Hidden Uses of Items

[Azathotep]

Despite this
"Oh the 'i' key, that's bound to the ironing action. You'll need to find an iron and an ironing board first of course, and a shirt to iron. Very useful towards the end of the game when you run into the monster that cannot attack anyone wearing a crease-less shirt"

And this
"You know you can identify them by dropping them in a sink? Shit man didn't you know that? It's kind of obvious. It's a sink! You know rings/sinks. Seriously you don't know about rings and sinks? Well what did you think the sinks were for"?

I still think hidden item uses can be make a game interesting. I have written a short blog post aimed at non-roguelike players to convey how roguelikes can offer intelligent decisions when it comes to using items. I know that generalizes and so is a bit misleading.
http://www.creepyshoebox.com/use-of-items

Some examples where I think it works:
-In nethack where you could carry a cockatrice corpse. If you see what touching a cockatrice does it's not that far a step to think about using one as a weapon. Of course you need to wear gloves, so that's another use for gloves.

-In brogue you can throw a potion of descent at a monster to make it fall to the next level, so it's a neat way of getting rid of threats. That's more intuitive.

I guess I am talking about items having secondary effects, uses other than the primary use they are in the game for.

-There's also cool fatal stuff, that has no real use (so this is not the same thing?) but is interesting like putting the lutefisk cube in the lutefisk cube in dredmor. Or putting on an amulet of strangulation in nethack.

I haven't played a lot of roguelikes but nethack is the only one I have played which has a ton of this kind of item interaction...although too unintuitive. I was expecting all the different cheeses in dredmor to do something until I found out it was a joke....and crafting isn't the kind of thing I am thinking of, that just produces more items.

I was wondering what people's thoughts are on this kind of item interaction aspect of roguelikes? Is it a bad idea, is it better to make interfaces less complex, with less actions?

[guest509]

I like this kind of stuff too. Sometimes it gets a bit wonky but generally it's fun to discover and experiment. Throwing of potions to apply the effect on a bad guy is neat. It seems weird though, I mean the player needs to drink the potion, right? But monsters just need to get doused?  :-)

[Vanguard]

Ragnarok is good for this kind of thing.  There are items whose function changes completely when you enchant them.  If you read any scroll while confused, you get a different effect, usually related to the scroll's original purpose.  If you read a scroll of identification while confused, it unidentifies you and your character's name is changed to "Unknown."

[Quendus]

This kind of thing is the reason I dropped nethack after 15 minutes.

[NON]

I like this kind of stuff too. Sometimes it gets a bit wonky but generally it's fun to discover and experiment. Throwing of potions to apply the effect on a bad guy is neat. It seems weird though, I mean the player needs to drink the potion, right? But monsters just need to get doused?  :-)

I think the general idea is that they breath in the fumes + get doused. Yeah it's not completely consistent, but makes for fun gameplay

Isn't it also a little weird that you can't just taste a potion by drinking a few drops or half the potion? It could be used for identifying it without wasting the whole thing. Or if you need just a little healing, you take just a small sip from a potion of healing.

[guest509]

Yeah. The original Zelda had a mechanic where you could drink half the potion, or buy only half if you wanted. If were to have a game with an ID mechanic I think I might try that for potions.

[Vanguard]

If you can ID potions without wasting the potion or putting yourself at risk, the identification system is pointless.

[Trystan]

Yeah. The original Zelda had a mechanic where you could drink half the potion, or buy only half if you wanted. If were to have a game with an ID mechanic I think I might try that for potions.

I always wondered what it would be like if healing items could be used to heal you all the way and the leftovers would remain. So a Healing potion (23 oz) would probably be a one use item for a warrior but a wizard could take a sip every once in a while.

Now that I think about it - that's probably why we don't see it very often. If each healing item can be used several times, then the difference between low hp and high hp characters is less because your "effective max hp" is your base hp + number of uses found instead of base hp + number of potions found.

If you had 4 potions that heal 20 hp and you use them when you drop to 5 hp:
If you start with 8 hp then you drop to 5hp and recover 3hp per use: 8 + 3*4 = 20 total hp.
If you start with 30 hp then you drop to 5hp and recover 20hp per use: 30 + 20*4 = 110 total hp.
for a difference of 110 - 20 = 90 hp due to "wasted" potions.

