[RFE] Allow wishing for every skill.
issueid=2970 05-13-2014 11:14 AM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Blasphemous: 110
[RFE] Allow wishing for every skill.

Considering the fact that most skills are wishable, would it be too much to ask for *all* skills to be wishable directly?

I'm playing a raven-born GE Mindcrafter right now, I did the druid quest to get gardening.
With 300+ blessed spense I got healing covered and I knew this was how I was going to play the moment I made this char but it begs a few questions.
The problem is that I don't have the healing skill.
I had some luck with pools and items. Got two wishes from the former, two RoDS among the latter.
Also found 2 pairs of 7LB randomly as well as AoLS. Wished for find weakness and GoGS.
So now I have two spare wishes and would like to use them to get alertness and healing skills.
But I can't.

People can argue the usefulness of some non-guaranteed skills like woodcraft or cooking.
However I don't think anybody can say that herbalism or find weakness are not desirable for any r/c combination. Those are both wishable.

Wishing for alertness yields perception increase, strangely. Perception is not a crucial attribute, if quite useful, so why not make it directly wishable?
An experienced player knows not to wish for attributes directly because you only gain ~2-5 points of increase where wishing for PoGA guarantees 9 points, though distributed evenly among all attributes.
Changing how wishing for perception works, relinquishes the spot for alertness skill.

Healing is another story but I think it would be fair to assume that a char with full health wishing for healing should not receive the "you are healed greatly" message and instead get the skill.
Instead, wishing for "health" could restore HP. Perhaps wishing for "regeneration" could grant the skill?

Now is the time when all those people will say: you want healing, do the carpenter quest. Or if you want alertness, play a dark elf or archer or whatever.
That's all nice and fine but doing carpenter quest doesn't prevent you from later wishing for gardening/herbalism.
What if I don't want to play a dark elf? For example if I have 10 wishes, that means I'm pretty much set for ultra with any char, but still unable to get either of mentioned skills even if I wanted to spend all those wishes on them. Where's the sense in that?
Doing the druid quest means that the only way to get healing skill otherwise is through an unreliable method like potions/scrolls of education (themselves wishable). If you are lucky.
Most often you are not and instead get bridge building or survival.
Making healing (and all other currently un-wishable skills) available via wish makes perfect sense, each skill is worth one wish and it doesn't break the game in any way.
Issue Details
Issue Number 2970
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Windows 7
Status Implemented
Priority 6
Suggested Version ADOM r48
Implemented Version ADOM r71 (v2.2.5)
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 17
Votes against this feature 6
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




05-13-2014 11:36 AM
Ancient Member
I've always thought that this is actually a bug (e.g. Healing not being wishable because the name clashes with a keyword for a wish to be healed, not because TB intended it not to be wishable). I guess we will now know the official word on whether this was intended or not.

In any case, I agree that all skills should be wishable. Firstly, because a wish is supposed to be the most powerful reward you can get in the game, and because the unwishable skills do not even match the most powerful skills. Secondly, because for an unspoiled player it is unintuitive and arbitrary that some skills are wishable and some aren't.

05-13-2014 02:32 PM
Ancient Member
Well, alertness is one of the most powerful skills :p

But yeah, I agree (and I think this is a duplicate).

05-13-2014 03:31 PM

05-13-2014 04:23 PM
Ancient Member
Well that's an old one, no wonder I didn't find it. Well at least mine is posted as RFE.

05-13-2014 05:21 PM
Ancient Member
I agree with this, for the reasons I posted on issue 1513's comments.

05-13-2014 10:04 PM
Senior Member
I agree as well. You might be killing a few sacred cows with Alertness, but IMO it should be wishable. (After all, you can wish for Concentration which is, arguably, more important)

05-15-2014 12:13 AM
Senior Member
Why not? As you say all the others are wishable. Race and village quest choice are still important as wishes (and therefore the skills you might miss out on) aren't normally available early in the game.

05-15-2014 06:06 AM
Senior Member
Eh? I'm saying it should be wishable...

05-16-2014 03:12 PM
Member
Why not open wishing for 'Skill', and let the text then ask: "Which skill do you wish for?"
Likewise with stats (or attributes?).

