Purge the devil: Remove item destruction

[Sandman25]

Without item destruction, the number of items it's desirable to carry around with you increases, and hence, both the time it takes to get full, and the number of times thereafter you'll encounter an item you'd like to pick up and you're full increases.

Our misunderstanding is here I think. Even without item destruction I don't want to have 10 potions of speed + 20 potions of HW etc. We almost don't have wands destruction and I never keep more than 2 wand of fire, more than 2 wands of cold etc. because I want to have different items instead.

[Sandman25]

I am sorry there is not polite way to say it, but this argument is simply idiotic. To explain why allow me to reword it.

I think getting kicked in the balls is important. When I get kicked in the balls I don't notice how bad it is getting punched in the face. You need to keep kicking me in the balls so I don't notice getting punched in the face.

Tedious solution A that makes tedious situation B not occure as often is a very bad solution especially when tedious situation A is more annoying then situation B.

There may be reasons to keep item destruction, but this is not one of them. The only one that I have seen presented came from dpeg, and he didn't even seem to think that it justified all the negatives.

Please devs ecplain exactly what item destruction does that several other mechanics don't allready do. Please explain the benefits of these effects. Honestly why is it a good thing that people don't carry all there good items around with them instead of leaving them littered about the dungeon?

I would replace some words in your post but basically I agree with you. Last time I spectated elliptic playing a game he had 20 potions of heal wounds in inventory. That was in Zot 5 of course. Thus I am not even sure what's the point of his argument.

[johlstei]

Without item destruction, the number of items it's desirable to carry around with you increases, and hence, both the time it takes to get full, and the number of times thereafter you'll encounter an item you'd like to pick up and you're full increases.

Our misunderstanding is here I think. Even without item destruction I don't want to have 10 potions of speed + 20 potions of HW etc. We almost don't have wands destruction and I never keep more than 2 wand of fire, more than 2 wands of cold etc. because I want to have different items instead.

Huh? Those things are incomparable. Wands don't stack, so each one takes up an item slot. Potions of heal wounds do. Are you saying you would purposely stop picking up scrolls of blinking after you had, say, 8 of them because of the 2 aums each one weighs? That is a strange choice.

I understand elliptic's point. Item destruction creates an incentive to not carry nearly as much stuff as one would otherwise. Thus, one spends more time further from the weight limit so as not to get annoying prompts about it. In practice, I usually end up close to it anyway, just with non scroll/potion items instead.

Personally I'd be fine with removing weight/weight limits as a concept as long as we still can only carry 52 distinct items, but I could go either way on whether I think that's a good idea.

[Sandman25]

Huh? Those things are incomparable. Wands don't stack, so each one takes up an item slot. Potions of heal wounds do. Are you saying you would purposely stop picking up scrolls of blinking after you had, say, 8 of them because of the 2 aums each one weighs? That is a strange choice.

I understand elliptic's point. Item destruction creates an incentive to not carry nearly as much stuff as one would otherwise. Thus, one spends more time further from the weight limit so as not to get annoying prompts about it. In practice, I usually end up close to it anyway, just with non scroll/potion items instead.

Personally I'd be fine with removing weight/weight limits as a concept as long as we still can only carry 52 distinct items, but I could go either way on whether I think that's a good idea.

I am usually (95% games) limited by weight, not by inventory slots. Also yes, I would not keep 8 ?Blink if I can have 3?Blink, 2!speed, 2!agility etc.

[Siegurt]

Our misunderstanding is here I think. Even without item destruction I don't want to have 10 potions of speed + 20 potions of HW etc. We almost don't have wands destruction and I never keep more than 2 wand of fire, more than 2 wands of cold etc. because I want to have different items instead.

Huh? Those things are incomparable. Wands don't stack, so each one takes up an item slot. Potions of heal wounds do. Are you saying you would purposely stop picking up scrolls of blinking after you had, say, 8 of them because of the 2 aums each one weighs? That is a strange choice.

Also the point is that while you might want different items instead *once you find them* if you find 20 !HW before you find the things you want instead, you're for damn sure going to pick them up, with no item destruction there's no reason not to. Then you'll have to drop them again, when you do find the things you want instead. This is the circumstance that changes when you take item destruction out of the equation. It's not like you find an equal distribution of each type of consumable you might want, in exactly the proportions that will fill up your inventory perfectly.

You'll find a bunch of one thing, and you'll pick them up *because there's no reason not to* then have to fiddle around with your inventory once you find something you want more. This happens now, but it would happen more frequently and sooner without item destruction to make it less optimal to pick up multiples of things you don't know you're going to need. If you're playing more-or-less optimally, without item destruction it makes no sense to not pick up everything which *might* be useful as long as it fits in your inventory.

