Turning Item Destruction Off

[Kismet]

Is there an easy way to turn item destruction off? I was about to boot up a round of Crawl but juggling consumables is so tedious that it has destroyed my will to play.

[Bloax]

Worship Jiyva and get 200 (that is, maximum) piety, but otherwise no - there isn't.

[savageorange]

Stub _expose_invent_to_element out to simply 'return false', and recompile.

This has the side effect of reducing xom stimulation, so you might instead want to change all instances of 'return true' in that function to 'return false'

[Implojin]

Apply the patch below, recompile.

This is quick and a bit spammy, if you don't want to see any messages related to item destruction just edit out the mprf bit.

Spoiler: show

From 83bfd8e34eb900b6f4e1e61293d5ad660fb71d94 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Implojin <implosionwow@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 01:39:48 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Make item destruction an unthing.

---
crawl-ref/source/ouch.cc | 3 +++
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/crawl-ref/source/ouch.cc b/crawl-ref/source/ouch.cc
index 33deebd..479b30b 100644
--- a/crawl-ref/source/ouch.cc
+++ b/crawl-ref/source/ouch.cc
@@ -478,6 +478,9 @@ static bool _expose_invent_to_element(beam_type flavour, int strength)
int total_dest = 0;
int jiyva_block = 0;

+ mprf("Code wizardry protects your items from destruction.");
+ return false;
+
const int target_class = _get_target_class(flavour);
if (target_class == OBJ_UNASSIGNED)
return false;
--
1.8.3-rc3

[Kismet]

Thanks very much for the advice guys, I recompiled last night and I am smiling smugly every time an ice beast or orc wizard comes around the corner.

[Arrhythmia]

While we're at it, is there any quick and dirty way to turn off my other huge pet-peeve, the tides in shoals?

[Implojin]

While we're at it, is there any quick and dirty way to turn off my other huge pet-peeve, the tides in shoals?

Quick and dirty patch below.

Caveats:
There's a lot of code dealing with tides in Shoals, and it's bizzarely mixed in with things like level generation. I created a wizmode game to verify that Shoals was still working, but something might go wrong.

Ilusiw also no longer casts Call Tide. It was intertwined with the shoals_apply_tides function and it was easier to just have her cast something else. You could make it work independently if you wanted to bother. In its place she has gained another Throw Icicle. If this makes her more dangerous than you'd like, you could replace SPELL_THROW_ICICLE with SPELL_CANTRIP or SPELL_NO_SPELL or whatever you'd prefer.

Enjoy!

Spoiler: show

  Code:

From 7fc718b61e48b8244b4f2f1829011c2d6210dbb3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Implojin <implosionwow@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 21:13:31 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] No more tides.

This commit kills timed tides and removes Call Tide from Ilsuiw's spell
list, replacing it with a second chance to Throw Icicle.

Wizmode tide adjustment uses a different function, so strange things might
happen if you try to do that. You probably don't want to, but this
shouldn't affect normal play.
---
 crawl-ref/source/dgn-shoals.cc | 4 ++++
 crawl-ref/source/mon-spll.h    | 4 +++-
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/crawl-ref/source/dgn-shoals.cc b/crawl-ref/source/dgn-shoals.cc
index 759a656..2adfd44 100644
--- a/crawl-ref/source/dgn-shoals.cc
+++ b/crawl-ref/source/dgn-shoals.cc
@@ -1176,6 +1176,10 @@ static monster* _shoals_find_tide_caller()
 
 void shoals_apply_tides(int turns_elapsed, bool force, bool incremental_tide)
 {
+    // Ilsuiw's Call Tide is a casualty, RIP.
+    // You could fix this if you wanted to.
+    return;
+
     if (!player_in_branch(BRANCH_SHOALS)
         || (!turns_elapsed && !force)
         || !env.heightmap.get())
diff --git a/crawl-ref/source/mon-spll.h b/crawl-ref/source/mon-spll.h
index 207420a..2479ffc 100644
--- a/crawl-ref/source/mon-spll.h
+++ b/crawl-ref/source/mon-spll.h
@@ -1156,10 +1156,12 @@
       }
     },
 
+    // SPELL_CALL_TIDE depends on the rest of the tide code to work.
+    // Quick and dirty approach means that she no longer casts it.
     { MST_ILSUIW,
       {
        SPELL_THROW_ICICLE,
-       SPELL_CALL_TIDE,
+       SPELL_THROW_ICICLE, // formerly SPELL_CALL_TIDE
        SPELL_INVISIBILITY,
        SPELL_BLINK,
        SPELL_WATER_ELEMENTALS,
--
1.8.3-rc3


[Arrhythmia]

You're doing the Lord's work, Implojin.

