I disagree with Nick that light makes a difference in ironman games. With the current drop rates you find far more light than you need. Of course, we could tweak things so that they did make a difference, but I'm not sure that's what we want. At the very least, if we were going to look at making light and light-radius important, I would strongly consider nicking things from Sil, which does a great job of playing with the light/darkness interface.

Light very much makes a huge difference in Ironman games.

I just YASD a lvl 28 ironman priest on dlvl 33. The first 15k turns were harrowing, as I only had my default torch to start with. I meant to purchase a second one, but bought a flask by accident. I found the second torch with 500 turns left on the first one. Then I actually ran out of light for a short while, but was able to stumble upon another torch around 10500 turns.

Once I got a lantern around 15k turns, things went much easier. That is, until I decided to try and kill Mihm and Beorn on the same level: dlvl 32. Due to Mihm's Disenchantment and Beorn's insanely heavy melee, and my own slow speed (-2), I had to constantly portal away, then find myself back to them, and lob off one or two OOD, activate my DSM and rings, then portal away again. For Mihm, I ended up digging a custom long passageway so I could portal west and east of it, to kill him. His AI pathing sucked.

Within a couple hundred turns after taking down both, I found myself lightless. My lantern had run out. Now, please note, that I had decided to not stockpile flasks because of ironman inventory constraints. If I had, this wouldn't have been a problem. Also, I had the opportunity to pick up a =Light earlier, and passed on it for similar reasons, never thinking that I might run out of light.

Luckily, I found a ?Enlightenment, and was able to finish up the level, loot my 2nd and 3rd randarts which were both awful, and descend...

into a lightless new dungeon level with no source of light. I stumbled around again across 1/4 of the dungeon, even having to kill this strange "It" that took quite a pounding: several hundred hp of activations, and kept dishing out acid bolts to destroy my gear. I thought he was going to kill me, but @ survived, then found his way to a Fire Hound, and was able to read the Prayer of Light while crouching next to the hound's inner flame. I then took to the methodology of casting Light every 30', so as to preserve my ability to see and cast. While doing so, I came across a reptile that I thought was a small salamander. Turned out it was a Basilisk, breathed on my twice, and YASD.

Of course, next time playing ironman, I'll have learned my light lessons, and prepare for it better.

[Update: Why don't Light Hounds light up a room with their breath?]

[Update 2: Oh, I just remembered. The first time my light failed was actually around 3000 turns. I had found a silver jelly, and successfully avoided it. Then as I cleaned out the level, I circled back, and mindlessly went in to melee it. Boom. No more light. Luckily I stumbled upon the torch a few hundred turns later.]

I *LOVE* the fact that you read a scroll by the light of a firehound!
That's awesome.

Well, obviously light makes a difference if you just ignore all sources of light! :)

I'll bet that it won't make any difference for all subsequent games you play -- other than "wasting" an inventory slot. From now on it'll just be a "do X every once in a while to avoid dying" mechanic, i.e. uninteresting.

Just wanted to say it's not good that you can survive by casting light area every few turns. That's ridiculously tedious! Also, from the way you describe your ironman game, I am not convinced that you ran out of light because the rate of fuel generation is too tight. Walking around at -2 speed suggests to me there were other problems...

[edit: lol, sry, skimmed the middle of the post. Your story is literally that you ran out of light because you didn't pick up light sources and this is why you think fuel is relevant in ironman games? You have to understand that when people talk about these kinds of issues, they assume a baseline of competent play.]

Well, the first time was actually running out of light due to a silver jelly. The second one was an ironman learning experience. Obviously, the degree of tolerance for light-starvation is different in ironman. In a normal game, I would've been able to recall to town on the level my light had run out. In ironman, that wasn't an option.

Yeah, but like, running out of light is usually game over if it happens even in a normal game, so it's kind of important to make sure it doesn't. The point is, though, you always can make sure it doesn't happen quite easily, unless, as in your case, you just decide not to.

Not when you're doing it for the first time. It's new, fun and scary.

Why? Because cynical curmudgeons are the only market for the game? The adventure of learning the basics is part of the fun. Once you've learned them, you get to go further into the dungeon and learn new things.

You regularly hear people say they never got past x feet in the dungeon before, and light, food, breeders, poison from worms, paralysis from eyes, etc, are the obstacles that make a huge difference to beginners.

Sure, once you have ingrained how to progress down to stat gain and beyond, they're irrelevant. People that can do that regularly are the minority of players, though more prevalent on this forum.

It's true. We shouldn't be taking this subject so lightly; new players frequently fizzle out before getting very far. They just seem to run out of gas.

Sure, but would new players notice the absence of fuel for lights? I don't think they'd care.