Treasure troves' cost should be rebalanced

[nago]

... At least for some items.

Some example:

* my last game had a trove that cost 7 scrolls of blinking. While it's possible to find as many scrolls - or even more - in a 3 runes game, there's nothing inside a trove that could be worth such insane cost, barring the orb of the zot itself. And anyway, even if one player was willing to burn those scrolls "just for fun", it would be possible usually so much late in the game that anything would be found inside would matter not.

* one of my previous games cost ~18 potions of heal wounds: while this is not an insane cost as much as the previous one - !hw isn't so worth past mid-game - the number is so high that it's unlikely to found\save so many potions in a 3 runes game. And again, if so much was found in the game, it would be so late in the game that the trove itself couln't have anything that really matter anyway.


Most possibly the troves itself should be reworked - but the point I'm underling is the balance of the cost.

[Implojin]

I'd tend to agree with nago on this, I haven't entered a trove in quite some time as the cost is usually too steep.

[andrew]

I usually enter them, and usually find them to be worth it; a lot of consumables fall off in the second half of the same, as nago said.

[sanka]

I think the problem is not cost vs benefits (too big costs), but simply that troves are a feature of the second part of the game, which is still not interesting enough. Neither a lot of consumables, nor some good items make big enough difference there, thus troves will never feel very exiting.

Of course, cheaper troves (with potentially less good items inside if needed, although I think it is not needed) could change troves from a late game thing to something you consider much earlier, where a change could actually matter more. But what I'd like to underline that maybe the late parts of the game could be made more interesting and then troves would matter more there.

[andrew]

Given how many characters I lose in Zot, I'm not convinced the late game is uninteresting. But maybe I'm just bad at it.

[vt]

Costs do include things you can reasonably get before the late game: e.g., a handful for fog or fear scrolls, all your piety, weapons or armour you might have been lucky to have drop, and items in shops.

[andrew]

In fact, "all your piety" is possibly more affordable early, since on D:9 you may not have all your stars yet.

[bt]

I take all the troves that I can (if it's at all possible) and find them to be worth about one item slot upgrade on average, which, as sanka pointed out, is not very relevant late game.

IMO, troves should more often generate earlier, probably somewhere in low D (like 13-15), rather than in Depths, and have the entrance fee slightly reduced (or maybe the range of values should be less extreme). That way they can influence long term decision making for chars who didn't do S-branches yet, and the lower cost will be more relevant at this point in time than the higher cost in Depths.

[sanka]

Given how many characters I lose in Zot, I'm not convinced the late game is uninteresting. But maybe I'm just bad at it.

While I generally do not enjoy the late game as much as the early game, this was not what I meant here - probably my weak English, sorry. I merely wanted to say that *troves* are not interesting in the late game, because individual items matter less and less, so the exchange of some items to some others does not matter much.

This porperty of the late game is partially responsible (IMHO) that it is not as interesting as the early game.

I die a lot in Zot, too.

[andrew]

IMO, troves should more often generate earlier, probably somewhere in low D (like 13-15), rather than in Depths, and have the entrance fee slightly reduced (or maybe the range of values should be less extreme). That way they can influence long term decision making for chars who didn't do S-branches yet, and the lower cost will be more relevant at this point in time than the higher cost in Depths.

Don't a lot of troves in fact generate then, if not earlier? I tend to think of troves as late-D things which I usually can't access until later.

[bt]

Don't a lot of troves in fact generate then, if not earlier? I tend to think of troves as late-D things which I usually can't access until later.

In my experience troves are most common in Depths, followed by Vaults and Elf. Of course it can be a statistical thingy or bias as well .
I pretty much always do D:15 before S-branches and sometimes before Orc, so for me it's an like a start of a mid game area.

[andrew]

Ok I looked it up and it's

  Code:

default-depth: D:10-, Depths, Elf, Vaults

So D:9 is in fact too early; sorry for the mistake. But I don't know how it works probability-wise; most likely the same as any other portal but I don't know what that is.