Identifying potions & scrolls

[jazzadellic]

Hi all, i've played roguelikes before but new to DCSS. Just wondering what in your guys experience is the best approach to identifying scrolls and potions? Every character that I've made and had die has ended up with a crapton of unindentified scrolls and potions, some of which could have saved me or at least given a few more turns. My approach has been so far to use identify scrolls on anything before using it, although a few times when I had a large amount of a scrolls or potions of a single type I correctly guestimated the increased likelihood that said scrolls or potions were something safe like identify, remove curse, or cure potion. But most of the time I am ending up with 1 or 2 of everything so that tactic doesn't help all the time.

So what is everyone's opinion on how reckless or not to be with use identifying potions and scrolls?

[KoboldLord]

The item identification mini-game in Crawl is dying very slowly and noisily. You can get a good approximation of 'optimal' behavior just by following the random impulses of your hind brain, because the main downside risk of doing it wrong is wasting one copy of some minor resources. If you want to follow actually 'optimal' behavior, then you're going to need to track and your item pickups and break out the spreadsheets because there are many semi-secret item generation rules that affect the likelihood of any potion or scroll being valuable and the best choice may shift whenever you find another consumable or or identify one that you already have.

First off, use your identify scrolls. Use them immediately unless you have nothing of value that you might want to identify. Good targets are potions and scrolls. All other targets are not worth bothering with until you have a functionally limitless supply of identify scrolls, with few exceptions. Bad jewelry isn't dangerous enough to be worth scroll-identifying, especially once you identified remove curse, and wands aren't likely to be important enough to you to worry about getting more charges unless they're one of the best three, which are rare. Target whichever item you guess is more immediately useful, which depends on what else you've identified. If you've identified a few useful scrolls, you're more likely to get more useful consumables if you switch to potions for a bit. If you get a bunch of dud scrolls in a row, then you might prefer to continue checking them because the bad results have already been thinned out.

Second, if you do stumble across a shop that carries consumables, buy a copy of everything unidentified that you can afford. Don't wait to identify by other means in hopes of stumbling across a shop, though, because that doesn't actually happen very often and it is not a safe gamble.

Third, you'll get a tiny trickle of identifications from monsters using items. You should not consider this at all when making decisions, because you can't actually do anything to influence it, but occasionally you will get a freebie.

Finally, you probably will have to read- or quaff-identify some of your consumables at some point. If nothing else, you usually have to read-identify scrolls until you get identify. Your penalty for use-identification should be considered to be wasting copies of your good consumables, since the bad ones are mostly harmless if used in a safe spot. Don't bother if you've only found one copy of something; you might as well wait for another identify scroll to spawn in that case since knowing the identity of that last scroll of blinking or potion of haste isn't very useful if you don't have another one.

If you like the item identification mini-game and want to make meaningful choices based on it, I recommend switching to another game, because Crawl only really still has it because it has always had it. Everything interesting about the mini-game has already been removed.

[Sar]

wands aren't likely to be important enough to you to worry about getting more charges unless they're one of the best three, which are rare

Is that so? When I find a strong attack wand like para/iceblast/acid early enough, I will often ID it because it gives me much more charges, effectively, and those wands (and some others) are really strong in early game even with low/no Evo.

[Arrhythmia]

Usually I just start ID'ing wands (that I want to actually use, i.e., iceblast/acid/para) at lair because I've got pretty much all my potions/scrolls id'd by then but hey, crawl keeps giving me all these scrolls.

[stickyfingers]

Everything interesting about the mini-game has already been removed.

Could you give some examples?

[KoboldLord]

wands aren't likely to be important enough to you to worry about getting more charges unless they're one of the best three, which are rare

Is that so? When I find a strong attack wand like para/iceblast/acid early enough, I will often ID it because it gives me much more charges, effectively, and those wands (and some others) are really strong in early game even with low/no Evo.

How many times in the early game do you deal with a monster that requires your wands to deal with and doesn't allow for any alternative? If you can just walk away, it doesn't matter if your wand's charges only held out one encounter instead of three. Getting the extra uses is a benefit, but getting access to blinking or haste is also a huge benefit.

Could you give some examples?

Compare to Nethack, which has a well-developed item identification mini-game. In Nethack, you absolutely need those consumables, but there are also many consumables that are legitimately dangerous. Blind use-identification is almost always a bad plan. If you are familiar with the system, however, you can infer enough about your unidentified items to make the process safe. Monsters will helpfully identify more sorts of consumables for you, and you can also narrow down the possible identities of any particular item if you have access to a shop. Many of the most critical items will just self-identify naturally, but you also have to take player action to speed up the process of safely identifying the rest. It is a project that lasts for basically the first third to half of the game.

Crawl doesn't punish you for use-identification, and it also doesn't give you any particularly viable alternatives. Use the scrolls first because that's what they're for, but then pay your consumable tax and get on with the game.

[Sar]

How many times in the early game do you deal with a monster that requires your wands to deal with and doesn't allow for any alternative?

I admit I'm not a smart player. I prefer confronting enemies directly. Wands help.

getting access to blinking or haste is also a huge benefit

The potion I ID could be something great like HW or haste or might, it could also be something useless like degeneration or poison or cure mutation. When I ID a wand of foo, I'm guaranteed to get more charges of wand of foo out of the whole deal. Unless the wand had only one charge, I guess. It's attractive.

[stickyfingers]

I disagree that, for example, price-identification in Nethack was an interesting concept, but to each his own I guess.

[Eyesburn]

The worst part of item identification in Crawl is probably consumable identification. Keeping track of where each potion/scroll in your inventory generated, how many have generated, stacks, which ones were in monsters' inventories, etc. lets you improve your guesses as to which consumable is which.

[and into]

KoboldLord's advice above is very good overall, but I also use ID scrolls on wands now.

The choice isn't between "IDing !haste, or getting extra uses of a known wand type." The choice is between possibly IDing a useful potion or scroll, or definitely getting extra charges of a wand. Basically, using ?identify on a wand gives you an effect similar to ?recharging. Whether that is better or worse than identifying your other consumables in the early game will depend on the exact circumstances, but there is always the risk that you burn ID on discovering !degeneration or something when you could have definitely gotten several more charges of paralysis, polymorph, acid, digging, etc.

[jwoodward48ss]

And keep in mind that Evo-skillers can ignore wandidentifying a little more than usual. High Evo lets you identify wands by using them.

[and into]

And keep in mind that Evo-skillers can ignore wandidentifying a little more than usual. High Evo lets you identify wands by using them.

True, but I find that this comes into play only when a lot of wands generate and ?identify has been unusually scarce. By the time I am putting significant skill into evocations, I usually have more than enough scrolls of identify, anyway. It is good to keep in mind though. Sometimes the RNG is screwy and it takes much longer to ID everything you would like to.

[jazzadellic]

Thanks for the info, it helps. I could never get into Nethack because of few things, one of them being the identification game.

[Sandman25]

DCSS CA fork has a chance to identify items with XP, this is the way to go IMHO as it increases options, for example, you are not obligated to blindly read unknown scrolls to find scroll of identify or scrolls from packs.