Is hoovering and stashing unused randarts a waste of time?

[tedric]

Somewhere along the line I developed a habit of picking up every glowing/runed item I come across and depositing the ones I have no use for in the junkheap near my stash -- the theory being that they may have a dangerous brand that I don't want to fall into enemy hands, but it's not worth my time and the risk of accidentally wielding, say, a Distortion weapon that's not my primary basetype to ID them first and be sure I'm only hiding the dangerous ones. With lower-Str characters, this ends up forcing a lot more trips back to L:2 than I would otherwise make (on the other hand, it encourages me to stash excess consumables more frequently than I might otherwise), but turncount is not a priority for me and the extra trips almost never cause hunger issues. And of course when I do discover a negatively-enchanted item or even a crappy artefact, I drop it immediately.

I'm sure there are at least minimal benefits to this; and my intuition tells me that there probably aren't any significant drawbacks. But I'm wondering how right or wrong I am. Is this behavior: optimal? sub-optimal? probably or definitely harmful? an idiosyncratic tic that has basically no bearing on the outcome of my games?

[daggaz]

It's massive overkill and a giant waste of time.

At earlier stages where its more important and your inventory is empty anyhow, it cant hurt to hang on to some of the nastier items for a while, especially considering you are far more likely to be running away often. Later its almost entirely pointless, you can just drop them in a nearby cleared area or take them one floor up if you really need to.

If a weapon id's as distortion, however, careful disposal can definitely save you a trip to the abyss, the weather of which is lovely this time of never.

[Tedronai]

In my opinion it is a waste of time. The only thing I do is taking distortion weapons one floor up (if I have cleared it). This way I will not come across them again until the ascension. Probably a good idea to do that with early draining/elec weapons too. But I don't see any benefit in explicitly stashing them.

tl;dr: Yes.

[Viashino_wizard]

I personally like to deal with Distortion weapons by chucking them in lava when the option presents itself.

[Tedronai]

I personally like to deal with Distortion weapons by chucking them in lava when the option presents itself.

Bear in mind that some salamander might be diving for those hidden treasures (same with deep water and merfolk).

[Amnesiac]

Do what suits you, but personally it's quite pointless. Monsters don't become much more dangerous from just wielding any weapon other than distortion. And you could just throw it in the corner in a cleared part of the level and no one will come to pick it up. Also, even if you stash your stuff on L:1, the probability of someone picking something up is very low and even if they do, they won't go far away. I don't do anything with anything I won't use.

Bear in mind that some salamander might be diving for those hidden treasures (same with deep water and merfolk).

Oh my god, then it's hopeless!

[mopl]

I personally like to deal with Distortion weapons by chucking them in lava when the option presents itself.

Bear in mind that some salamander might be diving for those hidden treasures (same with deep water and merfolk).

I personally deal with Distortion weapons (and also all dangerous weapons I don't use) by switching God to Ely, destroy the weapon and back to my previous God, is this a waste of time and piety ?

[duvessa]

Moving potentially dangerous weapons and armour is actually pretty good practice much of the time, the only cost is piety decay. Going all the way to lair:2 for that is stupid though, just drop them on the previous level.

[Amnesiac]

I think it's relevant only on first levels, then monster either is dangerous or not, (almost)whatever items he uses.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

This is totally useful, and in the case of launchers should be done almost obsessively.

[tedric]

Thanks for the many responses. I'm hearing consensus that I'm being way too cautious, but probably not hurting myself much since minor piety loss is the only real drawback.

Also, I love that the subject lines of all the replies have been truncated to "...a waste of tim" -- poor Tim.

This is totally useful, and in the case of launchers should be done almost obsessively.

Glad you brought up the issue of launchers, I find that crossbows of flame/freezing will almost always get scooped up by certain enemies, e.g. orc warriors and yaktaurs. But by this logic it would also be a good idea to grab all branded ammo, and that really does seem like too much work. And if you have Cons/Pres it's not a big deal.

I think going forward I'll adopt a policy of:
- in very early D, grabbing any randart weapons just to be on the safe side
- after D:3 or so, only grabbing weapons that have been IDed through combat to have a worrisome combo of brand & base type, and dumping them in corners or one floor up (except Distortion or other unreasonably dangerous things)

[Sandman25]

FR: ability "destroy weapon", can be used only when there are no monsters in LoS, takes 0 turns. Can be combined with autoexplore (disabled by default).

[wheals]

It would make more sense to not allow monsters to pick up items that you've seen.

[varsovie]

I always carry as many dangerous items has I can, in case the labyrinth appears so I can dispose them in a place to annoying for my foo to get them.

[Viashino_wizard]

I personally like to deal with Distortion weapons by chucking them in lava when the option presents itself.

Bear in mind that some salamander might be diving for those hidden treasures (same with deep water and merfolk).

I was under the impression lava permanently destroys items thrown into it. Guess I'll have to try it with a lava orc and see.

[duvessa]

I personally like to deal with Distortion weapons by chucking them in lava when the option presents itself.

Bear in mind that some salamander might be diving for those hidden treasures (same with deep water and merfolk).

I was under the impression lava permanently destroys items thrown into it.

It does. Tedronai just made that up (or was told by somebody else who made it up).