Item Destruction

[snow]

Bad Points:

1. It's largely spoiler based: many new players believe holding bad scrolls and potions will protect their good scrolls and potions. Only after being spoiled do they learn how to avoid it.
2. It's tedious and annoying to drop your scrolls before fighting fire enemies and potions before fighting ice enemies. It's so tedious and annoying in fact that a large number of players use conservation and preservation over tactically better alternatives just to avoid doing it.
3. It encourages item micromanagement and brings your action packed adventure to a jarring halt every time you find a stashable item. This is one of the biggest complains I see on the forums and has lead to many wanting multiple entrances to the temple and so on just because they have to stash so much to avoid item destruction. Yes the solution to this is to just to have multiple stashes but many Crawl players have OCD and even go as far as to organize their stashes into multiple piles: leaving everything all over the dungeon just won't do!
4. It's redundant. We already have weight to force us to stash: why would we need a second mechanic to do the exact same thing? Why have that second mechanic largely spoiler based, tedious to manage, and so on while adding nothing to the game because we already have a mechanic that takes care of things?
5. You either completely hate it or never experience it. With the tedious optimal play you won't lose anything so it's never relevant: but if you're not spoiled or just can't be bothered stashing everything you're going to lose a lot of stuff.

Good Ponits:

Um... can you help me out here?

[Steel Neuron]

Why not change it this way:

There is no destruction upon items in your inventory. However, if you quaff a potion while being subject to a cold attack (I mean, a cold attack happens during your quaffing action) there is a really high chance of the potion shattering (60%+).

Similarly, If you try to read a scroll and get hit by fire damage in that time, the scroll will likely burn in your hands.

In both cases the action you were performing fails, obviously.

I think this retains the general idea while becoming less tedious, less random and more tactical.

Optionally, being weak to any of the two elements (negative resistance) could cause the old behaviour to come up again, breaking items in your inventory, but only as a special case motivated by your weakness to that particular element.

What do you think?

[galehar]

1. It's largely spoiler based: many new players believe holding bad scrolls and potions will protect their good scrolls and potions. Only after being spoiled do they learn how to avoid it.

I wonder what makes them think carrying huge stacks of paper make them less likely to burn. It's also quite easy to realize that the more you're carrying, the more get's destroyed. Stuff which is intuitive and can easily be learned by being attentive are not spoiler based.

4. It's redundant. We already have weight to force us to stash

Not really the same. Even a weak character can carry dozens of potions. I think it would remove a lot of tension if you can carry huge stacks of healing potions and escape potions/scrolls. Why do you think wands of healing/hasting/teleportation are so valued?

With the tedious optimal play you won't lose anything so it's never relevant

That's a gross exaggeration. Dropping your stuff take several turns, you don't always have the time to do so. Also, once it's on the floor, you can't use it. Doing an ice cave without access to any potion can be quite dangerous.

I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, just that outright removal wouldn't be one.

[Pereza0]

I have no problem with scrolls and potions getting destroyed.

Still, sticky flame is really annoying in this aspect. Monsters can cast it beyond melee range rigtht? Maybe they shouldnt

[Galefury]

In return for being ranged monster sticky flame can miss...

[galehar]

Still, sticky flame is really annoying in this aspect.

True. Maybe it could get a weaker effect to compensate for the fact that it lasts several turns. It's fine that it's a greater threat to your scrolls than other fire attacks, but I think it's a bit too much.

[roctavian]

A problem with sticky flame is that it has a "solution" (besides jumping into shallow water when available) in dropping each stack of scrolls in descending order of importance; if it just destroyed scrolls on initial hit and didn't keep doing it each round it would be better I think. It can have a greater chance to destroy scrolls on hit if we want to preserve the greater item-destruction-threat.

[dpeg]

roctavian's proposal is good: the frantic dropping of scrolls (in single heaps) is tedious. But if the damage (to the scrolls, not to you) was done with the first impact, we'd be better off.

