ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Even though there are far fewer items littering the dungeon in ToME 4 than in ToME 2, a large percentage of them remain useless to the finder. In fact, I think the situation may even be worse than in ToME 2.

ToME 4 is a game where class roles are extremely tightly delineated and min-maxing is the way to survive. Therefore any weapon not of the correct type to the character is automatically dungeon litter. All shields are dungeon litter to characters who rely on two-handed methods of hurting monsters, such as archers. Heavier armors are dungeon litter to characters who can't spare the stat points and skill points to be able to figure out how to wear one. The worst of all, equipment that is too good in quality cannot be used by characters before they advance to some stat level. For example, arrows made of yew wood are apparently so sharp, straight, and balanced that they cannot be used by starting archers.

It's especially annoying when a guaranteed artifact drop from a boss is effectively useless due to class issues and can only be sold for a tiny amount of gold.

Jewelry also suffers from uselessness issues. Skill bonus amulets are particular offenders, since for any given character most of them raise categories they don't even have access to. It was different in ToME 2 where jewelry that did things like raised Stealth and everyone had Stealth to raise, even if they were bad at it.

Not all boss artifact drops are worth 0.50 gold. There's one which is worth 200.00

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's sells for 500 gp now (!).

Getting 500gp eventually, if you're lucky, is nice and all, but that doesn't help you a whole lot when you need 10 gold right now. I'd prefer if sales prices were higher all across the board and excessively valuable exceptions like this toned down in response. Now that the talent system has been reworked, minmaxing should eventually not be as important anymore, but that doesn't fix the problem that most items aren't even worth taking back to a shop to sell them, plain and simple.

well, you would have 10 extra gold if you took items back and sold them

Why would things not be worth picking up and selling them? I walk off with everything in the dungeon I can pick up -- except the mail armors since they would would burden my missile-shooting characters too much -- and why not! It doesn't take any extra time to pick them up and there are a bunch of good things my characters do with their gold when they get it.
I'd say the only things that aren't worth picking up monetarily are some of the scrolls and potions. However, if I'm going to pick everything else up, I may as well grab them too.

well, you would have 10 extra gold if you took items back and sold them

Well, duh But considering how many "trash items" sell only for 0.1 gold or so, this is often not worth the bother, eventually cluttering up the level with stuff for which you have absolutely no use in any sense.

The new drop system was meant to correct this issue, after all, by having regular enemies drop one item at most, which is compensated for by making them all(?) ego items. Problem is, egos don't really factor into sell price at lower levels, so you end up with tons of unusable and unsellable stuff at the stage of the game when every single bit of equipment and cash really makes a difference.

Why would things not be worth picking up and selling them?

This mostly applies to characters with low maximum carrying capacity, but I think that 0.1 gold just isn't even worth the bother of going back (which is pretty time consuming without Word of Recall, after all) and selling it. I usually don't really pick anything up at all before level 10. But then I'm kinda impatient like that

Only scrolls and potions sell for the low kind of money you are talking (and even many of them sell for .3 ). I'd say pick up every weapon you see until you are carrying too much. Then you can start dropping the iron crap, but the money I get from iron makes a big difference to my characters in the early game.

Eh, I just said "screw this" and fixed up the module so stuff sells for 80% of value instead of 10%. Makes it hurt less when you accidentally buy something instead of selling, too.

Thanks for the advice, though, although I still think that a somewhat smaller divide between "really valuable" and "mostly worthless" stuff would be better, if only so you don't have to pick up every bit of litter you see like some kind of elven dungeon janitor.

I think the idea of not being able to sell most/all items at all should be considered (along with slightly increasing the gold drop rate). Same result, but more convenient.

I simply never carry back any type of armor unless it is strictly better than what I have now but I cannot use it yet. Armor weighs far more than weapons and sells for the same price. Having played almost every class in the game now, very few times have I ran into actual problems with encumbrance.