Streamline skins

[phloomp]

Give dragon and troll skins the same stats as the corresponding armours, then remove the armours. Also make dragons and trolls sometimes drop their skins upon death instead of requiring butchering.

This is mostly simplicity for simplicity's sake, but the current situation is kind of spoily. For example, usually you should enchant your armour ASAP, but if you are a troll about to do lair:$ you should save exactly one enchant armour scroll.

[Shard1697]

Also WRT spoilery-ness, there are a lot of creatures that you would never normally butcher(especially now that poison chunks do not exist) for food but drop hides-I doubt an unspoiled player will realize it can be worthwhile to butcher an inedible shadow dragon, at least without a whole ton of trial and error.

[lethediver]

Counterpoint: armors look cooler

[Sprucery]

Of course the correct solution is to remove the hides and make the monsters drop pieces of armour instead :)

[Shtopit]

I actually like the crafting part a lot, but there is a problem with it, which is, there is no purpose to skins right now. All who can wear dragon skins can also wear dragon armours. If e.g. octopodes and draconians could wear skins (since they are manufacturing them from very, very large animals) but not dragon amours (because dragon armours are armour shaped for a different kind of body), skins would have a place in play. If nagas and centaurs could wear skins as barding, that would also be cool. But hides would have to be reworked and given a lighter encumbrance (25 for GDH looks a bit step.)

[VeryAngryFelid]

Of course the correct solution is to remove the hides and make the monsters drop pieces of armour instead

Especially true since you can't know what properties you will get from enchanting the armour (unless the player can use ?/ and guesses name of the item)

[Elitist]

Counterpoint: Most dragons are edible, you'll typically butcher a mottled/fire/ice dragon before finding a gold dragon to butcher. It's spoilery, but the game already has something to spoil you for it. I guess it plays into the chance/randomness the game wants to have.

[Doesnt]

It's good play to butcher every dragon ever to make sure a hide is available. It really shouldn't be, and I've heard of people getting screwed over by this; someone on IRC recently had an rF-impaired mummy because they were forgetting to butcher stuff on account of not needing to eat. Also, the first dragons you're likely to find in decent quantity are Swamp dragons, which conveniently are both inedible and among the most immediately useful ones to butcher.

[lethediver]

Fr: dragon corpses have a chance to leave hides on decay

[Shard1697]

Then you won't notice them unless you hang around until they decay. Just make them drop them!

[VeryAngryFelid]

I also try to remember to butcher all dragons in case a future trove asks for dragon armour. This should be removed/fixed too IMHO.

[and into]

Yes, just drop the hides at whatever rate to match current generation as if you butchered every corpse. Cuts out some unnecessary butchering, and also stops new players from either looking up info or butchering every enemy until they know what does and does not generate hides.

Not sold on the argument that it is necessary to generate the hides as armors, though. Upon examination the hides should say what they will become once successfully enchanted. That would be sufficient to keep current behavior. Dropping ready-made armor is a buff and loses a harmless bit of "crafting" flavor.

In my view it is not at all "spoilery" that there may be some edge cases where you might want to save one ?ea.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Why not just drop a -1 dragon armour? Anyone using hides?

[and into]

Why not just drop a -1 dragon armour? Anyone using hides?

That would be a small buff that is functionally almost the same, but here I would just go with the (imo) better flavor, given that this is how things currently are anyway. You could give more info upon examination for unspoiled players, who would pick up and examine any new <foo> hides they see, surely.

[VeryAngryFelid]

That would be a small buff that is functionally almost the same, but here I would just go with the (imo) better flavor, given that this is how things currently are anyway. You could give more info upon examination for unspoiled players, who would pick up and examine any new <foo> hides they see, surely.

Gameplay is more important than flavor, according to devs too. I often run in situation when I find a hide as a primarily caster and I am not sure how my spells will look like after enchanting the hide into an armour. Fortunately I can use another character and wizard mode to check but new players and online players don't have this option.

Edit. Sometimes I even waste a scroll of enchant armour by misjudging when I am lazy to bother with the check.

