Rune-based ID

[calris]

Couple of things I've just noticed:

• I found a ring with the Digging rune on it, but still had to ID a Shovel of Digging I found shortly afterward (EDIT: Ignore that - the shovel had an Acid brand I hadn't ID'd yet)
• I found a ring of Open Wounds - ID gave me the impared hitpoint rune, but I couldn't find out what it was until I activated it. It wasn't obvious that it had an activation - maybe something on the info screen to say 'it can be activated' would be helpful

[jagular]

I just found "the Glaive of Pain (2d6)".. is that a bug? It's listed as 9d6 in the artifact.txt.

http://imgur.com/LVRNsq8

edit:
this seems to be affecting all artifacts with changed damage dice
the Beaked Axe of Húrin is 2d6 instead of 3d6, and Calris is 3d4 instead of 5d4

[Nick]

I just found "the Glaive of Pain (2d6)".. is that a bug? It's listed as 9d6 in the artifact.txt.

http://imgur.com/LVRNsq8

edit:
this seems to be affecting all artifacts with changed damage dice
the Beaked Axe of Húrin is 2d6 instead of 3d6, and Calris is 3d4 instead of 5d4

Sounds buggy. Do the dice stay the same if you wield one of the weapons?

[jagular]

Yep. Haven't tried wielding Calris, I don't know how curses work in this version.. but the other two stay the same, yes. And they're all fully identified.

The 'I'nspect damage calc seems to match the lower dice too, although it seems I don't really understand how damage works..
(2d6 + 30 + 5 [cammithrim] + 13 [18/170 str]) * 1.6 [attacks per round] = 88 dmg/round
The game says 96.9. Maybe I'm missing some factor, but 9d6 would be a lot more I think.

Unless I missed a link, I'm using the latest windows build from this thread (it just says 4.0.4 in game). I can send you a savegame if you want?

[Derakon]

The 'I'nspect damage calc seems to match the lower dice too, although it seems I don't really understand how damage works..
(2d6 + 30 + 5 [cammithrim] + 13 [18/170 str]) * 1.6 [attacks per round] = 88 dmg/round
The game says 96.9. Maybe I'm missing some factor, but 9d6 would be a lot more I think.

The game takes critical hits into account, so you'll always see average damage that's a bit higher than what you would get just from dice + to-dam bonuses. Still, that's nowhere near enough to account for a missing 7d6.

[jagular]

The game takes critical hits into account, so you'll always see average damage that's a bit higher than what you would get just from dice + to-dam bonuses. Still, that's nowhere near enough to account for a missing 7d6.

Ah, that'd explain it!
Another thing I've been wondering about: resting to full health/mana takes a long time (feels like several seconds). That's probably not because of anything in the rune-id branch, but in variants based on old angband versions (like tome 2.x) you can do it instantly. Is there an option or something I missed?

[calris]

Just beat Morgoth using a Rune ID character (not a legit win as Carcharoth killed me - this was the corrupted save file that I posted in another thread).

A couple of notes:

• Endgame is VASTLY superior using Rune ID. I never realised how annoying the old ID was in late game until now
• Early game can be slightly annoying until you find a few Identify scrolls, but I think this actually improves the game's immersion factor - early game you are running around with no clear idea of the world around you - as you learn more runes, your understanding of the world grows. Before it was really a case of 'You know nothing John Snow' no matter how early or late in the game you were
• Auto-ignore and Rune-ID have some interesting effects - Often I will use detection and see *'s show up where objects are. When I light the areas, some *'s will instantly disappear (I'm thinking they are mostly scrolls, potions, etc.). But weapons and equipment will remain until I walk over them - that's when auto-ignore kicks in and they just disappear. It would be nice if auto-ignore was applied to equipment before going to the trouble of walking all the way over to them.
• As far as I can tell, there is no way of knowing if you know all the runes, so you don't know if you can safely auto-ignore Identify scrolls
• I'm not a fan of scrolls, potions, wands, etc. identifying regardless of if they have a noticeable effect (cure confusion when you aren't confused for example). Runes need to be ID'd through effect (or Identify), why should magical items be any different?

EDIT: Some more thoughts:

• Allow Identify scrolls to be used on magical items (potions, scrolls, wands, etc.)
• Bring back scrolls of *Identify* which identify ALL Runes on an item (or maybe a maximum of three Runes)
• Indicate how many things you don't know about an item. Maybe have three levels - There is something you don't know about this item for only one unknown Rune, There are several things you don't know about this item for two-four unknown runes, and There are many things that you don't know about this item for items with five or more unknown runes. The reason I say this is that it should be pretty obvious to a player that picks up a Defender early on (my last character picked one up somewhere around 250') that it's pretty special compared to a paltry weapon of flame for example.
• Have the magic shop offer an Identify service which recharges based on player turns (the black market sells scrolls occasionally - look at it as the magic shop grabbing a scroll from the black market while you are down in the dungeon)
• In Display Rune Knowledge, why not list all the Runes, but have a 'known' column to indicate what we do and don't know?

[Pete Mack]

The nominal reason potions auto-id on use is that for Kobolds, Dwarves, and Gnomes, some potions can never ID-by-use. (Poison/Cure poison, Blindness, Sleep, respectively)

[calris]

The nominal reason potions auto-id on use is that for Kobolds, Dwarves, and Gnomes, some potions can never ID-by-use. (Poison/Cure poison, Blindness, Sleep, respectively)

Can't we just make an exception so the potion does get auto-id'd if the player has an intrinsic race or class skill that prevents it?