[Lasty]

There is no destruction upon items in your inventory. However, if you quaff a potion while being subject to a cold attack (I mean, a cold attack happens during your quaffing action) there is a really high chance of the potion shattering (60%+).

When it's your turn, your action can't be interrupted by attacks, so this would never come up unless reading a scroll/drinking a potion was changed to take time like Zin's Recital. If it were, potions and scrolls would be much worse, because they would no longer be capable of saving your life in sudden peril situations.

[Psieye]

4. It's redundant. We already have weight to force us to stash

Not really the same. Even a weak character can carry dozens of potions. I think it would remove a lot of tension if you can carry huge stacks of healing potions and escape potions/scrolls. Why do you think wands of healing/hasting/teleportation are so valued?

With the tedious optimal play you won't lose anything so it's never relevant

That's a gross exaggeration. Dropping your stuff take several turns, you don't always have the time to do so. Also, once it's on the floor, you can't use it. Doing an ice cave without access to any potion can be quite dangerous.

This is pretty much it. Item destruction forces players to not have every emergency button at their disposal all the time. This is why Cons is a tactically relevant trait: because you have Cons you feel much safer carrying around extra potions of resistance or whatever which you could then use to deal with unexpected surprises.

Now, "I shouldn't carry around every consumable I have in my inventory even if I don't have weight issues" is separate a separate issue to "I must stash every valuable consumable I find". The former has tactical significance and once sticky flame is tweaked as per roctavian's suggestion, I think will be fine. The latter comes down to the question: "do we want to make OCD-ness easier to satisfy?" I get the feeling the answer may be "no" but if it's yes then my solution would be: let the "auto travel delay" init setting be split into 2 cases.

Your action packed adventure comes to a 'jarring halt' because of how long it takes to auto-travel to your stash, put down your loot and then auto-travel back to where you were. What if, just for this case of using auto-travel, the delay was set to -1 so you don't have to see all the intermediate landscape scroll by twice over? Detect it's this case (as opposed to all other cases of auto-travel) by checking if the player wants to auto-travel to a WAYPOINT. So the use case would be:


Player puts down a waypoint where there stash is. Later on, player finds some awesome consumable they have to stash right away. A waypoint is placed where they picked this up (either automated for them or they put it manually). The player auto-travels to his stash in the blink of an eye (unless auto-travel got interrupted for whatever reason). Player puts down his awesome consumable and has a chance to decide whether to do other stash-related stuff (like memorising a new spell). Player now auto-travels to his 'return waypoint', again in the blink of an eye barring interruptions. When the player hits 'o' afterwards, auto-travel scrolls by showing the terrain as he travels.

[sanka]

What is really annoying that tactically irrelevant strategically important items can be destroyed. Of course I usualy just switch off autopickup of enchant scrolls etc., but it's still annoying enough. If jellies would never eat them for some reason ("acid proof" items) the situation would be much better tough.

As far as I know jellies do not spawn on empty levels, but this is far from perfect. The current situation encourages the carrying these items to an already empty floor.

I guess the "id minigame" is the reason this has not been changed. I do not think that the id minigame is so intresting or that it would be so much different if there would be a third class of items ("runed stones" or something) which would contain the strategical items, and they would be immune to acid (or even immune to item destruction).

[Galefury]

As far as I know jellies do not spawn on empty levels

Jellies can spawn on empty levels.

[snow]

For what it's worth I agree that sticky flame should destroy items on impact and not force you to frantically drop items. To be fair though you should drop your stuff long before you get hit with sticky flame. For me it's usually seeing the D, run up stairs, drop my scrolls, then "oh where did it go?" is the more annoying part.

Also is burden ever an issue unless you're carrying like 12 of each consumable? I'm only ever burdened after butchering corpses.

I see what you're saying about ice caves though. Why not just have it say "you can't bring potions into this area"? Having certain handicaps in certain areas could be interesting but giving a baptism by fire to the unspoiled isn't that nice.

