Proposal: Mangle item

[Hurkyl]

Proposal: allow players to destroy items in inventory or the dungeon floor. This takes one aut for any number of items.

Bonus Proposal: allow an auto-mangle feature to have the UI automatically mangle selected items whenever it would do auto-pickup. Possibly allow the player to choose between all items, or mundane-only. Could use similar code as the auto-pickup configuration interface, although individual weapon and armor types would have to be added.

Rationale: there are often items you don't want to let fall into enemy hands. You don't want an early dungeon monster to pick up that dagger of distortion, or that kobold pack to stumble across those curare needles, or Wiegraf to get his hands on that runed crossbow. Or even lesser things, such as not wanting newly spawned orcs to equip themselves with all of those halberds and plate armours you've left scattered about the floor on Orc:3.

This effect can be achieved currently: pick up the item, and drop it in an out-of-the-way place corridor. Or on a different floor. Or bring it to the temple. For the most part, the only obstacle to this is player boredom: it is simply tedious to manually clean up the floor after every fight. The primary exception is in the middle of a fight, where the player's carrying capacity limits how many items a player can pick up in the middle of a fight to be disposed of in the future.

This proposal eliminates the tedium of this practice. And gives a small bonus to the ability to deny items to enemies in the middle of a fight (this is not intentional, just a side-effect of the most direct implementation).

[Sar]

Alternatively you can just prohibit monsters from grabbing items from the floor.
If some monster/item combinations are fun you can just let these monsters spawn with respective items.

[spudwalt]

I imagine all the "Aaargh chopping up corpses is so tedious" people are going to be thrilled with this idea.

[dpeg]

Mangling (I think it's called "squelching" in Angband jargon) is dubious. While the issue is real, I am not sure an additional command is a good solution. Sar's idea has a lot of potential. I guess the reason why this was never championed is realism: feels strange to see an intelligent monster step on/near a randart weapon and ignore it.

If a command was to be used, then I'd advocate for dropping: items you drop will not be picked by monsters (for allies, it's settled by the Ctrl-T command).
If no command is to be used (i.e. Sar's approach that monsters just don't pick up stuff), then that could be made more believable by simply dropping items out of the way of monsters (corners of rooms spring to mind).

[Klown]

Grab Nemelex and pray everything away.

[duvessa]

Mangling (I think it's called "squelching" in Angband jargon) is dubious. While the issue is real, I am not sure an additional command is a good solution. Sar's idea has a lot of potential. I guess the reason why this was never championed is realism: feels strange to see an intelligent monster step on/near a randart weapon and ignore it.

Well, if you can see it in the first place, it can probably see you, which means you're going to try to kill it. Under that circumstance, it makes perfect sense that the monster wouldn't want to spend the extra time to pick up a shiny ring and put it on.

[dpeg]

duvessa: Of course. (By the way, there was a time when monsters picked up stuff even when you were around. That led to hopeless abuse by evil players, so was dropped.)

There are some cases where I find picking up to cool and/or relevant, but these can be special-cased. What I have in mind is orcs in Orc collecting gold (I always love that, even if it means little), and the minotaur picking up the stuff he protects.

[nicolae]

duvessa: Of course. (By the way, there was a time when monsters picked up stuff even when you were around. That led to hopeless abuse by evil players, so was dropped.)

There are some cases where I find picking up to cool and/or relevant, but these can be special-cased. What I have in mind is orcs in Orc collecting gold (I always love that, even if it means little), and the minotaur picking up the stuff he protects.

Those two instances could probably be special-cased, though. Or, the orc mines could simply have less gold spawn on the floor and more gold spawn in the pockets of the orcs.

[Siegurt]

Floor equipment makes critters more varied and therefore more interesting/challenging to fight, managing actual dangerous stuff you come across and preventing critters from picking it up is trivial, managing everything that might give a creature even a slight advantage is, while possible and tedious, also dumb, and therefore doesn't require fixing.

[dpeg]

Siegurt: Values of "tedious" vary, but I feel slightly annoyed by having this compulsion to pick up and drop all the draining/etc. weapons.

