Make scrolls of curse/remove curse ID on read

[Volteccer_Jack]

As soon as you read a scroll which does nothing, you have unfailingly identified it as one of these four scrolls. However, three of them are strictly bad for non-Ashenzari characters. Therefore the only reason to deliberately read the scroll again is if you are looking for remove curse, in which case the curse foo scrolls don't add anything interesting to the situation. If you happen to identify remove curse before identifying one or more of the curse scrolls, you now know for a fact that any other scrolls with {tried} are curse scrolls and should be dumped and ignored forevermore. It is possibly interesting for an Ashenzari worshipper, but Ashenzari auto-ids all four scrolls before you even read them.

[BlackSheep]

Corollary: make all scrolls ID on read

[MoogleDan]

I don't see why we couldn't do the same thing they do for scrolls of enchant weapon. "Your hands/body/fingers and neck briefly glow black."

[Amnesiac]

there could be a message given looking like "your fingers glow red" or something, like with enchant weapon scrolls while unarmed

[some12fat2move]

As soon as you read a scroll which does nothing, you have unfailingly identified it as one of these four scrolls.

I'm pretty sure amnesia with no spells also does nothing.

Corollary: make all scrolls ID on read

We'd have to think of some flavour messages to make that make sense, but I'm sure it could be done. That would solve the interface screw of having a supposedly unidentified scroll while knowing exactly what it does.

[nicolae]

As soon as you read a scroll which does nothing, you have unfailingly identified it as one of these four scrolls.

I'm pretty sure amnesia with no spells also does nothing.

It does something in 0.14, and possibly earlier -- I read-IDed one earlier with no spells and it said something like "You feel forgetful."

Corollary: make all scrolls ID on read

Agreed.

At the very least, scrolls that have you select an item should ID before the item selection screen comes up.

At the very very least, scrolls of ID should always ID.

[dck]

One of the worst parts of crawl is perfectly knowing which scrolls are ?ea or ?recharge and being unable to tell your dude to stop picking them up.
Flavor is easy for those and there isn't any reason for them not to always ID, just make recharge on anything that isn't a wand or rod make things "crackle with energy" and ?ea make things "look sturdier for a moment" or something like that.

[galehar]

As soon as you read a scroll which does nothing, you have unfailingly identified it as one of these four scrolls.

I'm pretty sure amnesia with no spells also does nothing.

Not since 0.13-a0-2690-g97dada4

  Code:

Identify scrolls of amnesia if read with no spells memorised

It was unlikely to be ambiguous very often anyway since almost all scrolls that don't target an item are always identified on-use anyway.

[Kate]

Probably a better change would be to just remove the curse foo scrolls (with Ashenzari either being the only source of them, or getting some kind of curse-at-will invocation).

[Amnesiac]

hm, I think cursing at will would be too powerful, how will you balance it with the amount of remove curse scrolls? anyway, I don't see much point in changing anything besides auto-ID'ing.

[dck]

The point of removing them is making the ID minigame less arse which makes crawl a better game.

[Siegurt]

The point of removing them is making the ID minigame less arse which makes crawl a better game.

Personally I like the ID minigame, and would prefer it if less things auto-ID'd rather than more (I was disappointed by the change to the amnesia scroll for example) but I suspect I'm in the minority on that point.

[some12fat2move]

hm, I think cursing at will would be too powerful, how will you balance it with the amount of remove curse scrolls?

Piety cost for uncursing stuff ("You feel guilty").

[Volteccer_Jack]

Personally I like the ID minigame, and would prefer it if less things auto-ID'd rather than more (I was disappointed by the change to the amnesia scroll for example) but I suspect I'm in the minority on that point.

I don't mind ID-games at all. But the curse scrolls are in a weird situation where identification is too easy to allow anything interesting, but also lacks the convenience associated with full auto-identification.

[TeshiAlair]

Although I punted Nethack as far away from myself as I could the second I discovered Dungeon Crawl and realized it solved 99% of the problems of Nethack...it does have a much more satisfying ID minigame in terms of having normal, blessed, and cursed variants of consumables so that even knowing the base type didn't guarantee safety. Obviously, it can and should be done better than Nethack did, but having qualifiers on scrolls at the very least might be interesting.

[njvack]

Mod note: OT posts removed with prejudice. If you want a new topic, make a thread for it.

[KennySheep]

@TeshiAlair

Personally I like how in Crawl you can pick up and start using the vast majority of the items you find right from the get go without too much paranoia. If I wanted to play a game where I need to compulsively horde but never use every item I see I'd just play Nethack, where my character has more than enough space in her inventory to accommodate such things.

@The thread in general

Making curse/uncurse scrolls id on reading or just removing the things is a step in the right direction. Either way they pointlessly annoy me a little bit less.

[TeshiAlair]

@KennySheep

I like that as well, but I do think the current state is too binary. I think the nethack approach, like with 99% of things, is too ridiculous, but I think there's some leeway. For instance, variance in enchant weapon- it could be "scroll of enchant weapon (aggression)" that gives a +1/-1 enchantment, or a "scroll of enchant weapon (finesse)" giving the opposite. They would stack if you had ID'd the class but hadn't used !ID on them, and you wouldn't intensely regret either one, but it would make you think a little more.

[BlackSheep]

There are certain aspects of the game that shouldn't require more thought. (And honestly, even your example is a poor one since the scroll that increases damage is far more valuable than its inverse, which I'd never use.)

[galehar]

Personally I like the ID minigame, and would prefer it if less things auto-ID'd rather than more (I was disappointed by the change to the amnesia scroll for example) but I suspect I'm in the minority on that point.

I don't mind ID-games at all. But the curse scrolls are in a weird situation where identification is too easy to allow anything interesting, but also lacks the convenience associated with full auto-identification.

I still think reducing the frequency of ?RC is a simple way to make curses relevant.

[Siegurt]

Personally I like the ID minigame, and would prefer it if less things auto-ID'd rather than more (I was disappointed by the change to the amnesia scroll for example) but I suspect I'm in the minority on that point.

I don't mind ID-games at all. But the curse scrolls are in a weird situation where identification is too easy to allow anything interesting, but also lacks the convenience associated with full auto-identification.

I still think reducing the frequency of ?RC is a simple way to make curses relevant.

Relevant, yes, but interesting.. Well, I don't think so personally. There was a huge discussion a while back about curses where we laid out the problems and many possible solutions to them (including reducing the RC generation).

I had a proposal there that had some interest, and I intended to get enough code work done that it could be evaluated as a proof of concept, but I got busy and didn't get much done beyond some initial research on the best way to implement my suggestion, I still have an intention, but finding time and motivation is something else altogether

Here's the link if you're interested in said discussion:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8529

[Leafsnail]

I support the OP's proposal - having four scrolls, three of which are useless left in the "might not be identified" pool serves no purpose at all (other than meaning you have to bite a curse scroll to make it so that your character stops picking them up). That's true regardless of what your opinions are on curse changes or the ID minigame as a whole.