[absolutego]

to anyone that isn't bothered by item destruction i say: take a heavy-armour, low-ev "melee" character through late D without conservation. it's simply insufferable, an exercise in frustration. you make more decisions related to item destruction than to actual survival (or you just don't care and tab everything parabolic-style). it's like after a while the game stops trying to kill you and settles for making you mad so you quit the game.

Now, "I shouldn't carry around every consumable I have in my inventory even if I don't have weight issues" is separate a separate issue to "I must stash every valuable consumable I find". The former has tactical significance and once sticky flame is tweaked as per roctavian's suggestion, I think will be fine. The latter comes down to the question: "do we want to make OCD-ness easier to satisfy?" I get the feeling the answer may be "no" but if it's yes then my solution would be: let the "auto travel delay" init setting be split into 2 cases.

Your action packed adventure comes to a 'jarring halt' because of how long it takes to auto-travel to your stash, put down your loot and then auto-travel back to where you were. What if, just for this case of using auto-travel, the delay was set to -1 so you don't have to see all the intermediate landscape scroll by twice over? Detect it's this case (as opposed to all other cases of auto-travel) by checking if the player wants to auto-travel to a WAYPOINT. So the use case would be:

Player puts down a waypoint where there stash is. Later on, player finds some awesome consumable they have to stash right away. A waypoint is placed where they picked this up (either automated for them or they put it manually). The player auto-travels to his stash in the blink of an eye (unless auto-travel got interrupted for whatever reason). Player puts down his awesome consumable and has a chance to decide whether to do other stash-related stuff (like memorising a new spell). Player now auto-travels to his 'return waypoint', again in the blink of an eye barring interruptions. When the player hits 'o' afterwards, auto-travel scrolls by showing the terrain as he travels.

i hope this is a joke and i don't get it.

[jejorda2]

Suppression is lots of fun. Making elemental attacks work like supression for consumables does sound more fun that destruction.

[Psieye]

to anyone that isn't bothered by item destruction i say: take a heavy-armour, low-ev "melee" character through late D without conservation. it's simply insufferable, an exercise in frustration. you make more decisions related to item destruction than to actual survival (or you just don't care and tab everything parabolic-style).

By that point in the game, all my high-AC low-EV melee guys just don't care about losing the odd tactical consumable here and there. These guys can use strategic consumables on the spot (because I have my endgame weapon and armour) or left alone. That's without mentioning that late D gives you a portable stash (Vestibule) anyway so this scenario can be side-stepped.

You don't actually ever use more than a couple of each scroll/potion at a time. Carrying 5 scrolls of blinking would be no better than carrying 3 even without item destruction. With item destruction, it means there's no reason to carry 5 scrolls of blinking, ever! It's a no-brainer!
Seriously though, can you think of any case ever where it would be useful to use 5 of a consumable at a time? If you can, I'm pretty sure it means you need to get better at Crawl because you're wrong.

True, but a lot of 'not-yet-veteran' players wouldn't dabble in the art of "you don't need to carry all them tactical consumables on you at once" (with high Str characters) if item destruction wasn't there. The hoarder mentality can override no-brainer decisions.


I can get behind consumable 'suppression' from hot/cold attacks, once we figure out how to flavour why you can't read scrolls after being hit by fire. Magic parchment that stiffens (thus, unable to be unrolled and read) in heat to protect itself from destruction?

[absolutego]

That's without mentioning that late D gives you a portable stash (Vestibule) anyway so this scenario can be side-stepped.

i give up.

[nicolae]

I can get behind consumable 'suppression' from hot/cold attacks, once we figure out how to flavour why you can't read scrolls after being hit by fire. Magic parchment that stiffens (thus, unable to be unrolled and read) in heat to protect itself from destruction?

"Your scrolls of identify burn! The magic formulas are charred beyond recognition!"
<turns later>
"The magic formulas on your scrolls of identify glow softly, and are once again readable."

flavor is easy with magical items

[BlackSheep]

I can get behind consumable 'suppression' from hot/cold attacks, once we figure out how to flavour why you can't read scrolls after being hit by fire. Magic parchment that stiffens (thus, unable to be unrolled and read) in heat to protect itself from destruction?