Like so many interface improvements, this would lose a bit of flavour, yes. The only question is if it's worth it.

[crate]

Well the "flavour" has already been lost imo by making the loot in elf and tomb un-usable by enemies. Those were the only places I ever found enemies using items interesting in a good way at all.

I would like to not have the incentive to add lots of things I never want to use to my autopickup and autodrop lists just so I can prevent enemies from possibly picking them up.

[Hurkyl]

Floor equipment makes critters more varied and therefore more interesting/challenging to fight, managing actual dangerous stuff you come across and preventing critters from picking it up is trivial, managing everything that might give a creature even a slight advantage is, while possible and tedious, also dumb, and therefore doesn't require fixing.

Why is it dumb? Is it dumb because such activities diminish your chances of wining?

Is it dumb because you like to handicap yourself to make the game more interesting to you, and this goes against the spirit of handicapping yourself? Not everybody likes to do so, or wants to choose this particular way to handicap themselves.

Or is it dumb because it's a lot of tedious work for a small amount of benefit and rare chance of major benefit, and you don't want to do a lot of tedious work for a small amount of benefit and rare chance of major benefit? If this, then it doesn't make for a very good argument.

[and into]

I like the fact that even "popcorn" enemies can sometimes become dangerous if they pick up the right (err... wrong) thing. That's worth retaining. If that can be retained by having intelligent creatures sometimes (but rarely) spawn with wands, etc., then I'd be fine with a "no pickup" rule for your foes. Otherwise the baby goes out with the bathwater. The only thing you really ever have to worry about in terms of item disposal are strong wands in early game (but usually you want to keep those and use them for yourself, so not really a problem in practice) and distortion. I guess very early on I'll sometimes pick up arrows that are on same tile as bows, ever since a crimson imp once strolled over a centaur corpse and proceeded to own me hilariously. But other than distortion (which is rare) I stop doing item disposal pretty quickly. Even in the early game the benefit is probably very slight.

Hurkyl: Well, eventually you reach a point in the game where the regular attacks of most monsters is generally a lot more threatening than getting hit with a saber of draining or wand of cold or whatever, so for at least some of those things it does eventually become a non-issue. You are right though that there is probably too many cases, for too long in the game, when disposal of potentially dangerous items that you don't want to keep is technically "optimal." But it is very seldom a meaningful advantage. Of course, people have different levels of paranoia about this, and also vastly different tolerance levels for things that I would consider "grindy."

[Sandman25]

Is it possible to add a flag to weapon that player was in the same cell with no hostile monsters around? It means player could pickup the weapon if really wanted to so no hostile monsters should be able to pick it up.

Monsters picking up weapons during Vault 5 stairdancing are very annoying. It takes too much time to check every weapon in every surrounding cell to decide if some weapons should be thrown away so I am lazy to do it and suffer from draining/pain/freezing etc.

[reaver]

Alternatively you can just prohibit monsters from grabbing items from the floor.
If some monster/item combinations are fun you can just let these monsters spawn with respective items.

I like the fact that even "popcorn" enemies can sometimes become dangerous if they pick up the right (err... wrong) thing.

Does anybody know how hard it would be to make monsters spawn with more items? It seems like there's a lot of tactical space from a monster getting a scary consumable (ex., a Troll with a !berserk is like a mini-Snorg) that isn't being explored right now. Ground loot could be reduced to compensate if necessary.

[Siegurt]

Floor equipment makes critters more varied and therefore more interesting/challenging to fight, managing actual dangerous stuff you come across and preventing critters from picking it up is trivial, managing everything that might give a creature even a slight advantage is, while possible and tedious, also dumb, and therefore doesn't require fixing.

Why is it dumb? Is it dumb because such activities diminish your chances of wining?

Is it dumb because you like to handicap yourself to make the game more interesting to you, and this goes against the spirit of handicapping yourself? Not everybody likes to do so, or wants to choose this particular way to handicap themselves.

Or is it dumb because it's a lot of tedious work for a small amount of benefit and rare chance of major benefit, and you don't want to do a lot of tedious work for a small amount of benefit and rare chance of major benefit? If this, then it doesn't make for a very good argument.

