Overall Identification Strategy in Adom

[jonadab]

I've recently started playing ADOM (it was on my list of roguelikes to try out, and I was frustrated with my progress in DCSS...), and I've made faster progress than expected (already found both Jharrod and Yriggs, in my first non-tutorial game), but now I have a question, concerning item identification. I looked up identification on the wiki, and it supplied some factual information (e.g., that there are scrolls and a spell of identify in the game), but very little strategic advice, so I'm looking for just a general pointer in the right overall direction.

To give my question some context, I'm going to contrast how one does identification in two other games that fall on more or less opposite ends of a spectrum: Brogue and NetHack.

In Brogue, the main way to identify items is to use them. There's a lot more strategy to this than one might expect, in terms of when and where to use unidentified items and in what order, and there are tradeoffs (e.g., safety versus efficient use of resources -- for example, it's safer to do identification on a cleared level, but that risks wasting the effect of certain valuable consumables). It's not perfect: weapons and armor, in particular, are problematic: it is never practical to identify most of the ones you encounter, so if the RNG happens to give you a really good one, like a +3 dagger of quietus or a splint mail of respiration) you'll probably never know. But in general, it works pretty well, in Brogue. There are items that can make identification of other items easier or safer, once you identify them, but for the most part you identify potions by drinking them, scrolls by reading them, etc.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is NetHack, wherein identifying random items by using them is extremely dangerous and highly disrecommended unless you have partial information already and really know exactly what you are doing. An unidentified scroll is almost as likely to destroy your armor outright as to enchant it, or could cause amnesia, etc. Drinking an unidentified potion could cause hundreds of turns of hallucination, which is very likely to prove fatal, especially for a beginner. And so on. Unidentified items are quite dangerous to attempt to use, EVEN if known not to be cursed.

Instead, there are dozens of various tricks you pick up for identifying various items in the early game, until you eventually get enough sources of formal identification (a good stack of blessed scrolls, or the spell) to not need to do that any more. You curse-test almost everything (at least with a pet, if you can't find an altar), engrave-test wands, price-check scrolls (looking for 20zm ones, which are scrolls of identify, which you bless before using to maximize the number of items they'll ID for you, and also for 80zm ones...), price-check rings (because any worth less than 200zm aren't worth identifying, and 300zm ones are potentially very important but dangerous to ID by wearing), wear-test non-cursed armor only, and carefully prioritize which items to ID first when you get scrolls of identify, starting typically with any 300zm rings you've found... The Wiki article on Identification, which only covers the _basics_, is some twenty or thirty screenfuls, and that's not counting the article on Price Identification or the articles on the various kinds of items, many of which discuss identification strategies... it's complex, but the short rule of thumb is, you don't use unidentified stuff unless you have a very good idea what you're doing.

So my question is, where, roughly, does Adom fall on this spectrum? I know that some roguelikes pre-identify scrolls of identify. Should I be reading unidentified scrolls looking for scrolls of identify, or not? Should I be trying to work out strategies for identifying items by using them, or should I be patiently waiting, hauling all my loot to a safe area, and looking for other clues about item identities? At the moment, I'm mainly looking for an overall strategy to get me started here, not all the fine points. (I feel like I can't start learning the details until I have some kind of mental framework to attach them to.)

[timeywimey]

I know what you are asking but can't quite get my head on how to answer. So I'll just randomly write a few paragraphs.

There really aren't that many dangerous scrolls around, but then again there's really no reason to read a scroll if you don't know what it is unless you are trying to identify the scroll of identify. I mean I cannot think of a situation other than being cornered and reading an unidentified scroll of familiar summoning could save you. And those are relatively rare and high danger level (dl defines where the scroll can generate basically, and early game dl is low in most of the dungeons).

Watery potion is always a potion of water, orange potion is always a potion of carrot juice.

Usually a steel amulet is an amulet of life saving, but not always. Ordinary ring is usually a ring of djinni summoning, but not always. They just seem to be heavily rigged to be those items.

Iron items have a weight of 500, 80, 30, to throw a few numbers out there. If it's anything else than a "logical" number it's made out of something more valuable or it has a "light" prefix, which reduces the base weight. Eternium items weigh half of iron items.

brass items are always useless. Well, not useless, since potions of exchange exist, but they have absoulutely no effect ever when worn.

edit: also, a glowing wand is always a wand of wishing. And as for wands, the only wand that can really screw you up that I can think of is a wand of ball lightning (zaps a lightning bolt at a random direction, potentially killing the pc if it bounces back from a wall). Also there are a few relatively rare and potentially very useful wands that you wouldn't want to zap at 0 charges.

[Shaddox]

Seems to me that you're not really into identification, but rather into B/U/C status. Identification in ADOM only offers you info about the items, not their status. For statuses you have several options.