All fire attacks could cause a short duration DoT similar to sticky flame but less severe. While under the effect: "You can't recite that scroll without it burning up!"

[Psieye]

I can get behind consumable 'suppression' from hot/cold attacks, once we figure out how to flavour why you can't read scrolls after being hit by fire. Magic parchment that stiffens (thus, unable to be unrolled and read) in heat to protect itself from destruction?

All fire attacks could cause a short duration DoT similar to sticky flame but less severe. While under the effect: "You can't recite that scroll without it burning up!"

Hmm, may not even need to be a DoT, just declare "you're still on fire, it's just not severe enough to do damage to you. Your scrolls will care though."

[snow]

Temporary item destruction is possibly the best idea I've heard all week.

Being unable to drink potions against ice enemies could make them a unique challenge and also make early game orc wizards more interesting. The orc wizard freezes your potions? Run or keep fighting? THAT is an interesting tactical decision not derp I have over 3 of this item... time to tediously crawl back to my stash!

This could also extend to other items: you can't zap wands after electrical attacks and so fourth. This honestly would add so many interesting tactical situations to the game it's not even funny.

[Steel Neuron]

+1 to temporary destruction. It makes every bit of sense to me

[ebarrett]

Idea looks good, have fun figuring out how to deal with telling apart usable/non-usable scrolls as they get hit by elemental attacks without completely remaking the inventory system tho. (possible "solution": the effects are on you, not the items, so for example if you get hit by fire and get on the wrong side of some roll you simply can't read any scrolls for a while, no actual messing with the items needed. then have fun balancing that)

[some12fat2move]

One problem this might have is that consumables would only be lost when used, so the player would be more stringent in using them (in the current situation, if you don't consume a consumable the RNG might, so you have more incentive to consume). Another side-effect: this would make carrying large stacks of consumables helpful rather than harmful, which would make strength a little more useful.

[nicolae]

One problem this might have is that consumables would only be lost when used, so the player would be more stringent in using them (in the current situation, if you don't consume a consumable the RNG might, so you have more incentive to consume).

Well, the RNG can still consume your consumables by murdering you, so there's a pretty good incentive to use them.

[byrel]

Seriously though, can you think of any case ever where it would be useful to use 5 of a consumable at a time? If you can, I'm pretty sure it means you need to get better at Crawl because you're wrong.

I'm sure there's a few. The most obvious one would be five speed potions consecutively on the orb run, if you get unlucky with pan lord spawns. (Assuming no Haste, wand of hasting. Who cares about glow at that point?)

Excess curing for eliminating rot. (Strategic; irrelevant to item destruction)

Potions of blood for a vampire. (5000 nutrition, enough to let you wield a vampiric weapon.)

Teleport to abyss-scum for an exit/rune? (Never done this, but if I had 30 scrolls of teleport I probably would.)

Maybe potions of experience? I think five would make you more likely to survive any encounter...

I can't think of anything else...

[jejorda2]

Idea looks good, have fun figuring out how to deal with telling apart usable/non-usable scrolls as they get hit by elemental attacks without completely remaking the inventory system tho. (possible "solution": the effects are on you, not the items, so for example if you get hit by fire and get on the wrong side of some roll you simply can't read any scrolls for a while, no actual messing with the items needed. then have fun balancing that)

++
You are blinded by fire and temporarily unable to read scrolls.

Your tongue is frozen, so you can't drink potions.

The electrical shock makes your hands shake too much to zap the wand.

The draining attack has sapped your will to evoke the deck or staff.

[snow]

I think it would be best if after an ice attack ALL your potions are frozen and after a fire attack ALL your scrolls are burnt. The same goes with wands and electrical attacks too. This would be more consistent with not being able to use potions in an ice cave anyway. It pulls that safety net from under you and makes you have to think on your feet and maybe find an alternative way out of the situation.