I should clarify what I consider dumb vs. trivial: In this case the "trivial" is picking up things that could actually kill you, like distortion, curare, certain nastier wands, and *in the circumstance where you don't want to use it yourself* what there is to do is hold on to it, until the level is clear, then drop it then leave (Which I consider trivial effort, since I try to evaluate what I should be carrying with me from time to time anyway) The reason it's trivial is because the number of times such a thing spawns on a level which you would both have to worry about something picking it up, and in which you would be inclined to travel back to an area while a critter which could pick such an item up would still be dangerous to you is very very small (If you are escaping with the orb and encounter a kobold that picked up the dagger of disto that you left on level 3, it's not going to even be a speed bump for you) The circumstances where i feel like I need to "properly dispose of" a dangerous item come up maybe once every 2-3 games, doing something which takes 2 keypresses once every 2-3 games is 'trivial' and isn't something that needs fixed in a way that requires either a ton of effort rebalancing and tweaking things, or making the game less interesting and challenging.

What I consider "dumb" is picking up *anything and everything that could possibly be used against you and might ever potentially be better than what a monster spawns with* and disposing of it in some fashion (e.x. dragging all such things back to the upstaircase and dropping them on the level above before continuing to explore, this includes things like rocks and clubs and animal skins, because they might constitute an "upgrade" for the critter) The reasons it's dumb are: If you've found such things on the floor, and have time to "safely dispose of them" it's in an area that you've already explored, if you're exploring properly then the *only* things you have to worry about are things that spawn behind you in explored areas. So the cases where you have to worry about a critter is when something *respawns* behind you, which is capable of using a floor item to some advantage, if this isn't one of the "dangerous" items (from the trivial category above) then we're talking about something that slightly changes your tactics for dealing with a monster that you'd be easily capable of handling (a hobgoblin with a stack of stones is not significantly harder to deal with than one without, just requires different tactics and a little more thinking) It's only in a very very small set of cases where it will utimately make any difference at all. So (the cases I'm referring to as "dumb") result in a large amount of tedium for an *occasional* small benefit, with no chance of a major benefit at all.

My argument isn't that "You should never try to keep dangerous items out of the hands of creatures" it's that "Keeping genuinely dangerous items out of the hands of creatures takes little to no effort, and keeping minor potentially beneficial items out of potential creatures that may or may not be there is nearly 100% a waste of time. Fixing it so that it's *absolutely* 100% a waste of time rather than simply being *nearly* 100% at the expense of depriving the game of variety and challenge is something I think is a bad, rather than a good thing"

[XuaXua]

I'd love an "empty wand" or "break wand" option, rather than have to individually blow all the charges on a wand I won't ever use and don't want used against me.

Alternately, the ability to use any number of charges on a wand in a single eVoke in order to enhance the effect.

[Sar]

NetHack-style?

[duvessa]

Alternatively you can just prohibit monsters from grabbing items from the floor.
If some monster/item combinations are fun you can just let these monsters spawn with respective items.

I like the fact that even "popcorn" enemies can sometimes become dangerous if they pick up the right (err... wrong) thing.

Does anybody know how hard it would be to make monsters spawn with more items?

Given that monsters already spawn with items, not very hard.

[Hurkyl]

<words>

That was a long-winded way of saying the second two options in my description were right.

Also, I really don't think you're being imaginative enough to see where the rare major benefits happen. A Hobgoblin on D:1 with a any weapon can deal critical damage in melee to a low HP race/background combo. Anything that picks up a Halberd above D:5 suddenly becomes a rather dangerous monster. Wiegraf suddenly becomes a horrific danger if, after you escape from him, he wanders across the equipment from a pack of dead yaks you killed on the same floor. Stair dancing to break Vaults:5 becomes a much deadlier proposition if you leave a few branded weapons around the stairs.

And respawns appearing behind you are many times more dangerous than usual if the reason you encounter them is because you were running away from something else and are badly hurt.

depriving the game of variety and challenge is something I think is a bad, rather than a good thing

Then don't enable any items in the auto-mangle menu.

