Rune-based ID

[wobbly]

It potentially matters for the cloak with teleport on it. Mostly it depends on whether there's plans for cursed items or harmful activations in the future.

[spara]

Foremost the behavior should be consistent. Since rods, staves, rings and wands require ID by use, then I would say that the activations should too.

[Derakon]

Mm, and I suppose allowing activation while the item is in the inventory would mean that players would carry around certain artifacts for use as "rods". I was trying to think of a way for players to not have to equip the item to find out what it does (assuming they already recognized all the runes on it, of course), but okay, fair enough.

[Estie]

I wouldnt want to have to try to activate every unknown item/artifact. So if activations have to be tried to be identified, it should say on the unid item: "this item can be activated". With rod/staff/wand this information is implicit from the item type.

While it is consistent to require activation to identify the type, I dont like it at all to do so for egos and artifacts:
With rod/staff/wand the player has no idea what it does unless he tries it; with other items, any experienced player knows what the activation is going to be if he has even partial information about its other rune(s). You are introducing new cases of having to force the game to admit existing knowledge, exactly the thing that is unfun about the id game. The only exception that comes to mind are randarts. Otherwise, is there any item where knowledge of a single other rune does not allow to infer the activation type ?

[Nomad]

I think the issue is that there are multiple different item categories to be taken into account.

• DSM breath weapons. These are immediately obvious to the player even before pickup, and therefore it's silly for these to require activation to learn.
• Element rings. If you pick up a Ring [+something] with rFire, you already know it's a Ring of Flames, and having to activate it to learn that seems pointless. (OTOH, if the activation is immediately known, it leaks information the other way - a ring that activates for flames will obviously have the rFire rune. But then, the same is true of any item where you know some runes but not others yet.)
• Ring of Digging. The digging bonus is apparent on wielding, so the activation is obvious.
• Open Wounds. Kind of a weird quirky edge case where both the Impair HP rune and the activation are unique, so learning one makes the other obvious anyway.
• Standarts. There are quite a lot of these to remember, but experienced players will know at least some of them, especially for things like the artefact lights.
• Randarts. Completely random, impossible to predict, and include potentially negative stuff like +1/-1 stat effects, banishment, deep descent, destruction, etc.

Looking at that list, I think I'm leaning towards the idea that all activations should just be apparent on pickup. In most cases they're obvious to the player and requiring activation to learn them is just unnecessary jumping through hoops; the only time they're actually a complete mystery is with randarts, and that's a side option anyway.

[spara]

I wouldnt want to have to try to activate every unknown item/artifact...

I'm not finding _that_ many items with activation for it to feel tedious, but that's just me of course. And after playing a while one kind of knows what the activation will be, so I get your point. However I would prefer one time activation per activation type to recognize it. Just for the immersion and ambiance and such. Every new @ is a virgin for me .

[spara]

Heavier armors that have minuses to hit have to-hit runes in them. That's a bit weird, I think, since minuses come from the armor being heavy, not runed.

[calris]

OK, I'm a little late into the conversation and play testing of Rune-ID, but here are my brief thoughts:

• It felt odd (like really, really, odd) to be running around wearing every piece of gear I found just lying around. I know cursed gear got removed a while ago (and I missed the whole conversation around that), but it just feels wrong to randomly wear stuff with total disregard for the negative effects.
• I missed the bit about Identify being added back in so I spent the whole time stressing about giving away a scroll of *Acquirement* just to ID it (same with stat gain potions, etc.). Yes, I was too low level to come across any, but I was worried.
• Why not add a new scroll which gives the player knowledge of a random rune they don't already know about. Call it a Scroll of Rune Lore. Have maybe a Scroll of *Rune Lore* which gives the player knowledge of multiple runes. The runes the player learns about from these scrolls won't necessarily be unidentified runes on equipment they are carrying
• Hmmm, now that I think about it, the Lore scroll collection could include scrolls for each of Potions, Wands, Staves, Rods, Mushrooms, and Scrolls
• Hmmm, put 'Rune Lore' in Tomes (still with the '?' symbol) - Different colours for different lore (Brown for Mushrooms, Grey for Scrolls, Red for Runes, Blue for Potions, etc.)
• Not sure if it's there already, but we need a way of knowing how many runes we don't know yet (just like we can tell how many potions we haven't identified yet)

[Rydel]

Heavier armors that have minuses to hit have to-hit runes in them. That's a bit weird, I think, since minuses come from the armor being heavy, not runed.

Agreed - it seems odd for non-magical items to have any runes in the first place. It would make more sense for the base parts of an item to be known and not have runes, then use the runes just for magical enchantments.

[calris]

I've played around with this branch a bit more, and I'm beginning to get the feel for it. So far @ is level 14 at dungeon level 8. A few notes

• I picked up a cloak on DL2 that defied all reason to ID - got frozen, charred, acid burns, confused. Turns out it has shard resistance - Nice
• Wormtongue dropped a Defender - It was really fun having to cast ID over and over again to slowly reveal what it was - It had a nice feel to it game play wise
• Identify can no longer be used on Scrolls (and I assume anything else which is not equipment) so the only way to ID non equipment items is to either give them to a shop keeper or try them out. I was worried about the Potion of Death, but it appears this has been removed. I'm beginning to wonder if too much 'nasty' stuff (curses, potion of death, etc.) has been removed and a certain level of 'risk' has been removed with them. My feeling is that the new traps feature will reverse this trend and add a little bit of the nervy edge back into the game

After coming back from a ten year break, I was a bit worried about all the changes that had happened and are happening. But I think I can safely say that, if anything, the heart of what is Angband is shinning through stronger than ever. It's an all over cleaner experience with most of the annoying and repetitive elements being stripped away.

[Carnivean]

I was worried about the Potion of Death, but it appears this has been removed.

Lose Memories is still there though.

[calris]

Lose Memories is still there though.

Does Restore Life Levels counter this?

[Pete Mack]

The trouble with !death and !detonations was that they make ID-by-use impossible. They WILL kill you otherwise. Same with Rings of Woe. The only one that was survivable was !ruination, and even that made for absolute misery, since stat gain isn't a lot of fun. So The stat swap potions are a nice compromise.

[Nomad]

• Identify can no longer be used on Scrolls (and I assume anything else which is not equipment) so the only way to ID non equipment items is to either give them to a shop keeper or try them out. I was worried about the Potion of Death, but it appears this has been removed. I'm beginning to wonder if too much 'nasty' stuff (curses, potion of death, etc.) has been removed and a certain level of 'risk' has been removed with them. My feeling is that the new traps feature will reverse this trend and add a little bit of the nervy edge back into the game

In recent versions there's been a big push towards making ID-by-use a viable strategy, so risks have been rebalanced to allow players to test out random unknown items with the assurance that while they could have negative effects, they will never instantly kill you or cripple your game to the point of making it unplayable (unless you're very unlucky or stupid about when you choose to test them). So ultra-nasty 'gotcha' items like the Potion of Death that made it too unsafe to ever gamble are now gone, and curses have been temporarily removed pending a rethink to come up with some way to make them interesting without discouraging players from testing equipment by wielding it.

Does Restore Life Levels counter this?

Yes, it does.

[Carnivean]

Does Restore Life Levels counter this?

I've been too paranoid to ever take one.