Make elemental invokers stackable


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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 29th December 2013, 18:18

Make elemental invokers stackable

minmay's last win had almost a third of the 52 item limit taken up by miscellaneous items. Being able to use many miscellaneous items in succession is quite useful so you generally want to carry all of them that you've found (well, except for the crappy ones you don't want to carry at all). Constantly running up against the 52 item limit is pretty annoying in a game where food takes up inventory slots et cetera.
Therefore I suggest making elemental invokers, sacks of spiders, and boxes of beasts stack. You could represent which ones are inert like this:
  Code:
e - 10 lamps of fire (4 inert)

Alternatively you could have inert ones use a different stack, but then using an invoker with all 52 slots occupied would have to make it fall out of your inventory, so I prefer the former option.

I am sure someone will object to doing this for sacks of spiders and boxes of beasts because you'd need to manually keep track of how many charges have been used...but currently this is already the case, as unlike wands they aren't inscribed with the number of uses. Since blood is allowed to stack, I don't see an issue here.

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Arrhythmia, Azrael, dck, Lasty, Leafsnail, Sar, skyspire

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 30th December 2013, 14:50

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

Soo... the person who insists crawl is already mind numbingly easy wants to make it even easier? Like you said, being able to use a bunch in quick succession is quite useful, therefore, you shouldn't make it even easier to do so...

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 30th December 2013, 14:52

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

But you can already carry a ton of evocables, this would just make it less annoying. Annoying is not hard, annoying is annoying.

For this message the author Sar has received thanks: 4
Arrhythmia, dck, duvessa, earLOBe

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Post Monday, 30th December 2013, 16:53

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

You can carry a ton of a lot of things that don't stack. I get that it's less of an interface issue with evokables, as they only have 2 visible states, unlike wands, which could have any number or charges, or be unid'd, but it seems to me the only limiting factor of these new evokables is inventory space. And by end game, I typically only have 10-12 slots available (admittedly, I probably carry way too many things "just in case"). So I will only carry 2 or 3 evokables to preserve my limited space. If this change went in, I'd carry every single one I ever saw. Being able to spam 5 efreets, 4 water elementals, and 5 air elementals seems a bit OP to me.

Admittedly, one could just prioritize these in inventory, but then you're giving up space for the "just in case" stuff.

Do those evokables charge up 1 at a time like rods do now? I guess that's really the deciding factor to me. If they charge up 1 at a time, it's not terrible unbalancing to let them stack.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Monday, 30th December 2013, 16:56

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

They charge one at a time.
damiac wrote:If this change went in, I'd carry every single one I ever saw.
I already do that.

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 30th December 2013, 18:40

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

Heh, I clearly need to rethink my inventory.

Well like I said, recharging one a time makes it much less of a balance issue. And it's not like you can release them all in one turn. I'm all for simplifying the interface, and the less stash trips I have to make the better.

So I guess... I retract my objections
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Dungeon Master

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Post Tuesday, 31st December 2013, 01:04

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

Let's just make them heavier so you don't need to worry about stacking. :evil:

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Tartarus Sorceror

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Location: Toronto, Canada

Post Tuesday, 31st December 2013, 02:04

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

Make them all vulnerable to item destruction.

e: this is not a serious suggestion
take it easy

Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Friday, 20th December 2013, 00:43

Post Wednesday, 1st January 2014, 17:56

Re: Make elemental invokers stackable

I would prefer if they spawned less often but were stackable, I would end up carrying as many but would be less annoyed with inventory management.

edit: for anyone who enjoys inventory management, I highly recommend Tales of Maj'Eyal. I had to stop playing that game because past the early game inventory management is frequently 25% or more of game time, and simplest inventory management is one of the leading reasons why I still play crawl after all those years. I want action and adventure, not inventory management.

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