ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The game still has items disappear when leaving a zone for a long time. With enemies and items no longer respawning I recommend making all items permanently stored in all dungeons. This prevents the problem of fleeing a difficult area bringing about penalties by causing you to lose all the items that were generated within.

+1

I suggested this in chat time ago I think.
Apparently DarkGod doesn't want people to use levels for storage... I hope he rethinks that, especially as people can still store stuff in vaults.

+1, yeah.

The game's home is not that hard to get.

And basically, preventing people from storing items in dungeons (which few people would want to do anyway, I suspect) is nowhere near worth the extreme annoyance and frustration that having items the player has not yet collected disappear, especially since this is a "guide dang it" issue that players have no reason to expect will happen unless they know obscure details of the game's mechanics -- I used to often dart into dungeons, then leave for one reason or another and come back later, and didn't realize I was potentially costing myself items until someone explained it to me. This is totally unintuitive behavior, something most players would have no reason to expect.

(However, if Darkgod really really wants to prevent players from using dungeons for storage, how about this? Make it so unidentified items never disappear, nor do weightless items like gold or gems -- since players would have no reason to store those. Wouldn't that fix the problem?)

Another +1 here. I really can't see a sensible reason for it, and it's another thing that an inexperienced player wouldn't expect without spoilers - which could lead to some nasty losses!

Aquillion wrote: (However, if Darkgod really really wants to prevent players from using dungeons for storage, how about this? Make it so unidentified items never disappear, nor do weightless items like gold or gems -- since players would have no reason to store those. Wouldn't that fix the problem?)

So we'd have to intentionally avoid walking on stuff to identify it so it doesn't disappear, in some cases? Feels...convoluted.
Just say no to object decay!

Zonk wrote:

Aquillion wrote: (However, if Darkgod really really wants to prevent players from using dungeons for storage, how about this? Make it so unidentified items never disappear, nor do weightless items like gold or gems -- since players would have no reason to store those. Wouldn't that fix the problem?)

So we'd have to intentionally avoid walking on stuff to identify it so it doesn't disappear, in some cases? Feels...convoluted.
Just say no to object decay!

Completely removing object decay would be best, I agree.

But tying it to identification status would at least be better than what we have now, where items the player has never seen can be permanently lost for no better reason than that they popped into a dungeon, remembered right after entering that they wanted to do something else somewhere else first, and popped out.

Most of the time, players are likely to take or junk items they've walked over, not leave them there.

(If there were some flag for items the player dropped, with only those items being subject to decay, that could be even better. But honestly, yeah, the simplest and most logical solution is to remove decay. I can't see players using dungeons for storage as being that big a deal. If a player wants to claim the ruins of Kor'Pul and store a bunch of staves there... so what? Getting their house isn't that hard, and the house is far more convenient and has many other powers, so it's not like that would render the house obsolete.)

Aquillion wrote:Completely removing object decay would be best, I agree.

But tying it to identification status would at least be better than what we have now, where items the player has never seen can be permanently lost for no better reason than that they popped into a dungeon, remembered right after entering that they wanted to do something else somewhere else first, and popped out.

Or popped into the elven ruins at lvl 6 for a daring grab at a stralite dagger (woohoo!) and a ring then ran out again like a sissy girl :p

How many new players are going to pop into (very proximate to Trollmire exit) locations like those Ruins, see the "you soil your leather armor just contemplating taking another step in this horror of a place"-type message, and back out again thinking "oh okay, I'll come back when I'm more awesome", only to then unwittingly miss out on lots of high-lvl goodies later on? This is close to my situation, if I'm understanding this point of contention correctly.

Decaying identified items, or items flagged as dropped by the player, at least has some practical justification (wanting to boost the appeal of designated storage locations), but even in that case, the player should at least have enough turns to, say, recall back to town, deal with a random fight or two, and then run back down through a few levels first before it disappears. At least make this a possibility.

My two tests a few days ago, of dropping a couple of items in Derth then leaving and going straight back in, and then trying the same but with an artifact (recall) on the ground as well, resulted in all non-artifact items being destroyed upon exit or re-entry. At least give us enough time to run from town to town, sheesh! :/

Oh, and if items are going to disappear, and it's not something that would be obvious or understood by a new player (believe me, it's not - almost all games like this don't decay items quickly, if ever - some may do it between game sessions), then the player should be made aware. Perhaps bring up a message the first time an item is dropped on the ground in each game session or region (should be enough to inform new players and to keep others cautious/reminded), with a statement like "You don't feel it's safe to leave anything valuable lying about here..."?

Also, as encumbrance tends to rear its head as an issue _early on_ in the game (when practically all characters have a fairly low - albeit quite reasonable - carry capacity due to low stats and no boosting items, etc), it seems pertinent and helpful to trigger a bit of lore early about the storage house people have mentioned here on the forums (I haven't 'researched' it here because I would like to learn about it in-game - haven't heard or seen anything there yet though, in my limited exploration)

Unless there is some pressing technical reason (like computers cannot handle the large savefiles :3),
I would suggest to completely remove object removal.

If people want to store items on the floor, let them, it even allows for some nice inventory challenges: Carbon Fiber Man

basically, what would be the point in storing? due to the lack of gold in the early game i usually sell everything that i don't need, after minmaxing my equip, so why somebody would need to store things? just equip what you have and sell the other things... am i right?

Nope. For instance, I like to keep equipment with specific resists for specific dungeons. And I don't always play a character that has enough strenght or buffs to carrying cap that it is able to carry all stuff.
Apart from that, I have the habit of not selling any 'real' artefacts, but storing them all.

On the OP, I agree with removing item disappearance alltogether. Especially, since players do not start with a pickaxe, and there's quite a few starter dungeons that have unreachable areas if you have no digger or means of teleport.