The only real question is, is going back and refilling from your stash periodically when things get destroyed more, or less tedious than dealing with inventory management for each new consumable as you come across it. (elliptic's argument is that it's equally or less tedious, there are a number of vocal people who think it's more tedious, personally I think it depends on how good you are at avoiding item destruction, and how peculiar you are about having all the categories of things in your inventory at optimum levels whenever possible)

Myself, I almost never go back and refill anything from my stash, typically if scrolls burn or potions shatter, I just make due with whatever I have on hand, I figure I'll find more stuff soon enough, so for me it's pretty much a non-issue from a tedium point of view (obviously from a "I want all my stuff available all the time" point of view I'd like my stuff not to be destroyed, but that's not a game design discussion, that's a "I want my character to be more powerful" discussion, which I don't think as a game designer is the right place to come from at all.)

[Bloax]

If you want to see how this plays out, then I'm sure a game with a cloak of preservation is a good example.

Maybe conservation is the problem? There's no reason not to pick up everything once you do have conservation, after all. Item destruction is almost nonexistent, and there's nothing but weight preventing you from picking everything up!

The reason I want item destruction out is because it's aggravating as all hell to see your precious, scarce Consumables-Of-Possible-Lifesaving get blasted like there's no tomorrow - with you helplessly watching it unfold until you put a slow end to it.
Which to say is that I wouldn't even mind if less consumables spawned to counteract the removal of item destruction. I want the pain to stop much more than I'd dislike that.

[Mumcon]

Mumcon: It doesn't need a sage to tell you that players playtesting a branch/fork without item destruction would write glowing reports.

I never suggested that, though. The explanation from elliptic that galehar posted is exactly the sort of info I would have hoped playtesting would have illuminated, and which I think has added a lot to this discussion. It's possible to playtest something without doing the whole "let's create a branch for it and probably include it if people seem to like it" clumsy approach that I've seen done around here for other stuff, which is far from a one-size-fits-all approach. And a lot of non-devs have been giving their opinions here already anyway.

I don't feel at all motivated to think about solutions.

Me neither, because there has been at least one thread about reforming item destruction in the past and a satisfactory conclusion wasn't reached. Item destruction is not, by its abstract concept, incapable of being implemented in some way that overcomes people's criticisms. However, if there is no obvious alternative implementation at present, there is always the possibility of considering whether it could be removed without a negative impact.

I completely agree that item destruction is far from game-breakingly annoying. Although I thought the same about victory dancing when it was around. I honestly do have difficult imagining what Crawl would be like without item destruction, and am now quite curious. I've changed my view to prefer that item destruction not be removed unless burden is removed first, although it seems that was passed on recently.

[galehar]

Our misunderstanding is here I think. Even without item destruction I don't want to have 10 potions of speed + 20 potions of HW etc.

We're talking about optimal play here, so yes, you want as many consumable as you can carry. There's no reason not to.

[Sandman25]

Our misunderstanding is here I think. Even without item destruction I don't want to have 10 potions of speed + 20 potions of HW etc.

We're talking about optimal play here, so yes, you want as many consumable as you can carry. There's no reason not to.

Isn't it optimal to use less powerful consumables (if relatively safe) to save more powerful items for later? I hope nobody quaffs 10 potions of speed in a single battle

[duvessa]

I'd be pretty surprised if item destruction went away in DCSS any time soon, considering that it's been a general trend to add more of it. It was even extended to an entire new item category recently (wands).

If you want to see for yourself the situation elliptic described, try Brogue. Last time I played it, there was no destruction of items in your inventory (although there *was* item theft and corrosion of worn armour) but there was a fairly tight limit on the number of items you were allowed to carry (like the 52 item slot restriction in Crawl, but 4 potions of healing take up 4 slots). It's pretty aggravating, particularly since Brogue lacks item searching and good autotravel. So I'd definitely want to remove weight along with it (but keep the 52 item slots). Although I have to say I still find it a lot less aggravating than what Crawl has right now.

I still think that destruction of strategic consumables can and should just go away, though. It doesn't solve any of the horrible things caused by item destruction in general but it still greatly cuts back on item maintenance. Of course, given that jellies are allowed to eat even strategic non-consumables I have my doubts about this ever happening too...

[WalkerBoh]

The only real issue I see with itemdest is what dpeg mentioned, it creates tedious play where it's optimal to return to stashes. I don't see anything else wrong with it. I love the route of making strategic consumables non-destructible, but I'll take it one step further.

(Note: Strategic consumables are acquirement, enchant weapon, enchant armour, recharging, cure mutation, restore abilities (maybe I'm missing one or two, this is off the top of my head).)

