Progressing past DL20 - the game is now inventory management - feature and bug

[FogSpear]

Hey there. Still a n00b but getting down a bit now. I noticed that after DL20 that I am spending more and more time trying to figure out the best inventory combinations with the limited space. So basically, I am spending more time planning before I dive and battle.

I noticed some user interface issues that create unnecessary friction - or I don't know the shortcuts yet (Angband V 4.2.1).

For example, when I am in my home inventory and want to dump items; it seems I need to grab them first (i.e. put them in my on-person inventory) before I can then drop them outside or sell to a shop. This seems like an unnecessary extra step. I would like to just dump items from the home inventory screen (e.g. drop outside or sell to a shop).

I also noticed from the Home Inventory screen that the game prompts you to press '?' for help and the options it gives are not all relevant (e.g. 'I' inspect says it should work here - would be nice - but it does not; also 'd' to sell? to a store but that brings up the on-person inventory rather than grab from the Home Inventory).

Anyway...still having fun and learning a lot. I recharged a staff of teleportation too much and I guess I destroyed it in the process.

[Neigeden]

For example, when I am in my home inventory and want to dump items; it seems I need to grab them first (i.e. put them in my on-person inventory) before I can then drop them outside or sell to a shop. This seems like an unnecessary extra step. I would like to just dump items from the home inventory screen (e.g. drop outside or sell to a shop).

I also noticed from the Home Inventory screen that the game prompts you to press '?' for help and the options it gives are not all relevant (e.g. 'I' inspect says it should work here - would be nice - but it does not; also 'd' to sell? to a store but that brings up the on-person inventory rather than grab from the Home Inventory).

Yeah, it would be nice if ditching stuff when at home wasn't such a cumbersome process, I've found that mildly frustrating as well.

I understand 'd' to stand for dropping, as in on the ground normally, in exchange for money when at a shop, and into the home inventory when at home. Also, 'I' doesn't work to inspect something in a shop or at home, use 'x' instead to inspect something.

N.B. I use the roguelike command keyset, I'm not sure if any of this is different otherwise.

[bughunter]

It used to be if you 'd'ropped an item while on the home inventory screen, it dropped on the ground outside your home. (As of 3.4.1 -- I skipped a few versions.)

Suggestion for a simple fix: Enable the 't'hrow [away] command from the home inventory screen, and this would dump the item on the ground, like above. Player could then retrieve or abandon the item(s) 't'hrown, as desired, once leaving home.

Something like that would ease the home/character inventory management process when both are full.

[whartung]

I'd happily toss in 10, no, 100, wait, 1000g for a home "quiver".

[Monkey Face]

Inventory management is definitely one of the key challenges in the game. It's also a reason to play with no selling on...you don't have to keep something just for the sake of selling it, you can decide what to save while you're in the dungeon based on what you are most likely to need at some point.

When recharging wands/staffs, make sure you let them get down to 0 charges first. I haven't tested it, but the rumor on the forums is that the chances of a recharge backfiring goes up the more charges that are currently left on the wand/staff and/or the more items in the stack you are recharging.

[Angdrim]

If you think it's tough at CL20, just wait until you're carrying stuff to swap just because your usual kit doesn't have pChaos.

I like to turn "no selling" off, because it makes the crunch that much tighter. (Plus it hurts to find Narthanc and say "eh, junk" and leave it on the floor.)

[bughunter]

When recharging wands/staffs, make sure you let them get down to 0 charges first. I haven't tested it, but the rumor on the forums is that the chances of a recharge backfiring goes up the more charges that are currently left on the wand/staff and/or the more items in the stack you are recharging.

I've tested it using common wands and staves.

True on the former (mage and rogue recharging spells tell you the chance of failure).

I have not noticed the latter, but then I haven't analyzed it with a spreadsheet. For wands that drop a lot (e.g., -Fire Balls), I generally keep a stack of three or four, and charge them until the chance of failure reaches 5.0% (1 on a d20 because nerd). I really don't want to have to 'reload' in combat.

For more rare items (e.g., _Holiness), and items I can use between combats (_CLW) I don't recharge them until I absolutely must, and then never multiple times in sequence. And if I find multiples of these, the spares stay safely at home.

It certainly doesn't seem like having more items in the stack increases the backfire rate.

[Neigeden]

I'm pretty sure the more items in the stack, the lower the backfire rate. This is based on my experience and also I think I read somewhere on the forum a while ago that the chance is based on the average number of charges per item, not the total number of charges. Although that suggests that having a large stack makes no difference if there are 0 charges left, which I'd believe is the case

[Nick]

Rumour management

Here is the calculation for recharge failure chance (note that the chance is one in this value, so low number means likely to fail):

int recharge_failure_chance(const struct object *obj, int strength) {
	/* Ease of recharge ranges from 9 down to 4 (wands) or 3 (staffs) */
	int ease_of_recharge = (100 - obj->kind->level) / 10;
	int raw_chance = strength + ease_of_recharge
		- 2 * (obj->pval / obj->number);
	return raw_chance > 1 ? raw_chance : 1;

Strength is the power of the recharging method you use (various spells and scrolls have different strengths), and obj->pval is the number of charges, so obj->pval/obj->number is the average number of charges in the stack.

So the more charges you have, the more likely the recharge will fail.

[fph]

Note that (if I am not mistaken) obj->pval / obj->number is an integer division, so in practice, once you have fewer charges than items (e.g., 4 wands with 3 charges in total), discharging them further won't improve your chances.

TL;DR: the safest thing to do to minimize the failure rate is recharging only stacks that have (number of charges) < (number of items).

EDIT: Note that in some cases the optimal strategy requires some non-obvious juggling: for instance, if you have 5 wands with 3 charges, the min-max thing to do to get more charges is dropping two of the wands on the floor on separate squares, recharge them one by one, and then pick them back up again.

[sffp]

Make sure you drop all of the wands first. - otherwise autopickup will pick them up and amalgamate them.

It's drop them one of a time on different spaces ofthe floor (piles of one wand). Read Recharge on them while they're still on the ground. Pick them all up.

I tend to buy recharge scrolls and restore live level at the stores and store them in my house whenever I can afford them because they're not always there.

[bughunter]

Which brings up a related question:

If you have a stack of wands with num_charges < num_items, is there a way to predict (or control) which ones you drop first? The ones with, or without, a charge?

I seldom play around with stacks of rechargables like that, but do recall being confused the last time I did... months ago.

[fph]

You drop always the empty ones, or in general you drop them with floor(num_charges / num_wands) charges.