The Philosopher's Stone: Another inventory kludge idea

I've had another idea for how inventory management could be improved:

There could be a toolkit, perhaps with an interface similar to the lutefisk cube, which converts items into zorkmids so that you can sell them whenever instead of having to pile them up in the pocket dimension until you find a brax shop.

 

Not bad. Only downside is it needs a UI change, but at first glance it seems a reasonable option.

 

a super easy solution would be to increase the sell price of lutefisk. but that might be hard to balance late game, of course.

 

I don't even know how to respond to this but suffice it to say that I think you've misunderstood the intent of my suggestion.

What I meant was that this would convert items into a number of zorkmids approximately equal to their specific selling price. The point is to eliminate needless backtracking to Brax shops (and needless cluttering of the pocket dimension prior to said backtracking), not to eliminate the items themselves. This would be something for getting rid of actually valuable items, as opposed to the Lutefisk cube, which is basically a trashcan for unneeded crafting reagents.

 

So basically its a variation of the idea that we should be able to sell off items no matter where we are. Most of the stuff in the pocket dimension isn't stuff that I intend to use; its stuff that I intend to sell, and generally so many of them that I have to make multiple trips back and forth once I find a shop even if I completely empty out my inventory.

 

Honestly it isn't that hard to sell things. Sometimes on NTTG you will have a floor or even two that don't have a shop. But in the normal game there are always shops.

I agree with Nicholas though. We don't need a second recycling mechanism.
I also don't think that Lutefisk should be given more of a monetary value. Why? Because this trying to solve a different problem that isn't being spoken about.

Zorkmids are currency for standard items (shops + Machines)
Lutefisk are currency for special items. (Lutefisk Gods)

The problem is that the lutefisk system is not very fun right now. Giving them more monetary value simply sidesteps this to ignore them as a secondary currency. Why not fix them as an alternate currency. We have discussed potential fixes in other threads, but many of them have implementation issues. Most people are unwilling to deal with fisking everything, even when their are hotkeys for fisking things straight from the ground! Even in my playthroughs, gathering 500 fisk per statue means they go mostly unused.

I would much rather see 2 things happen:

1) Gold Costs Streamlined. It is a gargantuan task, but maybe we could get some people together and put together a substitute XML that gaslamp could just include in a later patch. (Almost no development time required). Some people, like essence have talked about a complete Item rehaul, this might be related.​

2) Lutefisk Statues Changed. Each statue always gives an item at 100 (or more) fisk donated. Item quality no longer dependent on number of Lutefisk. The number of stats dependent on the Floor Level. Something like Number of Bonus Stats = Floor Level + 2 + Difficulty Level, where EE =1, DM = 2, and GR = 3. Personally I would like to see them restricted to non-weapons since evil chests already offer up tons of weapons.​

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Fisking 100 items would be much easier than 500. Plus players aren't constantly working on maximizing their stat values to the point of tedium. And if a player wants to fisk everything they find, fine, it won't do them much good except for future statues. Then they don't have to feel like they do to get the most out of the game.

 

Not if you sell everything that's valued at over 40 zorkmids

 

Idea: What if the lutefisk cube was revamped so that you got 1 lutefisk for every 3 gp or so of the transmuted item's selling value, instead of a flat 1 per item.

 

Nicholas has discussed varying conversion rates for lutefisk. Sounds like it is a lot of effort. Also, your suggestion would mean ridiculous numbers of lutefisk late game, even on GR

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Eh, even large quantities are easy to sell. After a level is mostly cleared and not a threat toyou, you dump all your valuables, anywhere you want and then with a full inventory run around picking up all the junk, run to the shop and shift-click sell everything in your inventory in a whilrwind. Only a few trips of that and whole floors are cleared. Then you can pick your stuff up again.

As for me, I don't bother collecting Zorkmids. I would much rather leave things on the ground where I might want them later, for who knows what. I might end the game with 5 where originally I started with zero.

 

This is a problem you are doing to yourself. Money is plentiful and unimportant. I recently did a playthrough to completion on GRPD where I literally sold no items and ran a craft-heavy build (Smithing/Wand Lore/Alchemy/Tinkering/Rogue Scientist/Clockwork Knight/Archaeology). The only times I ran out of inventory space were before I found the lutefisk cube on floor 3, and then again on floor 11 when I accidentally put my cube inside of itself.

The problem is not the game: the problem is your insistence on playing it a specific way and then getting angry when that specific method is difficult.