I propose:
Change strategic consumables to function as one-time use "evocable" objects. It could be as simple as a type of one-time use book that you read, which gives you the ability to "enchant foo" or "recharge wand". This ability can be used any time, and each time you read the item it gives you +1 to the number of times you can use it. Obviously, using the ability gets rid of x # of uses, where x is chosen by the player, up to the max you have available at the time. After reading, the evocable object vanishes (like manuals that are finished).
Maybe this specific route is a bit clunky/too much work to implement. But the idea is to have a system where strategic consumables would not be objects you have to carry around and players can use them at any time without resorting to tedious activities.

Second thought, I see no issues with tactical consumables being destroyed. These are items you would use in battle, so losing them could affect your tactics directly and create interesting situations. I can see the potential/benefits, even if it creates situations like rebthor described where it is desirable to kill lesser threats first. Some may not like it (as bloax said, it hurts to lose that potion of heal wounds), but from a design perspective it is okay to me. Crawl is not a game that cares much about players being emotionally crushed, after all.

Third thought, conservation should be removed and itemdest frequency and severity should be reduced significantly. It is not interesting if itemdest occurs all the time, just like drain, or statrot, etc. The current rate is a bit too high (unless it was tweaked recently). Also if there is no way of preventing itemdest, I think that is beneficial to players mentally. You dont feel as much like you're being robbed, it is just a fact of the game you have to deal with. It also reduces amulet swapping which is good IMO.

Edit: Forgot acq, that's a pretty obvious strategic consumable.

[reg]

So, what if strategic effects are moved to a new "Runestone" consumable type which cannot be destroyed. So we have Runestones of Mutation/Decay/Acquirement/Enchant/Charging/Whatever. There is still a risk associated with un-ID'd stones, but they are safe to lug around.
Otherwise, I'd rather see item destruction limited to the more powerful sources of damage, or a buildup like Contam, so enchanted weapons/bolts/puffs tend to only put you in the grey, whereas sitting in a cloud will be a higher risk.

[TwilightPhoenix]

If people carrying around 30 potions of HW is problematic, one simple step would be to cap stackable items. Say like, each stack of potions can only be five deep. Pick up HW #6? It starts a new stack. Hence the 52 limit would have a much larger impact on the number of consumables you can carry, especially as the game goes on and your inventory gets filled with wands, food, gear for swapping, ammo, and so forth.

This mechanic wouldn't be confusing at all because as soon as a new player sees HW #6 drop into a new slot, there's a very high chance they'll realize not only that the cap is there, but how high it is.


Oh, and mind, even with item dest, every time you come across a useful consumable, you're encouraged to interact with it even if you don't want to carry it right now. Since monsters can pick up and use items, you'll want to move it someplace where they're unlikely to path-find over it, whether that be a nearby corner or your L:2 stash.

[snow]

I get the argument for item destruction. Give the player a choice: you choose between having more consumables over the course of the game or more consumables on you at any given time.

However this argument only applies to a small subset of consumables: the others just aren't useful to carry in large quantities. For example carrying 10 potions of might isn't more useful than carrying 3 potions of might.

When it really comes down to it there are just a few problematic items: potion of heal wounds and scrolls of blinking and teleportation. Item destruction does nothing meaningful to any other items as there's no reason to carry large stacks of any other items. And really teleportation is common enough and blinking is rare enough that the only real issue here is potion of heal wounds.

So at the end of the day item destruction only exists to give players the choice of carrying a few potions of heal wounds and having more throughout the game or carrying all of them just in case they might need all of them in a single fight. It exists for no other purpose at all. Realistically though if you end up using all your potions of heal wounds in a single fight then you're probably going to lose the game anyway and therefore optimal decision is to stash.

It comes down to that really. Item destruction, a universally hated mechanic, only exists to allow bad players to make bad decisions (i.e. to carry all their potions of heal wounds without conservation). There are no interesting choices here... only bad ones... but it doesn't have to be like this.

The first step to making inventory management fun and interesting is to remove item destruction. It's not a bad mechanic... it's just a bad mechanic for Crawl.

[MDvedh]

The other proposal:

You get conservation when you have less then N (say, 5) scrolls (or potions).
It will really encourage players to make their inventory management stuff without fear that the yaktaur will instaburn their only ?tele and they will have to go back to their stash to grab the other one.

Tactical aspect: whenever you are fighting something strong and fiery (like Azrael), you can't really rely on your ?tele and it's basically RNG deciding whether you have escapes or not.

[Hurkyl]

Possibly silly question: why is it bad to prevent characters from carrying everything they find in the dungeon?

In my experience, the most significant effect of the inventory limits is my ability to gather new loot to be brought back to my stash for identification / cataloging / safe-keeping.

