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  • Re: Putting everything in the bag

    From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Jist Anidiot on Wed Jan 17 05:40:20 2024
    On 17.01.2024 02:18, Jist Anidiot wrote:
    I'm just getting back into NH. I'm playing on NAO the latest version
    they have available.

    i have a promising game. Unforuntatly twice now I have somehow
    accidentally said put everything in the Bag of Holding including the
    Wand of Cancellation.

    What am I hitting to cause this and is there someway to disable that
    option?

    It may soothe you to hear that (after decades of playing roguelikes)
    the same just happens to me in a recent Slashem game played at home.

    The situation happened after I just completely killed that annoying
    Guild of the Disgruntled Adventurers, with tons of items lying around.
    Sadly, the last things I picked up to stash them in my bag were all
    the wands. And obviously I missed that there was cancellation amongst
    them.

    It was even more frustrating because it had been an artifact bag of
    holding with 6x carrying capacity. All collected importend things
    for the late game were lost, 80% of the dungeon explored, so little
    hope for sufficient ressources left to find. The most important gear
    (perfect armor, amazing artifact weapons, a good amulet, two rings)
    is in my inventory, so I could continue an arduous game now. But I
    decided to put that game on hold. I could certainly still easily win
    the game, but its just boring to Not Pass Go and restart collecting
    all the necessary support items from scratch.

    I don't quite understand part of your question; you are aware that a
    wand of cancellation doesn't fit with bag of holdings. So in Nethack
    and (most?) other variants it is at it is.

    This is built-in behavior (no option), so you cannot disable it.

    I usually take precaucions, giving bags of holding and those wands
    well visible "names". And I'm careful when operating the dangerous
    items. I put them in standard slots (the wands in 'c' then 'd', or
    put them in a sack named ***cancellation*** at inventory slot 'c'.)

    Once identified you cannot 'call' the wands any more in such ways;
    if you could I'd more easily spotted them in that heap of hundreds
    wands on the floor, which was the source mf my mishap.

    Many years ago I suggested to "fix" that behavior; it would be IMO
    much more sensible (to not completely frustrate players) to blow up
    the (precious) bag but let their contents survive littering around.

    It might be that I've seen a variant that implemented that behavior,
    but don't recall for sure and certainly forgot which variant it was.
    Maybe you want to look for it and switch to that Nethack variant.

    Janis

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  • From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Julian on Wed Jan 17 08:52:52 2024
    On 17.01.2024 07:01, Julian wrote:
    You are trying to rationalize exploding your bag of holding. [...]

    Am I? - My intention at least was (a) to answer the question, (b) to
    provide suggestions how to minimize risk, (c) to suggest alternative implementation design, and (d) to point to (maybe) existing variants.


    On the other hand, floating eyes menace the hallways of the Dungeons
    of Doom ending it for hapless barbarians who don't kill them on the
    first swing. Floating eyes are right behind you. If you see two
    floating eyes at the same time it is a sign of bad luck.

    IMO, a preferable design would be to adjust all effects to a sensible
    degree; also (e.g.) the duration of paralyzes from floating eyes. Or
    the effect of poisonous traps/arrows/etc.; it's typically still worse
    enough if your HPs get reduced to 5% (or 10%); why just terminate the
    game by making it by chance instant-deadly. Or the duration of the
    stoning process; reducing the player's speed from turn to turn before
    you turn to stone will at least make it possible to try to counter in
    a sensible range of time (cf. how green slime is implemented, which is
    IMO a good range) and to better notice its effect (in case where the
    UI floods you with combat messages).

    (This does *not* mean that zapping a wand of death at yourself should
    let you survive.)

    Just my 2ct.

    Janis

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  • From Ron Nazarov@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Sun Mar 3 20:01:42 2024
    Janis Papanagnou <[email protected]> writes:

    On 17.01.2024 07:01, Julian wrote:
    You are trying to rationalize exploding your bag of holding. [...]

    Am I? - My intention at least was (a) to answer the question, (b) to
    provide suggestions how to minimize risk, (c) to suggest alternative implementation design, and (d) to point to (maybe) existing variants.

    NetHack 4 prevents you from putting a bag of holding into another bag of holding unless they are separated by at least 2 layers of sacks. It
    also makes putting in wands of cancellation and bags of tricks drain all
    of the wand/bag's charges, but not destroy the bag of holding. dNetHack
    and Hack'EM will not allow you to place an identified bag of holding,
    bag of tricks, or wand of cancellation into an identified bag of
    holding. notdNetHack completely removes bag explosion, instead simply
    not allowing placing bags of holding into other containers (so you
    cannot nest bags of holding). Wands of cancellation and bags of tricks
    are safe to put in.


    On the other hand, floating eyes menace the hallways of the Dungeons
    of Doom ending it for hapless barbarians who don't kill them on the
    first swing. Floating eyes are right behind you. If you see two
    floating eyes at the same time it is a sign of bad luck.

    IMO, a preferable design would be to adjust all effects to a sensible
    degree; also (e.g.) the duration of paralyzes from floating eyes.

    Some variants have replaced (or at least lessened) the floating eye
    passive paralysis interface screw. dNetHack (and by extension,
    notdNetHack) makes paralysis from floating eyes a much more sensible
    duration (2d6 turns). NetHack 4 replaces the paralysis interface screw
    with simply making you unable to attack a floating eye in melee unless
    you're blind (or have reflection or free action). Fourk makes attacking
    a floating eye also damage you (depending on how much damage you do and
    scaled by your experience level), instead of paralyzing you.

    Or the effect of poisonous traps/arrows/etc.; it's typically still
    worse enough if your HPs get reduced to 5% (or 10%); why just
    terminate the game by making it by chance instant-deadly.

    NetHack 3.7 (and many variants) have removed poison instadeath, usually replacing it with more stat drain and damage.

    Or the duration of the stoning process; reducing the player's speed
    from turn to turn before you turn to stone will at least make it
    possible to try to counter in a sensible range of time (cf. how green
    slime is implemented, which is IMO a good range) and to better notice
    its effect (in case where the UI floods you with combat messages).

    Since NetHack 3.6 the Stone status has been shown in the statusline,
    which makes it harder to not notice. The curses interface requires you
    to use tab to scroll past the message if you trigger a msgstop, which
    also helps.


    (This does *not* mean that zapping a wand of death at yourself should
    let you survive.)

    Just my 2ct.

    Janis

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