Never spawn some spell books

[Mark]

Ever since selling items in town was turned off, finding spell books has been a mixed bag.

Previously, regardless of what class I was, regardless which books I had already found, at least finding a high level book was worth gold, which early on could buy a few potions on the Black Market.

Now, as a Warrior they are all wholly useless, and as a spell caster, half of them are useless. It's made worse, as (I imagine) they still contribute towards level feelings, so sometimes an excellent feeling is something of absolute zero value.

So.. ....why not have simple rules for item generation that say

Never spawn magic books if character cannot cast magic spells.
Never spawn prayer books if character cannot say prayers.

Less clutter, less disappointment, no change in balancing. Everyone wins.

[fph]

Oddly enough, I made the same suggestion less than one week ago in another thread http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...323#post137323 (check also the next page, where Derakon points out negative points of this suggestion).

I solemny swear that I don't know this Mark guy and this post wasn't arranged to support my point.

[Mark]

I see there would be an inconsistency introduced by this suggestion, that in itself doesn’t bother me.

Advertising spells to players who have never played a caster much, that is probably valuable, and reasonable to assume plenty of new players will be a warrior first. (But for all seasoned players it’s not valuable, there is very little middle ground)

My preference would be for a birth option defaulting to true: Spawn items useless for your character class (e.g. spellbooks). Newbies are unlikely to change this and if they do, they now know about spellbooks.

Also, to boost the ‘advertising factor’ I’d allow all classes to read the spell names in a book.

Spellsbooks as lot drops are a lot less annoying than being found in a vault.

[mrfy]

Why can't we just ignore the books which aren't for our class? It's pretty easy to do. I usually just do it when I come across them, but you could also pre-ignore them from the options menu.

[Mondkalb]

Why can't we just ignore the books which aren't for our class? It's pretty easy to do. I usually just do it when I come across them, but you could also pre-ignore them from the options menu.

Ignoring is ok, but there is still the problem that you will get a high level feeling if any of the dungeon spell books is on the level. But you can't even see it, because you are ignoring it ...
Frustrating to clean a level and only getting garbage.

[wobbly]

Ignoring is ok, but there is still the problem that you will get a high level feeling if any of the dungeon spell books is on the level. But you can't even see it, because you are ignoring it ...
Frustrating to clean a level and only getting garbage.

That's consistent with other good loot that is not of use to you. Level feelings are already a freebie of "good loot be here" and encourage stair scumming in my opinion. I can flick to the newbie AAR and see advice to stair scum. Should the game mechanics really encourage this type of play more than it already does?

[PowerWyrm]

Ever since selling items in town was turned off, finding spell books has been a mixed bag.

Previously, regardless of what class I was, regardless which books I had already found, at least finding a high level book was worth gold, which early on could buy a few potions on the Black Market.

Now, as a Warrior they are all wholly useless, and as a spell caster, half of them are useless. It's made worse, as (I imagine) they still contribute towards level feelings, so sometimes an excellent feeling is something of absolute zero value.

So.. ....why not have simple rules for item generation that say

Never spawn magic books if character cannot cast magic spells.
Never spawn prayer books if character cannot say prayers.

Less clutter, less disappointment, no change in balancing. Everyone wins.

This was changed in current version but reverted for a reason I don't know...

[Sparrow the Dunadan]

Oddly enough, I made the same suggestion less than one week ago in another thread http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...323#post137323 (check also the next page, where Derakon points out negative points of this suggestion).

I solemny swear that I don't know this Mark guy and this post wasn't arranged to support my point.

I don't get why you would turn selling off? I mean getting more gold on levels can be a hassle, because wouldn't it mean that some of it was buried in walls, meaning you'd have to carry a heavy pick around until you could get a decent ring of digging? (Ooo-whee are those things ever useful)

[Derakon]

I don't get why you would turn selling off? I mean getting more gold on levels can be a hassle, because wouldn't it mean that some of it was buried in walls, meaning you'd have to carry a heavy pick around until you could get a decent ring of digging? (Ooo-whee are those things ever useful)

I'm not sure what fph said about selling, but the reason to turn off selling is because Angband is a game about dungeon crawling, not shopping. Having to carry useless-but-"valuable" loot back to the surface to sell is an annoyance whose primary purpose is to let you afford your consumables and the occasional luxury item from the Black Market. With no-selling on, you can allocate your inventory to items you actually plan to use, and spend more time in the dungeon, actually playing the game. Plus it multiplies the sizes of gold drops to compensate; not enough to let you have the same amount of gold as a really dedicated seller, but enough.

Ignoring is ok, but there is still the problem that you will get a high level feeling if any of the dungeon spell books is on the level. But you can't even see it, because you are ignoring it ...
Frustrating to clean a level and only getting garbage.

This is one of the reasons why I advocate for turning level feelings off. They create expectations that often go unmet, which is frustrating. Even when you do find a significant item, you're constantly wondering whether that was the item that triggered the level feeling. I'd much rather just find the occasional significant item and go "neat! I had no idea that anything like that would be here!"

[Thraalbee]

I agree feelings are only so-so but I typically want to spend more time on every 5 levels or so in the early game to keep up with depth Feelings albeit no guarantee still help me choose the more suitable time for this. Also I kind of like no-preserve and guaranteed feelings for artifacts and do that occationally

My vote is to keep feelings

[NightLizard]

I have an idea that could work while both keeping feelings and work whether you have "no selling" or not.

If a book that you cannot use would spawn, just generate its value in gold instead. However, I'm not sure gold contributes to the level feeling (maybe not?).

[bio_hazard]

I'm not 100% sure that useless books are a problem that needs to be solved, but here's an off-the-wall solution: allow books to morph into a scroll. It's probably still going to be useless but at least there's some potential utility, and maybe this could provide rare access to some class-specific spells. Just a thought.

And I'll just advocate again for level feelings. For me, the downside of potential frustration of not finding/finding a useless item due to pursuing a promising level feeling is outweighed by the added interest in something breaking up 98 levels of dive/detect/fight/runaway.

[Derakon]

To be clear, I'm not at this moment advocating for removing level feelings from the game altogether. They're an option, I'm saying you should turn the option off.

At least try it, and if you really miss them then you can turn it back on.

[Nick]

I'm still thinking what to do about spell books - none of the solutions we've come up with so far quite tick all the boxes.

[Derakon]

Anyway, would it make sense to change the valuation of the book as far as it affects level feelings on a per-class basis? That is, zero out the book's impact on level feelings if the player's class does not match the book. Would that address peoples' concerns here?

Of course the book would still potentially consume valuable "slots" in vaults, but my impression from conversations here is that that's less of a concern. Certainly most floor tiles in vaults are consumed by other "worthless" items, so losing a few more to books you can't use has a fairly minor marginal impact.