Stash Storage Service Network

[Choko5]

Recommended stash spots for now are:
a. E.Temple
b. Lair:1 or 2
c. Hell

Problem:
When you're at D:22, going back to the lair for stash is boring.
Also, moving stash from spot to spot is tedious.


Stash Storage Service Network
1. items can be stashed safely
2. have multiple spot
3. the player can access to the same one big pile of stash
4. free to use

Can be found in
a. E.Temple
b. Lair:1 or 2
c. Hell
d. Vaults:1
e. H. of Blades
f. D:22

[XuaXua]

Put an entrance to the E. temple in several places like Hell and call it a day.

[pratamawirya]

Such proposal isn't really interesting since stashing isn't required at all in the game. To stash your stuff is convenient but not optimal.

[Choko5]

@XuaXua
That's a much better solution.

@pratamawirya
Some people actually do stash and this will mean something to them.

[cerebovssquire]

travel_delay = -1
into your rcfile.
There you go, you now can travel to whatever stash in the matter of like 1-2 seconds, problem solved.

[palin]

I think having access to Temple as a portal maybe in the Vestibule and in end levels of orc, elf and Vaults should be enough.

[Bloax]

To stash your stuff is convenient but not optimal.

I can't really see why stashing needs a buff, unless it's to reduce the wear and tear on the turncount. (Which is why you probably don't have a stash if you're going for low ones.)

[roctavian]

I'm fierce on this topic each time it comes up, and every time I post about it on SA someone calls me an idiot or suggests I have to be some kind of crawl god to not use stashes. There is no reason to keep stuff in one place because running back and forth will increase turn count significantly; you can never forget where items are because ctrl-f exists. As long as you don't worship Jiyva items are safe when you leave them on other floors. I'm not a very good player but it has nothing to do with the fact that I leave my junk strewn about the dungeon.

The problem is that people feel psychologically compelled to stow their junk in one spot because they're afraid of either an orc coming down some stairs and picking up their crappy old -1, 0 War Axe "Hublhglaubhg" (elec, sInv) and whacking them with it, or a jelly eating their stacks of EW scrolls. Or whatever variant on that fear they have.

I don't mean to suggest we should remove monster item use or floor item destruction, but the problem is that players see stashing as the "safe" choice when it's only marginally better than not stashing. I'm not sure how to correct that perception. I just can't roll my eyes enough when I hear that Crawl is "unwinnable" (as I have at other times) without stashing, though.

[Galefury]

I really like book stashing. Put them all in a pile, stand on top of it, press M. Convenient list of every spell you can learn. If there was a way to get such a list without stashing (possibly also including spells that are only in shops) I could just stop stashing and wouldn't miss it. I know ctrl-f finds spells, but just having them all in a list is much more convenient.

[galehar]

I really like book stashing. Put them all in a pile, stand on top of it, press M. Convenient list of every spell you can learn. If there was a way to get such a list without stashing (possibly also including spells that are only in shops) I could just stop stashing and wouldn't miss it. I know ctrl-f finds spells, but just having them all in a list is much more convenient.

Someone suggested a spell «shopping list». That would help.

[snow]

I usually don't even stash anymore. In my last win I just carried everything on me, without conservation, the entire game. People seriously make too big of a deal out of stashing.

For the record nothing touches your stuff when you're on a different floor... so you can drop your stuff on ANY set of stairs and it'll be 100% safe unless you're worshiping Jiyva or something. I usually keep a small stash around the crypt when I play a spriggan since that's when I usually become burdened.

[mumra]

The main reason I find a stash useful (not essential) is because my memory is bad. Fair enough I can press Ctrl-F to find anything I can remember exists, but if I come back to a game days or even weeks later I won't be able to remember much! It's nice to know I can usually go to L:2 and quickly review what I've found and what might still be useful, rather than using Ctrl-F to go through every possibility of things that could be laying around (and having to wade through a ton of +0 junk on some searches).

I guess what would be nice (in addition to the spell shopping list which would cut about one half of the reason I stash!) is some sort of general "Favourite" or "Starred" system that covers all items. I realise this might be possible already with Inscriptions but the interface for that is a bit unwieldy. I'm imagining something along these lines:

1. From an item screen you can press (f) to favourite something
2. There is a key which brings up your inventory similar to the drop screen so you can favourite / unfavourite multiple items
3. From the Ctrl-F screen you should also be able to favourite
4. Some items will be auto-favourited as soon as you see them; e.g. beneficial or unidentified potions / scrolls, food, wands, unknown jewellery, artefacts. We could also have an auto-favourite configuration system (maybe through the \ menu you could press f to enter autofavourite toggle mode).
5. Finally there is a way to bring up a list of all Favourited items. Ideally this list can then be filtered by keyword. This system could be integrated with Ctrl-F. Perhaps Ctrl-F should even show favourited items only by default, and you can press * to show all instead.

