Currently, the backpack is pretty small in my opinion. I'm currently playing a smith, and the ingots and various items that I save up to be able to craft items easily takes up half of the space in my backpack. Add in the high-powered arrows that I find along the way and want to save for the lower floors, and there isn't much room left for anything else. I'm suggesting that there be some way to buy or upgrade the current backpack, or at the least to have some kind of bank system where you could put some items in and be able to access them on later floors once you find the bank on that floor. Maybe they are heavily guarded, or behind the monster zoo, or something to make it more of a challenge to get to unless you decide to backtrack to a previous floor. I don't think I've seen similar suggestions, and if there have been I apologize for duplicating it. I'm constantly having to backtrack to sell items at the shops to clear up space, and sometimes I just empty my backpack of everything that I'm saving, fill it full of the items that I want to clean up and sell at the shop. Then I have to go back, retrieve all of my good items and reorganize it again. I have terrible luck at finding those lutefisk cubes and my last two characters never found a cube to use. I assume that if you don't find one by the 9th floor that you're probably not going to have one spawn. Some of us out there are ocd or packrats, and would really appreciate at least 50% more slots, or a bank that would be equivalent in size to the backpack, or maybe even a little bigger. Thanks for listening, and I really enjoy this game. I've logged somewhere around 60 hours now since it came out, and really enjoy it. I haven't beaten the game yet, but I'm about to hit the tenth floor finally with one of my builds.
I typically use the first Monster Zoo as my "dumping spot" for my crafting materials. That way, I'm not hauling around 20 odd ingots all over the place. It's marked in bright Cyan on the map, and typically it's in a central location on the level with multiple exits (not always, but usually), giving it easy access. Inventory management is a pretty big problem in the game. It disrupts the flow of the roguelike. Most roguelikes encourage "emergent gameplay", where you find solutions to problems in unexpected ways due to having some random crap at your disposal. A Spatial Distortion potion, for example, can be used as a last ditch escape. Limiting the inventory forces the player to make the strategic decision of "dump or carry", which inevitably restricts the emergent gameplay options. It will only get worse as more potions, wands, and bolts are added to the game.
Of course, allowing the player to carry everything they wanted to would make it much harder to challenge the player as they'd shortly have an item to deal with every situation. There need to be some limits on the player's carrying capacity. Frankly I think the current situation is pretty good. You can never carry quite as much as you'd like to, so you either Skol or leave the rest, depending on how OCD you are. I've played a few crafting characters to the endgame, and the inventory limits aren't insurmountable, especially if you use the crafting tools themselves for extra carrying capacity.
How about this as an idea -- reduce the base inventory size, vary the inventory size based on difficulty level PLUS add the ability to add more slots either through crafting or looting of containers. This will give the option for people who are having difficulty with the inventory restrictions to play at a difficulty level that suits their requirements, while at the same time, give the opportunity to those who like the inventory restrictions to have even more 'fun' with even more extreme restrictions.
@Hahnsoo I will use that idea. Never thought of that. Thanks for the tip <--- Edit: Talking about using the zoo as a crafting materials save spot. About the other things you said, i never really liked this kind of games (genre), because it's a difficult game + RANDOM + complex. DoD brings the rogue to a new level that's 'user friendly'. Like i said, im not a huge fun of the genre but im having a blast here, no matter how many bugs i find in my way everytime. Hardcore users, or roguelike-games-lovers might find it easy, but in MY case, im struggling my way out of the 4th floor. It's hard already with the actual inventory size, if you reduce it or extract items, you'll be killing me, and i'm guessing a lot of other players. Like i said before, DoD is great, but in any case, i would EXPAND the size, but hey! you should give each player options. Imho, there should be options or in any case, enlarge the inventory size in harder difficulties. I'll go with Haldurson's suggestions without the "reduce the base inventory size" part hehe. Just my opinion, from a 'new-joiner' to rogue, thanks to this game. Even though i tried out a couple of games and hated them, i might give them another chance once i get some skill playing DoD.
