Stores and stuff

[greycat]

Selling stuff to stores is a bit frustrating and odd. I don't think it's really a bug, so I'm posting the observations here instead.

First, you only get 10% of the item's value when selling to a store. This seems harsh. Maybe there's a way to get a higher fraction of the item's value later on that I just haven't unlocked, though.

Second, you get the same price for an item whether or not it's identified. So, by noting the price the store is offering you (mouseover), you can narrow down the item's identity and/or modifiers. This may be by design, of course -- nethack works similarly, with the notable exception of gems.

Third, items like scrolls of identify and phase door, and potions of lesser healing, are enormously expensive. When you only get 0.50 gold for selling a pair of iron boots (retail value 5.00 gold), or 2.00 gold for selling an iron plate armour (retail 20.00 gold), you can't buy a whole lot of scrolls and potions. Maybe this is due to the harshness of the first point, or maybe it's by design. I can't tell.

In any case, there's very little gold in the starter dungeon, unless you get a 3x3 treasure room generated (I've seen a couple of those). And you get very little gold for items. This pretty much forces you to scavenge consumables from the floor, since there's no other way you can afford them.

[madmonk]

This is by design...

Money is in short supply at the start. Gone are the days of loads of money! Welcome to Scrooge's world!

I understand there are plans to change things around a bit... IDed items, and so on.

[darkgod]

Yes gold is meant to be rare and precious

[forkbomb]

The markup is pretty insane, but not entirely un-understandable. Perhaps the markup/markdown could be dialed back a bit, but I expect it won't matter hugely. My guess is all the really good stuff comes from the dungeon anyway, where it's "free."

Anyway, one thing I was wondering was why gold isn't automatically picked up. Does gold have weight?

And actually speaking in terms of the fact that ID'd and un-ID'd items sell for the same amount (which I hadn't noticed), to somewhat play devil's advocate (apologies if these thoughts are disjointed):
Imagine you're a shopowner and some random adventurer dude comes in claiming to have a really nice weapon for sale. Do you as the shopowner take the adventurer's word for it? Sure, some really legendary artifacts might be identifiable by a quick glance at the artifact in question, especially by an experienced weaponsmith and merchant, but lesser items couldn't be known by a quick look. Would the adventurer necessarily hand over the weapon to the shopowner to allow the latter plenty of time to look at the object in question?

So for slightly-enchanted ego items, perhaps it's fair that they sell for roughly the same as the base price. Legendary artifacts should fetch a premium, though.

[greycat]

I think there's an implicit understanding in Angband and its variants that when an item is identified, everyone in the world can see its abilities -- not just you. So, if it's IDed, the storekeeper can see the properties too. But if it's not, then the storekeeper can't ID it until you hand it over. It's a bit odd, but after two decades of playing Angband, that's just what we're used to.

I don't think that same assumption is carried through into ToME 4. Rather, storekeepers seem to have the ability to discern the value (if not the actual properties) of an item in your inventory, regardless of whether YOU can. This is no more ridiculous than the Angband way; in fact, it may be slightly more believable.

Oh, a fourth thing I forgot to mention before: sometimes, but not always, when you bring your potions or scrolls to the potion or scroll store, some of them get IDed for free. I think this happens when the store has an item identical to yours. It doesn't seem to happen on items with special modifiers ("long scroll of identify" and the like); but I haven't paid absolute attention to the details to know for sure.

[Frumple]

Dunno if anyone's noticed it, but ID scrolls will start to pack ID if you've got a sufficient magic score. Near as I can tell, it starts up somewhere in the mid/low-twenties. Once that starts happening, ID scrolls become fairly massively cost efficient, providing you've got enough strength to fill your pack decently.

The one thing I have noticed so far as price goes is that unique items seem to sell for as much as normal ones, which is terribly disappointing. Amon Sul's boss drop sells for as much as any other base item of its sort, ferex. Considering how freakishly vicious (150+ damage from across the room! Ohnoes frozen->dead. Whatjusthappened?) the bottom buggers can be, and the number of classes that don't get much from their drops, a lil'bit more bonus from offing the critters'd be nice.