Rookie ammo branding question

[Selkie]

I'm ashamed to ask: how do I inscribe ammo so my ranger fires iron shots as default on the h key, rather than pebbles of slay demon?

[malcontent]

Originally Posted by Selkie

I'm ashamed to ask: how do I inscribe ammo so my ranger fires iron shots as default on the h key, rather than pebbles of slay demon?

I use the roguelike keyset - so to get my preferred amo to position 0 in my quiver (to make it the default amo) I inscribe @t0

[Estie]

~ Go to the knowledge menu
a Display object knowledge

navigate to ammunition - iron shot

Type {@f1 to have all iron shots inscribed automatically.

Now make a keymap - on "h" if you like, or some other suitable key - *tf1.

Go to user interface options and set "use old target by default", if it isnt already.

If you use h, it wont pick pebbles anymore if you run out of iron shots.

[sffp]

h will fire the top of your the top of your quiver (slot 0)
To move your ammo to the top of your quiver select it, choose { to inscribe and then @f0 to move it to firing slot 1. Often I choose to inscribe ammo with @f0,=g

because I want to pick it up automatically even if I run out

[smbhax]

Oh jeez, now I see why some are saying it's @t0, and some are saying it's @f0 -- the inscription is keyset specific!

If you're on the default keyset, you inscribe the ammo with @f0 to move it to the top; f being the fire/throw command in that keyset.
If you're on the roguelike keyset, you inscribe the ammo with @t0 to move it to the top; t being the fire/throw command in that keyset.

This is really confusing just for setting your preferred ammo, and doesn't seem to be covered specifically in the official documentation. The in-game help tells you that TAB (I'm using the roguelike keyset) fires the "default ammo," but there's nothing that tells you how to SET the default ammo.

The Angband documentation on missile weapons https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/la...issile-weapons says nothing about setting the default ammo. Farther down that page, under "Inscribe an object"--there's no particular reason a new player would think to look there for how to set default ammo, mind you--it says

Certain inscriptions have a meaning to the game, see '@#', '@x#', '!*', and '!x', in the section on inventory object selection

but there's no link to whatever that section is. I tried using the documentation site's search function to search for "object selection" and "inventory object selection" and did not come up with anything on inscriptions. Googling brought me a bunch of out-of-date information, and finally...back to this thread! ; )

[Incidentally, in order to make that quote pasted in from the manual page legible for the forum instead of weird symbols, I had to replace the slanting single quote marks used in the manual with straight up-down ones. Would be easier to quote from the manual here if it used simple quote marks rather than the fancy slanted ones.]

https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/la...scribing-items has a large paragraph about using @, a command letter, and a number, but doesn't discuss the t command letter--and needing to use t and 0 in an @ inscription to set an ammo to default isn't perhaps the most intuitive thing. (Not at all intuitive to me, at least--but I find the whole inscription thing really confusing, generally.)

https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/la...ntory-commands says

Wielding ammunition will add it to an empty slot in your quiver and prompt you to replace a type of ammunition if your quiver is already full.

Is that still accurate? I saw someone saying that was part of how to set default ammo in an old Google result, too--but when I press "w," ammunition I'm carrying is NOT listed in the resulting list of items; the ammunition has already gone into some slot or other in my quiver. And there is no "wield" command listed when I look at the details page for ammunition items in my quiver.

Setting an ammo to default should probably just be a command in the actual inventory system, like a command of "Set as default ammo" or whatever would fit, in an ammo item's details page.

(And since changing your keyset option would break that setting if it relied, as it does currently, on an inscription, it should probably NOT have to rely on an inscription. So then I guess we'd be looking at a "Set ammo priority" type of command, rather than just "default," so you could rank them. And setting that on an instance of an ammo type should set it for any instance of that ammo type you find...although shoot then you'd need a way to access that for that type even if you ran out of it, so you could change it, and Bolts of Wounding" for instance don't show up in the Knowledge menu, just Bolts, so there'd be no way to change your priority setting on those. Man, the ammo system is a bit of a mess, huh? Dang.)

Inscriptions are incredibly cryptic, are NOT documented in the game, and are simply not going to be understandable to most new players--and setting default ammo is a fairly basic function to which they should have access. Once you're used to TAB, you really don't want to have to select and fire a specific ammo type repeatedly with t, if you can help it.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Originally Posted by Estie

~ Go to the knowledge menu
a Display object knowledge

navigate to ammunition - iron shot

I went looking there to see if I could set an auto-inscription specifically for Bolts of Wounding, but they aren't listed there, just "Bolt"; so I guess the knowledge interface only lists the broadest categories, and won't do specific TYPES of Bolts or Arrows or whatnot? Dang.

~~~~~~~~~~


Mildly related: the quiver display at the bottom of the Inventory list is weird. For instance, I have some regular Bolts, and some Bolts of Wounding. My main Inventory view lists, at the bottom, in a different text color:

u) in Quiver: 40 missiles
v) in Quiver: 5 missiles

but pressing "u" or "v" there does not select these "missiles." If I press "|" to go to "Quiver," the listing is

0) 23 Bolts of Wounding (1d5) (+16, +8) {@t0}
1) 22 Bolts (1d5) (+0, +0)

which is what the missiles actually are.

Couldn't they be displayed that way at the bottom of the main Inventory, and even made directly selectable from there? Having a vague, unselectable listing for missiles there seems sub-optimal.

[Estie]

Not really; the inventory list sorts them by 40s, no matter the composition, so as to use less space than a potentially diverse list by type would require. Thats kind of the whole point of the quiver.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Estie

Not really; the inventory list sorts them by 40s, no matter the composition, so as to use less space than a potentially diverse list by type would require. Thats kind of the whole point of the quiver.

Oh I see, it's https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/latest/command.html

Quiver list (|)

Missiles that you carry will automatically be put in your quiver. The quiver has 10 slots; it also takes up inventory space, so every 40 missiles will reduce your number of inventory slots by 1.

That being the case, I suggest indicating them as space-consuming placeholder representations, instead of showing fake letter assignments for them--so in my case, instead of showing

u) in Quiver: 40 missiles
v) in Quiver: 5 missiles

where u and v are NOT actual selectable shortcuts, show

(Quiver: 40 missiles)
(Quiver: 5 missiles)

without any letter assignment.