[Sar]

But elemental attacks are really common. I think locking individual stacks of potions / scrolls would be better, else a couple of yaktaurs with crossbows of cold and fire will be able to lock you out of most escape options. Or maybe the number of enemies whose elemental attacks can affect you that way can be reduced, though it would be spoilery.

[byrel]

Or have elemental attacks have a (~20%?) chance of freezing all potions. Then it probably wouldn't happen the first turn you get an attack.

Either way, it would increase the worth of wands of x.

[Psieye]

I'm leaning towards "X% chance every scroll/potion is unusable" rather than having only some stacks get disabled.

[snow]

Yeah I'm thinking the same: x% of locking them all. I mean it's not like a surprise or anything: you know that centaur might have fire arrows and such so you can plan ahead... and you want it to mater tactically.

[snow]

Even though the vast majority agrees that the current situation with item destruction isn't very good and better alternatives have been suggested it doesn't matter unless a dev agrees to it. Otherwise, at best, you get an unsuccessful fork. How many of us still play vanilla NetHack?

Are any devs taking this thread seriously...?

[nicolae]

Even though the vast majority agrees that the current situation with item destruction isn't very good and better alternatives have been suggested it doesn't matter unless a dev agrees to it. Otherwise, at best, you get an unsuccessful fork. How many of us still play vanilla NetHack?

Are any devs taking this thread seriously...?

well it's a thread on the tavern so odds are not currently in our favor

[eeviac]

Yeah I'm thinking the same: x% of locking them all. I mean it's not like a surprise or anything: you know that centaur might have fire arrows and such so you can plan ahead... and you want it to mater tactically.

I don't think you appreciate how brutal this suggestion is. Say you hit a tele/shaft trap and land in a room full of dudes, a single puff of flame or fire arrow then disables your tele AND blinking AND fog AND fear in one go. Have fun.

I'm all for potions/scrolls being temporarily locked with the same function and probability that is currently used for destruction.

[Tenaya]

Even though the vast majority agrees that the current situation with item destruction isn't very good and better alternatives have been suggested it doesn't matter unless a dev agrees to it. Otherwise, at best, you get an unsuccessful fork. How many of us still play vanilla NetHack?

How did you determine that "the vast majority agrees that the current situation with item destruction isn't very good"? The vast majority of whom? Players? Devs?

Sure it is frustrating to lose an enchant armour scroll, but catching on fire can do that.

[snow]

The issue is that "losing an enchant armour scroll" should NEVER happen. As soon as you find one you should stash it. This can lead to a few trips to your stash each floor. Yes, the work around is to just take those items off auto pickup and use ctrl+f to find them when you need them but there are psychological factors in doing that and, well, is there a POINT to it all?

If you want players to have less potions then just generate less potions.
If you don't want players using potions against ice enemies then temporarily disable them against ice enemies.
If you want to punish newer players while making experienced players tediously micromanage... why not work on NetHack instead of Crawl?

Anyone who's played a while can see the issue here. I myself used to be a proponent of item destruction but as I play more and more games I just realized how pointless it is. It's not so much item destruction I hate but how easily it's avoided if you play right: it's almost nonexistent if you play carefully! However that "careful play" can be tedious since there are no tactical decisions and it really just comes down to "oh I found a stashable BRB."

[Lasty]

However that "careful play" can be tedious since there are no tactical decisions and it really just comes down to "oh I found a stashable BRB."

Though the distance to a stash is generally speaking the distance from where you're at to any corner wall, or, more often, pretty much anywhere you happen to be standing.

No item destruction/easier stashing keeps coming up here because most people can't accept that any random floor tile is quite nearly as safe as Temple for non-weapon/armour/rod/healing potion items, and for those items stashing them in any random corner is about equally safe.

[Tenaya]

However that "careful play" can be tedious since there are no tactical decisions and it really just comes down to "oh I found a stashable BRB."

Really? You can not come up with any tactical decisions to make regarding whether you should carry consumables?