For me this would solve all need for a stash because anything interesting I might want to come back to can be favourited. Then at any time I can view the list and just remind myself what's out there.

[snow]

Stashing is functionally identical to a bag of holding that can only be accessed while no enemies are on screen.

To withdraw from your bag of holding simply press ctrl+f.
To deposit in your bag of holding simply press G<d.

So... can these threads stop please? All the suggestions so far have been functionally inferior to the current bag of holding (i.e. the floor) everyone starts with. Also if you set your travel and explore delays to -1 then opening and closing your bag of holding happens instantly! Are people seriously so overly compulsive that they have to stash everything in neat little piles on a specific floor?

[onton]

Stashing is functionally identical to a bag of holding that can only be accessed while no enemies are on screen.

To withdraw from your bag of holding simply press ctrl+f.
To deposit in your bag of holding simply press G<d.

So... can these threads stop please? All the suggestions so far have been functionally inferior to the current bag of holding (i.e. the floor) everyone starts with. Also if you set your travel and explore delays to -1 then opening and closing your bag of holding happens instantly! Are people seriously so overly compulsive that they have to stash everything in neat little piles on a specific floor?

It would be cool to have a toggle to switch travel delay from -1 to whatever. It really bugs me to play with no delay because after having pressed "o" I have no clue what I have seen and how the hell I got where I am, so I have to keep the default value, blame it on my retardness

[cerebovssquire]

Wait, aren't explore_delay and travel_delay seperate things? from my rcfile:

  Code:

##### 4-g       Travel and Exploration #################
#
 travel_delay = -1
 explore_delay = -1


[onton]

blame it on my retardness

CS, you made my day

[neil]

onton: try "show_travel_trail = true" in your init: it shows the steps you took with the last travel command; they are cleared next time you move, or manually with ctrl-c (which clears the map as normal if you press it a second time).

[inkydood]

The main reason I find a stash useful (not essential) is because my memory is bad. Fair enough I can press Ctrl-F to find anything I can remember exists, but if I come back to a game days or even weeks later I won't be able to remember much! It's nice to know I can usually go to L:2 and quickly review what I've found and what might still be useful, rather than using Ctrl-F to go through every possibility of things that could be laying around (and having to wade through a ton of +0 junk on some searches).

This is why I use a stash. "I don't use stashes, so neither should you" isn't very persuasive. Stashing, while not optimal, is apparently convenient enough (if only psychologically) to be widely taken for granted as part of the game; people are going to continue doing it, so instead of condescendingly telling players "you should play like me or you're wrong" why not add a late Temple entrance and let the player decide?

[BlackSheep]

Your argument was fine right up until the end when it took a quick left. If you want a guaranteed safe place to drop items, use the existing Temple or L:2. If you want to reduce the amount of real time it takes to get to your stash and back, set travel_delay = -1. You'll still be able to blink back and forth between your stuff and your current frontier, but you'll incur the current costs of nutrition and turncount. Those costs are not zero and there's no good reason to reduce them.

[Tiber]

Your argument was fine right up until the end when it took a quick left. If you want a guaranteed safe place to drop items, use the existing Temple or L:2. If you want to reduce the amount of real time it takes to get to your stash and back, set travel_delay = -1. You'll still be able to blink back and forth between your stuff and your current frontier, but you'll incur the current costs of nutrition and turncount. Those costs are not zero and there's no good reason to reduce them.

Let's turn the argument around. What reason is there not to make stashing more convenient? People will continue to stash whether anyone likes it or not, as long as it is is beneficial to do so according to their playstyle. I have only ever starved once, and it had nothing to do with stashing. I and many others don't care all that much about turn count either, so your downsides are utterly irrelevant to many. The only downside that I care about is the real-life tedium, but I like having all my stuff in one place enough that I will continue to do it. I dislike -1 travel_delay for general gameplay, and autotravel still stops when you see a rat or find a trap.

