Stealing from Nethack: Bonus/Malus consumables

[TeshiAlair]

One concept I really liked in NH was the idea that consumables could be blessed or cursed. While I don't think that a cursed consumable should be an absolute inverse effect, I think there is some design space here. I don't think it would generate that much more inventory clutter, given that you tend to stash duplicates of consumables anyway, and thus you would have to decide whether to preserve your best stuff in a stash, or keep it with you.

Bad/Normal/Good examples:

?Tele Random blink/current tele/controlled tele
?Noise Really loud noise/noise/noise at location
?Ench weapon +1 -1, or visa versa /normal/equivalent of EW III
?Immo burns just you/old version/new version

!curing heal, but confuse/normal/heal + resistance (combine with !res possibly)
!poison strong poison/regular/sickness
!porridge feeds + slow/current/feed + heal or swift
!confusion confuse + berserk/confuse/confuse + see invis (kind of a weird one, but could be interesting in niche cases)

[BlackSheep]

And then we could bring back potions of water to bless items by dipping them and then you could...

Or then again, implementing a blessed/uncursed/cursed system for consumables could make inventory management way more annoying for what gain? So we have yet another ID game to play? That is one feature of NH that I am glad is not in crawl.

[Sandman25]

I have no experience with NH so my question is simple: can curse status of consumable be changed by player?

[BlackSheep]

In NH, you can fill bottles with water, take them to an altar to be blessed or cursed, then dip items into them to change the curse status.

[Sandman25]

In NH, you can fill bottles with water, take them to an altar to be blessed or cursed, then dip items into them to change the curse status.

Thank you. Sounds boring IMHO, it's too similar to typical quest game.

[Siegurt]

What's really fun in NH is that you can take regular potions, dip them into fountains or lakes, to *turn them into potions of water* so that you can then take them to altars to bless or curse them.

And what's really more fun is none of that chain of events is in the help or documentation at all, and you're expected to discover it on your own without spoilers

For a.... certain definition of fun, anyway.

[TeshiAlair]

Bottle shit is hands down one of the dumbest things in NH. However, the ID game right now is a no brainer. I feel that this makes it 1. More interesting 2. Makes stashing something you have to think about, rather than "keep some, stash rest" every time.

[nicolae]

However, the ID game right now is a no brainer.

I don't think "you should identify your items" is really the sort of tedious no-brainer the devs want to minimize.

Edit: And remember, in Nethack the B/U/C identification game is made easier because your pet won't voluntarily walk over cursed items.

[BlackSheep]

Then there's shop ID-ing and all sorts of crazy shit that makes NetHack NetHack.

[HenryFlower]

Ooooo: you could also have different spell effects if you were confused, and the effects could change depending on the B/U/C status of the scroll! And if you are going to have dipping into Holy/Unholy water, maybe you could dip other things. Like if you dip a scroll into water you'd have a blank scroll. Oooo ooo ooo! If you had a blank scroll, perhaps you could write on it. With, like, a marker. Ooo oo oo! Magic marker! Get it? Magic marker! Cool, huh?

And you could dip potions into other potions and get still other potions. What if you dipped darts into poison... Poison darts! Hey, if you dipped poison needles into water, you could wash off the poison, then dip them into paralysis! That'd be cool! (But perhaps not very useful -- what could you do with, like, 100 needles of paralysis?)

Or you could "up"grade some potions by dipping them into Flying. There's all kinds of stuff you could do.

That would totally increase the depth of Crawl.

[variouselite]

unsure weather you are being blessed sarcastic, uncursed sarcastic, or cursed sarcastic?

[dpeg]

Nethack's way of handling potions (and most other item interactions) is certainly nothing I can see in Nethack. Read the section about spoilers from the Crawl philosophy once more: if it is only fun to figure out once, then it's not good enough for Crawl -- we're aiming for replayability. If you make each potion a number of potions (because it performs differently depending on cursed/blessed/confused/whatever status), then good luck trying to maintain all versions are equally useful -- I bet they won't, and then you've spent a lot of work on nothing, as far as the gameplay is concerned.

