Suggestions about lights and probing

[t4nk]

Playing with radius 1 light is pretty tedious and slows down the early game quite a lot. How about selling lanterns in general store? Make it cost 500 gold. That will give a player some goal to achieve, and will cut down the tedium. Torches of brightness would be removed then.

Also, how about selling rod of probing in magic shop for 5-10k gold? This item is mostly useful to new players, and again, will give them something to look forward to.

Come to think of it, maybe probing monsters should give some xp? (once per monster race). If it's a lot of xp (like for meeting new monsters in Sil) that would make pacifist playstyle possible (maybe). And if it's a bit, it would at least make probing not entirely useless to people who already know all monsters (or who do this thing with monster.txt)

[Gwarl]

Lanterns did used to be available in the general store. They were removed because the first thing you did with any new character was buy a lantern. There's no reason for torches to exist in the game if lanterns are sold in 1.

There are two solutions: remove torches from the game or remove lanterns from 1.

[t4nk]

Lanterns did used to be available in the general store. They were removed because the first thing you did with any new character was buy a lantern.

Actually, I know ("1. Buy lantern; 2. Kill Morgoth"). And it appears Angband was more popular back then... (not just because of lanterns, of course).

There's no reason for torches to exist in the game if lanterns are sold in 1.

That depends on the price of a lantern. If you can't buy it immediately, you need to use torches. Even if you can, it's probably more optimal to buy other things (phase doors, cls, wands). People were buying lanters because radius 1 light was just too annoying...

There are two solutions: remove torches from the game or remove lanterns from 1.

No, there are more solutions... for example, increasing light radiuses across the board is also reasonable (torch 2, lantern 3, etc).

[Gwarl]

Actually about that latter one, I was considering doing that for my own variant.

[Derakon]

I like the idea of selling Rods of Probing in the magic store. Make 'em cheap, too.

As for lanterns, the first lantern find of the game is always nice. I think if I were able to just buy it, even if I had to endure a dungeon dive without it first, then it'd be less exciting. Plus I'd feel obligated to return to town as soon as I had the money for 2x Recall + Lantern.

[luneya]

Lanterns did used to be available in the general store. They were removed because the first thing you did with any new character was buy a lantern. There's no reason for torches to exist in the game if lanterns are sold in 1.

There are two solutions: remove torches from the game or remove lanterns from 1.

Of course, blundering into a floating eye because all you had was a torch used to be an insta-death. Now wandering around with radius-1 light is just annoying. And it's not even that bad, as most characters will have access to some form of light spell by the time that unlit rooms become common, and you don't really need light radius in a corridor.

[Werbaer]

Of course, blundering into a floating eye because all you had was a torch used to be an insta-death.

If you entered the dungeon naked.
But if you had ac AC of 8, you had to be extremely unlucky to get killed by a floating eye, even as a level 1 character.