Dropping items on coaligned altars will reveal their B/U/C status.
Shops offer you lower prices for cursed items.

I generally don't use scrolls until I have a means to identify them. You get one free blessed identify in dwarftown, after the first quest, at which you point you are extremely likely to have more scrolls, since they are fairly common.

In other scenarios, you have to calculate the risk. For example, it's worth it to equip a leather armor if you have a robe, as robes have typical stats of [0, 0] while leather armor has typical stats of [-1, +2] so even if it's cursed you gain PV which is very valueable early game.

[timeywimey]

Blessed scrolls of identification reveal the b/u/c status.

e: also greater scrolls of identify.

[Overheat2]

For me, since blessed scrolls ID your whole inventory with no fuss, I wait until I have a blessed ID scroll, and do not really bother with test IDing. Shops usually have one, so that will ID the ID scroll for you, since they sell ID'd stuff.

I do not know how spoiled you are, but there is an early game quest where the reward is an ID of your whole inventory (if you already have Literacy), which means if you found an ID scroll, you now know what that is.

Rings and Amulets found early game are *usually* safe, but I don't bother even trying them on, even then.

After that first wave of ID, you find enough ID scrolls to be like, "I have a decent amount of new stuff, better ID it."

There are finer points on narrowing down which things are what based on the material- imagine if a small subset of rings were always the metal ones in Nethack, for example. Wands also display charges after having been zapped once, if you have at least 6 Learning.

"The ID game" isn't really a thing in ADOM. You usually have one first wave of ID, from blessed scroll or quest, and then you never use an unID'd thing again, usually.

[Couchfighter]

Instead of trying to explain the identifyingness on a scale from one roguelike to another I'll just share with you what I normally do on ADOM:

Read scrolls whenever found until I discover scrolls of identify.
Haul loot (pretty much everything I find, I'm an extreme loothoarder in these kinds of games), and shop price 'identify' most items at vendors (as mentioned higher value items tend to be decent)
Stash the rest of the items someplace safe until I find or convert an altar to my alignment, then drop items on it to check item B/U/C status and start equip identifying (with some exceptions, I never equip id gauntlets, for reasons).
Once I know identify I tend to stop equip identifying random items and instead rely on blessing identification and uncursing scrolls for most of my item checking needs, while holy water to bless items with are always in high demand, it is usually not too difficult to procure a few so you can id stuff en masse.

[jonadab]

Watery potion is always a potion of water, orange potion is always a potion of carrot juice.

Ok, I'd deduced the former (this is similar in NetHack), but the latter is interesting and suggests that these may just be examples, and that there may be additional appearance/function pairings that are consistent from game to game. (NetHack also has that, but mainly for non-magical items, and not even all of those; fruit juice for instance is one of four 50zm random-appearance potions.)


danger level... defines where the scroll can generate basically, and early game dl is low in most of the dungeons)

Oh, now THAT is interesting. Item probabilities change significantly as you enter more dangerous areas as the game progresses. Very good to know. (There's a bit of this in NetHack, but purely on a per-item-type basis, e.g., food may be more or less common, or wands more or less common, in certain branches; this has no impact whatsoever on how you identify items, because you always know what general category something falls into, even if blind.)


Seems to me that you're not really into identification, but rather into B/U/C status.

Both are potentially relevant, but I found a coaligned altar very early this game (in the very first dungeon, the one that's different in non-tutorial mode from the prefab one with the minotaur, longbow, and goblin room in tutorial mode), so I can probably put off worrying about alternate methods of BUC checking until next game. Since I didn't start with a pet, I assume that pets/allies are probably not as relevant in the very early game as in NetHack (which, they also aren't in Brogue or DCSS, so NetHack appears to be the outlier there).


I generally don't use scrolls until I have a means to identify them. You get one free blessed identify in dwarftown, after the first quest, at which you point you are extremely likely to have more scrolls, since they are fairly common.

Ah, good to know. I haven't seen dwarftown yet (or completed any quests), but I'm just getting started, so.


In other scenarios, you have to calculate the risk. For example, it's worth it to equip a leather armor if you have a robe, as robes have typical stats of [0, 0] while leather armor has typical stats of [-1, +2] so even if it's cursed you gain PV which is very valueable early game.

This makes sense. I've been known, rarely, to knowingly equip cursed armor in NetHack. (In Brogue, however, this would pretty muich never be a good idea.) As a fighter, I've been starting with chain mail, which appears to be pretty decent in the early game; but yeah, the principle makes sense.


since blessed scrolls ID your whole inventory with no fuss

Oh, do they now? That seems like the kind of info that should be in the wiki article on scrolls of identify (and, near as I can tell, isn't). Is there a better source of Adom info than the wiki? (The NetHack community has kind-of conditioned me to expect the wiki to tell me everything I need to know...)


