The Tavern

(A heads-up: this is a request for a relatively minor interface adjustment, not a juicy gameplay change.)

Pressing shift and d drops the last thing you picked up. If you last picked up three chunks, it drops three chunks. It is irrelevant that you may have had eight chunks in your inventory. But this is almost never what I want: I want to drop the whole stack that I recently added to, whether or not that instance added to zero items then present or not.

I rarely want to split up stacks by dropping things. With inventory weight and item destruction gone, there is almost never a cost to carrying ten of something, if you are going to carry one of it. So there is rarely a reason to drop only the nine you just picked up.

(Yes, I realize that there are times you want to split stacks; I claim they are rare enough that it is okay if you have to manually input a number to split the stack, and anyway rare enough that it is unlikely that D will select the right item type and number.)

By contrast, I often want to drop -all- of the stack of things I just picked up, because I want to free up a slot. Very often (see if this sounds familiar) I want to drop my stack of chunks in order to free up an inventory slot. This is so I can ID that thing on the floor, make a decision about whether to keep it or drop something else, and then pick up the chunks again. Then I run into a hitch if I had recently added to my stack of chunks but not just picked up the whole stack.

I could avoid the problem by taking care to shuffle out of my inventory something that doesn't stack (and sometimes I do). But often chunks are the thing that I am picking up on a regular basis as I go through the dungeon, so it would be nice to just use D to drop that. Anyway it seems I can either think about how to minimize key presses (what did I last pick up? can I press D to free a slot or not?) or just take the long way around every time (d + some designated drop item). It would be better if I could just be sure that D would free a slot.

It's not a big deal, and I guess it could be lua-macro-ed away. But given the rarity of having to think about splitting up stacks, and the commonness of juggling the 52nd slot of the inventory, I thought I would first see if others share my preference. At the moment I see little reason for the default behavior of D.

***

I will try to forestall a possible objection. One might say that the envisaged new behavior is unintuitive and confusing. I don't find it unintuitive, and was surprised to find that D behaved the way it does. (Here it is maybe relevant that I started playing after item dest was removed.) Now, I am prepared to believe that I have weird intuitions. But I put it to you that at this point the game does not actually encourage us to think of potions or arrows etc. as discrete items. As an illustrative thought experiment: consider how little of the game---none, as far as I can see, of ''normal'' gameplay---would be changed if stacks of potions were replaced by ''charms'' that you collected charges for. As far as normal gameplay goes, you might as well have ''might, nine uses'' in your inventory as ''nine separable uses of might.''

That's a good call! (I am also happy to see people use D.) The proposal is very reasonable, and I am sure a patch would make it into trunk. Thanks for bringing it up!

Agreed. I am all for this. Patches welcome. I'll probably do this myself eventually if no patches roll through.

Short reminder, someone some time ago suggested that dropping stuff with D removes that stuff from autopickup. Would be awesome to patch in as well!

I could be wrong, but I don't think the OP would like that. Presumably he still wants to pick up chunks regularly.

le_nerd: Yes, would also improve quality of gameplay. Like 4H2A points out, for everything except chunks.

Yeah, that would be ideal.

I'm going to piggyback a question on this proposal, as it sounds like it's been accepted anyway. Currently, if I start as a warper, I have tomahawks automatically set to autopickup. If I decide I don't want to pick up every tomahawk in the dungeon, I can turn off autopickup, BUT if I do that, I don't even pick up the ones I already have a stack of. Is it currently possible to put autopickup on an item to just autopickup what I already have stacks of?

It's the same problem with assassins and needles, I don't want to keep picking up poison needles in the depths, but I do want to keep picking up needles of confusion and curare. I can't seem to do that from the autopickup menu currently.

I would hate, hate, hate it if you did that. I routinely use D as a convenience to juggle around a single inventory slot when I'm full up.

starhawk: So do I. The proposed change shouldn't interfere with this, because the item should go back to autopickup as soon as you pick it up again.

Toggle it twice from the autopickup menu, so it turns grey (or non-bold) rather than white (or bold). Assuming you don't have any relevant autopickup_exceptions, that will pick up that item only if you already have a stack of that item.

But why would you drop the last item you picked up? Wouldn't you drop the least useful item instead? Unless you actually mean juggle like there's an item under you but your inv is full, so you walk x distance, drop an item with D, go back to get the first item, walk 2x distance, press D, go back to get the second item, walk 2x distance, press D, repeat. I hope that's not what you meant because that's insane.

Especially late in the game, the least useful item is what you just picked up. You often pick up stuff (wands, weapons, etc.) only to see what it is, but it's trash compared to what you already have. Then you want to immediately drop it and pick back up whatever you dropped to free the slot.

If this gets in it should definitely be a toggleable rc option, not default behavior.