No Sell - I am convinced

[Bahman Rabii]

After some heartfelt recommendations, I decided to try it out. Huge win. You can forget how much pain there is with managing inventory just for stuff to sell. And it gets rid of one more reason to have lots of useless items drop.

One small complaint - I understand the principle of starting no sell characters with gold and no gear, but I don't like it in practice. It slows down the start, and it leads to annoying situations (e.g. my priest who is down to 800' and still has not seen the first spellbook for sale or in the dungeon).

[jens]

Originally Posted by Bahman Rabii

One small complaint - I understand the principle of starting no sell characters with gold and no gear, but I don't like it in practice. It slows down the start, and it leads to annoying situations (e.g. my priest who is down to 800' and still has not seen the first spellbook for sale or in the dungeon).

I agree, since no_selling might well become one of the standard ways of playing, it should be as easy and usable as possible.

[Derakon]

The first spellbook wasn't for sale in the temple? That shouldn't happen. Sounds like the allocation rules in store.txt need to be tweaked to increase the number of basic spellbooks.

Some players may prefer to start with no armor and more consumables, or with a different weapon, or skip a bow when they're playing as a ranger. With selling, you can sell your starting gear and buy what you like; that's obviously not possible with no-selling, hence the change. If you have a better idea for how to start out no-selling, feel free to make your case.

[d_m]

I agree totally. Whenever I start a game I have a 50% chance of killing the poor character by forgetting to buy a light source and/or food and/or recall.

[Max Stats]

Originally Posted by Bahman Rabii

After some heartfelt recommendations, I decided to try it out. Huge win. You can forget how much pain there is with managing inventory just for stuff to sell. And it gets rid of one more reason to have lots of useless items drop.

One small complaint - I understand the principle of starting no sell characters with gold and no gear, but I don't like it in practice. It slows down the start, and it leads to annoying situations (e.g. my priest who is down to 800' and still has not seen the first spellbook for sale or in the dungeon).

A solution to this would be allowing the player to save everything in the character's inventory to a pref file, to be used as starting kit for all new characters. Only items that are part of standard store inventory should be included. For weapons and armor, this should include only unenchanted items, and jewelry should be excluded altogether. On character creation, once the new character is accepted, if starting kit is found in a pref file, the game would ask if you want to use that as your starting inventory. If you say yes, it purchases everything in the list until either the list is complete or you run out of gold.

This would have the added effect of avoiding the annoyance of not being able to find what you want in the stores. For example, when I play spellcasting classes, I like to purchase the first two books to start off because I usually stay in the dungeon long enough to learn spells from the second book before I return. However, it is common to start out without the second book in the store's inventory, so I normally quit and restart. This method should assume that if an item is part of standard store inventory, it is in stock. Black Market items not included, of course.

Since you can save class-specific pref files (Warrior.prf, Mage,prf, etc.) you can have a different set of items for each class you play (no point buying spellbooks for your warrior, of course).

[jens]

Originally Posted by Derakon

The first spellbook wasn't for sale in the temple? That shouldn't happen. Sounds like the allocation rules in store.txt need to be tweaked to increase the number of basic spellbooks.

On Tobias videos his mage starts a no sell game, finds no mage book, then restarts.

Originally Posted by Derakon

Some players may prefer to start with no armor and more consumables, or with a different weapon, or skip a bow when they're playing as a ranger. With selling, you can sell your starting gear and buy what you like; that's obviously not possible with no-selling, hence the change. If you have a better idea for how to start out no-selling, feel free to make your case.

Ah, yes... I had thought of that before... Will have to come back to you on that one ;-)

How about mixing it up a bit? Let each character get a bare minimum of what they need to survive, then the rest of their value in gc.

Suggested list of eq:
2 torches, 2 food, 1 dagger
spell book for pure casters
balance of value in gc

If you are brave you can go straight into the dungeon, if you would have wanted to sell something, that would only be the dagger, so you didn't loose much value.

[jens]

I take too long writing my posts...

Originally Posted by Max Stats

A solution to this would be allowing the player to save everything in the character's inventory to a pref file, to be used as starting kit for all new characters. Only items that are part of standard store inventory should be included. For weapons and armor, this should include only unenchanted items, and jewelry should be excluded altogether. On character creation, once the new character is accepted, if starting kit is found in a pref file, the game would ask if you want to use that as your starting inventory. If you say yes, it purchases everything in the list until either the list is complete or you run out of gold.

This is a great idea!

One problem I see though is that new players will not realise it's there...

[CJNyfalt]

I think that it might be a good idea combine no sell with 'less buy'. Basically I think that making store stocks fixed and unlimited in numbers, but very restricted in what is available.
So that stores would only sell must have consumables like healing potions, ammo, Phase Door, Teleport & WoR scrolls, torches, food, oil, shovels, and lanterns. Black market would naturally be removed.

[Derakon]

Such an approach would render money completely moot by around 1000' or so -- at that point you can buy all the consumables you'll ever need and that's all you can buy.

The Black Market still serves an important purpose by allowing the player to buy items they haven't found in the dungeon yet (or not in sufficient quantity). Important items to get from the Black Market:

* ring of Free Action
* rod of Trap Location
* scroll of Teleport / Teleport Level / Deep Descent
* potion of Speed

Of course, there's also stat gain potions, helms of telepathy, amulets of trickery, rings of damage, dungeon spellbooks, and other "I really want that but it's not vital" items. Oddly, in my experience weapons are always too weak or too expensive to bother with.

[Max Stats]

Originally Posted by jens

One problem I see though is that new players will not realise it's there...

We now have "shopkeeper hints" that sometimes pop up when you enter a store. Maybe the first hint could always be "When you are done shopping, press <whatever> to save your starting kit."