Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)


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Post Friday, 10th March 2017, 12:00

Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

The Archaeologist branch is sort of abandoned because it does clash too much with the core design of backgrounds. However, after thinking of it for a while I think there's a way the same general idea could be implemented in a way that aligns a bit better with the game philosophy. The objective of this proposal is creating an incentive during the early game to take your character in an unexpected (and hopefully fun) direction.

Chest: a rare, miscellaneous evocable item. Even though it's rare, in case of appearing it would do so during the early game (D1-7). Chests are named in relation to a skill. A couple examples:

  • Pyromancer's Lockbox (SK_FIRE_MAGIC)
  • Armourer's Crate (SK_ARMOUR)

The description for a chest explains that, in order to unlock the mechanism, the player must be more knowledgeable in that particular skill. This could be measured in SP or raw skill levels, or randomised to some extent. The chest is identified on pickup and will always require a skill level that the player does not have, and represent a significant investment. I'm not yet sure if the particular level required should be visible or hidden. If it was hidden, the player would be notified when they reach that level that they "finally understand the locking mechanism".

Once the player reaches the desired skill level, the crate will open and contain an unrand, or a set of powerful items related to that skill. The Armourer's Crate for example could have Lear's Hauberk, or a highly enchanted plate mail and a bunch of good STR jewelry.

Reasons why I think this could be fun:
  • Players like gambling mechanics. Dr, Ds, mutations and troves are very memorable for newer players. This idea has a lot in common with troves, except you pay in progression and it manifests much earlier.
  • Can lead to some very offbeat builds and offer a side challenge. An experienced player may want to give that SK_FIRE_MAGIC crate a try on their minotaur and play something they wouldn't have otherwise.
  • Sunken cost would force players to use fun/gimmicky unrands that they wouldn't have considered otherwise. The potential for player stories is there. "I spent so many skill levels and I got this shit unrand, but I forced myself to make it work and won an interesting game".
  • Being implemented as an early but very rare item instead of a background makes start scumming impossible and prevents feature fatigue, as it would be a rare occurence. It also mitigates the problem that some devs brought up with Archaeologist in that it devalues the rarity of unrandarts.

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Post Friday, 10th March 2017, 13:15

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I like it. Actually I'd rather this, or somthing like it, be more common than you propose and replace ?acquirement. ?acquirement reinforces existing builds on average and reduces interesting choices. Acquirement biased more toward good, maybe multiple, items with forced types and cost offers the the player a real choice and all the good effects on play you mentioned. It would be a little redundant conceptually with troves, but I think both could co-exist.

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Post Friday, 10th March 2017, 14:11

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Gambling mechanics are fun, but dying before you get to open the chest would not be. If it's to be found on D:1-7, that will be reasonably frequent. So here's my suggestion:

You can immediately evoke the chest to open it. However, doing so will cause at least 50% of your incoming XP to be diverted to the chest's skill no matter what you do, for some number of XP/skill points. The skill would appear a different color on the skill screen to indicate that this effect is active. The player would have the option of diverting more than 50% of their XP to the skill, if they so choose.

Overall, I think this preserves the gambling aspect and the sunk-cost situations, while preventing a frequently annoying situation. Yes, it's a buff since you get the items earlier, but most items are not going to be game-breaking when you have no levels in their relevant skill.

Also, FWIW I like the idea of some version of this replacing scrolls of acquirement.
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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 03:29

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I think this is a much better approach than the original background angle.

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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 04:23

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

there are a few problems with this setup:

  • unless the item is guaranteed to be usable right out of the proverbial box, a player should just treat it like a trove (i.e. don't use it unless you're so overpowered the cost is meaningless)
  • i don't really see what kind of cost makes this an interesting decision. If you make the cost "get 8 skill in X" then it's basically meaningless after a certain point because 8 skill is not a high cost in the later part of the game. If the cost is "get 16 skill in X" then you only consider the chest once enough items that use 16 skill in X spawn in the dungeon. If the cost is "get >20 skill in X" then you don't consider it at all unless your build requires getting 20 skill X in the first place, and at that point it's usually way too late for the chest to make an impact
  • item generation already incentivizes this kind of behavior. A book of Callings/Summonings spawn, you might start thinking about investing in summoning. an early manual of fire might make the player consider getting some fire spells

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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 04:33

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

this seems like it'd be either make no-brainers or be a massive newbie trap, with very little room in between the two. to me your second and third "reasons you think it could be fun" sound like descriptions of it misleading people into making bad decisions...

all you're evaluating is "do i expect the contents of the chest to be good enough to train the skill for it", which is easy to answer with spoilers and not easy to answer without spoilers (see: trove costs, acquirement choice)
when the answer is yes then the chest has just made your skill training decisions for you, and when the answer is no then the chest was just useless noise

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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 04:47

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I kind of like roll-of-the-dice things like this. I like the ecumenical altar, even though I know it's not a good way to win the game. I often open runed doors even though I know it's stupid and a way to get needlessly killed.

