Re: CF: Answers to Scott Yelich's questions

["Mark Wedel" <mark@icp.siemens.com>]

On Jan 17,  5:54pm, Peter Mardahl wrote:
> Subject: CF: Answers to Scott Yelich's questions
> 
> > (3) How do I apply a scroll of weapon bonus?
> > It always says weapon not prepared?
> 
> You use the Prepare Weapon scroll first.  THEN you can apply the
> other scrolls. 

 The doc/SurvivalGuide is actually pretty good/accurate and making magical
swords.

> 
> > (4) Why do wands not give magic experience when 
> > they are used to kill something?  Why can't
> > spells such as fireball go over water?
> > Why don't my pet monsters attack all enemies?
> 
> Basically, because someone at some point decided that players
> shouldn't get magic experience for using wands/rods/scrolls:  they considered
> it abusive.  A low-level player can gain rather a lot of experience with
> little risk by using a wand of large fireball, for instance.

 It also went back to using such an item wouldn't really give the character
better knowledge (for example, if you cast spells, you should get better
at them.  likewise if you use a sword.  Currently, this is measured by
what you kill).  But killing monsters with a wand doesn't really teach you
more about casting.

 I have thought about changing it so you get experience for this, but it
goes into a generic category (so you could still gain overall levels, but it
won't help a specific skill).

> (alchemy) 
> The conversion (using a cauldron, the alchemy spell and a recipe) of
> raw materials into useful items.  You can make things like dusts which
> act like wands:  they cast spells.  However, the advantage of alchemically
> made stuff is that the spells don't have the MAGIC attacktype set.

 Alchemy is something that needs to be balanced.  Currently, finding formulas
honestly seems so difficult that a character would almost never use it.
Along with this, bodyparts were added to many monsters for alchemy, and this
increases the effective value of all monsters in the games (zombies corpses
are worth good money, and thus zombies are now worth more money when you
kill them.)  

 What should probably be added is a difficulty field to the formula
file - simple/basic formulas would have a low difficulty and thus be
on easy maps.  Difficult/useful formula (like the actual end products
and not the intermediate ones) have a higher difficulty.  A map should then
try to find a formula of appropriate difficulty when makin up treasure -
a high level map would actually have useful formula.  Also, there should be
some tie to the character actually having the recipe and being able to make
something - just because the player knows all the recipes should not mean
a character can make them.

 Actually, I would like most of the readable stuff to be redone (the
titles).  It is pretty annoying to buy a book of something to find out
it is information that you already have because the title is overly
vague.  This may involve including something about the contents in
the title (ie, bestiary of orcs, goblins, and gnolls), or 'recipe book
containing potion of invulnerability').  This way the character knows
if it at least might be useful without actually telling the character
what knowledge it contains.



-- 

-- Mark Wedel
mark@pyramid.com
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