Scrolls of Identification


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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Sunday, 14th March 2021, 16:22

Scrolls of Identification

It seems that the next version will mostly eliminate the identification subgame. The only things that need to be identified are potions and scrolls. Still the game generates an endless amount of scrolls of identification (at least in the current trunk version). But since the number of things that need to be identified is finite, after some time in the game these scrolls are increasingly useless and just take up an inventory slot - until you finally decide to drop them.

I wonder if we can't do without scrolls of identification entirely. Most players quaff-id most scrolls, and read-id a good number of drinks (or was it the other way round?). You may want to use other ways of identification early on in the game, and I believe they can be provided in interesting ways. What about having to give away a useful scroll (not noise, for example) every time you want to identify an unknown scroll - and a useful potion (not deterioration) each time you want to identify an unknown one? That implies that you need to quaff-id at least one potion, and read-id one scroll - and develop good strategies about doing this. All this can be handled as an ability that only is visible when you have unidentified items and at least one identified useful item of the same category in the inventory.

You may want to object that players would get id too cheaply, but each useful potion to me seems to be a higher price than a scroll (id) that will be entirely useless in a very short time.
Maɟaŋ

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Sunday, 14th March 2021, 20:52

Re: Scrolls of Identification

I think it would be fine to pickup-id consumables. The identification game isn't very interesting once you get the hang of it, and deciding when to use a consumable feels like a much more interactive strategic choice than deciding when to start sampling from consumable stacks, and pickup-id of consumables would mean such a choice would be available more often (in practical terms, at least).

As for using an ability to use a scroll to id an item, I think that's needlessly complicated, especially when you can already just use an item to identify it. The only real concern with that is to avoid !mut, but if entering the mutation minigame were more desirable, early !mut wouldn't be so strongly avoided. The less interesting way to do this is to simply make !mut more common, as an undesirable early mutation could be cancelled out with a second potion, and there would be less of a need to stockpile them in preparation for Malmutate encounters. The more interesting way would be to leverage the recent refactoring of species mutations to make positive mutations more competitive with negative mutations by allowing the possibility of obtaining characteristics from other species from !mut.

Biggest problem with the second approach is that some species mutations are way more valuable than normal good mutations, e.g. Gargoyle's bonus AC compared to fur. Though, this could be mitigated to some extent by having prerequisites, e.g. for bonus AC: tier 1 = Naga, tier 2 = Draconian, tier 3 = Gargoyle. In some cases it might be necessary to add prerequisites that don't exist, and that still wouldn't change that even Naga bonus AC is way better than tier 3 of fur.

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andrew

Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Friday, 13th December 2019, 01:33

Post Sunday, 14th March 2021, 21:24

Re: Scrolls of Identification

I actually am fine with ID as it currently is too. Yes at some point in the game it becomes trivial; but from then on it's now pretty unobtrusive. But I do like the idea of making mutations something that one will actually interact with.

Mines Malingerer

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Joined: Saturday, 10th December 2016, 15:38

Post Thursday, 18th March 2021, 14:43

Re: Scrolls of Identification

Majang wrote:It seems that the next version will mostly eliminate the identification subgame. The only things that need to be identified are potions and scrolls.

There wasn't any identification subgame in the first place, except maybe in some niche cases.
I mostly never even used Identification scrolls for anything except ID'ing scrolls and potions. There was simply no point to it. I maybe used ID's on a couple of amulets every now and then just to avoid things like Harm, but that was it.

The only unidentified items that could screw you over were harm and distortion. Harm wasn't even that bad since most of the time you can just wear it off on cannon fodder, and there was such a low chance of getting distortion AND rolling banishment on unequip that it wasn't even worth thinking about it.
Worrying about unidentified items being cursed wasn't a thing either since Remove Curse scrolls were plentiful enough.

The only time I used ID's on items was in the late game when I had all of my scrolls and potions ID'd and I wanted to save myself the trouble of having to spend several more clicks on reading Remove Curse scrolls if the item happened to be cursed.

I'd even argue for removing unidentified items altogether.
Unidentified items are only unidentified in the early game, and that's when your character is undeveloped so it has the least amount of tools to deal with the trouble and needs consumables the most.
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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 19th March 2021, 13:10

Re: Scrolls of Identification

That's precisely when I used scrolls of ID. Sounds like you used them a lot.
Maɟaŋ

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andrew

Mines Malingerer

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Post Friday, 19th March 2021, 16:57

Re: Scrolls of Identification

Of course I use them. I have no other choice.

However, it doesn't add any value to the game, just an extra chore.

If you want to have an "identification subgame", things would need to be reworked from the ground up.

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