I suspect that if I were to find one of these early, and it were at least somewhat feasible for me to skill to unlock it, I'd go for it. Even if I knew it was making my character weaker. From my point of view, winning is cool, but I much prefer the stories that emerge from games than I like grabbing the orb.
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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 10:03

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

One thing that could alleviate the issues that CanOfWorms and duvessa point out, would be for the box to provide a nerfed manual effect as you train up the skill.

Having +2 apt to the skill the box requires would make training it a more interesting prospect, even if the reward ends up being bad. Granted, this wouldn't be an optimal choice in most cases, but it isn't meant to be.

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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 12:00

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

The goal of this proposal is to create unusual builds. I don't think starting with a moderate approach like this will achieve that. For that matter, I'm not sure there's merit in what I'll say next, but I'll braindump first:

A trap that rerolls your stats and skills, then lets you figure out how to re-organise your build based on the items on the floor.

- Trap because it shouldn't be a voluntary thing. Like mutations, this is a shiny thing that strategically distract newbies - sometimes fatally.
- Reroll because you don't want the player feeling they've 'wasted' their prior investments by keeping them around. On that note, your chest idea would have to be a D:1~2 thing (with an expiry timer of some sort) for me to be compelled.
- Once you're in a completely new setup, items to support that build are up to you to figure out.


I don't think this 'fuck your plans lol' trap is a good idea. But it's what I expect would be needed if there was some nonsensical mandate that there HAD to be a way to increase suboptimal build incentives.

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Post Saturday, 11th March 2017, 18:25

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Steel Neuron wrote:Granted, this wouldn't be an optimal choice in most cases, but it isn't meant to be.
...So its only purpose is to be a massive newbie trap?
You know, I may hate faded altars, but at least they have the decency to make it obvious that using one is a horrible idea. This suggestion is even worse because not only do you intend for it to be a bad choice, you're making its contents a mystery so that only spoiled players (or unspoiled players that do a prohibitive amount of experimentation) know it's a bad choice. I thought there was some good in this suggestion at first, but now it's clear to me that it's just pointlessly mean to players.
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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 01:41

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I'm not a newbie, and I would be "trapped" by it. The only thing is, even if the reward wasn't always good and sometimes encouraged me to build a weak player, I don't think I would feel trapped by it. It was a risky investment. It's not like that's some kind of mystery.

@duvessa: It's totally clear that this feature is not for you. But crawl is big, and it's okay if there are parts of it that aren't for you. In a game this big, I actually like having more goals than "get runes, get orb, get out" and then "do that again, except more runes or faster or several times in a row."
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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 02:01

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Well, the game is designed around the notion that the player is trying to "get runes, get orb, get out". We don't have quests, towns, selling, crafting, or many other notions from role-playing games that try to provide those experiences. So unless the challenge that a new feature or item adds really feels like it has adds something to the kind of game-play that crawl offers, "this would make the game bigger" isn't a compelling argument.

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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 11:24

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I honestly don't know how you guys are extrapolating this feature to the point you think it would be mean to players, or somehow on the level of quests and crafting.

By duvessa's reasoning, a manual is also a newbie trap. How is it so different to have an item that gives +4 apt to long blades for a while, to an item that gives +2 apt to long blades, and a good long blade when it expires? How is it "mean" to the player in any way? It's the same concept with a hidden reward.

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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 11:51

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I think what people are objecting to is the following:

Suppose, in a normal game, you find a randart morningstar while you were training long blades all along. Then you have a choice of diverting XP to maces for a while so you can use the morningstar effectively.

Now, compare this scenario to the proposal in the OP. Here, you don't get to use the randart immediately, and you don't know what the randart is in the first place. Thus you have more risk and lower immediate payoff.

The way of compensating for more risk and lower immediate payoff would be to make the item you get from the box exceptional. I am not sure if this is a good idea, because this may be hard to balance, and the mechanisms of item generation would be rather spoilery.