05-17-2014 07:05 AM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Kurasu
Why not open wishing for 'Skill', and let the text then ask: "Which skill do you wish for?"
Likewise with stats (or attributes?).
I very much dislike that idea. Genies and other wish-granting beings don't usually prompt for more information, they just grant your wish as stated, usually not in the way you intended.

09-27-2016 08:19 AM
The Creator
This always has been intentional as I wanted these two skills to be very rare and also increase the value of the quests giving the healing skill and the value of the race/class combinations getting these skills (particularly for Alertness). I have added a special message to indicate that this behavior is intentional and thus consider this issue to be solved. If you really dislike the behavior and oppose me please submit a new feature request and gather votes once again now that my will is known ;-)

10-05-2016 04:44 PM
ixi ixi is offline
Junior Member
Seeing it in changelog as implemented is confusing... Even though I was reading all this stuff I was surprised seeing it there with a though in my mind: "How I could miss that every skill is going to be wishable now?" Actually it was just clarified that the current behavior is intentional.

The Creator, maybe a comment in changelog with clarification would make it a bit clearer?

10-05-2016 11:09 PM
Junior Member
I agree with ixi, I saw it in the patch notes and got a little confused at first. Then I played the game and wished for healing and got "You hear fate snickering" and had a chuckle. I think it might be best to clarify that in the notes, as it makes it sound like this was actually something "fixed" rather than being intentional.

10-06-2016 09:54 PM
Member
Also got confused. Tried to wish for alertness and got "You hear fate snickering". This should be clarified.

10-06-2016 10:51 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by adom-admin
This always has been intentional as I wanted these two skills to be very rare and also increase the value of the quests giving the healing skill and the value of the race/class combinations getting these skills (particularly for Alertness). I have added a special message to indicate that this behavior is intentional and thus consider this issue to be solved. If you really dislike the behavior and oppose me please submit a new feature request and gather votes once again now that my will is known ;-)
I wonder if it is possible to both allow wishing for these skills - while keeping them just as rare?
I.e. wishing for Healing would increase your healing rate, similar to potions of Troll Blood, and only when you've reached the minimum would it grant you the Healing skill.
Similarly, wishing for Alertness would increase your Perception if it is below natural limit of carrot juice - and only if you are already perceptive enough would it grant you the Alertness skill.

This way the skills would be both rare and wishable.

10-06-2016 10:54 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by SinsI
I wonder if it is possible to both allow wishing for these skills - but while keeping them just as rare?
I.e. wishing for Healing would increase your healing rate, similar to potions of Troll Blood, and only when you've reached the minimum would it grant you the Healing skill.
Similarly, wishing for Alertness would increase your Perception if it is below natural limit of carrot juice - and only if you are already perceptive enough would it grant you the Alertness skill.

This way the skills would be both rare and wishable.
I like this suggestion!

10-07-2016 06:11 AM
Senior Member
SinsI's idea is a good one. A PC at full HP should not get nothing at all from a wish for Healing.

10-07-2016 08:59 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by SinsI
I wonder if it is possible to both allow wishing for these skills - while keeping them just as rare?
I.e. wishing for Healing would increase your healing rate, similar to potions of Troll Blood, and only when you've reached the minimum would it grant you the Healing skill.
Similarly, wishing for Alertness would increase your Perception if it is below natural limit of carrot juice - and only if you are already perceptive enough would it grant you the Alertness skill.

This way the skills would be both rare and wishable.
This is a terrific idea. Now to get it through to TB.

10-16-2016 03:54 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by SinsI
I wonder if it is possible to both allow wishing for these skills - while keeping them just as rare?
I.e. wishing for Healing would increase your healing rate, similar to potions of Troll Blood, and only when you've reached the minimum would it grant you the Healing skill.
Similarly, wishing for Alertness would increase your Perception if it is below natural limit of carrot juice - and only if you are already perceptive enough would it grant you the Alertness skill.

This way the skills would be both rare and wishable.
I'm okay with the Alertness suggestion.

I have a couple of niggles with the healing one. First, the healing rate mechanic is hidden and has alway seemed to me confusing and unnecessary unintuitive. Second I think that Healing is often a weaker wish than rings of regeneration or spell books of cure something wounds. If you want Healing skill over those too then you're probably so late game and slot-optimized that the wish is almost irrelevant.

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