Adding a later temple entrance wouldn't change the game balance at all, and it would take less time to implement it than has been spent arguing about the issue again and again. Stashers won't be setting any high scores for turn count either way.

[BlackSheep]

So you don't care about score therefore nobody should.

[inkydood]

Your argument was fine right up until the end when it took a quick left. If you want a guaranteed safe place to drop items, use the existing Temple or L:2. If you want to reduce the amount of real time it takes to get to your stash and back, set travel_delay = -1. You'll still be able to blink back and forth between your stuff and your current frontier, but you'll incur the current costs of nutrition and turncount. Those costs are not zero and there's no good reason to reduce them.

Quite a few people, myself included, dislike -1 travel delay but use stashes. I'm guessing most players use the default .init options and stashes.

The food and turn costs are indeed not zero, but basically amount to an annoyance. Speedrunners are unlikely to use stashes no matter what, and if nothing changes, I'll still be using L:2 without a problem. In the end, it's just a matter of convenience-- people like having their stuff safely accessible in one place. I only ask the devs to consider making a small accommodation, thereby reducing an appreciable amount of tedium for most players while effectively leaving game balance untouched.

It's such a small change that not implementing it amounts to silent endorsement of how a small minority plays (but this doesn't affect them anyway). What's the point of that?

[Tiber]

So you don't care about score therefore nobody should.

Considering that you just scolded inkydood for making a left turn, I don't even know how you managed to go that far off track. I said absolutely nothing like that. But if you want to go in that direction, fine. The devs have made numerous changes that affect difficulty and scoring, such as removing the point bonus for escaping while carrying artifacts or reducing the amount of time players spend in pan. Just don't expect scores to mean the same thing between versions, and you'll get used to it. Also, even if stashing takes less time, it still takes time. So if you're not stashing, you should have no problems beating the high score of an equivalently-skilled stasher anyway.

Lastly, points in video games are just a glory award that mean absolutely nothing. You can play one pinball game and get a high score at 1 million, and get 100,000 points for hitting a bumper in another game. They're just some number the creator thought looked good and approximates player skill. I'm not saying the point system should change for no reason. What I am saying is that if a change makes the game more fun overall, I really don't give a crap if that messes up the scoring between versions. With the exception of games where earning points is the sole objective, if you're worried about something that miniscule as a developer, you should really just give up and consider your game feature complete.

[BlackSheep]

I and many others don't care all that much about turn count either, so your downsides are utterly irrelevant to many.

[Tiber]

I and many others don't care all that much about turn count either, so your downsides are utterly irrelevant to many.

Which means that I don't care if choosing to stash lowers my own personal score. You made the statement that stashing has a downside in the form of a lower score, and I am saying that that does not discourage me from choosing to stash in the slightest. It would make no difference if I escaped with the orb and earned 100 points or 1 billion points. There are presumably many people besides me who also don't care about their own personal scores, and many of them are likely stashers. When I judge how how impressive a win is, I look at the number of runes earned, the difficulty of the combo and any self-conducts, and lower turns spent is sort of a bonus. The actual numeric score may as well be in roman numerals for all I care.

You, of course, are free to care about scores all you want. It won't mean a thing to me if you say something about the game shouldn't be changed just because of points though.

[pratamawirya]

Asking the devs to make stashing more convenient even though it (stashing) isn't necessary at all is like asking the police to share you a donut and a cup of coffee while you sit in the back seat handcuffed.

[galehar]

You, of course, are free to care about scores all you want. It won't mean a thing to me if you say something about the game shouldn't be changed just because of points though.

But we're not designing the game just for you, are we? Score is a game feature, and some players care about it. We're not ignoring it when designing new feature just because you don't care about it.

Anyway, I personally consider stashing to be a bad habit not something that needs to be encouraged. Like most players, I used to be a compulsive stasher and brought back to Lair every crap that was autopicked up. 95% of which I never use. I think the new autopickup menu helps a lot with that.
As already suggested, another feature that would help a lot would be a memorise menu with all available spells. Selecting one would travel to the book.

[dpeg]

galehar: coudn't that be part of Ctrl-F?

