ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Right now infusions/runes and wands can be destroyed whilst in your pack. With no place to store items it's quite annoying to lose something vital, and essentially encourages packratting in the hope that the RNG will choose the unwanted items.

I have to ask, in the context of the item changes, why do we have equipment destruction? It only serves to annoy the player and reduce one's ability to prepare for a variety of situations. We shouldn't have to carry multiple of items we rely on (which may well be hard to find) in the hopes of getting to keep at least one. With potions/scrolls it wasn't so bad because you always had enough that it didn't matter, plus there were the ego ones that couldn't be destroyed. Now there are no such ego'd items, but more importantly the items themselves are more individual and it hurts a lot more when they are lost.

So, in a rare situation where I suggest the game be made easier rather than harder, I think we should remove item destruction from the game.

i dont mind the runes so much, it's the wands that really get me.

Agree. Permanent item destruction tends to undermine the sense of character achievement and progress. Also boring tactically since the response, as pointed out, is simply to carry everything important in duplicate or triplicate.

Yes I agree. Item destruction is mostly an annoyance.

Dervis picks up (c.): frozen book
Orc pyromancer casts Flame.
Orc pyromancer hits Dervis for 34.65 fire damage.
The burst of heat destroys your frozen book.

The same turn? Honestly?

Item destruction is one of the trials and tribulations of roguelike games, with wands it makes it nescecary to occasionally buy or find replacements so one wand wont last yo uthe game, making others irrelevant, and although picking up the tome and having it destroyed on the same turn is tragic bad luck. WHY WOULD YOU PICK IT UP when you know you are in an area with fire spamming mobs at large part of roguelikes is the excercises in caution you sometims need to take, if an item is too precious to risk losing, leave it by a staircase until you have taken care of the item destroying threat.

Artifacts are immune to destruction effects. Anything else is replaceable.

And yes its irritating when it happens, but its part of the fun of the genre

Actually that 'frozen tome' IS an artifact... having it burned off really sucked to be honest.

Elkan wrote:HY WOULD YOU PICK IT UP when you know you are in an area with fire spamming mobs at large part of roguelikes is the excercises in caution you sometims need to take, if an item is too precious to risk losing, leave it by a staircase until you have taken care of the item destroying threat.

Leavin stuff on the ground so it's not destroyed?
That's just cheap!
Some roguelikes - T2 too, I think - had elemental damage destroy stuff on the floor too. Perhaps that should be implemented?

That was a joke, by the way.

I'm not against item destruction on principle - it made a lot of sense to me for potions and scrolls.

However, considering how different infusions and runes are from potions and scrolls, I think it could be reasonable to make them, if not indestructible, at least way more resistant to things like acid and fire.

Perhaps the damage type that destroys stuff should be arcane, instead?

And yes its irritating when it happens, but its part of the fun of the genre

And yet...as Grey and a few others said, some don't find it so fun. Perhaps the game could be funnier - at least for them - if this element was removed.

Potions and scrolls being consumables was in genre too...but we changed that. And people seem to like it. Not all, of course, but I don't think the game got much less funnier for most.

Again, I can see reasons for making some stuff destructable but 'it's in genre' doesn't sound like such a good argument to me.

I think item destruction works well in other games where there is a large wealth of items that can be easily found and there are various ways of protecting them. In ToME items are rarer and more vital to many of the tactical elements of the game, and are also impossible to protect (unless you want to spend turns dropping everything on the ground when a dangerous monster comes into view). Also there are quite a lot of monsters in ToME that use elemental effects compared with other games, and a lot of the effects are damage over time too.

As the system currently stands item destruction ain't fun, it's just annoying. It promotes bad play (packratting) and doesn't fit in with the strong tactical and strategic elements of the game.

maybe a decent compromise, and something that i would certainly be willing to try is to either:
1. reduce the chance that an item could be destroyed by something dramatic, like 90%. This would probably stop me from being a pack rat, but still occasionally gives you those 'OH CRAP!!!' moments, that I think ultimately enhance the game.
2. Make item destruction a feature of only some mobs, maybe bosses. This makes the player balance the loss of utility, like a PD rune for the boss battle vs. the chance of item destruction. Thus it becomes a choice that the player has to make - increase the difficulty of the fight by removing some of your options, or go in with all options, understanding that you are putting some of your items at risk.
3. Make a wearable artifact that prevents item destruction. I can see everyone grabbing this, just like they grab the orb of ID, or the recall rod. Maybe a cloak or something?

Charlatan73 wrote:maybe a decent compromise, and something that i would certainly be willing to try is to either:
1. reduce the chance that an item could be destroyed by something dramatic, like 90%. This would probably stop me from being a pack rat, but still occasionally gives you those 'OH CRAP!!!' moments, that I think ultimately enhance the game.
2. Make item destruction a feature of only some mobs, maybe bosses. This makes the player balance the loss of utility, like a PD rune for the boss battle vs. the chance of item destruction. Thus it becomes a choice that the player has to make - increase the difficulty of the fight by removing some of your options, or go in with all options, understanding that you are putting some of your items at risk.
3. Make a wearable artifact that prevents item destruction. I can see everyone grabbing this, just like they grab the orb of ID, or the recall rod. Maybe a cloak or something?

1-2. Either it is so uncommon that it is so pointless to worry about. Then better to just remove it. Or it is a real danger and then you should prepare for it by having everything in triplicate and so on. If some form of item removal must be included it would be better that the item was not permanently destroyed but instead disarmed and thrown away from the player some number of spaces. This way a player could still retrieve the item if he wins the current battle; this would remove the sense of permanent character regression and much of the packrat need caused by permanent destruction while still having a tactical effect in battle.
3. Should every boring element in the game be fixed by a special artifact? One problem being that new players will still be affected by that boring elements so that they may stop playing the game when trying it out. To me it seems better to remove the boring elements completely instead of just exposing starting/new players to them.

runes and infusions are immune to destruction while you are wielding them. this is more than enough protection. i don't think it should be encouraged to go running around with lots of backups in your pack - this system is too powerful as is. i agree with those that have suggested an increased encumbrance for runes and infusions - this would cut down on packratting.
i suggested a skill that protects against magic device destruction in a tree i proposed (and the packing tree already has one, if it hasn't been already removed). if a character relies heavily on magic devices, and one wants that kind of protection, one should have to sink some points.

Is a character's resistances extended to his belongings already?

Is a character's resistances extended to his belongings already?

Sort of, in a way. I believe the chance for destruction was based on how much damage you took, so if you took less damage there was less chance of your items getting destroyed.