[sanka]

Yes, elliptic's argument is really strange if you take it seriously. Potions / scrolls simply should not have any weight, and you should be able to carry every one of them. If some items are changed frequently, then any limit carrying them or any need to managing them can be annoying.

Weight limit can stay for other items, where there is a purpose (like large rocks) or which does not change so frequently (like armour/weapon).

[galehar]

Isn't it optimal to use less powerful consumables (if relatively safe) to save more powerful items for later? I hope nobody quaffs 10 potions of speed in a single battle

The point is not about consumables being powerful or not, it's that assuming no itemdest and optimal play, you should always carry as much consumables as possible, thus be always at the weight limit which is very annoying.

I get the argument for item destruction.

No, obviously you don't.

[acvar]

No, obviously you don't.

And he is not the only one. Again can the developers please explain why item destruction is desirable. And don't reqoute elliptical because that argument is a non sequiter. The behaviors used to counter item destruction are far more tedious then the behaviors required to avoid the weight limit. If the devs really want to fix the tedium of the weight limit then making consumables weigh 0 solves that problem without creating a rediculously tediuos sub game. I see no good reason a spellcaster should be forced to pump their str to increase their carring capacity. Pure fighters have no reason to pump their int.

[ackack]

I don't understand the "make strategic items indestructible" point of view. In almost all cases you still wouldn't want to carry them because of the 52 slots limitation (which I butt up against basically always.)

Overall I'm fairly agnostic about item destruction. I do think sticky flame needs to go.

[Galefury]

If people carrying around 30 potions of HW is problematic, one simple step would be to cap stackable items. Say like, each stack of potions can only be five deep. Pick up HW #6? It starts a new stack. Hence the 52 limit would have a much larger impact on the number of consumables you can carry, especially as the game goes on and your inventory gets filled with wands, food, gear for swapping, ammo, and so forth.

This is a very good idea in my opinion, which I have also thought about. There is a minor problem with it: what to do when after creating a second stack, the total number of potions becomes again small enough that the extra inventory slot is no longer needed, but both stacks still have potions on them (5 potions in inventory, pick up a potion --> 5+1, use a potion from the first stack --> 4+1). This can be easily solved by assigning only a single slot and letter, and just having extra stuff take up some of the limit without using a "real" slot.

Unfortunately this is less intuitive, but I think it is a better interface than having more "real" stacks, because it means there is only one entry in the inventory and use lists, which is much easier to parse. A disadvantage would be that it makes it take more keypresses and thinking to drop unwanted stacks, because you would have to go through the d# interface instead of just pressing the stack letter.

If something like this happens, which would be really neat IMO when combined with removal of item destruction and the weight limit, autopickup should probably be configurable to only pick up items up to a certain number. Actually this would also be very useful right now.

[Galefury]

I don't understand the "make strategic items indestructible" point of view. In almost all cases you still wouldn't want to carry them because of the 52 slots limitation (which I butt up against basically always.)

Yes, strategic items should not take weight or slots either.

[Galefury]

the option to tinker with characters' inventories is a great opportunity.

I think there are some fundamental problems with this. I greatly prefer item destruction outside the player inventory to item destruction inside the inventory. While in-inventory destruction creates a tension between wanting to pick things up and not wanting to pick them up, which could be interesting and fun in theory but currently really isn't, it also means that you have to think about inventory management much more. I think this is somewhat analogous to the food reform: people do not want to spend time and effort on game mechanics that are not interesting and mostly peripheral to the parts of crawl people actually care about. This includes eating as well as inventory management. Eating was made more complicated, which has been reverted. I think it is time to make inventory management less complicated. It is not interesting, it is not fun, and it should be reduced to the minimum possible without negatively impacting the parts of crawl that are fun and interesting.

Item destruction outside the inventory is better IMO (not necessarily good or even required, just better than the other kind), because it sharpens the distinction between picking things up (which you pay for with inventory slots) and not picking them up (which is free but you cant use the item, and with item destruction you may completely lose access to the item). This is also related to inventory management, but actually makes the distinction between things in your inventory and outside stronger. Item destruction inside the inventory introduces an additional price for carrying things with you, making the decision whether to pick something up or not less clear. In a system that should in my opinion only be there to make the rest of the game work smoothly, it is good when decisions are very clear. Not necessarily easy, I like limited slots, but they should not require complex weighing of advantages and disadvantages.

[Mumcon]

There is a minor problem with it: what to do when after creating a second stack, the total number of potions becomes again small enough that the extra inventory slot is no longer needed, but both stacks still have potions on them (5 potions in inventory, pick up a potion --> 5+1, use a potion from the first stack --> 4+1). This can be easily solved by assigning only a single slot and letter, and just having extra stuff take up some of the limit without using a "real" slot.

