Idea - Shops with custom-built items and changing prices

[ekolis]

In Angband, the "game of shopping" involves checking the shops every so often to see if any useful items are available for sale. I've got an idea for a new mechanic that someone might find useful for a variant...

Basically, instead of a list of "available items" you can choose from, instead you get to design your own item and have the shopkeeper fabricate it for you. This is basically the same as the "smithing" ability in Sil, except that you'd have to pay gold dependent on the properties of the item you want to make.

But to make things interesting, prices can fluctuate over time! These prices would of course be dependent on the various properties of the items - to-hit enchantments, armor class, resists, etc. Every so often (in a similar fashion to the current "restocking" mechanism), the prices get rerolled. So if the price of "resist poison" was set to 4d50 in the edit files, then you might start the game with resist poison costing 122 gold, but later on it might drop to 87 gold, or increase to 165 gold, or whatever the roll came out to.

[Derakon]

Any kind of "build your own artifact", which is what it sounds like you're suggesting, needs to be sufficiently expensive to be unusable except to the people willing to grind until the game's not challenging anyway. Otherwise it will break the game wide open. A significant portion of the game is trying to optimize your gear; if you can just select the abilities you want to have then that goes right out the window -- even if you limit it to only a few abilities. Hell, just being able to combine, say, FA/SI/rPois on a pair of gloves would probably be enough to really free up the rest of your gear options in many games.

That said, IIRC some variants have the option to order specific items from stores. Not custom-made items with selected properties, but non-equipment items like potions and scrolls. You have to pay a lot more of course, and I think there's also a delay before the item arrives.

[getter77]

It could work with a good amount of tweaking, like you needing to furnish some of the "raw materials" alongside some gold. Ideally, the general sort of stuff you'd be able to make would be different than what you'd general find dungeon diving. Similarly, I've long been keen on the notion of something of a supplementary barter system along general types valid only per dungeon entrance. Roughly a "I could use something that resists fire, the more the better. If you can manage it, you can select X amount of any of the potions I have on hand, up to Y in the case of best res."

[Magnate]

This could be interesting providing the item ordered is not provided to exact specifications. So more like "look, shopkeeper, I'm desperate for something that resists lightning so I can free up my amulet slot - here's 100k gold please see what you can do". Rather than "I'd like a pair of Soft Leather Boots +15 with FA, rFire and rNexus."

It's basically an extension of NPP's "store services" or Sangband's "investment" in the stores - a way to siphon money out of the player's pocket in return for a small chance that something useful will appear. But more often than not the item would need to be imperfect (e.g. wrong slot, or very low-end etc.).

[ghengiz]

This could be interesting providing the item ordered is not provided to exact specifications. So more like "look, shopkeeper, I'm desperate for something that resists lightning so I can free up my amulet slot - here's 100k gold please see what you can do". Rather than "I'd like a pair of Soft Leather Boots +15 with FA, rFire and rNexus."

It's basically an extension of NPP's "store services" or Sangband's "investment" in the stores - a way to siphon money out of the player's pocket in return for a small chance that something useful will appear. But more often than not the item would need to be imperfect (e.g. wrong slot, or very low-end etc.).

Agreed.
I think the chance should go (slowly) up with money: the more you give, the more the shopkeeper does his best to find the item you want. Are you desperate enough to give him tons of money for some percent more?