Everyone else: What I dislike about the "stashing is so inconvenient" argument is that's actually damn convenient. You whippersnappers wouldn't know, but old DC and Nethack made stashing a chore. Now it's dead easy. Of course, the interface improves and so expectations go up as well.
It's one of my worries that the next generation of interface niceties takes a lot more work (code, upkeep, documentation) than the first one, for significantly less gain. That work could be put into gameplay: monsters, branches, gods. The point was brought up how "easier stashing" wouldn't really require much code, but that is dismissing the gameplay changes, as galehar has explained. (Also, it's not just about nutrition and score: piety.) On top of that there's the issue that we're fine with stashing being reasonably easy (it is!) but the game shouldn't encourage players to stash. It's a natural, nut not nearly ideal, way of playing.

A personal word: I am stasher, and I don't see what's wrong with status quo. I understand discussing the Fighter background at length, but not stashing.

[galehar]

galehar: coudn't that be part of Ctrl-F?

What I'm imagining is the same interface as M, but with all found spells, and 2 more columns: availability (number of books, or lowest price if found only in shops) and location. Drop the latter if there isn't enough room. Select a spell list all locations, select one to travel there.
Quickly seeing all books per spell would also be quite convenient to manage amnesia from books.
I think it's different enough with ^F to have its own interface. Map it to ^M.

[dpeg]

galehar: okay, sounds great. Will help in making stashing not relevant at all for book-keeping purposes. Implementable?

[galehar]

galehar: okay, sounds great. Will help in making stashing not relevant at all for book-keeping purposes. Implementable?

Good idea, it could make a fine implementable.

[Tiber]

You, of course, are free to care about scores all you want. It won't mean a thing to me if you say something about the game shouldn't be changed just because of points though.

But we're not designing the game just for you, are we? Score is a game feature, and some players care about it. We're not ignoring it when designing new feature just because you don't care about it.

I already addressed this point. Scoring and difficulty has already undergone several changes, so a win in 0.8 means something different than in 0.12, to the point where using scores to compare the two is meaningless. Just about every change you make can be seen as changing the difficulty, and by extension the scoring system, ever so slightly. How worried were you about preserving the scoring system for all of those changes? I am not saying scoring should just be removed; I am just saying it should be an incredibly low priority because anything and everything can affect scoring, and yet scoring itself does not affect the actual game at all (that is, it doesn't even show up until you win or die). Nor have I EVER said that a change should be made solely for me, yet I have pointed out that the issue of stashing has been pointed out by numerous people and has been brought up for as long as I have been on these boards. It's not going to go away just because you choose to ignore me.

Anyway, I personally consider stashing to be a bad habit not something that needs to be encouraged. Like most players, I used to be a compulsive stasher and brought back to Lair every crap that was autopicked up. 95% of which I never use. I think the new autopickup menu helps a lot with that.

There's your problem right there. If you don't like to stash, great. However, players do as they will, and I like to stash because I like having all the stuff I've found together, even if I'll never use it. Gamers do weird things, like carry useless gnome statues through an entire game, or organize their stash so it looks pretty and post the pictures in Yuif's corner. Heck, stashing is at least half the reason player housing has taken off in RPGs. As long as there are limited inventories and items persist after being dropped, there will be stashing. It's a fact of life. Don't think of it as encouraging stashing, because it's not. It's recognizing that players behave in a certain manner, and making things more convenient for them. And yes, I do appreciate Ctrl-F and Ctrl-G.

[inkydood]

Anyway, I personally consider stashing to be a bad habit not something that needs to be encouraged.

Why? This is exactly what I addressed in my first post.

[pratamawirya]

As long as there are limited inventories and items persist after being dropped, there will be dropping items on the ground.

FTFY.

And I'm sorry to say this, but your last post reflects the mindset of fans of AAA games, not Crawl.

[galehar]

Heck, stashing is at least half the reason player housing has taken off in RPGs.

You must be right. We have no choice but to follow the trend of commercial RPGs, otherwise people won't buy our games. No wait...

I'm not saying we should prevent players to make pretty stashes or that it's a bad things. Players do as they like, and as dpeg pointed out, it's already pretty damn convenient. We even gave you a way to make it easier (travel_delay = -1) but you dismissed it for some reason.
Also, you're saying that we should make it easier because many players like to stash and it wouldn't affect those who don't, so there is no downside. I disagree. If the game makes it easier to stash, it is implicitly saying that this is a good things that needs to be done. It's saying to new players "use this feature, stash everything you find it's important". I think this is giving the wrong message. The more you stash the less you use.
What the game is saying now is "leave non-important stuff on the ground wherever, you'll easily find it if you ever need it". So there's a decision when you find something (or configure your autopickup menu). Do I carry that with me? Just leave it here? Dump it in a ministash nearby?

