Tartarus Sorceror
Posts: 1698
Joined: Saturday, 18th June 2016, 13:57
These Should Not Be Inventory Items
My point is that items are divided in two categories: those you can tactically equip and/or use on the fly, and those you can't. For example, putting on a ring of rN+ when you meet Nergalle is a tactical application. An armour with rN+ cannot be swapped this way: you need to be out of the fight.
Items with tactical application:
- Weapons
- Rings
- Most potions
- Half the scrolls
- Misc items
- Wands
There are many items that you can't tactically equip or use on the fly. These you can leave on the floor, and get back to them when you need them. Since there is no limit to floor stashing and you generally have no reason to/cannot equip or use these items in combat, you effectively have an infinite inventory for them (the floor). However, while optimal, it's a very boring way to handle them. So if they didn't take up inventory slots, it wouldn't change anything in their practical use, while improving playability.
These items are:
- Scrolls of: acquirement, amnesia, brand weapon, enchant armour, enchant weapon, identify, remove curse
- Spellbooks
(you have no reason to carry these items around. You can leave them on the floor and go back to them when you need them, use them on location, and leave them again. Spellbooks would have tactical meaning if they allowed you to learn spells on the fly during combat, but they don't. The only time acquirement counts as item is if you find more than one in a portal, so you take them to avoid leaving the acquired items there).
- Armour
(once you have what you want to wear, you can leave the rest on the floor, because you would have to reset the fight to wear anything else anyway)
- Food
(once you have a stack of bread or meat, you have no reason to pick up anything else. Leave them there until your provisions run low)
Amulets move in a similar direction with the after-effects of many of them, effectively discouraging swapping. However, this is more like a decrease in power than a complete absence of tactical equipping on the fly.
IMHO strategic scrolls should be goldified. Spellbooks should disappear and leave you with a "spell library" comprising all spells you found and haven't learnt yet.
Food should also be goldified, simply because it's not a free choice to carry one stack around or not, and having more than one type is suboptimal. If food must take one inventory slot, then it's better to just have a 51-slot inventory, it's the same with less fiddling. Anyway, there already is discussion about a solution: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23263
Armour leaves me in doubt. While being able to carry infinite amounts of armour would be an improvement from a gameplay point of view, it would be a strange solution, and probably overwhelming for new players.