Mining ore for smelting

[Grotug]

One of the things that has limited value in Angband is mining for treasure. In the first 40DLs it's somewhat useful. But what if instead of treasures that immediately convert into gold for your coffers, you drilled for actual ore? I know some other variants/crawls have smiths where you can upgrade your equipment. It would be fun to play an angband variant where you can mine different ores which would have different abilities for smelting and thus improving existing equipment you had.

So if you had a cloak and you smelted it with some sapphires, then it would increase the AC of the cloak. In deeper dungeons you would on occasion find rare ore types that would confer resistances to equipment. Say, you find some meteoric iron and you smelt it to your weapon, branding it with rDisenchantment. Maybe to make it more difficult to give your equipment high resists, you'd need to accumulate a certain amount of an ore type before you could use it for smelting. (Is smelting even the right word? I just like how it sounds. )

[Derakon]

Crafting has to be done very carefully to avoid either a) breaking the game balance completely, b) making the crafting not worthwhile, or c) making the game grindy. Even Sil has major trouble balancing the utility of crafting, with many players complaining that there's not much point to playing a smith in current versions.

The best crafting I've ever seen in any game, roguelike or not, is in Teleglitch, which has 10 levels per game, each of which has a specific set of crafting ingredients. Crafting then is mostly a matter of the player deciding what items to make with their limited resources. The strict limits (Teleglitch is basically a survival horror roguelike) make crafting choices meaningful and keep them from being overpowered.

I'm not saying don't do it, but I would be surprised if crafting made it into Vanilla.

[Pete Mack]

Crafting is worth it in Sil if you find an enchanted forge and/or Orodruinvand gloves+3. Then you can make excellent rings and amulets at almost no cost. But it only works because worthwhile forging resources are very rare.

[AnonymousHero]

One of the things that has limited value in Angband is mining for treasure. In the first 40DLs it's somewhat useful.

No, it's of no value in terms of helping you master/win the game. Ignore it completely.

FTR, I think it should be removed entirely. There's no conceivable reason to keep it other than "play how you want to play". Except nobody but the most-OCD of us wants to play that way[1]. If that's how you want to play, then "I don't want you playing my game". (That's not to disparage the semi-OCD of us, of whom I am one, but the chance of mining + lucky BM (or whatever) is just so remote and pointless that it should be removed.)

(EDIT: Not talking about "literal" OCD here, I'm just using the phrase as shorthand.)

[1] I guess I could see a purpose to it if there were a "ranked by $" thing on the ladder, but otherwise... no. I say this only because I've watched someone spend ~8h getting the maximum gold score in Spelunky. I stayed mainly because he seemed like an interesting person (+ it was live-streamed) and had interesting commentary and music, not so much for watching the mechanical destruction of every single level block. Because that latter bit was excrutiatingly boring.

[Pete Mack]

@AH--it has very slight value, but it's not what Grotug says. It's if you can almost afford something, but don't quite have enough--go mine a little on DL 1. (There's more ore than gold in the early levels.) I've done it a very few times when I couldn't afford a necessary scroll of recall. But that's it. The main value is to show you where veins are when you are tunneling towards a vault, and a little eye candy.

[AnonymousHero]

(Removed the bit about buying a shovel. Fair point, but these days I think characters get enough for that. Actually, maybe we should just outfit characters with a shovel. Even if only to dig through rubble.)

The main value is to show you where veins are when you are tunneling towards a vault, and a little eye candy.

Hang on... I think I've played enough games that I can say that that's not actually a thing. Does "vein" generation actually try to "favor" vaults? If so, that's an amazing little detail that (obsessive as I am) have never noticed.

[Derakon]

Hang on... I think I've played enough games that I can say that that's not actually a thing. Does "vein" generation actually try to "favor" vaults? If so, that's an amazing little detail that (obsessive as I am) have never noticed.

I think Pete just meant that if you're trying to tunnel in a given direction and there's a vein, it's a lot faster to follow the vein than it is to bore straight through granite. So far as I'm aware, vaults and ore veins don't have any special correlation.

[Estie]

I dig out treasure when I am a dwarf. I enjoy it and dont want it to be removed!

Funnily, coin amount has been reduced in the first level(s) to discourage grinding. Well, I never used to gold grind before, but since the change, I have to spend a lot of time on level 1 when I cant afford a recall scroll

So the change has had the opposite effect. Any chance for a fix ?

[PowerDiver]

Funnily, coin amount has been reduced in the first level(s) to discourage grinding. Well, I never used to gold grind before, but since the change, I have to spend a lot of time on level 1 when I cant afford a recall scroll

Why isn't ?recall part of the standard starting kit? Everyone should start with a dagger, sling, 10 shots, torch, a few food, and ?recall. Anything less is bonkers, except I forgo the ?recall for ironman starting kits.

[Pete Mack]

Recall IS in the starting kit, though you don't get it if you choose to start with gold rather than equipment. I ran out of gold when I saw something I could just barely afford in the black market (-TO, I think.) I agree it's a huge pain when there's no sling in the weaponsmith's.

Why isn't ?recall part of the standard starting kit? Everyone should start with a dagger, sling, 10 shots, torch, a few food, and ?recall. Anything less is bonkers, except I forgo the ?recall for ironman starting kits.

[Estie]

The first recall is not the problem, but like Pete said, sometimes you can barely afford something important; also, sometimes I just buy one potion too many, which, while admittedly my mistake, still happens occasionally and forces me to gather gold.

Would it be terrible to make the ?wor cheaper ? Its not a relevant drain on money, if you can get down in the first place. Or be less stingy with gold amount on level 1. If anyone really wants to waste time on level 1, let them...

[PowerDiver]

The first recall is not the problem, but like Pete said, sometimes you can barely afford something important; also, sometimes I just buy one potion too many, which, while admittedly my mistake, still happens occasionally and forces me to gather gold.

If your first purchase isn't two+ scrolls of recall, that's entirely on you.

[Estie]

If your first purchase isn't two+ scrolls of recall, that's entirely on you.

Normally it is. But "on me" or not, I never used to spend much time farming on level one prior to the "we dont want to encourage level 1 farm" change. Now I do.

[bio_hazard]

If mining helps you afford 2-3 WoR plus spellbook 3, that saves a trip. I mean mining doesn't really matter so much to the game, especially outside of the first 30 levels, but I really don't get the hate.