IronJelly wrote:I would like to counter that Rings of Sustenance are far from useless.
Not everyone is an expert at the game, and those make my sub-optimal gameplay choices a bit less dangerous. Good not just for Ash Worshippers, but the early Zin worshippers too, who can't eat some of the things they kill. also useful the first time you enter a branch with a lot of non-edible enemies such as demons and undead.
Sure, it's maybe not optimal for a long-time player or a spriggan or something, but it's far far from useless, and I really think it should stay.
But a lot of stuff in the game makes hunger *seem* more important than it actually is, and so stuff like ring of sustenance actually makes it more difficult, I think, for new players to figure out what decisions are good and bad. Not to mention that the way it works (unlike gourmand which has a "ramp up" period before it comes into effect) tends to lead to bad behavior in a way contrary to Crawl's design aspirations. Plus you get weird ID stuff going on—technically when you put on a ring and it doesn't ID, you want to wait until you get hungry just to make sure it isn't sustenance.
At the very least, things should change. Hunger and sustenance should probably just be removed, but if they stay, then I'd suggest two changes:
1.) Both auto-ID on wear
2.) Change the mechanics. The best I can come up with off top of my head that doesn't become
completely (but just mostly) redundant with gourmand would be if sustenance cut *all* hunger costs—not just spell casting—by 50% (1 ring) or 75% (2 rings). No effect for more rings on octopodes or dudes with that funky amulet. =Hunger, meanwhile, doubles all hunger costs. Give them a similar "ramp up" period like gourmand I guess to discourage swapping.
The problem now is that both rings only have a noticeable effect if you are spending a disproportionately huge amount of time resting, auto-traveling, or just having your character pace back and forth doing nothing for some reason. I don't think it is good design to have items that are by definition only meaningful (and then only a little bit) when you are spending far more turns than you should be doing nothing.
I also agree with combining =positive energy and =sustain abilities, I think that would be a good move.
The other rings aren't really problematic but some of the stuff being suggested to fix what isn't broken, is problematic.
Well okay it has been suggested before, but I do think it would be cool if =fire and =ice extended their effect by giving a boost to all damage from the respective element—so including rods, wands, weapon brands, staff damage, etc. The boosts to these sources of elemental damage would probably have to be lower than the spell power effect, but should still be noticeable. This would specifically be the case for these rings, and maybe for the spell ring of flames; other spell power enhancers like archmage would only affect spell power of course. I think if that were implemented you'd see much more experimentation with combinations of rings and armor and different ways of juggling resistances late game, thus giving a bit more strategic variety to late game equipment decisions.