ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I think it would be nice if stores removed the items that you sold to them whenever they restock. It will be more clear that they have restocked, and they won't be littered with the worthless items (for you) that you previously sold.

Nice idea, but not all items. It would be likely that they'd pawn off most of these items, but highly improbable they'd sell them all.

Could be amusing(but perhaps somewhat abusable?) if some removed items were actually transferred to NPC adventurers instead...

I wish I could figure out when stores do restock... I can't ever seem to trigger it now a days and find out *what* I did to do that.

Perhaps also add ordering items...?

If you pay enough money, a store might even import an artifact for you.

On related note I think there are too few randarts vs fixed arts.

Final Master wrote:I wish I could figure out when stores do restock... I can't ever seem to trigger it now a days and find out *what* I did to do that.

Dreadfell and the scar. (Beating them, I think. At least in b31 this was what I heard from the chatter channel).

Well, since we are speaking about the shops... I don't find 'em useful. First of all, the Transmogrification Chest fully replaces the shops. You get full (oh, I was wrong here; you don't get full price) selling price for all items you transmogrify + energy and you can use the chest anywhere. Sure, you don't get the chest from the start and in some cases it's not that easy to get it, so there definitely will be a period of time in which shops are crucial if you want to get some money, but it'll end fairly quickly. As for buying things: prices in shops are quite high, so if you see a nifty item that you would like to have, you may simply don't have enough money for it. And at the point where you can allow buying it, you won't need it anymore. This is true for the early game. After early game, however, shops have some potential, since you don't have problems with money. Come to think of it, shops in roguelikes were useful since in most cases they were selling consumables. And if they were selling equipment, they were still useful, because equipment could be damaged, cursed, etc.

As for the idea: yeah, sure, items better be removed.

You don't get full sell from the chest, sorry. It's particularly obvious when trans'ing ammo stacks. The only thing that goes for full price to the chest is gems. Further, the chest has a 25 gold max sell price, whereas other shops can get a bit higher. So, insofar as gold production goes, the shops do have a bit of an advantage, still. The big advantage to the chest is not having to physically carry junk back to the shop, so you can 'sell' a lot more. Quantity over quality.

Insofar as the actual shop contents go, my characters have been pretty consistantly helped by shop perchances. Early steel or a decent weapon ego can make a lot of classes go from 'death struggle' to 'cakewalk' in terms of starting difficulty. Shops are also about the best (that is, most likely to have) place to find waterbreathing items.

Of course, the items themselves can be very helpful. It's not uncommon to find excellent egos in shops. The price becomes largely negligible once you've got the chest or have sold a fair chunk of gem/ammo stacks. The biggest problem right now is that there's some significant 'gaps' in shop content, due to how spaced out the restocks are. If you don't know to space out visiting towns (be as high a level as possible when entering them!), you can lock the entire west to iron/steel quality items for most of your time there. Further, a lot of the towns seem level capped -- the last level 50, last restock, fellow I had couldn't find find voratun jewelery in magetown, ferex. They're a bit more limited in use than they were when restocks were still tied to boss murder -- but at least I'm only looking at three shopping trips instead of a dozen or more

Yeah, I've found some great stuff in shops before. Even at low levels it can give a really useful helping hand with getting a decent infusion or a better weapon.

I think the way they react to your level when entering the town needs to be removed though. One shouldn't have to meta-game what shops stock what materials.

Also, Angolwen needs more wands. I rarely even find them with egod wands. Seems impossible to get a teleport or healing wand these days.

I think the way they react to your level when entering the town needs to be removed though. One shouldn't have to meta-game what shops stock what materials.

Definitely. If it's a balance issue, just have high-level shops not let the player in until they're high enough level, or hide items that are above a certain quality until the player's high enough level (which would give the appearance of shops steadily getting new things available as the game progresses rather than sudden restocks.)

Also, Angolwen needs more wands. I rarely even find them with egod wands. Seems impossible to get a teleport or healing wand these days.

The problem isn't so much a lack of wands as it is the fact that wands are mostly broken right now and tend to overwhelmingly spawn as useless sticks. There has to be a broader determination of what's going to be done with them before anything else can be done about that, really.

Reverend Bizarre wrote:Well, since we are speaking about the shops... I don't find 'em useful.

Am I the only one who buys a lot of items from shops? My latest winner probably purchased 2000 gold worth of non-artifact equipment from shops. Most of my gear for most of the game were from shops. Heh, I purchased those rough leather gloves of dispersion very early on, and I used them the rest of game (even the final battle).

So, I think shops can definitely be useful. The rich merchant shop could be made more useful (and the prices could be even higher ). Shops become relatively less useful the more side quests and farportals you do, because your chance of finding better equipment increases. However, not everybody does side quests or many farportals. In other words, I don't have a problem with shops the way they currently are; I would just like them to remove the things that I sold them whenever they restock.

My SVN character just bought a belt of unlife from the shops at level 10 or something. Should make a certain watery dungeon a breeze.

I think the shops should(at least partially) restock every week or so and be filled with stuff of lower level than player, few equal level items and one to three higher level items.
Perhaps even add an option to "order something interesting for me" which gens a randart?

I agree with Reverend Bizarre, the shops currently are barely useful.

Asmageddon wrote:I think the shops should(at least partially) restock every week or so and be filled with stuff of lower level than player, few equal level items and one to three higher level items.
Perhaps even add an option to "order something interesting for me" which gens a randart?

I agree with Reverend Bizarre, the shops currently are barely useful.

The problem with restocking based on time passed is that this encourages the player to just wait in place for a week, which is simultaneously boring and game-breaking (because you could theoretically just wait until you get whatever you want.)

Why were shops changed to the current system, out of curiosity? It might be useful to consider that, so we know what we're aiming to do with any proposed solution.

My thoughts:

The current system is flawed in that it forces players to "game" the system based around when they enter the shops. That's its biggest flaw. This can also result in players making the shops useless, especially if they've played the game before but don't know how shops work, and visit every city right at the beginning to start alchemist quests etc.

Also, metagame knowledge that the shops restock after certain key events plays too big of a role. It's not good to force the player to rely on metagame knowledge (and makes the game less fun for people who haven't read spoilers.) The player has no way of knowing to check the shops after clearing Dreadfall. Worse, seeing the stocks change then may make players constantly revisit shops from then on (believing they'll restock at random) when there's actually no chance of them finding anything new.

Another consideration: Should shops lose their old inventory when getting new stuff? This is logical and prevents huge lists of stuff, but at the same time, it's potentially a bad thing, since it forces the player to constantly revisit shops if restocks are too frequent. One way to avoid this might be to have shops 'retain' their X most expensive items (which they can't sell so easily). As a practical matter, this would require repeatedly regenerating the stock if the player has missed more than one restock period while they were out, to avoid forcing them to constantly revisit shops or risk missing good purchases.

Hmmm. I think I suggested this somewhere but can't find the post.

What about funding the shop so it restocks when you pay X gold? Perhaps it could also get slightly better items every time you do so?