So how is the current inventory size making the game harder for you? What exactly is it that you want to carry with you that you're unable to? Keeping in mind that a significant portion of the items in the game are junk -- negligible resale value and not useful to your character (e.g. mechanisms for non-tinkerers, most booze for non-mage-oriented, most food for characters with alternative faster healing methods). My inventory has, generally, the following in it: 1) A few slots devoted to any relevant crafting objects, e.g. ingot smelter, alchemist workbench. 2) Various random potions that I practically never use and should dump or chug (voltaic/hyperborean/dire empowerment/radiance/etc.) 3) Bug-out potions (invisibility, spatial displacement, healing, purity) 4) Tentacular wands and bolts of squid/mass destruction 5) High-density food items (either high HP per item, or large numbers of that item, e.g. diggle eggs) 6) Booze -- generally, 2 stacks of wine, or brandy if I have alchemy. 7) General-purpose ammo; say, about six stacks (counting bottle ammo and the like) 8) Crafting ingredients Most of the ammo goes on my belt. With this I still have a few slots clear to carry high-value items to Brax. Anything I can't carry gets left behind, or Skol'd if I'm bothering with the lutefisk cube.
Yeah, I never have much problem, as most items are useless for any one character. I keep a little bit of food, some strong potions or wands, and whatever crafting materials I need. Anything else gets dropped in the lutefisk cube, sent to the museum, or sold. I actually feel almost like it's too much sometimes, since I've never had to make any character breaking decisions. The backpack is large enough that you should be able to free at least one slot at any point in time in order to pick up something the you actually NEED. My first time playing, I took alchemy and smithing, though. That didn't work so well, as far as inventory goes.
I am plaing a 2 crafting skills char right now and it does get a little bit annoying at times. Mostly because I want to pick everything up and then sell it, so i could change that behaviour. But one more line of slots would help. Especially if you take three crafting skills plus the fungal tree Some builds will not ever have an inventory problem, but others will. Especially if you need some X for a recipe but don't have it and you do have Z, Y and M and need that to make X if you find D, the recipe you want to make with X also requires Q and R, and so for a few things EDIT: however: I really do not wish to see a bank, it's against the idea of going into a dungeon if they have banks there. The shop is already bordering it but roguelikes have them (presumably for other denizens) so yeah. And even if you can find a way to justify it basically I would not like it at all, carrying your own stuff should be it. EDIT2: and then I forget the traps when you can pick them up and the need for a few different armors and weapons depending on circumstances etc... yeah, could really do with more inventory
Logic is generally not a huge limitation on gameplay in most rogue-likes. Nethack (maybe rogue and hack as well???) had a bank vault, but it really wasn't anything like what people are asking for. It was essentially there for you to figure out how to get in and out, and steal the gold there (generally you either had to dig your way in or teleport), and if you accidentally got in without a way out, you had to empty your pockets and wait for a bank guard to escort you out -- a good way to lose all your money. So there is a kind of precedent for banks in rogue-likes, just not the kind of banks that are terribly useful. If in a future update/dlc, they add an above-ground area, then banks for storage, or even personal chests might make some kind of sense.
I agree that the backpack is much too small, like half the size it should be, simply because of the variety of items like fungus and bolts and ingots. Most games have two types of healing potion, not 15 different kinds of food. If you pick two different crafting skills you're having to run back and forth to the merchant all the time just to keep one row free. Looking at how the crafting devices work, it can't be too much work to provide a bag of holding type item to increase the inventory.
