More hints for beginners? Must one read the spoilers?

[Mithril]

Should ToME be a game where one must read the spoilers in order to have a chance? Many roguelikes are like that. I think it narrows the audience. Many people will give up after a while when they cannot progress.

I think that currently many of the unlocks will likely be missed unless one reads the spoilers. Many people may miss Bill or the personal house completely if they do not collect lore. Many people who play alchemists may never realize that they can switch to controlling the golem or level it up.

So maybe there should be much more help? Maybe have a library where one can buy various hints for a minor sum?

[bricks]

I think a lot of that information should be in-game, as you say. The lack of certain bits of information seems to come about due to the periodic nature of development; sometimes a class itself will go largely untouched for a number of version, though mechanics crucial to the class have been completely revised.

Both Bill and the fortress have related quests, so missing them is more a matter of not looking at your quest dialogue. A more prominent "new quest!" announcement would be splendid, though somewhat annoying for more experienced players.

[Covenant]

The OP raises a good point. To say that the ToME community (by having separate forums and chat channels) seems to discourage spoilers, they seem more necessary than in a good deal of other roguelikes.

Aside from the obvious lack of help documentation (the whole 'resource leech' issue was raised in a different thread recently, and serves as a good example), there are many other smaller things that may go unnoticed by long-time players, but are frustrating for new people.

Mithril pointed out the house - I myself spent a long time lugging things around wondering when I'd finally get a place to store them (I wanted to collect as many fixed artifacts as I could, for fun). If I'd have known the Sher'Tul ruins was going to give me one, I'd have visited there a lot sooner. As it was, I was suspecting it'd be a quest given to me in town, like the Derth/Tempest Peak one. Nothing major, but an annoyance that could be averted by making it (an early) part of the main quest.

Another example would be the Kryl-Feijan temple. I visited it for the first time recently, and after spending a couple of turns moving toward cover I noticed a 'Turns remaining' counter in the corner. I couldn't see the sacrificial victim the text had alluded to, so I quickly made my way to the other end of the room, assuming there'd be some kind of altar I had to destroy, or a woman I had to free/kill/interact with in some way, but the timer ran out before I was even in view of it.

I still don't know what I'm supposed to do - kill all the cultists in the room? Reach the altar faster? - but since reading the forums, I've learned that the counter goes up for every cultist you kill. Surely the level-entry text could be altered to give newbies a better clue of what they're supposed to be doing? Otherwise, as the OP said, situations like this just encourage the use of spoilers to stop players 'missing out' on anything.

Off the top of my head, another example - things like the Crystal Focus, or the Heart of the Sandworm. What sort of item should I imbue it in? Will eating this heart have negative side effects (as the flavour text alludes to)? These sort of things encourage newbies to look up spoilers.

In general, the use of 'Once you start this quest/enter this zone you're in till you succeed or die' is a big cause of this problem; as an unspoiled newbie, how would I know whether I'm strong enough for, say, the Temporal Rift? Hell, I don't even know if it's a fixed dungeon or a special event (like Crawl's labyrinths and bazaars) that will disappear once I leave the level.

That could be alleviated somewhat by designing zones to slowly give you a taste of what you'll be up against before any locking in point, so that you can judge whether your strength is adequate.

Anyway, it's a big issue, and I just mean to point out a couple of examples I've noticed, but I'm glad someone brought the topic up.

[Aquillion]

I still say that the distinction between Ice damage and Cold damage is completely obtuse to any user who doesn't already know about it -- most users are probably not even going to notice that there are two different words for it.

The fact that Slime damage inflicts slow is similarly something that, realistically, players are often only going to know about via guides or the like -- even if they notice their attacks are slowing the enemy, they may not realize why.

IMHO those things should be followed by (chance to slow) or (chance to freeze) or whatever, respectively, at least in equipment descriptions. That'd make it more clear to a new player looking over a list of potential equipment that the sword that does slime or freeze damage is dramatically more powerful than the one that does fire or acid damage, something that is currently extremely easy to not realize.

Also, the race descriptions should be written to list and focus on all four of each race's racial talents. Currently it focuses much more on their stat modifiers, so most new players are likely pick races based on that... even though stat modifiers don't really matter nearly so much as racial talents in the long run.

[Grey]

I think a second tutorial with an alchemist would be good, showing some advanced tactics and damage types. Dungeons of Dredmor has a good tutorial system to emulate. An in-game manual would also be nice, but would have to be kept up to date.

ToME is already quite good for not needing spoilers on obscure item interactions, but there's always room for improvement.

[marvalis]

Some other possible ui improvements:

wild infusion cures poison/hex/mental/magical/physical but what does that mean? If the negative effect would clearly show what category it belongs to, then this might help the new player (ideally being color coded or using graphical symbols to indicate what group it belongs too). This might also help clear out some of these effects and make the categories a bit more coherent (dunno if that is actually a problem right now because I have little oversight).

It is still not possible to target something, and examine it, for example so you can hover over its temporary effects and read the description. Some of these effects need to be known to understand what you are fighting. Without spoilers this can often not be known to the new player.

[Dervis]

We could add a tips element to every talent in the game. This would probably help people understand their class a bit better.

newTalent{
name = "Thick Skin",
type = {"technique/combat-training", 1},
mode = "passive",
points = 5,
require = { stat = { con=function(level) return 14 + level * 9 end }, },
getRes = function(self, t) return 3 * self:getTalentLevelRaw(t) end,
on_learn = function(self, t)
self.resists.all = (self.resists.all or 0) + 3
end,
on_unlearn = function(self, t)
self.resists.all = (self.resists.all or 0) - 3
end,
info = function(self, t)
local res = t.getRes(self, t)
return ([[Your skin becomes more resilient to damage. Increases resistance to all damage by %d%%]]):
format(res)
end,
tips = function(self, t)
return ([[Straight up damage reduction... Although you probably won't need it early on, this will prove invaluable in the mid and especially in the late game on any character.]])
end,
}

[darkgod]

I like the idea.. but we need volunteers.
I cant do it for three good reasons:
- bad at writing
- detracts from my time on other issues
- no will to change every talents ;>

:>

[marvalis]

would it be possible to have an in-game skill library that simply takes the talent descriptions, compiles it in a list, and make it search-able?
That way the player always has a way to find out what 'Blurred Mortality' means when he sees it on a vampire. Ideally you should just be able to hover over the vampire his sustains and get a description of some sort (as suggested above). Maybe we can even have both: a talent library that you can link to from the talent effects in the game (you look at the vampire, you see it has 'Blurred mortality'. You hover over it to see the description. You click on it to open the talent library and see the full description.

[Gliktch]

As a possible (easy code) stopgap, how about if once you mouseover something that produces a popup (enemy or ally), holding Shift keeps the popup open so you can then mouseover any talents or effects listed there?

There's probably a better way in the long run, this just seems simple enough for now though.. And this is assuming that the effect lines in those enemy mouseovers are already 'ready' to display info on hover, so long as the popup itself wasn't destroyed before your cursor could get there.

Regards,
- Matthew