Mines Malingerer
Posts: 44
Joined: Monday, 31st October 2011, 04:45
Thursday, 3rd November 2011, 13:59
Improve the scroll ID minigame
I like that crawl has an identification system - the early game experience of thinking in an emergency "is this a scroll of teleport or a scroll of noise" is a good thing. But it shouldn't be tedious.
Some recent changes removed some of the tedium: scrolls of enchant weapon will now identify even when unarmed, removing the annoying need to pick up an edged weapon (pre identification of curse weapon) with an unarmed character to identify them.
A few more changes are needed. First and foremost: amnesia. If you're playing a berserker or non-spellcaster, the scroll will never self-identify. It will sit there, you may wonder if that was a scroll of holy word or fear or something, and eventually you will have to burn a scroll of ID on it or be confident in the process of elimination. For non-spell casters, you should get a message like "you feel a brief sensation of forgetfulness." You could theoretically have some fun with this and have a wide variety of thematic messages for non-spell casters: "You forget your birthday," "you forget why you're in the dungeon," etc.
Similarly, scrolls of fear/and holy word should identify on use. "You feel a wave of dread," "You hear an angelic choir." To properly play the crawl id minigame, you need to read un-id'd scrolls in front of one living enemy and one undead/demonic enemy to ensure either scroll is identified. This is tedious and spoilery. It's especially irksome in the lair, where the chances of finding holy word begin to increase but there are few applicable foes.
With these changes, virtually all scrolls will self-identify, except for remove curse without curses, curse jewelry without jewelry, and mis-targeted enchant armor and recharging. That's a good thing. All potions ID on use. Reading a scroll and having no idea what it was is not fun, it just encourages a bizarre litany of spoilery behavior to beat the ID game.
Some recent changes removed some of the tedium: scrolls of enchant weapon will now identify even when unarmed, removing the annoying need to pick up an edged weapon (pre identification of curse weapon) with an unarmed character to identify them.
A few more changes are needed. First and foremost: amnesia. If you're playing a berserker or non-spellcaster, the scroll will never self-identify. It will sit there, you may wonder if that was a scroll of holy word or fear or something, and eventually you will have to burn a scroll of ID on it or be confident in the process of elimination. For non-spell casters, you should get a message like "you feel a brief sensation of forgetfulness." You could theoretically have some fun with this and have a wide variety of thematic messages for non-spell casters: "You forget your birthday," "you forget why you're in the dungeon," etc.
Similarly, scrolls of fear/and holy word should identify on use. "You feel a wave of dread," "You hear an angelic choir." To properly play the crawl id minigame, you need to read un-id'd scrolls in front of one living enemy and one undead/demonic enemy to ensure either scroll is identified. This is tedious and spoilery. It's especially irksome in the lair, where the chances of finding holy word begin to increase but there are few applicable foes.
With these changes, virtually all scrolls will self-identify, except for remove curse without curses, curse jewelry without jewelry, and mis-targeted enchant armor and recharging. That's a good thing. All potions ID on use. Reading a scroll and having no idea what it was is not fun, it just encourages a bizarre litany of spoilery behavior to beat the ID game.
?