If the items that have a per slot cap are totally identical, you could also just force the player to effectively take from the smallest stack (the non-full one, if it exists). So if you have h - 5 potions of heal wounds, i - 5 potions of heal wounds, j - 2 potions of heal wounds, quaffing h or i or j will always result in h - 5 potions of heal wounds, i - 5 potions of heal wounds, j - 1 potions of heal wounds. For other possible examples (starting from the same 5 5 1 stack arrangement), perhaps dropping 4 of stack i would result in h - 5 potions of heal wounds, i - 2 potions of heal wounds; and dropping 7 of stack j would result in h - 4 potions of heal wounds.

[Galefury]

That is of course also possible, but having multiple entries for the same thing in a list is bad, and frequently changing slot letters are also bad.

[Tiber]

Elliptic's argument that if item destruction were gone, players would hoard items up to their weight limit then get annoyed juggling inventory whenever some new item was found is not very compelling to me because:
A) People can run into the same problem now, it just tends to involve juggling things like wands or ammo rather than destructible items.
B) The current way of doing things where players are advised to drop some number of potions because carrying too many of them leads to excessive item destruction is no less micro-managey than advising players to drop some items so they can pick up others without being burdened, and it's also much less intuitive.
C) Except in places where you can't leave easily or without cost (pan, abyss, zigs/portals), when you have 1 heal potion and pick up another, it offers a good tactical advantage. When you have 12 heal potions and pick up another, the only advantage it gives you is strategical. Unless you are a bad player, you're not going to go through 13 in one fight (and you probably would have died before you picked up 12 if you were); afterwords you can just go back to your stash and pick up more under the current system. In the cases where you can't run back to your stash, you probably planned ahead when entering and carried more than you normally do (timed portals and unintentional abyssing are the only exceptions to that).

[Amilir]

So one of the major problems with item destruction is that without it, clearly optimal play is tedious, going directly against crawl design philosophy. The fist counter argument is that optimal play right now isn't any less tedious, it's just so much less clear what's optimal (2 ?Blink or 3? 4 !HW or 5?) that people don't bother nitpicking over every consumable.

Why don't we target the tedium then? Implement auto-drop, and connect it to the auto-pickup limits suggestion in the thread next door. Grab up to the limit, maybe grab more if you have room, drop it if something more important turns up. Add reasonable defaults, maybe 2 !might/brilliance/agility and so on, and you can remove half the problem of managing a loaded inventory.

Heck, that makes sense even if you don't remove item destruction. Managing an inventory that's at its limits is a problem either way! Item destruction just disguises the problem by making it less likely that you actually hit the cap. I have weight issues with spellcasters all the time, and inventory slot problems with most characters. Something needs to be done about item management. If removing the silly mechanic exposes a deeper problem, that problem needs to be dealt with first.

Its fairly clear that item destruction as is is a bad mechanic. Stashing of strategic consumables at least needs to be fixed. And frankly, while popularity is a poor indicator of the value of a mechanic, that so many people dislike item destruction so thoroughly is still meaningful. The other value of item destruction, tactical limiting of consumables, would be MUCH better accomplished by other means.

Fix the real problem (inventory management), and it's obvious that item destruction is just patching up the worst symptoms.

[damiac]

The argument that item destruction causes less inventory juggling is pretty false.

If I carry 5 HW pots instead of 20, and 5 cures instead of 100, I still have 52 inventory slots. This is the limit I typically bump up against. So how does it help when an orc wizards breaks 2 out of a stack of 5?

In fact, what item destruction does is require me to immediately go stash my EW, EA, acq scrolls, instead of at least waiting for a full inventory until I go stash. So more stashing is required.

Item destruction also means I'm usually carrying around an extra amulet, because I'm sure as hell not going to wear conservation all the time, I just put it on when I see mottled dragons or whatever. So one less inventory slot to use, meaning a little more inventory juggling.

I think a min damage to break items would be a huge help to the annoyance of item destruction. Meaning the sticky flame doing 2-3 damage per turn won't burn my scrolls, but the OOF spamming fireballs at me probably will. And I'm sure as hell not going to wear conservation against an OOF! You'd get rid of the annoying item destruction, without watering down the more dangerous foes.

[Moanerette]

Regarding weight, is one of the intended effects that it acts as a (minor) handicap on small races and some mage classes, or is that just incidental? It strikes me that removal of weight limits would be something of a power boost for spriggans in particular.

I agree with the posters who suggest a damage threshold or similar for item destruction. I've no issue with losing a couple of scrolls to a fireball, for instance, but losing three potions to a dart of frost is most aggravating. That may be a 'flavour reason', but it would satisfy the desire for things to make sense.