[ebarrett]

Also if you really feel like you should go back to your stash every time you pick up a new consumable (as opposed to say when you absolutely can't carry anything else and you're completely out of junk to drop) you should probably see a doctor before pushing for a change in the game. Priorities, etc

[Mankeli]

My stash is pretty much any cleared dungeon level.

[snow]

As stated multiple times before I understand you can just drop things everywhere. Again the issue isn't item destruction but avoiding item destruction: it's too easy and you're constantly doing it yet it adds nothing meaningful or tactical to the game.

It's like, for example, your armor got damaged after fighting goblins and such and you had to repair it every so often. All you would have to do is go up some stairs and repair it... for free, with nothing strategic or tactical about it. Is stashing any different?

[Lasty]

As stated multiple times before I understand you can just drop things everywhere. Again the issue isn't item destruction but avoiding item destruction: it's too easy and you're constantly doing it yet it adds nothing meaningful or tactical to the game.

It's like, for example, your armor got damaged after fighting goblins and such and you had to repair it every so often. All you would have to do is go up some stairs and repair it... for free, with nothing strategic or tactical about it. Is stashing any different?

There is if your armor can break while fighting the goblins, or to bring it back to Crawl, if you can run out of consumables. If you can carry vast stacks of consumables, you have access to way more options at any given moment. As it is, players balance the amount of extra power they carry with them in the form of consumables against the threat of losing those consumables to item destruction. There's a tradeoff between over- and under-loading consumables at the moment, and it's choice players get to make.

At this point in the discussion, people usually circle back to non-tactical consumables getting destroyed by item destruction, which then circles back to the fact that you don't have to carry them everywhere, which circles back to . . .

[snow]

You have access to the same number of options with 10 curing potions as 1.

Realistically most players carry around like 2 or 3 of each relevant potion/scroll and stash the rest. Also the VAST majority of potions/scrolls shouldn't ever be carried with you since they're never tactically relevant.

The reason why I suggested locking off ALL potions from ice attacks is it would make them actually matter. It doesn't effect the game state at all if you lose one of your 2 or 3 curing potions... I say disable them all!

It's all semantics though. Really the issue here, again, for the millionth time is not the ACTUAL item destruction but the means in which you can avoid it. I'm honestly sick of dropping all my potions/scrolls before fighting an ice beast/mottled dragon... weren't mummies changed because of this?

[jejorda2]

Yeah, if you're frozen or glared or whatever for ten turns whether you drop your stash or not, it removes a lot of tedium.

[Sandman25]

I am a new player and would like to explain why I believed that carrying useless scrolls decreases chance of burning useful ones. Not all scrolls are destroyed and not all scrolls of the same kind are destroyed usually so it looks like every scroll instance is stored separately, in a separate "bag" with a single scroll only. When fire affects player inventory it affects a random "bag" or several random "bags". It is very unrealistic that crawl checks every scroll trying to determine whether it is destroyed or not (if it's the way crawl works).

[galehar]

It is very unrealistic that crawl checks every scroll trying to determine whether it is destroyed or not (if it's the way crawl works).

If we wanted to be realistic carrying more scrolls should increase the chance of starting a backpack fire and thus increase the individual chance of being destroyed for each scroll (don't try this at home). There's nothing realistic about reducing the individual burning chance by carrying more. You only believed that because you made a simplistic assumption about the random function involved, this has nothing to do with realism.

[ebarrett]

I am a new player and would like to explain why I believed that carrying useless scrolls decreases chance of burning useful ones. Not all scrolls are destroyed and not all scrolls of the same kind are destroyed usually so it looks like every scroll instance is stored separately, in a separate "bag" with a single scroll only. When fire affects player inventory it affects a random "bag" or several random "bags". It is very unrealistic that crawl checks every scroll trying to determine whether it is destroyed or not (if it's the way crawl works).

If you want inventory realism start asking yourself how you can simultaneously carry up to, say, 52 suits of armour or 52 halberds.