Slime Squisher
Posts: 392
Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21
Stash (bag of holding)
The idea:
A stash (functionally a Nethack-style bag of holding) as a UI element rather than an item (similar to the spell library) that can be accessed by spending 10 turns, interruptible by a monster entering LoS. Upon completion of those 10 turns, items can be freely exchanged between the inventory and the stash. When attempting to autopickup with a full inventory, the prompt to ignore the item is replaced with a prompt to place the item in your bag, which only takes 1 turn to perform regardless of the number of items to autopickup on that tile (similar to picking them up into your inventory). The 10-turn limit assumes that the 52 item limitation is desirable in that it forces players to choose which items to carry in their inventory and not merely an unfortunate side-effect of a 26 letter alphabet; if that assumption is wrong, then a smaller amount of time (or even no time) could be used.
Update:
There should be no time delay for placing items in the stash, whether or not there's one for removing them. And, picked-up items stackable with items in the stash should automatically go into the stash to join the stack.
Expected usage:
Players will store situational items that can't (or are less likely to) be meaningfully utilized mid-combat (e.g. resistance armor, scrolls of remove curse, etc.) and those that are likely to be irrelevant to the current branch (e.g. rings of protection from cold in the volcano) in the stash, while keeping those that can (e.g. evokables, scrolls of blink, etc.) and those that are convenient to have on-hand (e.g. scrolls of identify) in the inventory. Basically, the same behavior that players currently perform using the floor, minus the case of dropping an item to make room to pick up a and use-identify a piece of equipment before dropping the unwanted equipment and picking up the dropped item.
Design goal relevance:
This significantly advances the painless interface major goal and slightly advances the no spoilers minor goal, while preserving and somewhat advancing the meaningful decisions major goal. Allowing players to carry equipment in their stash would free up inventory room, reducing or removing the need for the tedious drop/pick-up/equip/drop/pick-up routine, would eliminate the need for backtracking across the several levels to pick up a situational item left behind and the incentive to research how many inventory slots need to be left empty to accommodate items found in a timed portal or other temporary level, and would eliminate the incentive to ferry items in bulk to choke points to reduce long-term food and piety consumption across multiple trips and the incentive to move all potentially useful items next to the staircase to an unexplored level in case that level contains a timed portal. Players' need to decide which items are most important to have available in combat is preserved my the inability to access items in the stash within sight of monsters, and somewhat enhanced in that more items can be available to choose from.
Arguments against:
Juggling items between the bag and the inventory is less convenient and efficient than juggling items between the inventory and the floor. Counterargument: This proposal does not include removing the ability to drop items. Not only is juggling items between the inventory and the floor still an option, but the ability to stash items that would otherwise clutter the inventory would reduce the time spent with a full inventory and make the need to juggle items less common.
There's no need for such a feature because items can simply be dropped on the floor and returned to later. Counterargument #1: This doesn't work with timed portals, Pan levels, and the Abyss. Counterargument #2: Even in non-transient levels, the process of backtracking to collect old items is less convenient and efficient than spending 10 turns at the current location, for no significant advantage in meaningful and interesting choices... and attempting to optimize around that inefficiency to preserve piety, rations, and/or remaining time before collapse of portals is tedious behavior that should not be incentivized.
- For this message the author Nekoatl has received thanks:
- petercordia