ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

In the current implementation, transmogrifying an item allows you to get the same amount of gold that you would get for selling it, with the added bonus of energy for the fortress. This basically lets you "sell" everything in a dungeon, makes encumbrance virtually worthless, and devalues the worth of gold.

If you're going to transmogrify something, it should give you a reduced gold return, thus increasing the incentive to sell the best items to shops. Currently, most people probably won't even touch a shop after a certain level, unless it had some artifact. With my own characters, I hardly visit any of the towns once I complete a few quests and get the fortress.

Edit: Apparently the gold return is different for items other than gems. Still, I believe it gives way too much, with my opinion on this posted below.

Disagree wholeheartedly. I don't find the game more fun when I need to carry around a bunch of +carry gear, nor would I ever put points in strength simply for that purpose. I've had to deal with it before, when using the Transmog Chest would cause my games to bug out. It was a huge pain. The whole encumbrance mechanic feels like the true offender.

As far as buying items in shops goes, I also disagree. While I don't buy tons of items, it can be a great way to fill in gaps when you can't find something to fill a slot. Rune/infusion shops are also extremely useful. It's also good to check the shops right after taking out the Master, since they restock.

It already does this! Only gems give like for like value. Ultimately though the ease of the transmo chest stops one even considering returning to shops, especially when gold isn't all that useful. And personally I say good! Screw the idea of having the game force us to do boring things. I wanna kill monsters, not playing a fecking dungeon tradesman.

Afaik the chest gives far less gold for ammo stacks than shops do.

Basically, I'm saying that the chest gives too much gold, and discourages visiting towns and shops (though I'll concede that rune shops are often still useful). With the addition of a persistent window or an uber ui, there would be even less incentive to go to towns!

Keep in mind that this would still be a choice; nobody would be forcing anyone to sell to shops any more than they're forced to transmogrify lots of items, because gold still wouldn't be very useful. It would just make gold supplies tighter, making money more of a challenge and more meaningful.

Right now, in my opinion, having a free shop in your backpack that gives you extra rewards, on top of the money they pay you, is a little broken.

How? Broken for whom? Who is losing out? How is this exploited? Sure, it's not particularly logical, but I don't think you could call it broken. Right now, the main end-game use for gold is to order an artifact from the merchant, which is already very limiting. Even with lots of farportals, getting more than 3 of these items in a game is a tall order.

The wilderness is so damn dangerous that I'd rather not play shopkeeper. Item management is only really interesting, IMO, when the game emphasizes survival and limited resources. ToME just isn't that sort of game.

The Transmog chest can't output more than 25 gold, by the way, so there is still some incentive to sell those end-game artifacts to shops.

Absolutely not. In fact, I feel that Transmogrification should give exactly as much as a shop. The player should never be rewarded for or encouraged to lug things back to shops, ever, at all.

If feasible, I would support (strongly) having the player start with the chest, and removing the ability to sell to shops entirely, much the same way that the orb ultimately replaced the identification shop entirely.

Why? Simple. Carrying things back to shops is not fun. It is not interesting or exciting. With no respawning, it doesn't involve any risk or threat or trade-off, it's pure boring wasted time on the player's part. It should offer absolutely zero benefit to the player, fullstop; it should never be encouraged, and the player should never feel that they are giving up anything, at all, by choosing not to carry things back to shops.

What does it add to the game, now that there's no respawning? Nothing. The only reason not to do it is because it's horrifically boring and dull. "Boring" and "dull" should not be gameplay elements or balance elements. Boring and dull behavior should not be rewarded. Therefore, carrying things back to shops should never be rewarded, at all -- the chest should give you at least as much as carrying things back to shops, and it's fine (in fact, it's good) if the chest flat-out gives you more than shops in every way.

I think it's reasonable to suggest that the player should flatly no longer be allowed to sell things to shops once they have the chest. Selling things to shops is -- like potions and consumable items -- a "bad old way" of doing things that ToME is rightfully moving away from; it should be burned out of the game entirely.

It's boring. It's dull. It purely detracts from the game. Kill it, kill it, kill it. Make the chest give full price, please. If this makes it too easy for the player to earn money, balance it by universally reducing item sale prices. But the player should never be rewarded for or encouraged to sell things at shops rather than putting them into the chest. Shops should, if anything, pay less than the chest. Selling things to shops is a regrettable hold-over from old ways of doing things that should be minimized and kept out of gameplay as much as possible.

I agree, Aquillion. The economic system has never been ToME's strong suite, and, along with items and inscriptions with finite charges (which are being phased out), is probably the main aspect that does not adhere to ToME general design philosophy of eliminating tedium, grinding, and unnecessary boring mechanics of the game. As I understand it, the price of gems increased a while back to make them a main source of income (as well as gold drops) for the player instead of selling items. This was a good half-measure, but I think ToME should go all the way and only allow the player to sell gems.

If I may diverge for a minute to share a different type of playing style...

I've played several under-leveled characters that skip most non-essential zones. They usually fight the Master at clvl 12-16 and go to the Far East at clvl 20-25. Most die in Dreadfell or an Orc Pride, or to a summoning trap or dreadmaster. None get the Transmogrifier chest. And you know what? I don't miss it at all. It turns out ignoring items is even more convenient than transmogrifying them. Don't need an item? Leave it for the next weary adventurer. After playing like this, I now find the Transmogrifier chest tedious (but it is, of course, less tedious than hauling items back to shops to sell).

