Identification: thrilling or tedious?

[darkgod]

Oh and thus, I need a new spell for the Divination talents, any ideas ?

[Mithril]

Great news regarding identification!

Regarding the divination school, here are two ideas.

Foretelling.
You get one message per talent level. So if you put five points into it you get all five messages. (At most, no message if an appropriate item/monster/quest does not exist.)
1. Sense if standing on a stair down if the next level has an escort quest and who it it. Also works if you are on the world map and standing on a dungeon entrance. "You sense in your future X who is in distress."
2. Sense which is the most dangerous trap on the current level (causing most damage or causing worst effect. Picking random one if they are equal.) "You sense in your future a dangerous X trap."
3. Sense which is the best ego item on the level. A random if several equally good. "You sense in your future a powerful X ego item."
4. Sense which is the most dangerous monster on the current level. "You sense in your future a dangerous X monster."
5. Sense if there is an artifact on the current level. Including one carried by a monster. "You sense in your future the X artifact ."

Mind's eye
1. Select a monster in sight. For some duration you can see the location of this monster even if it leaves your line of sight. Longer duration than more general monster detection spells. Increasing duration with more talent levels. Good for boss fights.
2. You can use the look command to check the monster's stats.
3. You get messages regarding what the monster is doing like if it encounters a trap or summons others.
4. You can see everything that the selected monster can see.
5. You no longer need to a see a monster in order to cast the spell. If selecting yourself as a target the most powerful monster on the level will be selected even if out of sight.

[Grey]

A simple suggestion would be to remove items and traps from Sense and give them their own spell, Detect Items. Detect Items will only pick up traps on talent level 3. At level 5 the items will be identified by the spell even as they lie on the ground (yeah, screw you Elisa!)

[Burb Lulls]

Hmm... how about...

Cognisance (Sustained)

Maps all tiles around the player in a radius of X, regardless of line of sight.
At level 3, also detects enemies. Enemies will be alerted if they are detected.
At level 6, enemies are no longer alerted.

Mind Tap (Activated)

Deals a small amount of arcane/mind damage to an adjacent enemy. If this damage kills the enemy, you have a X% chance to gain telepathy for whatever type of monster it was (the same letter). For example, killing an orc with mind tap would allow you to detect all orcs, but after killing a troll with mind tap you'd stop detecting orcs and start detecting trolls, etc. A failed mind tap could cancel your old telepathy regardless.
Increased skill levels improve damage and chance of gaining the telepathy.

[Susramanian]

Darkgod, when we're holding Elisa's crystal, can we have the items identified as soon as we step on them as opposed to picking them up? Having to pick up and drop every item you find is still a keystroke chore and a totally unnecessary one. Anything to make the game smoother and faster without sacrificing depth and fun is good.

Oh, and I'm really happy you like the idea. I'm always thrilled to help move this great game towards its momentous release!

[darkgod]

Yeah it does that too
Elisa is a really nice girl

[hops]

If I do not understand wrongly, undead will have absolutely no means of ID in the entire dungeon of Path of Dead. I would suggest spawning ID scrolls in the Path of Dead, or give undead pseudo ID, since they have had much experience before their unlife.

[Dervis]

Voting tedious here.
The way I'd go around this would be:
Leave the system as it is with 2 simple changes:
1 - auto-id any item on equip
2 - add a few cursed egos just to add some risk to it (and add scrolls of remove curse I guess)

--

Edit: I was too lazy to read the full thread. This is in relation to current version. If you've already got something lined up for the future, I'll eagerly wait for it.

[darkgod]

How is it tedious? You get 95% of items auto-ided by walking over them adn the few that are now means they are powerful and you can id them by using the orb

[Susramanian]

I'm guessing he was responding to the original post, not the recent idea.

[edge2054]

Darkgod, for my Chronomancy school (which is the divination/future telling generic one) I'm using the following names and effects.


Deja Vu: A detect actor + vision combo
Prescience: Defense bonuses
Foresight: Opens up a potion/scroll shop window so you can buy a consumable. Costs no energy.
Premonition: Avoids the next attack that occurs with in the next X turns. (Like a pre-cast, single attack, bone shield).

Feel free to steal any of those affects (but leave me the names please )