Thus, the comment about the box being either a newbie trap (if the item isn't exceptional), or being spoilery or unbalanced (if the item is exceptional).

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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 12:18

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Well, when you roll a demonspawn, you have more risk and lower immediate payoff. So do you when you start saving up healing potions for a trove, when you quaff Mut, when you choose to go into a portal vault, etcetera. I would've thought taking calculated risks for an unknown payoff is a cornerstone of roguelikes.

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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 12:26

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Well, people have already said that this is very similar to a trove. Why do we need another trove-like mechanism?

Btw, I don't find troves to be a particularly good feature. If the trove told me what was inside beforehand, it would be much better, though still not ideal. In practice, troves are mostly useless; either the costs are too much, and/or the reward is a bit like a spoilery lottery.

Demonspawn is slightly different; many mutations are rather unique to demonspawn, and you get a lot of them over the course of the game. Thus, there's something you can work with almost from the beginning.

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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 13:32

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

bel wrote:Well, people have already said that this is very similar to a trove. Why do we need another trove-like mechanism?


Because troves happen too late to have a real impact on your build. This is an offer to get some extra early power in exchange for branching out in an unexpected direction.

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Post Sunday, 12th March 2017, 20:53

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Steel Neuron wrote:By duvessa's reasoning, a manual is also a newbie trap. How is it so different to have an item that gives +4 apt to long blades for a while, to an item that gives +2 apt to long blades, and a good long blade when it expires? How is it "mean" to the player in any way? It's the same concept with a hidden reward.
Manuals and faded altars aren't huge traps because they tell you what they do. Your idea specifically hides the reward from the player until it's too late. Yes, troves are just as bad, but having one bad feature isn't a justification to add more features that are bad in the same way.

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Post Monday, 13th March 2017, 01:09

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

gammafunk wrote:We don't have quests, towns, selling, crafting, or many other notions from role-playing games that try to provide those experiences.

There's Beogh, who I would argue provides exactly that role-playing game experience. At least, that's the itch he scratches for me.

You also have a wee bit of crafting, in the weapon and armour enchantment systems. And in troves and timed portals, I would argue that you *do* have quests — what you don't have is an explicit narrative structure built around them.
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Post Monday, 13th March 2017, 08:06

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

njvack wrote:And in troves and timed portals, I would argue that you *do* have quests — what you don't have is an explicit narrative structure built around them.

I agree. If, instead of the timed portal message, a mysterious unique would arrive and give you a quest to kill the evil minotaur in the Lab, it would be functionally same as the current system.
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Post Monday, 13th March 2017, 18:36

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Beogh doesn't provide any of quests, towns, selling, or crafting, so the god doesn't provide "exactly that" experience. Beogh gives you permanent allies and a very limited means of giving some of them a piece of equipment. This is not an aspect of game management that we wish to expand, generally speaking; the Beogh rework went in the direction of more management to less management. I also don't think that citing Beogh as support for this change will help its case.

The existence of timed portals doesn't mean that crawl is trying to develop an elaborate quest system any more than the existence of extra runes does. If a new rune branch or portal adds interesting gameplay (in terms of combat and decision making), then lore or theme would be important, but secondary, and "how does this further implement questing/crafting/etc" would not be important.

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Post Tuesday, 14th March 2017, 08:05

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I'm still sitting here wondering what quests and crafting have to do with the idea I'm proposing. Could we stay on topic please?

duvessa wrote:Manuals and faded altars aren't huge traps because they tell you what they do. Your idea specifically hides the reward from the player until it's too late. Yes, troves are just as bad, but having one bad feature isn't a justification to add more features that are bad in the same way.


Is Ds a bad mechanic too? It doesn't tell you what it does either. What about Dr? You can get red draconian after investing in ice magic. Lab? You spend a lot of time and potentially a couple consumables on a place for an unknown reward that may be shit. Unidentified shops?

