I've gremlin bombed without pickpocketing and it still gets you way too many items. It's not enough to take away pickpocketing to break it; you have to remove the drops, too.

Yes, you should totally make gremlin replication an absolute nuisance with no reward for anyone except the gremlins themselves (who become more powerful).

I seem to detect some sarcasm - but at the same time, I thought making sure gremlin scumming dies was the intention. If gremlin scumming is supposed to be useful anyway, how does removing the ability to pickpocket gremlins change things whatsoever at all?

At the very least, gremlins who drown in the water dragon cave should not drop loot. This is at least as exploitable as the pickpocket method of gremlin bombing, with potentially very high-yield rewards.

I just think removing the ability to pickpocket them and their death drops might be too much. After all, they get more experience as you kill more of them, and you get less from doing it.

PS: I don't gremlin bomb, so this is an outsider's perspective.

I thought drowning monsters already don't drop items? Hence making pickpocketing them the only means to get loot in the WDL.

I'll have to check. I don't use gremlin bombs, myself.

The experience thing doesn't really solve the problem, btw. For example, the traditional strategy for winning the Eternium Man game involves killing huge hordes of gremlins with a pet.

No one's ever gremlin bombed for the XP - it's the items. I have gremlin bombed in the graveyard, and got insane amounts of loot even just killing the gremlins with my own hands. (As you might be aware, I don't think a great deal of pickpocketing.) My point is, essentially, that the problem of gremlin bombing isn't a Pick Pockets problem. Yes, they get more dangerous as you kill more, but a) you can use pets no problem and b) you get insane loot long before the gremlins become remotely dangerous.

This is correct. Gremlins that drown don´t get more experienced, either.

Can we please stop making suggestions about demolishing non bug-based scumming techniques? I can't really see the point.

The point is that some of us think the game would be much better without exploits.

By the way, a blatant exploit that provides infinite rewards in a game at no or almost no risk is arguably a bug, although for a suggestion it doesn't really matter if it's a bug or not.

TB has said that he plans to remove many "loopholes and exploits" from the game. I assume that he is not explicitly referring to bugs.

I'd rather see all of the scumming techniques demolished, and then new techniques that make the game just a little easier without scumming introduced to rebalance things.

Basically, I want the game to be fun and winnable without having to resort to cheap exploits or tedious, monotonic activities. Grinding and scumming should be kept to a minimum.

What measure is exploit? Especially blatant?

I don't think a reasonable amount of people use gremlin bomb in the course of normal game or event ultra. Why? Because it doesn't justify thousands of game turns spent on it. Event with macro usage. Sure, you can get loads of potions/gold/scrolls/rings/amulets/bracers and other crap, but they are not really game-breaking.

For several challenge games this is absolutely necessary. Want to do Head Hunter? Good luck finding solars/ki-rins and other stuff without spending thousands of terms chilling in Scintillating Cave/BDC. Wishes are hard to come without some sneaky tactics.

And lastly, it's not really that good. Speaking of my (still unfinished) Head Hunter, I've spent 20k turns and got 0 wishes. And that is counting PoEx dipping.

Eternium man relies on gremlin bombs too. Then again, in my opinion challenges should be redesigned to suit the new game, rather than redesigning the game to suit existing challenges that were created for the old version of ADOM. Still, I agree that the number of turns you need to spend on grinding is a good indicator of how game breaking (or harmless) a scumming method is.

I think this topic deserves a lot of thought. Emotional arguments like "pickpocketing is dumb" versus "you're an elitist" get us nowhere. It´s an interesting question really, what is a loophole and what is not.

But I think the bug tracker is a bit too limited for these discussions. IIRC I read somewhere that a new subforum is going to be created especially for discussion about revisions in 1.2.0, is that right? Maybe it is a good idea to continue our flamewars there? ;)

Summoned beings no longer can be picked. The logic here being that it leaves open the question if summoning actually retrieves the monsters from some other place or creates them temporarily. Yes, this thus also affects treasure drops...

Errr, yes, implemented. Forgot that.

I'll better get reading older suggestions.

Does this fix include gremlins created by water?

So now the 'Summon Monsters' spell is just there for xp. I rather enjoyed seeing those monsters drowning, dropping the Amulet of Life Saving the silly being forgot to put around it's neck before the monster ate it. Just, kidding. I only did this once after emptying every pool in the Drakalor chain(even Stone Circle) and not receiving a single wish.

Err... still not marked as "implemented".

What's the point of this gameplay-wise? It takes the same effort to kill a skeleton of the same level and pickpocket attempt exposes the PC to the same level of danger regardless of whether it was summoned or generated normally (actually, since you can sacrifice the latter ones, they are easier to kill). It just needlessly complicates things and deprives player of a well-earned reward. The only problem was with gremlins that drowned underwater, which was already fixed by removing their pockets...

Undead cannot be sacced.
The point of this is that lvl 1 bards starting with a guaranteed wand of light could enter the gremlin cave, retrieve a fluff ball and start a gremlin factory in an area with desirable DL once a water trap is found.
Then use a pet to kill gremlins while the PC stands on a single spot and pickpockets them. This really generated game-breaking amounts of loot for a low level character at nearly no cost and no risk.
Bards could easily tame killer bugs back then and use them to slaughter thousands of gremlins. So yeah, this was a much needed fix, just like banshee + animated forest.