[Siegurt]

<words>

That was a long-winded way of saying the second two options in my description were right.

Also, I really don't think you're being imaginative enough to see where the rare major benefits happen. A Hobgoblin on D:1 with a any weapon can deal critical damage in melee to a low HP race/background combo. Anything that picks up a Halberd above D:5 suddenly becomes a rather dangerous monster. Wiegraf suddenly becomes a horrific danger if, after you escape from him, he wanders across the equipment from a pack of dead yaks you killed on the same floor. Stair dancing to break Vaults:5 becomes a much deadlier proposition if you leave a few branded weapons around the stairs.

And respawns appearing behind you are many times more dangerous than usual if the reason you encounter them is because you were running away from something else and are badly hurt.

depriving the game of variety and challenge is something I think is a bad, rather than a good thing

Then don't enable any items in the auto-mangle menu.

Actually mangle (or auto-mangle) isn't what i was objecting (or responding) to, it was the second suggestion that creatures shouldn't be able to pick up and use floor items at all, ever. Mangle seems like extra code trying to solve a problem that isn't really much of a problem (at least not from a game design perspective), but it doesn't actively hurt the game.

[dpeg]

I realised that there are more solutions to the issue:

• Status quo. Do nothing, live with the current amount of tedium.
• Monsters never pick up items.
• Monsters never pick up items dropped by the player.
• Monsters never pick up items touched (stepped on) by the player.
• Monsters never pick up items seen by the player.

The last two are good candidates to keep the good aspect and get rid of the bad, in my opinion.

[Tiktacy]

I do think the dev team should spend their time on bigger(or much smaller) projects than this. I like the idea and support it, but I think it should wait until much later in .14 when things are a bit more settled down.

[Tiber]

I realised that there are more solutions to the issue:

• Status quo. Do nothing, live with the current amount of tedium.
• Monsters never pick up items.
• Monsters never pick up items dropped by the player.
• Monsters never pick up items touched (stepped on) by the player.
• Monsters never pick up items seen by the player.

The last two are good candidates to keep the good aspect and get rid of the bad, in my opinion.

I don't like the second or last option, because I think it adds a bit to the game if you see a potion of heal wounds and an intelligent monster and have to play carefully if you want to keep the monster from picking up and using it. The first, third and fourth options I am open to.

[and into]

Yeah, with auto-explore and autopickup on you basically end up stepping on every item automatically, anyway, with very little tedium. A "stepped on" flag to disable enemy pick up would probably achieve best results.

Can we also make it so that jellies won't eat things you've stepped on? There is still the threat when you see (or hear) jellies that they are gobbling up all the unseen, untouched loot on that floor. That twinge of panic (however irrational) that some boots of running were eaten is what really distinguishes jellies as an enemy.

But dragging around stuff you don't actually want in order to deprive enemies of it is dull. Plus the whole "when/how do you stash?" discourse really needs to be made obsolete.

Seeing as how you *can* avoid jellies eating stashed stuff simply by dragging it to Lair 2 or whatever, and if someone goes through the trouble of implementing the "stepped on" flag, why don't we kill two birds with one stone and make it so that enemies simply don't mess with stuff you stepped on? (Call it "auto-Elbereth" ) No more tedious—and in some cases, spoilery—item disposal. Jellies still threaten unknown floor spawns and should still be allowed to absorb corpses, bones, and doors, in addition to untouched items, in order to multiply. So it is only a very minor nerf to jellies, but it removes a lot of un-fun fretting and item-worry. I think that's a win-win. (Plus jellies had their speed recently buffed to 10 (average), so even if this change were committed I'd still say they would be more of a threat than they were back in 0.11 or whatever.)

[1010011010]

Can we also make it so that jellies won't eat things you've stepped on?

Jellies eat to heal, that includes ammo and anything you walk over when moving away from a jelly.
remove jellies from spawning mid level instead.

[galehar]

Preventing monsters from picking items you've seen or stepped on would be very spoilery. How can you explain that or convey it to the player. It's anything but intuitive.
Jellies spawn range is 5-15 btw.