[snow]

Now to just get these patches in the actual game...

[savageorange]

^ Pfft. These changes are not actually good for the game. By which I mean this approach is very simple and short sighted, and will naturally have a significant effect on game balance. A patch that is not just a quick+dirty fix would modify other game elements to compensate for the change in resource availability.

That's the whole reason that item destruction still exists. It's not as if any dev considers it necessarily good, it just performs a certain role in gameplay.

[Amnesiac]

Itemdest is pretty useless and annoying. If you know what different monsters can do, you can avoid most of it, by just taking cover/taking stairs and dropping everything, but isn't it ridiculously tedious? This is a great game, but itemdest is surely not the best way to handle things and even just removing it surely won't break the balance of the game. You can even reduce the item generation rate by 10% if you so want. That said, I'm pretty used to it by now, as I'm used to the pain of unexpected deaths

[zogre]

Itemdest is pretty useless and annoying. If you know what different monsters can do, you can avoid most of it, by just taking cover/taking stairs and dropping everything, but isn't it ridiculously tedious? This is a great game, but itemdest is surely not the best way to handle things and even just removing it surely won't break the balance of the game. You can even reduce the item generation rate by 10% if you so want. That said, I'm pretty used to it by now, as I'm used to the pain of unexpected deaths

You're welcome to your opinion about the game, and thanks to the wonder of open source, you can even do something about it - but I wouldn't want to play your version of Crawl and I'm glad I don't have to try to code those patches out.

Normally, I wouldn't reply at all; because usually people take disagreement with their opinions personally and I'm not interested in an argument, but I don't want silence to be taken as agreement by any devs that read this forum.

Cheers!

[Sandman25]

Item destruction is interesting sometimes. Do I want to use preservation/cloak of Thief/cloak of Starlight? Do I want to switch from stasis/clarity when playing Xom?

[Kismet]

^ Pfft. These changes are not actually good for the game. By which I mean this approach is very simple and short sighted, and will naturally have a significant effect on game balance. A patch that is not just a quick+dirty fix would modify other game elements to compensate for the change in resource availability.

That's the whole reason that item destruction still exists. It's not as if any dev considers it necessarily good, it just performs a certain role in gameplay.

I agree.

[and into]

Corrosion is just kind of obnoxious in my experience, but I've more or less made peace with item destruction, in the abstract.

What still bothers me is in some specific instances of its implementation. I don't like that sometimes a single source of fire damage burns four scrolls or something—it makes sense to punish bad play, and usually you can avoid fire stuff hitting you, but there's enough random fire/ice crap thrown at you that sometimes you are going to get hit with a lot of item destruction through no real fault of your own. If lucky this just means you end up with a couple less scrolls of identify or teleportation, but randomly you'll just lose a bunch of great tools like ?fog.

The other things that can really affect my enjoyment are multiple-turn destruction, through sticky flame (public enemy #1) but, to a lesser extent, I find freezing and flaming clouds really obnoxious too. Plus multiple-turn item destruction doesn't mesh well with amulet of conservation, as you can swap it on and get full benefit.

Also unlike say weapon choice or decisions regarding what spells to prioritize, I don't think decisions vis-a-vis your armor are all that interesting or deep (sometimes there are exceptions, but in general). Decisions amongst different types of cloaks, in particular, doesn't really intrigue me but maybe I'm missing something.

[Sandman25]

Decisions amongst different types of cloaks, in particular, doesn't really intrigue me but maybe I'm missing something.

Well, what would you wear as Dr warrior of Xom with distortion weapon - cloak of the Thief (fog is great, I have really high Evo and it can save me from blinking monsters) or cloak of Starlight (I have good EV but no rElec and no rC+ so random chain lightning balls from Xom can kill me and I would be slowed from cold attacks without stasis). This question is not theoretical. And I don't even want to find cloak of preservation to complicate the matter
Sorry for off-topic.

[Amnesiac]

I really don't like that branded ammunition destroys your stuff. Especially if it's a kobold with some darts of flaming.