Barkeep
Posts: 4435
Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28
What are manuals for?
dirtywick wrote:Elf 3 often contains manuals
in the "Should you do Elf:3 or Crypt:5?" thread, and realized: a manual has never changed a decision I've made in a Crawl game. Ever. They're so vanishingly rare that by the time I've found them, it's either "Hey look, free XP in something I'm training anyhow!" or "Hey look, free XP in something I don't care about." It's not like that Maces & Flails manual I pick up at the end of Vaults is going to make me put down whatever weapon let me clear Vaults in the first place.
Manuals are one item class that might actually be more interesting if it were weighted to appear early in the game. If they're gonna influence my character, that's the time to do it...
If they're intended just as "hey look, free XP" then that's cool, too.