Shops usually have one, so that will ID the ID scroll for you, since they sell ID'd stuff.

Oh, that's interesting too. Perhaps I should pay more attention to that black market I saw than I have been. (I looked at its prices and was like no. But if all the merchandise in there will provide ID info, I should probably at least look at all the items.)


I do not know how spoiled you are

I have no objection to being fully spoiled (up to and including source diving, for games where that is possible, which is MOST of the ones I play). I haven't absorbed a lot of Adom spoilers yet, but this is because I'm just getting started.


Haul loot (pretty much everything I find, I'm an extreme loothoarder in these kinds of games)

I do that in NetHack. (Well, I don't haul stuff that's worthless even as polyfodder, like mundane weapons and junk non-magical armor. But nearly everything else.) In Brogue, I've never really been tempted to try stashing, partly because I always seem to have consumables that you can gain benefit either from identifying or from using immediately, and partly because I know that sources of formal identification are much too rare in that game to allow me to ID everything, no matter how successful my game is (not that I've been _very_ successful -- I usually die by depth ten in Brogue; it's much harder than NetHack).



Stash the rest of the items someplace safe

Hmm. I haven't seen any containers yet. Where DO you stash things in this game? Relatedly, do monsters pick up items off the floor and use them against you? (In NetHack they absolutely do, and leaving anything powerful on the floor is a bad idea unless you are about to leave the level. In Brogue they don't, and I haven't seen it happen in DCSS or Adom yet either, but I'm pretty new...)

[gym21]

I'm not as knowledgable about ADOM as many of the posters here, but I think I can offer some pointers on how I think about identification in the early game.

By and large, the stuff you find early is more likely to be useful than dangerous. But there's also not very much of it, and you won't want to consume valuable stuff without knowing what it is, being able to bless it, etc. That comes with the caveat that equipping cursed items can be quite annoying and, in some cases, lock you into other items. A cursed girdle stops you switching armour out; cursed gauntlets keep your rings in place. Unless you're playing a weak character or deliberately run into dangerous situations (the puppy cave or a UD dive come to mind), you should be able to handle yourself in such a way that you don't need to do an inventory identification until later. Many of my characters are perfectly happy diving to Dwarftown for the free ID that you get there.

But that said, there are situations where early-game identification can massively boost survival rate, particularly if you end up poisoned a long way from Jharrod or end up stuck between some out of depth threats. If a character feels vulnerable, ID'ing things should be high on your priority list. You never know if something life-saving is in those five wands, after all.

1) Scroll of Identify. The most important identification tool is the scroll of identify. Blessed scrolls identify every item you're carrying, including showing blessed/cursed status. Uncursed scrolls identify every item in a group (e.g. rings or potions). Working out what is and isn't a scroll of identify is the easiest way for beginners to get to grips with their inventory. How do you do that?
a) Shops. Everything in a shop is identified for you, and added to your memory. This makes the shop in the bandit town (and to a lesser extent the HMV shop) quite useful to see if you can get some scrolls automatically ID'd. At best, you'll find a scroll of identify in one of those locations and your problems will be more or less solved. But even identifying other scrolls is handy too, since you then know what a scroll of identify isn't. You can also work out if you have a particularly good item if you try to sell it and the shopkeeper gives you more than you're expecting.
b) Commonness. I believe, but don't know for sure, that scrolls of identify are one of the five most common you'll find in ADOM, the other three being uncursing, power, light and darkness. Of that set, only a cursed scroll of uncursing is likely to be dangerous in a controlled environment. I'll talk a bit about working out B/U/C status in a bit, but for now bear in mind that if you start seeing large stacks of scrolls you have a good shot at one being a scroll of identify, and if you absolutely need to work out what's going on with your equipment it's unlikely to hurt you if you read a scroll stack of two or more. This method has the downside of not being able to control blessed status of the scroll itself, which limits you to ID'ing specific groups of items, but you should have a pretty good idea of what your most useful group might be before you try an ID anyway.

2) Item names. As mentioned above, some items have the same name in every game. Wooden rings, for instance, are always rings of fire resistance (if you see a fire vortex headed your way and see a wooden ring in your inventory, you know what to do). Other items are heavily biased towards certain names, although not guaranteed. I'm not going to list them out, but you'll pick up on them as you play more.

3) Item weights.
a) Without a full ID item weight should be your go-to in dealing with worn/wielded items. Items of unusual weight (especially lighter than usual) are almost always better. If you're using swords, for instance, and come across a broadsword that weighs 57s, you're looking at an adamantium broadsword that will almost always be an upgrade on your original gear. Once you get to grips with weight you'll be able to work out the cost-benefit of risking equipping a cursed item. There is, for instance, no power on earth that will stop me equipping a large shield [210s] in the early game, but I might be a little more skeptical of a short sword [24s].
b) Item weights can also be handy in identifying consumables, although this is more situational. If, early on, I have a big stack of unidentified potions that weight 2s, I know there's a pretty good chance that they're Potions of Cure Poison. And that can save lives.

