[ALL] Dealing with weak/slow pseudo-id

[Donald Jonker]

As a novice who plays warriors almost all of the time, I wonder how people deal with the other classes' weak/slow pseudo-id.

Do you just ID all the armors and weapons you come across? Doesn't that cost too much?

Do you fill up your pack and skip stuff until however long the pseudo kicks in? Won't that make you miss a lot of loot?

Do you fill up and then rest until pseudo happens? Doesn't that take forever?

I can't figure it out. I'd like to play non-warrior types more often, but I find it slows down the game far too much.

--J

[konijn_]

As a novice who plays warriors almost all of the time, I wonder how people deal with the other classes' weak/slow pseudo-id.

Do you just ID all the armors and weapons you come across? Doesn't that cost too much?

Do you fill up your pack and skip stuff until however long the pseudo kicks in? Won't that make you miss a lot of loot?

Do you fill up and then rest until pseudo happens? Doesn't that take forever?

I can't figure it out. I'd like to play non-warrior types more often, but I find it slows down the game far too much.

--J

- Most things in the dungeon are crap until you get the id spell
- ID by selling all potions/rings/mushrooms etc. or try them
- create a rest 9999 turns macro, useful for pseudo id and town scumming ;]

Cheers,
T.

[Zikke]

After I get past the first 15 levels or so, I just destroy any armor or weapon to see if it's an artifact.

And yeah, sell rings/potions/mushrooms to ID them for future reference, and try zapping all the rods/staves/wands/scrolls to figure out what they do. Anything that I see as {tried} I vendor to find out what that flavor is.

The "rest 9999" thing can work too, if you can sustain yourself on food/light.

[zaimoni]

After I get past the first 15 levels or so, I just destroy any armor or weapon to see if it's an artifact.

And yeah, sell rings/potions/mushrooms to ID them for future reference, and try zapping all the rods/staves/wands/scrolls to figure out what they do. Anything that I see as {tried} I vendor to find out what that flavor is.

The "rest 9999" thing can work too, if you can sustain yourself on food/light.

R9999 (and its lesser versions) should be done when *finished* with a level, if possible; it'll drive monster spawning through the roof.

The basic problem with weak psuedoid is that it can be metagamed using out of game information. Things you'd never learn in-game:
* When psuedoid triggers, any *worn* not-psuedo-id'd item is actually average.
* Managing inventory is a bit trickier (a non-normal item has a 1/5 probability of failing to be noticed by psuedo-id), but some sort of counting "not caught by psuedoid" would be useful.
* Priests and Paladins have it easy once they have Orb of Draining (unless, of course, you actually need a Nazgul weapon for See Invisible....), as they do not have to take the chance of identifying a destuctible cursed item.

[PowerDiver]

* Priests and Paladins have it easy once they have Orb of Draining (unless, of course, you actually need a Nazgul weapon for See Invisible....), as they do not have to take the chance of identifying a destuctible cursed item.

That also leads to a big deal in that they can test melee weapons. Other chars should not use the "wield a weapon until something pseudos" trick, for fear of losing the game to a Morgul weapon.

[nobody]

why not try the rogue? rogues are awesome, melee and ranged combat with support magic. they have the fast strong psuedo id and then they get the id spell

[Pete Mack]

As a novice who plays warriors almost all of the time, I wonder how people deal with the other classes' weak/slow pseudo-id.

The most important thing is: don't worry about the first several levels, where "several" is class-dependent. You need to dive so that solutions to ID start presenting themselves. Fortunately, all these classes, with the possible exception of priests, can dive fairly fast, one way or another. And Priest has extremely fast ID, even though it's weak.

Do you just ID all the armors and weapons you come across? Doesn't that cost too much?

Do you fill up your pack and skip stuff until however long the pseudo kicks in? Won't that make you miss a lot of loot?

Do you fill up and then rest until pseudo happens? Doesn't that take forever?

Not forever. UnIDED things fill up in inventory in order of pickup. When my inventory is full and I've been playing a while, I just start destroying the oldest stuff. (That way I don't miss any artifacts.) I also carry a _lot_ of ?ID.

For Priest and paladin, Orb of Draining and/or Remove Curse make a huge difference.

I can't figure it out. I'd like to play non-warrior types more often, but I find it slows down the game far too much.

For mage, the spell is early and cheap, if you just dive a little bit. (Yes it's dangerous, but it's fun.)


The other thing I do is play Rogue instead of Ranger :-/ The extra stealth, HP, and better detection largely make up for the weaker fighting. Or you can play NPP, where rogue and Bandit(?) have superpowers. (Sling bonuses and traps.)

[Nystul]

It's only an issue because people make it so. ID scrolls are cheap. I was carrying stacks of ID scrolls on an L50 ranger because it is safer to have the extra weight (when your speed is +30something anyway) than to waste all of your mana on identify spells.

Priests on the other hand tend to have plenty of mana, so before you get identify keep in mind that you can cast orb of draining on a stack of unidentified items to weed out the cursed ones before identifying anything.

I still will carry stuff around if I have open slots and wait for a pseudo ID, but I'm not going to rest for thousands of turns waiting unless I have way too much stuff and not many ID scrolls left to use.

Mages get ID very early so it is a non-issue for them, and paladins/rogues can rely on a fairly strong pseudo-ID.

[Donald Jonker]

Thanks for all the feedback... gives me fuel to stoke the fires of diverse experimentation.

--J