Most roguelikes have tons of food. It just usually happens to be from the corpses of your fallen foes.
for my blacksmith, I've started using the idea suggested to dump everything in a monster zoo once it's cleared out. I organized it as if it was a giant backpack, and it's sad how liberating that was to have most of my backpack empty finally. then I am free to run around like a vacuum cleaner, getting the extra items or food that are laying around. None of my characters are finding the lutefisk cubes any longer. I guess it's just bad luck with the randomness, but I really wish there was a way to buy one so I wouldn't have to just keep selling everything to make room. i like the idea of having a larger backpack as something you could craft, or as an extremely rare item, or a very expensive item in the shops. We have all of this money we get, but not really much to spend it on after a while. I had over $600,000 by the time I beat Lord Dredmor, and would have gladly paid $200,000 or more for a larger backpack. Or instead of a backpack, use the bag that Hermoine uses in Harry Potter. It can fit everything you need, it's all available when you need it, and it's small and light-weight. I'll take two!
600k zorkmids? Cripes. I rarely pass 50k at any point in the game, unless I'm playing a mathemancer. Also, I think the first dungeon level is guaranteed to generate a lutefisk cube now. At least, there's a special room (guarded by two eelies) that has a cube as a guaranteed item, and that room has shown up on every first dungeon level I've explored since the patch. I still feel like the inventory size is fine the way it is, and that you should just get used to not being able to pick up everything you find. But it's a singleplayer game, so who am I to dictate how you play? I guess the main takeaway from this for the devs should be: make container sizes moddable!
I've never actually used a mathemancer, this is just from picking up and selling everything in the game, since I had no lutefisk cubes. I'm a little OCD... My smith was started before the latest patch, but even my latest character that is using staves and fungal arts primarily didn't find a zoo or cube on level 1, and then found a zoo right at the start of level 2, in the first door that I opened. Dying is fun! There was no cube on level 2 for him either, but maybe he'll get lucky on level 3. In over seventy hours of playing and a large number of characters, I've only ever found one potion of steeling too, so I might just not be very lucky... and of course the potion of steeling wasn't found by my smith, who has everything else he needs to make the ring of iron thorns except that one potion. I like the moddable idea, even if I haven't tried editing the files yet. I love this game, it is highly addictive and fun! I can't wait to see what else they come up with for it.
Yeah, the value you get from picking up and selling every item you don't use? Can't be anywhere near the value of the time it took you to carry that item to a store. Hell, I've come to the conclusion that fisking everything I find isn't worth the effort, so I don't even bother with lutefisk cubes any more! It's quite liberating to just leave all that junk on the floor, which is where it belongs, because it is junk. Also, if you haven't found a lutefisk cube at all in the entire game, then something's wrong...
Actually, it's not terribly uncommon to not find a single lutefisk cube on the first 4 or 5 levels. It doesn't happen often, but it happens enough that I've noticed it as well. So I would not be surprised at all to hear that people has gone all the way to level 10 without finding one -- that's random numbers for you. Fisking, for me, is just part of normal inventory management. When I don't have the cube, I don't bother picking up anything but the most valuable of items. If you don't find anything really expensive to purchase, and you aren't raiding the vending machines regularly, then it's easy to accumulate a couple of hundred K or more zorkmids, even without mathemagics, simply by selling the better artifacts that you find (the ones that net you a thousand or more). I agree that it's not worth selling every trinket you find. But on level 1 and 2, it might be worthwhile if there's better stuff in the shops than what you've found. Past that, I only keep the good stuff. Past a certain level in the dungeon, when I feel I'm about as well equipped as I'm going to be, I don't even bother with the artifacts. By then, you'll generally have all the cash you'll ever need anyway to fill up on food, drink and ammo from the machines.
Lutefisk cube is a good trash bin if you set auto loot for a category but actually only wanted half of the stuff. So if I am using alchemy/fruit staff and got auto loot food, and so happen to be using vampirism (or every run I did with alchemy), it is far easier to dispose all the non fruits into a lutefisk cube than drop/walking around them.
If there was an autofisk (or even a "shift-control-click to pick up and fisk") then I'd use the cube, but as it stands, dragging things into the cube all the time is too much effort for the expected payoff. If I had enough inventory space to let things build up into stacks before fisking them, maybe, but I don't.
+1 for "autofisk". Who'd've ever though someone would verb 'lutefisk'? More proof that any noun can be verbed.