[acvar]

Since we are on the topic of improving inventory handling here is a quick fix that gets rid of one of the annoying aspects of inventory juggling while changing the game very little. Condence countless number of fruits down to just one type called fruits, and condence bread and meat rations down to just food rations. Less inventory slots taken up by food. Less juggling all those damn fruits. Why do we need a dozen different kinds of food? They all taste the same to my characters. I don't need variaty in my diet in crawl for chists sake!

[roctavian]

But what about pizza? Pizza is important.

[sanka]

The main problem with every limit of what a player can carry is that usually they do not really pose any choice, but cause a lot of tedium. This is true for the weight limits, the item slot limits and the item destruction that makes you drop some items. I never remember any game where I hit any of these limits and there were any real choice what to drop. It simply caused me a lot of drop/ctrl-F cycles.

If anybody thinks that limiting items the player could carry should stay to cause interesting decisions, than we should use a much much more restrictive system, where you can only carry a few things, so you should think which should be the better for your character. For example something like the following:

1. Two weapon slots and one slot for every armour you can wear. You can only equip them from the ground, no carrying around.
2. ~20 more slots for all other items, no stacking except ammunition.
3. Strength based limits for the size of ammunition stacks.
4. Strategical items don't take slots or have weight, and they never destruct.

Yes, this will keep the running forth and back for items when they are used/destroyed etc. But at least it will cause you to think on what to carry, so it won't feel as a meaningless tedium.

This proposal is only half serious, to show why I think that item limits are not very good now in crawl.

[billob]

(apologies if bumping this topic is annoying, I'm new here and preferred that to making a new topic)

At the very least, potions and scrolls should have it in their description that they can be destroyed by ice and fire respectively.

How about the more scrolls/potions above a certain threshold you carry, the higher the risk that random ones get destroyed? Maybe even something as simple as [items destroyed] = 1d([number of items] - [lower bound]) * [some factor], and then randomly selecting items to destroy until that number is reached.

It would be kinda intuitive, too: if you put 3 potions in a bag, you can individually wrap them in padding; if you put 50 potions in a bag, even just putting that bag down too quickly will break some or even most of them. And in this case, carrying 30 potions of curing and 3 of experience would mean the curing potions put the experience potions at risk: the greedier you get, the more you risk to loose stuff.

It could also be applied to scrolls and potions dropped on the floor; the more there are on a tile, the more they are at risk. Or hey, if you have too many potions, some of them might break when you fall through a shaft, etc? Since it would only affect hoarders, it wouldn't really make the game harder: if you consistently find more of something than you use, it might just mean you don't really need that much of it (so DCSS takes it away whenever it can haha).

Then preservation could simply increase [lower bound] and reduce [some factor] a little in the equation above, maybe even to varying degrees: preservation, preservation+, preservation++, with not even preservation++ coming anywhere close to what preservation currenty does, and the possiblity of that property generating on random artifacts. Maybe it could also lower the chance of harpies stealing food a little?

Speaking of harpies, here's a random idea that most of you will probably hate: thieving monkeys who steal potions, scrolls or ammo if you have a lot of one type... and bananas of course. Repeatedly killing them would put Xom in a *real* foul mood, regardless of what god you follow; while followers of Xom with high piety could have a chance to get some random junk the monkey found in the dungeon in exchange for what it steals ^^

[Leafsnail]

Having to put all your consumables on different tiles sounds horrible, and that formula would encourage players to find some breakpoint where your items are never/rarely destroyed. I don't really see what your proposal fixes, carrying a lot of needless items is already punished under the current system (and also gives you no real advantage other than saving time anyway).

[RBrandon]

billob: harpy food destruction has been removed in trunk, and probably won't be coming back.

As Leafsnail pointed out, carrying more consumables has a greater chance of getting them destroyed.

Spreading out your crap over multiple tiles would be incredibly tedious. Item destruction already encourages incredibly tedious behaviour as it is.

[Osgoodbad]

I also rarely use many of the less-common tactical scrolls, because I know that I am much less likely to use them in battle than I am to lose them to mottled dragon fire or bolts of fire. I typically find only 2-3 scrolls of summoning, silence, torment, or holy word in a given 3-rune game. While they are very powerful, they are only situationally useful. I always end up dropping them because I would prefer to have them for when I need them, and I know they will be destroyed before I get the chance. These scrolls are too valuable to actually carry around with item destruction in its current form, even with the reduced risk from carrying fewer.

[damiac]

That's a good point, those scrolls you mentioned are in a weird place. If you carry them, you get so few they'll probably be burned by the time you would actually use them.
If you don't carry them, they won't get burned, but you also can't use them.