I'm not buying that you consider any hidden information, delayed reward mechanic as bad. They are a staple, and I haven't seen many people complain about troves; regardless of whether they are optimal, they are exciting, which is something worth keeping in mind for newer players too.
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Post Tuesday, 14th March 2017, 14:50

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Sorry, didn't mean to derail! This idea feels like a mini quest to me. I like that, because I like quests and crawl doesn't have much in the way of quests. I like troves and timed portals for the exact same reason.
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Post Tuesday, 14th March 2017, 17:27

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Seriously? I'm going to quote this again:
Steel Neuron wrote:Granted, this wouldn't be an optimal choice in most cases, but it isn't meant to be.
You specifically, explicitly said that opening the box isn't meant to be a good choice. So the only people who will open it, if the feature works exactly as you intend it to, are
1. people who make bad choices intentionally for fun
2. people who haven't yet discovered it's a bad choice
As someone who campaigns for clarity, of course I'm going to be hostile to that! If you, personally, like putting this sort of trap in your games, fine, there's a place for that (it's the entire gimmick of I Wanna Be The Guy for example). But it doesn't belong in a game that lists avoidance of spoilers as a design goal.
Before you said this, my objections started and stopped with the potential for no-brainers and the same problems that troves and acquirement have. But the originators of troves haven't come out and said "Troves aren't meant to be an optimal choice in most cases". You have. So now I have a much bigger objection to the idea.

Yes, Ds and Dr have clarity problems too, but again, that doesn't justify deliberately adding more clarity problems. And the comparison is very unfavorable, anyway: Ds and Dr don't offer the player a choice (other than deliberately avoiding experience gain); you get your Ds mutations and Dr colour whether you ask for it or not. Ds doesn't ask you to trade 14 potions of curing for new mutations, and you don't have to train fire magic to 8 to get your Dr colour. If the pyromancer's lockbox, upon being generated, forcibly diverted all your xp into fire magic until it reached 8, then it would not be nearly as bad of a trap.

Steel Neuron wrote:Lab? You spend a lot of time and potentially a couple consumables on a place for an unknown reward that may be shit.
I think Tavern has heard enough from me about labyrinths already

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Post Tuesday, 14th March 2017, 17:32

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I think you misunderstood my sentence (and frankly I could have been more clear with it)

Steel Neuron wrote:Granted, this wouldn't be an optimal choice in most cases, but it isn't meant to be.

What I meant by it not being optimal in most cases is not that the reward is bad, it's that the randomly assigned chest skill will, in most cases, be unrelated to your intended build. This isn't hidden and the player can judge it on their own merits.

I think you understood my sentence as meaning that the rewards will be shit in most cases. That's absolutely not my intention, they should be good items every time. Whether or not it's optimal would just be a matter of aptitudes and a general plan. For example, if I'm a minotaur and I get a fire magic chest, it won't be optimal to go for it. However, if I'm a minotaur and get a SK_ARMOUR chest, it will be optimal in that case. I hope this makes sense to you; what would the alternative be? If this mechanic was balanced in such a way that it would make it the optimal choice to train SK_FIGHTING as a deep elf, it would be a terribly overpowered mechanic.

The choice of whether to train a skill that you've been offered an unknown reward for seems completely valid and in line with the game's philosophy for me. Sometimes it would be a no brainer (if the skill was already going to be part of your progression) and sometimes it will be an immediate skip. The reward should invariably be good for a character that can use that specific skill well, however. When I said "If the reward ends up being bad" I didn't mean due to random chance, but due to the mechanic having to be balanced to the point the reward isn't as powerful as I'm proposing.

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Post Tuesday, 14th March 2017, 23:43

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Perhaps make the locked chest transparent, so you can see what's inside.

It would remove spoilers and reduce the gambling aspect, while introducing a greed aspect (similar to many vaults). All the rest of the listed advantages in the OP remain.

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Post Wednesday, 15th March 2017, 00:36

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

bel wrote:Perhaps make the locked chest transparent, so you can see what's inside.

It would remove spoilers and reduce the gambling aspect, while introducing a greed aspect (similar to many vaults). All the rest of the listed advantages in the OP remain.


How is this different from just generating the item(s), though? You have to wait a little longer before you can start using the item, but chances are, the item isn't very useful during that period.

Though actually, that brings up another issue: players have the option of just waiting until the forced skilling isn't likely to cripple their character. That sort of "wait until it doesn't hurt" behavior is exactly why the rune lock was added in the first place.

Perhaps this should be a timed portal vault instead. It would have no opposition or anything, but upon entry you'd have only two choices: take the chest and automatically trigger the forced skilling, or leave without the chest. This could even work with a transparent chest, since you no longer have the option of deferring the skilling.

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Post Wednesday, 15th March 2017, 00:56

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

It's similar to finding an item on the floor, but not exactly. The main point of the OP is an early item which incentivizes people to try something different.

If I find a +9 morningstar of elec on D:4, I can pretty much use it right away and start training maces. If I'm supposed to get 10 M&F to unlock it, the decision is whether I want to gimp my character in the early game (the hardest part) so I can use the item.