If you had 4 potions of 20 ounces (=80oz) that heal 1 hp per ounce and you use them when you drop to 5 hp:
If you start with 8 hp then you drop to 5hp, recover 3hp (77oz left), drop to 5hp, recover 3hp (74oz left) ... etc = 8 + 4*20 = 88 total hp.
If you start with 30 hp then you drop to 5hp, recover 25hp (55oz left), drop to 5hp, recover 25hp (30oz left) ... etc = 30 + 4*20 = 110 total hp.
for a difference of 110 - 88 = 22 hp due to initial differences (30 - 8 ).

So, for healing type potions at least, having multiple uses that remove the concept of "waste" means that the difference between low hp and high hp characters is sort of lost. There's still the lost turns when quaffing potions though.

Although maybe you want to lessen the difference between low and hp characters.

[Samildanach]

If you can ID potions without wasting the potion or putting yourself at risk, the identification system is pointless.

Not necessarily. You could have a correspondingly reduced chance of identification for taking a smaller swig. Having said that, I don't necessarily see that it would be something worth adding. Again, realism versus good gameplay.

[NON]

If you can ID potions without wasting the potion or putting yourself at risk, the identification system is pointless.

Not necessarily. You could have a correspondingly reduced chance of identification for taking a smaller swig. Having said that, I don't necessarily see that it would be something worth adding. Again, realism versus good gameplay.

Pretty much my thought when I wrote my comment. It wasn't meant seriously at all, just a funny thing to consider

[akeley]

In Powder (and maybe others) you can ID (some) potions by dipping objects in them. So you might imbue your sword with poison - or lose it, if it`s an acid potion. Great mechanic.

As for the OP, I just love it, it`s one of the things that makes RLs so fresh and interesting for me. This is what I find very boring in normal RPGs (especially wRPGs) - the conventionality of everything; objects, actions, settings etc. Always the same. And so much more could be done...

[Rickton]

So, for healing type potions at least, having multiple uses that remove the concept of "waste" means that the difference between low hp and high hp characters is sort of lost. There's still the lost turns when quaffing potions though.

Although maybe you want to lessen the difference between low and hp characters.

That's only if the potions heal a static amount of HP. You could have them heal a percentage: each potion has 10 swigs, each swig heals 10% of your max HP, a 200 HP warrior gains 20 HP per swig while a 80hp wizard only gains 8.

A bigger issue I have with the idea is that getting rid of the concept of waste makes the choice of using the potion less meaningful.
If you always drink the whole potion, you have to decide between two imperfect options. Do you heal now and waste some of the potion, or walk around wounded in the hopes you'll get hurt badly enough to be able to get full use out of it, but risk getting killed because your health is low?
If you only use however much you need, there's no reason to ever NOT drink the potion (assuming for the sake of this example that it's the only mode of healing).


Back on topic though, hidden uses of items (or item combination effects) are fun, but they should be logical, hinted at within the game, or just an easter egg that's not very useful. Having something really useful -- like identifying rings -- require something that doesn't make any sense -- like dropping them in a sink -- isn't good in my opinion (unless it's actually hinted at somewhere in the game; I've never made it past the first few levels of NetHack and don't really care to, due in part to things like this).

[Trystan]

I got sidetracked by the potions discussion but I also like hidden uses of items as long as they're not required.

One of my favorite items in any game is the Shield Rod in Castlevania Symphony Of The Night. It's a normal blunt weapon but if you do a special move (most weapons have special moves) then it will have a different effect based on which shield you're using. One shield will heal you, another will cure you, another will fire a homing projectile, another will fire a dozen small projectiles, etc. With the Shield Rod, your passive item gains some special effect that probably won't save your life or allow you to win the game, but it can help a little, it's a nice surprise, and it makes you want to try with each shield. Even if you don't use the special power, it's a decent weapon.

[Ancient]

I absolutely love this mechanic, and immediately reached for SLASH'EM because I could not have enough from NetHack itself.  Then came player patches applied on top of the game. Even more variety!

Some interactions are weird to me like why eating a lizard corpse in NetHack stops stoning. Other actions like wielding a potion in ADOM to hit with it make more sense. Some are funny. In ZapM drinking beer banishes fear (liquid courage). In Crawl when poison resistant you can drink potions of poison as sustenance. Ain't this great?

[Vanguard]

One of my favorite items in any game is the Shield Rod in Castlevania Symphony Of The Night.

The shield rod is amazing.  I'm much more impressed by detailed games like SotN than big but shallow games like Skyrim.