ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'd like to see a way to make shops restock without having to leave a town and wander around a few days, mainly because that forces a save, sometimes two or three due to getting in fights. Saving takes quite a while sometimes and tends to lag my game out. Maybe a button or something to that effect? If wandering around shops until you can find something you're looking for isn't intended game design, my bad on this suggestion and nevermind it. But if it is, I think this would be a solid addition.

In the SVN what is in the shop has been redone so their should be no need for scumming next beta. Also that feature may be considered to some as quasi cheating. Hopefully next beta people won't consider shop scumming.

1) You can shut off forced saves.
2) Why scum shops?
3) You can play the game normally, then come back and bam - new stuff.

Err, how is that scumming? I'm honestly curious. Is it scumming to go through the same level of a dungeon twice? I thought scumming would involve messing with my saves or crashing the game, something to that effect?

Final Master wrote:1) You can shut off forced saves.
2) Why scum shops?
3) You can play the game normally, then come back and bam - new stuff.

1. I didn't know forced saves can be turned off, that's awesome, thanks. 2. I'm still not understanding how this is scumming, but as far as why, because I've got a heap of gold, and would like to turn it into something that will make my character stronger. It's quite rare that I'm able to do this, so I 'scum' shops so the gold I'm picking up is of some value other than recharging wands. 3. When I hafta get the shop to restock a dozen times to find something useful, using the play normally then come back method is quite likely, in my eyes, to lead to the worthless gold problem I mentioned earlier.

In clarification, I don't mean to be defensive, I just don't understand how it's scumming, and like I said earlier, I'd like all the gold I'm gathering to be useful to me.

Shops are stocking much better loot on the SVN. Rather or not things will stay that way into the next beta or not is up to darkgod but it's looking like it'll be much easier to get good loot from shops next release.

That seems like it would solve the problem in a better way than mine, but I'm still quite curious as to why restocking the shops is considered scumming.

Jakk43055 wrote:That seems like it would solve the problem in a better way than mine, but I'm still quite curious as to why restocking the shops is considered scumming.

Well, if you were supposed to have an infinite selection of goods in shops and always be able to buy what you want (if you can afford it), then the shops wouldn't have the limited stocks that they have in ToME 4 (and most other roguelike). So, by traveling back and forth between towns to restock the stores, you are effectively making pointless one of the sources of difficulty of the game, thus some consider the practice to be scummy.

Of course, the problem is that it is quite easy to force the stores to restock, if it was harder, then doing it on purpose wouldn't be scumming. One example is from one *band (I forgot which one), where the stock quality depended on which dungeon floor you spent the last N turns in. So staying in town until the restocking lead to abysmal stocks.

I'm clearly unfamiliar with the roguelike community, because that whole "If it were harder to do, it wouldn't be scumming" thing works backwards for me. It seems like if restocking the shops was scumming, it would have been made harder to do. Difference of opinion, I spose. And from what people are saying, shops will be more likely to stock useful items in the next version, thus negating the main reason I've been doing it, which is worthless gold.

Definition of scumming (according to me):
Repetition of a process or set of actions to gain an advantage from the randomness of the game, and or to undo bad decisions from the player.[.b]

So, store scumming goes about revisiting stores until you find something you want to buy. Which, if there was something there in the first place you liked, you spent your money and then not have enough money to buy anything any more, and thus stop scumming. But now the temptation is to say "I have 1000 GP, if I scum just for that *perfect* armor", would then be scumming again.

But in tome there is a lot of random dungeons so running between towns can generate new dungeons for which you are not ready yet.

In older games people would scum to get 99 scrolls of identify, more of *identify* and many healing potions etc.

Jakk43055 wrote:I'm clearly unfamiliar with the roguelike community, because that whole "If it were harder to do, it wouldn't be scumming" thing works backwards for me. It seems like if restocking the shops was scumming, it would have been made harder to do. Difference of opinion, I spose. And from what people are saying, shops will be more likely to stock useful items in the next version, thus negating the main reason I've been doing it, which is worthless gold.

Some roguelike terminology is far stricter than in other genres. "Scumming" often refers to any repetitive act done for gain, such as repeating the same dungeon level over and over for experience and loot. It's not necessarily meant as a bad thing to do (how you play is up to yourself), though it's usually believed that in a well-designed game this should be discouraged.

I'm understanding now, previously the only scumming I was familiar with was savescumming. I'll continue doing it as necessary to have something worthwhile for my gold, but I can see where it would be looked down on.