Under-leveled characters have a greater reliance on items, so it can be very important to buy items from shops, which means these characters have an incentive to make money. I still lug around lite items to sell, such as rings and amulets, infusions and runes, and ammo, which, along with gems, provide sufficient income. My latest character had 400 gold and 600-700 worth in gems at the end of the game, and he probably purchased over 2000 gold worth of items. The point here is that, um, buying items from shops is a nice option to have, but selling items (except for gems) is stupid. Transmogrifying items is stupid too; I'd much rather the Transmogrifier chest do something passively.

Also, currently, the new Lost Merchant "special" items for a "special" cost incentivizes transmogrifying (or selling) every single item the player come across, which I think encourages tedium. How many hundreds or thousands of items do you think you Transmogrify during the course of a game? I'm sure it's a lot, and it constantly interrupts the flow of playing the game.

So, back to suggestions. Let me list-ify 'em:

(1) Only allow selling of gems
(2) Don't allow selling any other items (a corollary to (1))
(3) Don't allow items to decay (er, just because )
(4) Don't actively transmogrify items for gold. Make it passive or activated for something else (like accessing something from the storage room every 500 turns or so), or get rid of the Transmogrifier altogether.
(5) Gain fortress energy some other way, such as a passively with gained experience (as someone else suggested elsewhere) or via gems.

And, as a final thought that wasn't worth list-ifying, I actually don't mind the current encumbrance system. It keeps me honest and makes it so I don't haul around everything that I may in some conceivable situation have some small need of (although I tend to do this anyway ). I'm not strongly opinionated on this, though, so I wouldn't be against encumbrance being changed if a reasonable alternative were proposed.

I'd personally be happy if shops and gold were entirely removed from the game. There'd have to be solutions to other things like the dwarf talent, and making runes more common, but overall it would remove a hugely boring micromanagement system from the game.

Seeing as Maj'Eyal has towns/cities and forts who trade with each other, removing gold and shops kind of takes away from the suspension of disbelief that despite all the crazy magical stuff that has happened, there is a semblance of normalcy.

tiger_eye wrote:I've played several under-leveled characters that skip most non-essential zones. They usually fight the Master at clvl 12-16 and go to the Far East at clvl 20-25. Most die in Dreadfell or an Orc Pride, or to a summoning trap or dreadmaster. None get the Transmogrifier chest. And you know what? I don't miss it at all. It turns out ignoring items is even more convenient than transmogrifying them. Don't need an item? Leave it for the next weary adventurer. After playing like this, I now find the Transmogrifier chest tedious (but it is, of course, less tedious than hauling items back to shops to sell).

Also, currently, the new Lost Merchant "special" items for a "special" cost incentivizes transmogrifying (or selling) every single item the player come across, which I think encourages tedium. How many hundreds or thousands of items do you think you Transmogrify during the course of a game? I'm sure it's a lot, and it constantly interrupts the flow of playing the game.

My experience is the same. After playing the game for a while I tend to skip most non-essential zones and I stopped using transmogrification.
I like how gems are automatically picked up, so I would not mind a gem-only money system.
Alternatively, just make monsters drop gold and transmogrifying gems only produces energy. If this is done, then just remove the option to sell things at a shop. Its not like you can sell your old cloths in a clothing shop in real life ^_^ (I'm sorry, we only *sell* things we do not buy second-hand weapons).
I generally never use shops so I don't care if they are removed or not.

I don't use farportals, but I would not want to nerf it too much for people that do use it. So still allow enough energy to be generated for players to use it.

There was a fuss kicked up when DarkGod made it so that shops only buy gems and artifacts. Personally I thought it was great, and it's a shame he's changed it back. Let junk be junk without having to turn everything into gold!

marvalis wrote:Its not like you can sell your old cloths in a clothing shop in real life ^_^ (I'm sorry, we only *sell* things we do not buy second-hand weapons).

Most stuff in these days is produced industrially, though. I'm pretty sure in the past some shops would be interested in buying stuff too. I actually think an interesting mechanic if we're keeping item decay would be having decayed stuff show up in nearby shops, btw, or adventurer parties.

Chest gives less gold for non-gems than just selling...does it tell this to the player anywhere, clearly? Either it should, or this should be changed. Aquillon has a point that if gold from the chest and from shops is going to be different, the chest should give *MORE*. The chest isn't an intelligent being out to make profit at the player expense(unless it is, being a Sher'tul artifact I can't be sure ).

On the whole issue of shops - I'd like to bring up that people who don't like buying and selling are free to play like that now, while if things were changed again...the reverse would not be true. People who like shopping would be penalized. I think that would be bad, unless there were a lot of other significant changes to provide a better chance of getting useful equipment.
More chances to order/create custom equipment like the Lost Merchant or jewelers could be a good idea, perhaps.

I fully agree with bricks also, that managing carrying capacity isn't very fun. And *why* is it bad if, as the game progresses, the player no longer feels the need to return to town just to sell stuff?

I *DO* think the current transmog interface is a bit annoying, wish it could use checkboxes when transmogging from inv. But that's separate.

Welll... this discussion is making me think of the Horadric Cube... How about us being able to transmorgify a couple of useless items for the chance to get a slightly less useless item...

Canderel wrote:Welll... this discussion is making me think of the Horadric Cube... How about us being able to transmorgify a couple of useless items for the chance to get a slightly less useless item...

If fortress energy could be used for enchanting/disenchanting, it would certainly be interesting. Could transfer egoes/enchantments between items, stuff like that, without needing extra NPCs.
Now THAT, if flexible enough, might make people not miss being able to buy stuff from shops.
However, it would be a huge change, likely much more than than what this thread is about.