[dpeg]

galehar: Yes, it is non-intuitive enough to warrant an entry in the manual. With that, it'd be fine though.

[twelwe]

"mass" item destruction such that ely and nemelex have should remain exclusive to them. clearing items off the floors is a tactical advantage in places where lots of weapons are dropped and picked up by monsters like orc and vaults.

[Siegurt]

Don't forget Jiyva

[BlackSheep]

Yeah, with auto-explore and autopickup on you basically end up stepping on every item automatically, anyway, with very little tedium.

Only if there's more than one item in a stack. Autoexplore recognizes single item stacks and only walks to them if they're marked for autopickup.

[dpeg]

BlackSheep: yes, but it would be easy to adapt it to travel to branded items and randarts.

[BlackSheep]

...and heavy weapons? And any type of launcher?

[dpeg]

He, this is why so often: nothing happens.

[BlackSheep]

Sometimes no action is better than half measures.

[dpeg]

No problem, we can just keep picking up and dropping garbage for a few versions.

[Jeremiah]

Mangling (I think it's called "squelching" in Angband jargon) is dubious.

Just FYI - squelching in Angband is not the same as destroying items, it's purely a UI feature so that the dungeon floor is not completely covered with junk items in the late game.

Items that are squelched are simply not visible to the player - they still exist and can be made visible again by turning off the squelch option.

Not that Angband is at all relevant to the issue at hand as monsters in (vanilla) Angband can't use items.

[crate]

I don't really see any situation in which making items the player has stepped on unpickupable is better than just making them unpickupable on sight. You never* want to allow a monster to pick up an item; it will already not pick up items if the monster is in LOS of the player (and additionally monsters that have seen the player will chase after the player if the player moves out of LOS). There is therefore no gameplay difference between the two cases, except that in one of them you have to make a bunch of otherwise-unnecessary moves to go step on all the items in the game. (Ok I guess these extra turns will very marginally increase the number of monsters generated on the level and very marginally increase the number of items those monsters have access to pick up, since you are wasting time walking on items you have no intention of picking up or using. However this is presumably not considered an actual design benefit. Additionally this would be another drawback to not using autoexplore, which is also presumably not the goal.)

* it is occasionally beneficial to allow a monster with a shield to pick up a ranged weapon or a two-handed weapon so it will drop its shield, but this situation is really silly to begin with because it shows that monsters don't prioritise equipment in a way that actually relates to how effective said equipment is for the monster

[Sandman25]

I didn't know monsters cannot pickup items when player is in LoS. With this in mind stepping is not required indeed.

[rebthor]

I don't really see any situation in which making items the player has stepped on unpickupable is better than just making them unpickupable on sight. You never* want to allow a monster to pick up an item; it will already not pick up items if the monster is in LOS of the player (and additionally monsters that have seen the player will chase after the player if the player moves out of LOS). There is therefore no gameplay difference between the two cases, except that in one of them you have to make a bunch of otherwise-unnecessary moves to go step on all the items in the game. (Ok I guess these extra turns will very marginally increase the number of monsters generated on the level and very marginally increase the number of items those monsters have access to pick up, since you are wasting time walking on items you have no intention of picking up or using. However this is presumably not considered an actual design benefit. Additionally this would be another drawback to not using autoexplore, which is also presumably not the goal.)

* it is occasionally beneficial to allow a monster with a shield to pick up a ranged weapon or a two-handed weapon so it will drop its shield, but this situation is really silly to begin with because it shows that monsters don't prioritise equipment in a way that actually relates to how effective said equipment is for the monster

Well, I'm pretty sure there are exceptions in there for monsters that throw stuff at you as I've been able to run away from otherwise even more dangerous threats because they stopped to pick up the club that they hit me with so they could throw it again.

[rchandra]

I've also seen Mennas pick up weapons in my LOS. I'm pretty sure I've seen orcs/gnolls do it too but I'm not 100% sure. Or is it just they don't pick up stuff _you_ dropped when you can see them?