[Tiber]

I'd rather avoid the whole AAA game vs. indie game debate, because it'd really just end up some off-topic rant about how BS it is that people need to segregate the two and hate on things that other people enjoy. All I'll say is that developers do and should try to make their games more enjoyable for their audiences, and remove or mitigate features that their audience enjoy less. I also never said it was only commercial games that did this, so I'd appreciate if people didn't make up arguments for me. I'm not asking for infinite lives or an easier difficulty here. I'm just asking for closer access for mid/late-game players to a known safe place for items (or if you want to switch gods).

I already explained why I dislike travel_delay -1. I find the teleporting around less enjoyable and more disorientating for the >99% of the time that I'm not traveling to or from a stash. I also don't get how the statements, "I personally consider stashing to be a bad habit" and, "I'm not saying ... that it's a bad thing" are not contradictory.

You already implicitly encourage players to leave items behind through item destruction; the only difference is some players like to leave items around haphazardly and others like to be more organized. I'm just the type of person where if you give me a game like Resident Evil 4 that has the "tetris inventory", I'll waste time organizing everything just the way I like it. But I think you worry too much about "sending the wrong ideas". If you took a poll to see how many people would change their decision on whether or not to stash if you made it slightly easier or harder, I doubt very many people would change their minds. People play how they want to play, and it takes more than a subtle nudge to really change their behavior. You may think that if you change this you'd be sending out subliminal messages or something that it's okay to stash, but really, I think all players are going to think is, "Hey, now it's easier to store this stuff I was going to drop here!" I think you're imagining that you have a far greater ability to manipulate peoples' behaviors than you actually have.

Lastly, stashing isn't just pointless behavior. Besides books, which you seem willing to implement a shopping-list-like solution to just to avoid conceding that stashing might be good for something, there's also late-game food and Tomb preparation. For Tomb, I consider it best practice to have plenty of curing and restore ability potions and remove curse scrolls near the entrance (but not all on me, since summoned demons can still destroy them), and I just prefer being able to grab them all from one place rather than hunting them down. I also go back to my stash for heal wounds potions, which are valuable and used often enough to have to go back for more of. I also think another temple entrance or two would be an easier solution to the spell memorization problem than the shopping list solution, and to be honest I still have absolutely no idea how the shopping list actually works, even after looking through the in-game help for it.

[XuaXua]

Crawl 0.13

All items are now temporary. You can see an item on the floor from a distance, but if you step over it to view it, you must make an immediate choice to either pick it up or not. If you don't pick it up, it is gone forever. If you drop an item on the ground, it is gone forever. All players now maximize their carrying capacity and absolutely no way can you ever put anything on the ground. Cloaks of Preservation become the #1 item in the game to obtain. Tough shit if you find a CPM on D:1 and can't build towards it if you're even slightly too weak to wear it; unless you can carry it the rest of the game, that beast is gone. Selection of character type to maximize strength for carrying potential becomes key.

[inkydood]

If the game makes it easier to stash, it is implicitly saying that this is a good things that needs to be done. It's saying to new players "use this feature, stash everything you find it's important".

I can definitely see this being an issue for new players, but on the other hand, nobody is a "new player" forever. Eventually you're experienced enough to decide for yourself.

I think this is giving the wrong message. The more you stash the less you use.

I don't understand the logic here. Personally, if an item isn't in my stash, I'm liable to forget it exists and not use it. But even if my memory was perfect, I don't see how piling up your items makes you less likely to use them than dropping them haphazardly on the ground.

What the game is saying now is "leave non-important stuff on the ground wherever, you'll easily find it if you ever need it". [...]

But if that's the case, why is L:2 stashing so persistently popular? Are people ignoring the game's implications, or is stashing perhaps always implied? Does it matter?

Anyway, that's about all I can stand to write on the topic. Hopefully somebody has been persuaded, but if not, it's not a high-stakes issue.

[njvack]

I used to be a big "yes it should be easy to stash" proponent, but I've come around. Really, it does not help enough to be worth it.

The only thing I'd really like is for monsters to not mess with stuff I've already "claimed" -- something like putting ISFLAG_NO_PICKUP on items when I step on their tile and not spawning jellies after level creation would more or less do it. (Yes, equipping orcish allies would need to change, so it's not that simple. I think equipping orcish allies should change anyhow, but that's a topic for a different thread.)