 

It is possible to play without caring much about money, but when you see that one good item in the shop on floor 2 for 20,000z, saving up is definitely worth it for the push it gives you for the next couple of floors. Some of the weaker early game/stronger late game skillsets really need that one item.

 

Granted, but even if you do care about money, you need to set a cutoff point for yourself where the value of selling an item is too small to bother selling it.

 

I would also like to say that the use of real life inconvenience and frustration as a game balancing factor, which I think may be what is going on here although no one has said it explicitly, is a very poor game design philosophy indeed (unless you're making some sort of dadaist art game meant to represent the futility of human endeavor).

 

You are still doing this to yourself. You do not need to sell every little item for 5z. Set a benchmark for value--a sliding one by floor--and try it, please, before you dismiss it out of hand.

 

Have to agree with Fax on this one. The only time I've ever had a great use for money was on a challenge run with shittiest skill build I could think of at the time. Shops became very important in that run.... I still didn't grab EVERYTHING off the floor.

It's just not worth the time and headache but I can't see this as something that needs changing either. It's just a matter of choosing what's important and what isn't.

If you really must have everything in Brax's stores though I humbly suggest robbing him. Seriously, he's a demon in a terrible suit. He does not deserve your respect. It could be said that the suffering and tedium you experience trying to pay the creature is it's real remuneration.

 

It's not just brax; its also because I like to buy all the holy hand grenades on the lower floor vending machines.

 

I'm another person who just has to make use of everything, either selling it or saving it or lutefisking it, and even I have to agree with Fax on this one. I am a hoarder (well, in Dredmor anyway), pure and simple, and I admit it. And the devs are enablers in that they gave us all the pocket dimension. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I will not ever claim that they did this in order to encourage our bad habits, but it certainly accomplishes that in spades.

The biggest part of the problem is not that desire to OWN and SELL everything (which I share with you), it's the desire to CARRY everything in your backpack. If you can just unload MORE of your backpack on every visit to your pocket dimension, and only carry the bare minimum with you at all times, it will become much less trouble, I guarantee it. Limit what you have to carry with you at all times to just those life-saving objects, and sufficient staples to deal with monster zoos and bosses. So that means:
A collection of any kind of potion or object with healing capabilities
Potions of Purity and one or two unused zodiac wand (stow the rest)
No more than 4 or 5 varieties of food in stacks (by all means, save the rest)
Anything that helps you hide or escape
If you need them, a small number of stacks of your best alcohol and/or mana potions
To deal with bosses and zoos -- A few stacks of thrown weapons and/or bolts, and/or wands including your best AE gear

Later in the game, you can carry a little more if you need it (which arguably, you might need sooner, but if you are flexible enough not to go overboard, that's ok also). Early in the game, when I follow these rules, I tend to have about 2 rows occupied by those items, occasionally 3. Everything else is stuff to get saved in my pocket dimension for when I need it, whether it's to replenish stacks, to fight Dredmor, deal with deeper zoos, and so on.

Visit your pocket dimension as needed to drop off everything else. When you find a shop, drop off all your essential items into a single pile (except those in your quick-slots), go back to your pocket dimension and drop off everything else, and pick up everything in your 'to sell' stack (it helps if you have autoloot for everything), and come back and sell it. You probably won't need to make a second trip, but feel free to do so.

EVERYTHING else gets stowed in an organized manner. EVERYTHING in that 'to sell' stack is stuff that you know you are never going to use, and is just too valuable to convert to lutefisk (the threshhold for that changes as you get deeper into the dungeon. Check out my steam guide for one organization method (note that I'm flexible, so I don't always use that EXACT method, and it varies by my crafting skills, but I always have a 'to sell' pile, at least one 'future use' pile, and an ore/ingot pile, a mana pile (alcohol, mana potions, etc.), and a food crafting pile (contents vary by which mods I'm using), a crafting bonus pile (anything that can give a crafting bonus) and at least one crafting tool pile (consisting of ingot presses, etc.).

 

My understanding was that this was never the case, only that the lutefisk god would put more enchantments on an item if it consumed more lutefisk in doing that. Item quality solely depends on floor level, yes?

 

Let me clarify. When I wrote that I was thinking of quality in terms of number of bonuses, not the quality of the item itself (prebonus, aka number of stars). I actually don't know for sure how the bonuses work, but then again, I have stopped caring about lutefisk altogether. Saving up 500 to use on level 1 floor seems... well stupid amounts of work. If it gave an item with 10 bonuses on it, even if it was a plastic ring, then that would be pretty awesome.