[and into]

Huh, I thought hides all have the same encumbrance as the armors they become, so you could see how it would affect your EV and spells before burning a scroll to transform the hide into armor.

If that is not the case then yes, there are stronger reasons just to have the appropriate enemies drop ready-to-wear hides that only recieve +s from ?ea.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Oops, it looks like you are right. I should start using hides to see spell failure

[Rast]

The current hide --> armour behavior is interesting and good, because it gives the player the option to sacrifice a long-term strategic resource for what may only be a medium term armor improvement. If dragons&trolls change to dropping amours, many characters will automatic follow the troll --> swamp --> storm --> fire path without having to spend an ?EA to activate each armour.

I agree that the hide should drop automatically without the player needing to remember to butcher.

[Siegurt]

The current hide --> armour behavior is interesting and good, because it gives the player the option to sacrifice a long-term strategic resource for what may only be a medium term armor improvement. If dragons&trolls change to dropping amours, many characters will automatic follow the troll --> swamp --> storm --> fire path without having to spend an ?EA to activate each armour.

I agree that the hide should drop automatically without the player needing to remember to butcher.

Do you frequently get storm dragon s before fire dragons? I almost never do, not that it matters for your point, but i find your progression strange

[phloomp]

The current hide --> armour behavior is interesting and good, because it gives the player the option to sacrifice a long-term strategic resource for what may only be a medium term armor improvement. If dragons&trolls change to dropping amours, many characters will automatic follow the troll --> swamp --> storm --> fire path without having to spend an ?EA to activate each armour.

That's fine, one still would have to decide between having a +1 troll skin now versus a +1 fire dragon skin later, so a similar strategic decision is preserved.

(Personally I think almost all strategic decisions are uninteresting and spoilery, so I wish this proposal would remove one, but unfortunately it doesn't.)

[duvessa]

The current hide --> armour behavior is interesting and good, because it gives the player the option to sacrifice a long-term strategic resource for what may only be a medium term armor improvement. If dragons&trolls change to dropping amours, many characters will automatic follow the troll --> swamp --> storm --> fire path without having to spend an ?EA to activate each armour.

I don't think you realize how bad +0 body armour is.

[arandomperson12]

How bad is it? Doesn't the majority of the ac come from base armour?

[phloomp]

Of course the correct solution is to remove the hides and make the monsters drop pieces of armour instead

The name "hides" is better than the name "armour" because it is easier to search for.

[Shard1697]

You're probably searching for a specific kind though, no? ctrl f "fire d" and you're good. "Troll" and you're probably good. etc

[duvessa]

How bad is it? Doesn't the majority of the ac come from base armour?

Really bad. +0 TLA is worse than +2 leather. +0 fire/ice/swamp dragon armour is almost always worse than +3 ring mail. Quicksilver dragon armour becomes useless long before quicksilver dragons start appearing. +0 storm/shadow dragon armour are very slightly better than +0 plate. +0 GDA is frequently worse than +0 plate, and rarely better than +3 plate. Cases where it makes sense to wear +0 dragon armour are very rare, let alone cases where it makes sense to spend an enchant scroll to get +0 dragon armour and wear it, let alone cases where it makes sense to save an enchant scroll to make +0 dragon armour later and wear it - I'm pretty sure no such case has ever occurred in any game of crawl ever.

[BabyRage]

+0 GDA is frequently worse than +0 plate

When for example?

[and into]

+0 GDA is frequently worse than +0 plate

When for example?

GDA has much higher ER for two more base AC and some resists, which is not a reasonable trade for a lot of characters. Casting spells in GDA is much harder and depending on your exact stats and skills you could even end up with a worse AC—EV spread any way.

For like HOBe, sure, a +0 GDA will generally be better than a +0 plate, but in practice by the time you can skin a golden dragon you are actually going to be choosing between, like, a +5 plate and (effectively) a -1 GDA.

[Siegurt]

+0 GDA is frequently worse than +0 plate

When for example?

I would personally say if:
1. You can wear plate
2. You have less than 30 strength and
3. You are not presently fighting an orb of fire with no fire resistance