Additional gold sink

[Cold_Heart]

I think Angband needs more gold spending opportunities. Here are some ideas:

1) house size increase
2) gambling for items (buying unidentified)
3) donations to shops in town to improve their inventory / inventory size / get discount

[Malak Darkhunter]

Originally Posted by Cold_Heart

I think Angband needs more gold spending opportunities. Here are some ideas:

1) house size increase
2) gambling for items (buying unidentified)
3) donations to shops in town to improve their inventory / inventory size / get discount

Sangband has an option in the store interface to "invest" in a store by giving it your gold, in return the store stocks some of the finest items availiable...I've always liked this function and it provides a way to get rid of all that gold in a worthwhile manner.

[mushroom patch]

It's gotta be dungeon 7. Black markets that appear in dungeon at depths > 90 and sell endgame consumables (*heal*, des/banish scrolls, restore mana, etc.) at crazily high prices in more or less unlimited numbers if you can pay. Balanced so that the typical amount of gold an endgame player has buys a fairly minimal Morgoth/Sauron kit (minus equipment). Kills the late game scumming and useless money problems in one go.

Given the pro-ironman/force down posture of current developers, I think working on taking the focus away from town makes a lot of sense. Stores in the dungeon with high prices accomplish a number of useful ends: You streamline play by reducing the need to return to town and fiddle with things up there, you have a clean thematic reason for prices to go up and thereby keep money strategically relevant, and you give the player a reason to leave the stairs and move around more to find shops, particularly if they aren't visible to the usual detection spells/effects.

[Zireael]

+1 to stores in the dungeon.

I've played a few roguelikes which had it and it's good as long as:
1) you provide an in-universe reason for the shopkeepers to stay alive
2) and/or you make sure the shopkeepers don't drop on death the stuff they sell for whatever reason

Also, I like the invest option, too.

[mushroom patch]

In crawl, which has in-dungeon shops, no thematic reason is given for the existence of shops/survival of shopkeepers and they operate like vending machines the same way angband shops do. It is not a problem there. I'd also point out that angband variants already have dungeon shops that follow the same format and they're good. They work exactly the same way shops in town do. Tomenet is an example.

[Derakon]

Dungeon shops that sell outrageously expensive, but useful, things sounds reasonable to me. Along with endgame consumables, you could also include things like Rings of Speed +10 or greater, Balance Dragon Scale Mail, Crowns of Might, and Shields of Preservation.

[mushroom patch]

I think good rings of speed sounds reasonable, but maybe you don't want legit rare stuff (rings of speed aren't rare, imo). I'm thinking like balance dsm of resistance or mace of disruption/blade of chaos with slay evil is too rare/good. May take too much of the looting aspect out of the game. Finding consumables is just repetitive, finding good equipment slightly less so... idk.

If you broaden the scope of dungeon stores to include equipment, then you need mid game shops to eat gold too so there's a real trade off there. It sounds like a lot of work making shops that produce good, level appropriate stuff at prices that make you go "hm," but it would likely be worth it. Personally, I would like to see town removed altogether and dungeon shops be all there is.

[Slightly tangentially, it would be really hilarious if shop owners adjusted their prices upward when you're badly in need of something, e.g. when you're out of heals, they increase their prices for heal potions to outrageous levels. Put the adversarial nature of shopkeepers back into the game.]

[Nomad]

Maybe there could be dungeon 'forges' where you can pay to get equipment bonuses boosted? i.e. pay a big chunk of cash to get your +6 speed ring upgraded to a +7 speed ring, or similar. With the cost steadily increasing depending on the current level of enchantment.

[Estie]

I think consumables only is the way to go, because permanent items might or might not be wanted, so you still end up with useless gold. For example, a BDSM of resistance can be great or useless if you already happen to have PDSM or you are relying on the +5 con your chain mail provides.

Enchanting weapons past +15 would be worthwhile to spend gold on, too. However, to preserve the current balance among egos and artifacts, the amount of enchantment has to take into account the (average) value provided by the ego or artifact. So "of Gondolin" would be enchanted higher than "of extra attacks", Ringil higher than Narthanc.
The simplest way to implement it that way would be to just add a constant (to hit, to dam) on top of whatever is inserted.

For example, introduce a special vault "Forge" where at the anvil (some ascii character - how about & ?) you get the option to increase the enchantment of a weapon by (+1,+1), with a chance of success proportional to the amount of coin spent, say 100% at 100k.

Somehow, that smells of grind though.

[AnonymousHero]

Originally Posted by Estie

Somehow, that smells of grind though.

Yeah, this would be my worry too. Enouraging people to gather more gold doesn't seem like it would have a positive effect on gameplay overall since it would (however implicitly) encourage grinding[1]. Personally, I'd rather see suggestions for ways to remove gold from the game completely.

One suggestion in this direction might be to make everything in the shops completely free[2], but to impose stricter inventory limits (say, smaller stacks) at the beginning of the game and then increase those max stack sizes gradually as the character levels up. There's a little bit of that due to carrying capacity, but that's mostly irrelevant for all but the weakest of characters -- I think it would have to be more limited than just by total weight. Also, I'm worried that it would be rather hard to make this mechanic transparent/understandable to players.

IOW: I'd encourage people to think about is more in terms of: what is the problem that gold is trying to solve in-game and can we solve that problem in a better/more fun way? (AFAICT the only problem it solves is that beginning characters shouldn't be able to buy a gazillion CCW, _Teleport, etc. to make the start completely trivial. That, and it has a minor function for the BM.)

[1] Especially since it actually isn't even necessary to have more than, say, 20-50K gold to be able to buy basic supplies at-will.
[2] Obviously, the BM would have to go.