As I argued above, if the aim is to incentivize offbeat builds, it would make sense to reduce the risk in making the choice, while introducing an element of greed. The other aspects listed in the OP are still fulfilled.

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Post Wednesday, 15th March 2017, 08:01

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Maybe that's what cursed items could be: An item that you can't unequip until you've exhausted your obsession towards it (by training it for a while). Curses would have to be less frequent obviously.

Would have some interesting interactions with Ashenzari, unifying the skilling and curses theme.

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Post Wednesday, 15th March 2017, 12:49

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

Provided the cursed items are no longer negatively enchanted junk, I like that idea a lot. I don't think curses would have to be less frequent, provided the player is always warned that they're a possibility (i.e. cursed items are always marked as ego items). Pretty sure you'd want to get rid of active item cursing, though (bye bye scythe of curses).

You'd presumably want to get rid of scrolls of remove curse, which would require some rethinking of Ash's cursed item swapping, but that should be doable.

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Post Wednesday, 15th March 2017, 15:13

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

The curse change seems interesting. Leaving that aside as a separate issue, I think the following combination of prior suggestions and one of my own (#5) would be good:

1 - Do away with ?acquirement. It adds nothing interesting because it rarely causes you to change your strategy. Most of the time the item you get is something that helps your current build, or is useless.

2 - New boxes are transparent.

3 - Skilling is forced when you open them and it is clear this is what will happen from the description. Possibly with a small manual style bonus to add incentive to gamble.

4 - Item is unlocked when you reach skill X. At high levels when skill is already 27, it can just suck up some xp. (Bikeshedding flavor: The enchanter's lockbox requires a worthy user to free its contents!)
Edit: I could see going the other way on this as ion_frigate suggested and allowing it to be usable immediately. I feel like that might make it too obvious if it's the right choice to open the box though and reduce the gamble but I'm not convinced I'm right.

5 - The box itself has a decay timer, beginning as soon as it is first seen. The only way I can see anyone trying to abuse this is to use Ash item sense and avoid revealing items. But this seems a self-defeating choice, given that you'd need to leave 100s of items on the floor just for the chance one of them is a lockbox.

The player is forced to make a near immediate choice about a gamble/risk with clear rewards.

Adding the timer on the box on first sight instead of putting it inside a timed vault allow this to be more common and replace ?acq. (You could make more common timed vaults, but that seems annoying).

Benefits:

It does away with ?acquirement, which is really just a floor spawn that the player gets to direct toward his existing build. It preserves the one good thing about acquirement, which is an occasional big power boost (premise: occasional big leaps in power are desirable).

When it appears somewhat early, it diversifies character builds and encourages experimentation with a non-spoilery gamble (premise: diversity and gambling are good).

Decay timer encourages risk-taking (premise: risk-taking is good). To clarify: it is superior to simply buffing floor items because you can't leave it - example: a caster who wants to later branch out into medium armor would leave a good +5 randart scale mail on the ground and come back for it later, but if it's going to disappear, he might choose to risk dumping XP into armor earlier than he would otherwise.

When it appears late, it's something you might often skip, but this is no different from every other floor item and still an improvement over ?acquirement.

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 18

Joined: Tuesday, 25th September 2012, 00:52

Post Thursday, 18th May 2017, 10:49

Re: Skill locked chests (a more palatable Archaeologist)

I really like the gambling aspect of this proposal. Holding onto a strongbox and Skilling while hoping for a nice item seems like fun to me.

To make it less of a newbie trap, emphasise the skill gain over the item gain -- so it's competing more with Manuals than with acquirement scrolls.

1) Replace some or all Manuals in the game with Strongboxes.
2) A Strongboxes functions like a manual - it trains that skill at +4 (or maybe less)
3) When the strongbox has been used up, it vanishes, and the item inside is spawned in the player's inventory (to avoid splash/sizzle of acquirement over lava).
4) The acquired item is strongly correlated with the skill that was trained, and requires at *least* the player's new skill level to be used effectively -- so if the user just got up to 10 in maces, they may get a dire flail, but they won't get a +0 club.
5) When the player dies, the contents of Strongboxes are visible in the post-mortem inventory. (so they get closure!)

In this way, Strongboxes would be mechanically just slightly better than manuals (and possibly slightly worse if they're only +2 or +3), but they would now have two moments of excitement -- finding it, and getting to open it.

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