Gozag ability proposal: rent equipment

[galbolle]

Here is a rough proposal for making Gozag's shop interaction more interesting. Keep "Call merchant" as it is now (maybe less biased towards areas you have already explored), but add the following active abilities:
- passive: Sense Business Opportunities: Ctrl-O tells you in advance the location of some shops on unexplored levels. (ie, you have a passive chance to learn about a faraway shop for each $ you pick).
- (active, small gold fee): Hire-Purchase Equipment. Choose a shop from an unexplored level. You can shop there; any item you buy there is hired instead of bought: you pay a per-turn fee for it until you reach the shop. Upon reaching the shop, the fee stops and if the total rent you have paid is less than the price of the item, you pay the difference. In all case, the item is now yours. The purchase-hire cannot be recanted in any way. The fee is calculated so that you have to dive mostly straight to the shop to get the item at-price.

[Sar]

I'm sorry to hi-jack, but reading the thread made me think of some Gozag ability that would actually rent you a bunch of equipment, but only temporary, for a modest fee. Intereface similar to potion petition, only with a bunch of randart armour and a weapon (weighted towards your skill)? I think such an ability would be cool and would encourage trying to make the most of a good setup if you get one.

[Sharkman1231]

I was thinking about the renting an item too. I had trouble thinking about implementation though. Making it tied to xp gain would encourage skipping fights, making it tied to time would encourage speedrunny behavior, and I don't know if every player would want that.

I was thinking something along the lines of getting an item for X amount of levels (something like 5-7). Every time you enter a level, the counter ticks down (or up) one, once it hits zero (or the number) the item poofs away. You could make levels that have runes count for more, branch ends 2, if there's a rune, 3, or whatever.

[Marbit]

Don't rent the equipment, sell it. No one wants to deal with more steps just to buy an item in a shop.
While we are at it, don't make the player pay for the chance to generate a shop in a distant land whose items could perhaps be useful.
The benefit of getting an extra shop is reduced by the cost of the ability. The fact that the shop is in a random unexplored place make the ability worse.
I think cacticus suggestion of a passive ability sounds better:

Gozag instead offers an item directly for sale for a limited time. Kind like Vehumet's memorization offers? "Gozag offers you a [bla bla bla] for $xxx."

[lessens]

It would be cool if Gogaz let you buy portals the way you used to be able to get portals from Nemelex with decks of dungeons.

[thromnambular]

Make Gozag the god of rent-to-own armour and weapons