Town Books vs Dungeon Books

[DavidMedley]

Do we like this strong rift between town and dungeon books? That is, there are some books that are always available in town, and some books that are never available except very rarely in the Black Market. I know the joy of finding a book that you need in the dungeon is great, but is it greater than the frustration of not finding a book that you need? What if all 1st books are in the bookstore, and all others show up there occasionally?

[Adam]

For me it's part of the fun to find the dungeon books.
One can live without any of them, just makes the game more interesting.
I played IM mage before the magic refactor who had to live without Kelek and it was ok. For non IM games this is less relevant.
I could imagine introducing some mid-game quests with class specific guaranteed reward (or player chosen reward from a set of items).

[Philip]

Each class has things they scale with, and some things scale mostly linearly and predictably, and some things are extremely random and power-spikey. Warriors scale HP with level and stats from potions mostly linearly, but their most important stat, damage output, mostly scales with weapon quality and equipment stat boosts. Warriors are a pretty spikey class, on the whole. In contrast, casters are mostly linear, even with dungeon books as they are. Their HP, SP reserves, available spells, and casting stat have more effect on their damage output and security in fights than what books they have. Yes, dungeon books provide important utility spells and can allow casters to have higher damage per turn, but until pretty late, casters would rather not fight the sort of fight where killing the monster quickly is both difficult and essential. Yes, the first couple pieces of equipment that provide your casting stat have a large effect, and even potions of that casting stat can feel a bit spikey, and there tends to be a sudden accumulation of HP late in the game as layering +CON equipment becomes viable, but on the whole, casters scale with clvl more than they do with found objects. I believe that making the dungeon book distribution curve flatter and more predictable would be a mistake, and that caster gameplay is linear enough already.

[quarague]

Note also that town books can be destroyed by fire, so depending on what you fight you have to be careful about them. Dungeon books on the other hand are indestructable so you only need to find them once. In general to me looks fine as is.