EDIT: And the same applies to the See Invisible Rune for High Elves, or or the Free Action rune for Gnomes, or Hold Life for Hobbits. Potions aren't special when it comes to conflicting with a player's intrinsic abilities

[Nomad]

Just won a game in the rune-based branch, and though there are things that I think could still be tweaked (and auto-inscriptions are still slightly buggy), even as-is it's vastly superior to the current ID system. Though one thing I did notice playing a winning game is that, as calris mentions, it's a bit frustrating not being certain when you've learned all the runes and can safely ditch your ID scrolls. Maybe the rune knowledge menu could indicate runes still to be learned with question marks or something?

IMO it doesn't seem particularly necessary to bring back *Identify* or any other methods of learning more runes - standard Identify scrolls covered my needs quite happily. (In fact, I hoarded them for longer than I needed to, and ID'd a lot of things by use in the early game that I could have just used scrolls for without running out.) I could go either way on the "indicate the number of unknown runes" issue: it might be nice to know an item's relative power level on pickup, but on the other hand, only gradually discovering that an item you assumed was something basic is actually really awesome is kind of neat as well.

And personally I actually like that there's no magical way of identifying consumables any more - I found it freed me up from being so annoyed at accidentally wasting good drops. In the previous system I'd have been cursing myself if I drank a potion of Life instead of waiting to play it safe and use an ID scroll, but in this one I can just shrug it off because, hey, there was no other way to have learned. (That said, I'm aware that many players are far more risk-averse than me and might feel frustratingly cornered into ID-by-selling if they're unwilling to test things by use. Maybe magical ID of consumables should be available solely as a red-book spell for rogues and mages?)

• I'm not a fan of scrolls, potions, wands, etc. identifying regardless of if they have a noticeable effect (cure confusion when you aren't confused for example). Runes need to be ID'd through effect (or Identify), why should magical items be any different?

I think the main aim here is to avoid making players jump through hoops to get the game to put a name on things they've already recognised. With scrolls and potions there are only a relatively tiny number that don't have an immediately noticeable effect, and they're mostly very common early game finds that an experienced player will figure out easily, so it's something of an artificial annoyance to force the player to find some way to test that scroll they already know is Detect Invisible or wait to be injured before they can identify a stack of what are obviously Cure Light Wounds potions. Having them all just be apparent on use removes that pointless hassle.

That said, I do think wands, staves and rods are a different case, and those should revert to needing to be used against a suitable target before they auto-identify. It's fair to reward the player with instant ID for taking the risk of using an unidentified scroll or potion, but zapping a wand at an empty square neither uses up the wand nor puts the player at any risk of negative consequences, so it shouldn't be that easy to get the ID.

[Nick]

Just won a game in the rune-based branch, and though there are things that I think could still be tweaked (and auto-inscriptions are still slightly buggy), even as-is it's vastly superior to the current ID system. Though one thing I did notice playing a winning game is that, as calris mentions, it's a bit frustrating not being certain when you've learned all the runes and can safely ditch your ID scrolls. Maybe the rune knowledge menu could indicate runes still to be learned with question marks or something?

Yes, I think something like that is a good idea.

That said, I do think wands, staves and rods are a different case, and those should revert to needing to be used against a suitable target before they auto-identify. It's fair to reward the player with instant ID for taking the risk of using an unidentified scroll or potion, but zapping a wand at an empty square neither uses up the wand nor puts the player at any risk of negative consequences, so it shouldn't be that easy to get the ID.

My feeling here is approximately that things that have an effect on monsters should need to be used on a monster (but not that the effect needs to succeed), but everything else be instant. Maybe there are other effects that shouldn't be instant, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

[Nomad]

My feeling here is approximately that things that have an effect on monsters should need to be used on a monster (but not that the effect needs to succeed), but everything else be instant. Maybe there are other effects that shouldn't be instant, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

Yes, that seems fair. The only other effects that require a target are the ones that affect dungeon features - Stone to Mud, Disarming and Trap/Door Destruction - and of those, Stone to Mud is almost certain to hit a wall when you test it anyway, and the trap-related ones are likely to be reworked/removed in the trap branch, so I'm not sure it's worth making them special cases.

[Nick]

OK, I have fixed the following:

• Magic devices that affect monsters need to be used on a monster to ID
• Artifact dice appear correctly
• Standard to-hit penalties on body armor don't count as the to-hit rune
• Autoinscriptions should not leak info - let me know if there are still autoinscription issues
• All activations that are standard for an object kind (notably on things like Rings of Digging and Open Wounds) are automatically known

and pulled this branch into the master branch, so it is available on the nightlies page.

Please continue to let me know about bugs - in particular, I suspect that artifacts may still be creatable multiple times.

[Nomad]

• Magic devices that affect monsters need to be used on a monster to ID

Monster-targetting wands/staves have now reverted to the old behaviour of not identifying if the monster is unaffected. Not a big deal, but I think it would fit better with the streamlining of ID to have them ID regardless of whether the monster resists.

(Also, having spent all my testing of the traps branch frustrated at the lack of rune-based ID, now that I've switched back to this one I'm frustrated at having to manually search for secret doors and monster-created traps being invisible. So I guess you can mark me down as considering those big gameplay improvements.)

[Nick]

Monster-targetting wands/staves have now reverted to the old behaviour of not identifying if the monster is unaffected. Not a big deal, but I think it would fit better with the streamlining of ID to have them ID regardless of whether the monster resists.

I've pushed some changes to this - nightlies page should update soon. See how they work.