The net effect is that it's doubly random whether you'll have any of those scrolls when you could actually use them, and very little of that is in the player's control.

[billob]

Having to put all your consumables on different tiles sounds horrible

As long as you don't fight monsters near your stash, you don't have to worry about stacking things there; the idea was rather to make it harder to drop everything in the last minute; like harpies steal food from the tile players stand on. [I just saw the post by RBrandon that that got removed... aww, might as well remove that attack from harpies altogether, what's the point.. if you ask me, they should actually seek out food stacks in preference to the player, haha]

and that formula would encourage players to find some breakpoint where your items are never/rarely destroyed.

Like they are encouraged to train weapon skills until they reached min delay, or spellcasting until the main spells are hungerless? That's not a fly in the soup, that's fly soup, and part of the point IMHO, to make informed choices about priorities which actually have an effect on the outcome. But still, people who don't want to min/max don't have to, and people who do will do that anyway, always.

There's no need to have them guessing or reading the wiki though, it could simply be stated that if you carry more than X potions/scrolls, the likelihood of them getting destroyed in elemental attacks increases, and that preservation cloaks can help with that.

And finally, that breakpoint exists already anyway, it's just at zero right now. How is that better? It just means if you find a potion of cure mutation or a scroll of acquirement you don't want to use yet (maybe because you want to equip a shield first to lower the chance of getting one), you basically "have" to drop them whenever there is the slightest chance of elemental attacks, running back and forth a lot - instead of dropping 10 of the 20 potions of curing you are carrying around, and keeping the cure mutation potion.

I don't really see what your proposal fixes, carrying a lot of needless items is already punished under the current system

I'm not sure it is punished, at least not for characters with even a modest amount of strength. If potions and scrolls only stacked to a certain amount that might help though.

It's supposed to fix the preservation ego forcing the choice between boring cloaks and a modicum of safety, or interesting cloaks and either running a risk or running back and forth a lot, even when you have very few potions and scrolls. The idea is to make it possible to weigh between stuff like a cloak with good preservation and nothing else, and a cloak with little preservation but other resistances etc., or going without preservation altogether, without having to be paranoid as long as you're restricting yourself to items you will actually need, and/or to at least not losing every last scroll/potion if you run into some elemental damage that repeatedly hits you for 1 hp before you can react. I get that crawl is about the sadism of the RNG first and foremost, but too much of that is not difficulty so much as rather a disconnect between player actions and what is going on on the screen.

(and also gives you no real advantage other than saving time anyway).

Running back to your stash to get a scroll of holy word or a potion of haste is not an option when you're surrounded, fell through a shaft, are in the abyss, in pandemonium, in a ziggurat - which means you'd have to decide beforehand what you really need, and leave the rest at your stash, or risk losing some of it. I would like the game to be more playable without using a stash at all... that being stingy with things you have an abundance of requires boring play is okay IMHO, that's up to the player. As I said, I think people bring that to the game, instead of the other way around. And utter randomness when it comes to loosing items just means you have to either use them up right away, or run back and forth between stashes. It encourages everything *but* sensible play.

[khalil]

Here's an idea: the first five consumables in a stack are immune to item destruction because reasons (fireproof scroll case or whatever, who cares), and any over that amount are subject to destruction.
It's unlikely a player will get more than five of cureMut, Torment, or other such scrolls (thus saving them from destruction and removing the need for stashing), but blinking, teleport, and heal wounds are all carried in quantities much greater than five, so they'd work as normal.

[Leafsnail]

It's supposed to fix the preservation ego forcing the choice between boring cloaks and a modicum of safety, or interesting cloaks and either running a risk or running back and forth a lot, even when you have very few potions and scrolls. The idea is to make it possible to weigh between stuff like a cloak with good preservation and nothing else, and a cloak with little preservation but other resistances etc., or going without preservation altogether, without having to be paranoid as long as you're restricting yourself to items you will actually need, and/or to at least not losing every last scroll/potion if you run into some elemental damage that repeatedly hits you for 1 hp before you can react. I get that crawl is about the sadism of the RNG first and foremost, but too much of that is not difficulty so much as rather a disconnect between player actions and what is going on on the screen.

Simpler alternate proposal: remove item destruction. Having to constantly count your consumables sounds really annoying, and I still don't see why "carrying too many items" is something that needs to be punished.

Running back to your stash to get a scroll of holy word or a potion of haste is not an option when you're surrounded, fell through a shaft, are in the abyss, in pandemonium, in a ziggurat - which means you'd have to decide beforehand what you really need, and leave the rest at your stash, or risk losing some of it. I would like the game to be more playable without using a stash at all... that being stingy with things you have an abundance of requires boring play is okay IMHO, that's up to the player. As I said, I think people bring that to the game, instead of the other way around. And utter randomness when it comes to loosing items just means you have to either use them up right away, or run back and forth between stashes. It encourages everything *but* sensible play.