[Jarlyk]

One thing that would be interesting, I think, would be some way to make use of the various 'bad' consumables you find. There are quite a few potions which serve no purpose other than to require you to ID them to make sure they're not something useful. This creates a few interesting choices, though it's somewhat redundant with potion rarity. Generally quaffing the bad potions in a safe situation would be a perfectly fine way to ID them (with the possible exception of Mutation potions); the bigger risk is wasting something useful and rare like a Cure Mutation potion. It also seems strange, from a lore standpoint, as to why these potions would have ever been created if they have no utility whatsoever.

Given that inventory management is already a pain, any use should probably be strategic rather than tactical. Some possibilities that spring to mind:

1. Have a god whose primary ability is conversion of unwanted (or excess) consumables into some sort of 'essence' item. This 'essence' would then be a consumable power source for the other god abilities. There is a small overlap with Nemelex/Jivya here, but those gods focus on turning items into piety, which is somewhat different. The downside to an approach like this is that these bad consumables are still useless to unbelievers.

2. Have a similar kind of 'essence' mechanic with a set of Transmutation spells.

In both of the above cases, you could have abilities that add/remove traits with randarts, providing an explanation as to how they came into existence in the first place. This is kinda like a mutation mechanic, but for items rather than characters. There would be biases toward addition of 'good' effects or removal of 'bad' effects, with of course the opposite bias in the case of a miscast. In the spirit of Crawl, this shouldn't be an 100% certainty, of course. This has the benefit of potentially making that awesome randart ring you found that was spoiled with *Tele suddenly usable. It also opens up the possibility of training Transmutations for something other than Unarmed Combat.

Both of the above introduce some interesting new mechanics I think, though neither really resolves the lore question as to how the bad consumables came to be in the first place. Perhaps these are the result of miscasts from prior transmuters?

[Sprucery]

Nethack has containers, so having stacks of cursed, uncursed and blessed scrolls and potions is ok there. I don't think we want to have containers in Crawl.

[ontoclasm]

some way to make use of the various 'bad' consumables you find

This basically boils down to selling them, which is on the won't-do list. Basically this is because, if you can wring a little value, even a tiny tiny amount, out of all the trash that litters the dungeon, then that encourages players to spend a million turns collecting it all. I realize other games generally teach you to grab and sell every piece of dirt you can scrape off the walls, but that's not Crawl's thing.

The astute will note that Nemelex completely ignores the above because ???

edit: For the flavour thing, note that bottles of, for example, bleach exist in the real world. They have a purpose, but "to be drunk while you're exploring ancient ruins" is not what that purpose is.

[and into]

Ack, double post.

[and into]

The astute will note that Nemelex completely ignores the above because ???

Because he's very well designed in other respects. Plus the value you get from the junk and the resultant usefulness is both randomized and mediated in a variety of ways; in practice, using your decks well often involves some interesting decisions. The quality of the items sacrificed matters, too—although yes, Nem does let you turn quantity into quality. The interface (sacrificing everything) is pretty bad I agree—Jiyva's method is much more elegant. But the pros outweigh the cons.

Responding to the thread in general: Crawl has intentionally eschewed a highly loot-driven design such that collecting/hoarding in order to "transmute" or trade becomes a major part of strategy (cf. WoW or Diablo II/III).

In Crawl, only some things are useful to everyone—but nearly everything is useful to someone. For a game in which trading is not a central element, that works quite well. Some religions bend that a little bit, but then again, that's what religions (and occasionally, species) are for.

[Jarlyk]

In Crawl, only some things are useful to everyone—but nearly everything is useful to someone.

I think this is what bugs me about the bad consumables, like potions of poison; they are one of the few things that are universally useless. The only thing they do mechanically is give an additional incentive to ID your potions before quaffing them, though, as I mentioned, avoiding the bad potions is generally far less of a concern than not wanting to waste the rare good potions. They add a little flavour in the rare cases where you randomly quaff potions in the early game, hoping to find a potion of Curing before you die from that kobold's poison darts, but it still feels to me like they could benefit from some sort of additional utility, even if it's a niche thing that only a few characters can use.

This basically boils down to selling them, which is on the won't-do list. Basically this is because, if you can wring a little value, even a tiny tiny amount, out of all the trash that litters the dungeon, then that encourages players to spend a million turns collecting it all. I realize other games generally teach you to grab and sell every piece of dirt you can scrape off the walls, but that's not Crawl's thing.