[Sandman25]

I didn't know monsters cannot pickup items when player is in LoS. With this in mind stepping is not required indeed.

But wait, that's not true. I have seen many times how a monster picks up some draining/pain weapon despite I am adjacent to the monster (and in LoS of course).

[crate]

Right i think they will pick up weapons sometimes? Idk monsters picking up weapons is weird anyway.

I am going off this:

By the way, there was a time when monsters picked up stuff even when you were around. That led to hopeless abuse by evil players, so was dropped.

and I don't think I've seen monsters pick up anything but weapons while in sight but that may be wrong.

[dck]

I had a fun time once in the thunderdome as a Ds when Mennas spawned as a boss then promptly grabbed a couple of arrows and a longbow from the spawn and dropped his huge shield.
Bet you regretted that move, holyboi.

[galehar]

The actual rule is that monsters only pick up weapons and missiles you've dropped or thrown when they are wandering. Nothing to do with LOS, only behaviour.

monster.cc:2339

  Code:

                // While occupied, hostile monsters won't pick up items
                // dropped or thrown by you. (You might have done that to
                // distract them.)
                if (!friendly()
                    && (testbits(item.flags, ISFLAG_DROPPED)
                        || testbits(item.flags, ISFLAG_THROWN)))
                {
                    return false;
                }

[XuaXua]

NetHack-style?

Never played it.

[varsovie]

To be honest, stashing in temple isn't all that a tedium with waypoints and G unless you make it one.

Also dropping everything on the stair of the floor you cleared and leave is safe 99.99% of the time, and if ever it's really dangerous or important (distortion, wand of haste, certains randart...) I can keep it on myself until I find a safer stash or lava/deepwater.

If you remove the ability of the goblins to kill you turn two with wand of drain, then they become ONLY popcorn.

The fact that during a combat you manage to kill a dangerous foo, then have the choice to step forward making sure his dangerous weapon isn't used again or fleeing, taking the risk to see it next corner is a small, but enjoyable part of the game.

*Major design goals
challenging and random gameplay, with skill making a real difference

[Tenaya]

I would love if there was a toggle for smash-my-boot-down-on-the-wand-of-polymorph without leaving autoexplore.
The discovery menu is rather long though, but maybe there could be three options for any given recognized item type:
[ ] don't pickup, but stop autoexplore;
[+] pick this item up and let me know when it happens;
[X] smash every one of these that you see and don't even bother me with the news*

* perhaps the smash option would not be a true toggle, but require some key-stroke effort that would not be inadvertently selected.

The issue is that in general picking up dangerous/annoying items is strictly the safest way to play; however the risk of not doing so is slight and therefore this falls into the category of tedium.

[Tenaya]

Floor equipment makes critters more varied and therefore more interesting/challenging to fight, managing actual dangerous stuff you come across and preventing critters from picking it up is trivial, managing everything that might give a creature even a slight advantage is, while possible and tedious, also dumb, and therefore doesn't require fixing.

Agree that floor equipment makes monsters more interesting and provides tension on new levels, if, for example, the orc warrior will pick up the consumables that you desire.
Disagree on the rest; junk management, as you describe it well, is an activity with miniscule reward and risk and yet is strictly optimal. Therefor it should be fixed, despite it being a trivial problem.

[Siegurt]

Floor equipment makes critters more varied and therefore more interesting/challenging to fight, managing actual dangerous stuff you come across and preventing critters from picking it up is trivial, managing everything that might give a creature even a slight advantage is, while possible and tedious, also dumb, and therefore doesn't require fixing.

Agree that floor equipment makes monsters more interesting and provides tension on new levels, if, for example, the orc warrior will pick up the consumables that you desire.
Disagree on the rest; junk management, as you describe it well, is an activity with miniscule reward and risk and yet is strictly optimal. Therefor it should be fixed, despite it being a trivial problem.

I would argue that it is not strictly optimal because the miniscule benefits from junk management are outweighed by the miniscule penalties associated with the extra turns required. (Notably extra spawns and food consumption(where applicable), also the possibility of valuable items being consumed by jellies, and yet-unfound-items being picked up by wandering monsters)