This proposal is 100% against your goal, then. It would encourage even more tedious item management and messing around with your floor items, because you'd always be pruning your inventory to the magic number of consumables. A way you could actually make less running back and forth to stashes occur is by removing item destruction.

I don't think any player would choose not to take hasting around with them, by the way. Also you could still easily game this system within Pan (just take lots of items and drop some at the start of the level).

Here's an idea: the first five consumables in a stack are immune to item destruction because reasons (fireproof scroll case or whatever, who cares), and any over that amount are subject to destruction.
It's unlikely a player will get more than five of cureMut, Torment, or other such scrolls (thus saving them from destruction and removing the need for stashing), but blinking, teleport, and heal wounds are all carried in quantities much greater than five, so they'd work as normal.

Simpler alternate proposal: remove item destruction. How often do you get an advantage out of carrying more than 5 of a consumable? I think the answer is literally never. Even in the case of the extended endgame (which I'd point out the vast majority of characters and possibly even players never see) you could just drop your stacks down to 5 as you enter each level.

[khalil]

If you really screw up an IV drip of Heal Wounds potions is nice.

[billob]

Simpler alternate proposal: remove item destruction. Having to constantly count your consumables sounds really annoying, and I still don't see why "carrying too many items" is something that needs to be punished.

I'm not sure it *needs* to be punished, I just think it's yet another way to make it slightly more challenging, as are inventory restrictions in general. Also, I disagree that people *have* to obsess about carrying not even one potion above the minimum safe amount, just like taking turns taken into account for the final score doesn't *force* people to hurry.

This proposal is 100% against your goal, then. It would encourage even more tedious item management and messing around with your floor items, because you'd always be pruning your inventory to the magic number of consumables. A way you could actually make less running back and forth to stashes occur is by removing item destruction.

You might as well say it encourages using stuff you have more than enough of outside of emergencies? I really do think that depends on the player. And for emergencies, having one potion of curing etc. when you really need it is much more useful than having 20 in your stash anyway. Outside of heal wounds, not many things are useful in huge amounts, are they?

Also you could still easily game this system within Pan (just take lots of items and drop some at the start of the level).

Yeah. But less item destruction is kind of a middle ground between what we have and no item destruction at all. With which I would be fine by the way, I just don't have hopes of it happening ^^ Just like eyeballs and demons mutating the crap out of people the first time they get that far is not going to go away either.

[Arkhan]

I like the part of the game where I press buttons and things turn into corpses more than the part of the game where I litter. It's honestly gotten to the point where I don't care if my remove curse scroll decides to atomize in the face of an orc throwing a candle in my direction. It's suboptimal play. Yes if it's early on I'm not going to engage the ice beast in melee for 20 turns while holding potions. But there's a point in most games where I hit a power level that makes me not care anymore and I find myself artificially lowering that bar more and more as I go because the game is more fun when I play it.

[Bloax]

Simpler alternate proposal: remove item destruction. Having to constantly count your consumables sounds really annoying, and I still don't see why "carrying too many items" is something that needs to be punished.

I'm not sure it *needs* to be punished, I just think it's yet another way to make it slightly more challenging

Except there's already a factor of randomness in the form of how many consumables spawn in the first place.
Carrying a lot of them shouldn't be punished, as the most fun you'll have in crawl is by getting knee-deep in the shitter and throwing a combo of consumables and careful moves to survive the otherwise very certain death - why should you be punished for daring to carry around the fuel for powering that? Do you prefer agitation to fun?

[Kalma]

If item destruction is good, why is there a fairly common item that reduces it to ten percent? And why do I find the game more enjoyable once I find this item? I can't see how making that ten a zero for all games all the time would break anything.

I have stopped playing for months when the next phase of a game was Zot without conservation.

The weight limit argument doesn't apply for me at least. I find myself on the limit most of the time anyway due to evocables and whatnot. It's already "optimal" to carry as many of these indestructibles as you can. Adding scrolls and potions to that group wouldn't create a new problem.

[Bloax]

I have stopped playing for months when the next phase of a game was Zot without conservation.

I've tried this on a heavy-armor ogre of Chei.
there's little more to say than that i really wanted to quit the game
too much napalm, fire cloud, potion popping, hell "anti-scroll" fire smiting and death drake spam all at once

[Kate]

This thread is way past the point of having any useful discussion. Item weight/destruction will probably end up being looked at in some way or another for 0.15.