The astute will note that Nemelex completely ignores the above because ???

The reason Nemelex works is that you generally interact with the 'loot' immediately upon encountering it, making a decision whether to pick it up or pray it away. This is quite different from games that use gathering loot and carting it away in your limited inventory to a central location as a mechanic to provide pauses in their 'grind'. Granted, you press 'p' more often with Nemelex than with probably any other god, but at least you're not having to lug everything back to an altar first. I like the fact that Crawl makes you pick and choose as to what's useful to your character and hence worth carrying around, but when you have some items that are simply never worth using under any circumstances, it begs the question as to what purpose they are serving.

[cerebovssquire]

What is the game missing that can be gained by giving bad potions some utility? If you come up with an interesting new potion effect, then it should be added as a new potion instead of needlessly complicating things. I think what you are saying about bad potions being unnecessary makes sense, but the simple solution here is to remove them from the game.
They (especially poison, strong poison and confusion) don't have an effect at all. I don't quaff-ID because I am afraid of wasting a potion of speed or heal wounds, and as long as valuable potions are in the game you don't need dangerous potions to prevent quaff-IDing. If I die quaff-IDing mid-fight because I wanted !curing instead of !paralysis, well, first of all I was probably going to die anyway, secondly this situation is rare because !curing/!heal wounds is common enough that un-IDed curing is still recognisable in many cases, and lastly it's a rather spoilery and frustrating death.

[HenryFlower]

WRT bleach, utility of:

Please note that Orcs hoard !confusion like crazy.

So by all means, take your !confusion and !paralysis and such, go up to a nice quiet level with a room where you can lock the door, and get slizzzard on your sizzurp. Your character will thank you for it; being a dungeon crawler is hard and stressful work, and everyone needs to unwind now and again.

Also, !poison and !strong poison because rats.

[Hirsch I]

Also, !poison and !strong poison because rats.

say what?

[HenryFlower]

Also, !poison and !strong poison because rats.

say what?

OK. Let's say you have a nice shop in the dungeon. Could be anything, but let's say a weapons shop. Antique weapons. Now, you have your bows with bowstrings, your triple swords with leather wrapped hilts, etc., and all those things ever so often get damage. Gnawed, toothmarks, etc. Brings down the value of the merchandise.

So you go to your friend who runs a potions shop*, and pick up a !poison and go to your other friend who runs a food shop and pick up a bread ration**. You put a bit of poison on bits of your bread and leave them around the shop. In a bit, you have some dead giant rats.

* You most emphatically do not go around the dungeon scrounging for potions, because everything in the dungeon belongs to someone***. Fred, or Joe, or someone.
** Same deal.
*** Only adventurers from up top do that kind of thing because they steal and kill and destroy at random. You'll sell to them, but really, you want to do what everyone else does, and just kill them.****
**** But everyone else is so lame - if they just massed and mobbed the adventurers instead of just bum rushing the show. But do they listen to you? No.

[Hirsch I]

oh, ok then. I cant escape such flawless logic.

[WalkerBoh]

The correct thing to do with bad potions is to replace them with potions that are probably still bad overall, but can be good at times. A recent example of this was replacing !paralysis with !lignification. As someone said above, in that case just replace the bad potion with the new one.

[XuaXua]

The correct thing to do with bad potions is to replace them with potions that are probably still bad overall, but can be good at times. A recent example of this was replacing !paralysis with !lignification.

I thought paralysis still exists alongside the new tree growth formula.

[Hirsch I]

add the (un)randart potions that where proposed in another thread, and make them look like an common potion. more variety, and will make test id a worse idea.

[WalkerBoh]

The correct thing to do with bad potions is to replace them with potions that are probably still bad overall, but can be good at times. A recent example of this was replacing !paralysis with !lignification.

I thought paralysis still exists alongside the new tree growth formula.

You're right, so they were.

[nicolae]

The correct thing to do with bad potions is to replace them with potions that are probably still bad overall, but can be good at times. A recent example of this was replacing !paralysis with !lignification.

I thought paralysis still exists alongside the new tree growth formula.

They replace slowing, not paralysis.