Removing acquirement regret

[Jk]

I had a thought about acquirement after YAAD (Yet Another Acquirement Depression) from making a decision I regretted:

- Remove player's ability to choose the category.
- Make the scrolls slightly more common to compensate.
- Have them skew towardness usefulness (as with god acquirement), but not entirely.

[Galefury]

Why? Decisions are much more interesting than just getting even more free stuff thrown at you every once in a while. There are already "acquirement quality" items that can be put into vaults. If there is no decision to make there is no point in actually spawning the scroll.

[snow]

I find the scrolls extremely useful and interesting. I got a wand of healing off one in my last game.

[Ossuary]

I find the scrolls extremely useful and interesting. I got a wand of healing off one in my last game.

And you can even improve your chance to get one by waiting to use the scroll until you have most other wands. Desicions, decisions ...

[snow]

To be fair that's kind of a spoiler.

[XuaXua]

To be fair that's kind of a spoiler.

A mild alteration to the description of the scroll, noting its preference to present you with item (type)s you have not yet discovered, can fix that.

[snow]

I agree that the description of the scroll should explain that you're likely to get items you haven't found yet.

[nht]

I prefer the way crawl light handles acquirement - the player is presented with a shop-like interface with an item from each category and picks one. This solves the problem of getting -2 animal skins and other junk, and still makes for an interesting choice.

[Baldu]

Anyone ever get something good out of book acquirement? It seems to reliably give manuals when I used it without magic skills but neither manuals nor books seemed to have much relation to my skills. Only tried about 10 times so far, mostly early game when all my XP was in very few skills, but no luck so far. Bad luck or is it mostly (or completely) random?

edit: for more content, i found weapon acquirement useful early game for melee guys, armor acquirement useful to get a barding or as a default if nothing else is needed, wand late game to get haste/heal, gold early if nothing else needed or if caravan found or necessary for zig running, haven't used food yet but can imagine it would be useful in some cases, staff for trog rods. Only acquirements I`ve had 0% good thing from are jewels and books, and I`ve never tried misc (I don't even know what it would give, decks or crystal balls i guess?).

[rchandra]

I've used book when looking for something particular, took a few to get it. Jewellery can be good too but is highly variable.

[crate]

I think I use book acquirement more than jewellery acquirement....

[XuaXua]

I agree that the description of the scroll should explain that you're likely to get items you haven't found yet.

Reported.

[Galefury]

Cant anyone suggest improved descriptions via transifex? I haven't registered there yet because I'm terrible at writing in any language.

[Grimm]

Cant anyone suggest improved descriptions via transifex? I haven't registered there yet because I'm terrible at writing in any language.

Anyone can get in and modify the descriptions. Unfortunately there is no easy way to tell what has been changed, when, or by who, or to mark descriptions as "need update".

[XuaXua]

Cant anyone suggest improved descriptions via transifex? I haven't registered there yet because I'm terrible at writing in any language.

I would have suggested alternate text myself, but I'm not sure of what the "rules" really are for acquirement (as I have had everything including a buckler, except headgear, done acquirement for armour, and gained a f'n buckler), and I don't have the current text onhand, so...

[crate]

I use book acquirement more than 0!!

[eeviac]

I used jewelry acquirement on my Fe, Op, and 'kill everything with dragonform' wins. Pretty sure that means I've used it more than book.

[Baldu]

I hadn't though of cats and squids (haven't played them yet!), so that`s another type of acquirement that`s ok to good in some cases. Just book and misc acquirements that I`m not convinced can be ok to good in any case yet. Anyone at all that have a positive thing to say about those?

[galehar]

Cant anyone suggest improved descriptions via transifex? I haven't registered there yet because I'm terrible at writing in any language.

Anyone can get in and modify the descriptions. Unfortunately there is no easy way to tell what has been changed, when, or by who, or to mark descriptions as "need update".

Well, I have finally finished importing all your submissions. I'd like to delete them from transifex to make it easier to spot new submissions, but I haven't yet found how. Worst case, I'll just delete the resources but we would lose history. And it would be a pain to have to do it each time.

[Grimm]

Unless Transifex changes I don't see any other option. Maybe the devs there would be open to modifying it to suit DCSS.

[palin]

Unless Transifex changes I don't see any other option. Maybe the devs there would be open to modifying it to suit DCSS.

Or maybe putting links to some other instrument to mark obsolete entries, a small wiki comes to mind.

[Lasty]

In terms of acquirement regret (and gifting regret), I think receiving an endless parade of shields from armor acquirement when wielding two-handed weapons has got to top the list. Is there any way to limit this -- at least limit it to one vanilla shield, and one shield of each ego or something? It's obnoxious to have to have what seems like 2/3rds of your acquirements go towards shields when so few characters can make use of them effectively.

[XuaXua]

Yes, less shields.

[palin]

Yes, less shields.

I think that we should make shields more useful instead... currently they are next to useless for most character backgrounds.

[Konebred]

My last win was won a lot easier due to a SoA dropping a resist mutation amulet when I asked for jewelry. I had cleared elf, snake, swamp and vaults and no RMut. My last hope without hitting slime was the scroll and it pulled it out for me, I was hyped. I don't really like doing slime as melee unless I really have to.

[XuaXua]

Yes, less shields.

I think that we should make shields more useful instead... currently they are next to useless for most character backgrounds.

Yeah, but it still keeps giving them to you observationally preferentially over any other armour, even if you found shields before.

[Lasty]

Seconding XuaXua -- it's not that shields are bad (though they may well be) -- it's just that after being given one or two or seven I presumably have enough of them that SoA should stop giving me more.