On 05.04.2014 07:23, Michael Deutschmann wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Apr 2014, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>> On 05.04.2014 02:11, Michael Deutschmann wrote:
>>> One area in which I think the DevTeam is too cruel, is the fact that
>>> helms of opposite alignment destroy your protection. This makes that
>>> helm excessively dangerous to distinguish from helms of telepathy
>>> without identify spells.
>>
>> But isn't that the basic principle with many of Nethack's object classes?
>
> Not really. While you can burn yourself badly if you don't know what you
> are doing, if you are spoiled rotten you can rule things out and know what
> protections you need to attempt any use-ID. The only case that I find as bad
> as ]HoOA vs ]HoT is scroll of amnesia vs. scroll of taming.
I think there's a lot more than that. You have a lot price clashes in
the larger price groups; fire and destroy armor in the "100"s, amnesia
in the "200"s, and punishment in the "300"s group. (I am sure this has
been intentionally done so. As we will see, some objects need explicit
identify, some can be determined if you have additional supporting
items, some are trivially identifyable.)
>
> Price-ID can take you a long way. So can the wand of enlightenment in
> dealing with rings and amulets.
Yes. The more you have, the more options you have to determine the items.
In addition of the above mentioned scrolls, before you get a unicorn you
shouldn't quaff potions of price 100 (because of hallucination), neither
150 (because of blindness), 200 (polymorph), 300 (paralysis). Some are
worse than others, of course.
>
>> You can't read unidentified scrolls, because it might be destroy armor, or
>> amnesia, or punishment, or fire.
>
> Destroy Armor is in a different price class than Enchant Armor, so you
> can just not wear your good armor when testing $100 scrolls.
(Oh, I thought that fire damage would also reduce your maxHP if you're
not resistant, but I notice that this is true for fire traps but not for
the scrolls, so you're right.)
> You can
> also avoid carrying the items Fire destroys in open inventory. You
> can wait until you have a means to remove curse before playing with $300
> scrolls. [...]
Yes, waiting for more means to determine the objects is what one should do.
(But along that line, why not wait for scrolls of identify then? At least
they are three times as common as remove curse, and scrolls of identify
can even be determined by price without ambiguity.)
>
>> You shouldn't quaff (or dip) unidentified potions because of polymorph, or
>> acid.
>
> Acid is easily identified. If it's worth $250 then drop the potion as
> wells as anything applyable. Press 'a' and make sure you get "you have
> nothing to use or apply". Then pick up the potion and if you get a "[*]"
> prompt it's oil. Otherwise it's acid.
Right. I always forget about lighting the oil. So we can exempt acid/oil
from the list.
> [...]
>> And gray stones in boxes or in corners of undiggable walls;
>
> You can wait until you have spare curse removal resources -- or have
Waiting for more supporting items, as said, is always helpful. The point
was that there are items deliberately implemented in the price class of
dangerous items. You need some other means to determine those objects.
> encountered the same one in kickable circumstances and named it. Note
> that in this case scrolls and spells of identify aren't helpful either.
Yes. In the case of the helm the scroll (or spell) is helpful. So there
are even specific objects that are yet worse identifyable than helmets.
>
>> I'm not sure about the intended existence of a Real Life rationale. I took
>> the behaviour to just prevent switching forth and back alignment, thereby
>> gaining access to other artifacts, altars, temples, without drawback. The
>> two effects, auto-curse and protection-reset, balance the power of that
>> helm.
>
> That doesn't explain zapping protection if you identify it by attempting to
> wear it on the first level of the quest branch.
(Just browsed the Wiki... - I didn't knew about not being able to put it
on in the quest. I suppose that's another hack to avoid being thrown out?
Anyway.) There is a special message in that case, but the effect WRT your
divine protection seems to be the same; what's wrong with the explanation
that the protection lost is implemented to balance the HoOA?
To sum up; given the various "same price as a dangerous object" samples,
and given the alignment change balance issue, I don't see any problem
with the implementation of the HoOA w.r.t. losing divine protection, or
with its justification.
Janis