3) Material. Here's where things get a little more complicated, and you're probably best off reading the wiki page (http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Material-based_identification). The tl;dr version is that item names in ADOM are drawn from groups that correspond to the material that item is made of, which is constant (which is why you know that a wooden ring is always a ring of fire resistance -- there's only one ring in the wood group). Knowing the item name therefore means you can narrow down what exactly you're dealing with, in some cases enough to equip-identify an item. There's one special case that you should know about: do not use wooden wands that weigh 4s unless your character is in serious, serious trouble. They're a good way to electrocute yourself to death.

4) Location. Someday you'll encounter herbs. Herbs are very useful, and can be useful even if you don't have herbalism or any means of identifying your equipment. If that's the case, pay special attention to the row on screen in which said herb is growing. Morgia is (if I'm remembering right), the only herb that grows at the very top and very bottom, and can be used to boost your stats even if cursed. So grab as many as you can, eat, and see if you get a minty taste. If so, you're in good shape.

5) Status. All items are generated as blessed, uncursed or cursed. There are a few ways to work out and control this status, which will determine how safely you can equip-ID your loot. Cursed wearables are unremovable; cursed weapons will deal half damage to undead and demons.
a) Altars. Coaligned altars will tell you the status (but not the identity) of any item you drop on them. Not sure if those leather boots are going to be stuck on you forever? Find an altar, drop them, and see if they're cursed or not. The downside of altars is that you're not guaranteed a coaligned one until you're at Dwarftown for neutrals and lawfuls. So, uh, good luck!
b) Detect Item Status. If you're a priest or a ratling, you start off with this skill. It's not 100 percent effective, especially early, but it's also never wrong when it kicks in. So if your inventory tells you something is blessed, it's blessed. Unless...
c) Autocursing. Some items autocurse, which means that as soon as you equip them they'll glow black and become unremovable. Early on, your likely candidates are Rings of the Fish (harmless) or Gauntlets of Peace, which are super annoying. For this reason I wouldn't equip-ID 10s gauntlets. If you must, throw them at a kobold or something, let him pick it up and see if it autocurses him instead. Yes, that works.
d) Stack size. B/U/C items are never mixed even if their status is unknown. This means that if you have three stacks of an item, you know that you have at least one blessed one, one cursed one and one uncursed one. The uncursed stack will usually be the largest and safest, although if cursed items aren't dangerous (like scrolls of identify) you should feel free to just poke them and see if you end up with the blessed one.
e) Water. Dipping items in holy water blesses them. Dipping them in unholy water curses them. Normally you generate holy water by dropping water on the altar of a friendly (not just coaligned) deity, but if you're generating a lot of watery potions you can exploit the triple stack rule, assuming you have the ability to identify your stack of potions.

I've probably missed stuff out and probably made mistakes as well. But I hope that all helps a little.

[timeywimey]

Hmm. I haven't seen any containers yet. Where DO you stash things in this game? Relatedly, do monsters pick up items off the floor and use them against you? (In NetHack they absolutely do, and leaving anything powerful on the floor is a bad idea unless you are about to leave the level. In Brogue they don't, and I haven't seen it happen in DCSS or Adom yet either, but I'm pretty new...)

No hardboxes or containers in adom, but there are a few safe places where you can drop your stash. Monsters can pick up weapons, armor, and from what I gather a few potions (invisibility for sure).

edit: actually scrap the weapons part. they won't pick up weapons. Correct me if I'm wrong.

e2: about the places where you can drop your stuff, and don't mind being spoiled, google dwarftown and it's associated quests. Also a certain barbarian doesn't mind if his lawn gets littered with items. Darkforge later on etc etc. There's nothing happening on a level if you exit it, so basically any dungeon is perfectly safe.

[Couchfighter]

About storage, 100% safe places to store items are rare, but do exist. Won't go into more detail on this one. :) And now I shall spoiler a little bit anyway, ah well. But yeah, some not 100% safe places to stash loot in the early game include the top row of tiles in the starting village. NPC's don't ever enter the top row of tiles on their own, with the exception of one guy. So it's actually mostly safe to drop things there.

Another thing I often do is just drop my hoarded stash at the stair tile of a dungeon or dungeon floor I'm done on, so no monster will ever step on the tile until I return there.

[blunk]

Gym21 made an excellent summary.

Here's some on ID gambling which is very useful in early game and generally worth downsides.

Nr1 is a medium/large/tower shield, even a cursed medium wooden shield is useful in the early game.
Nr2 is metal armour, unless extreme weight (which you see without id) any metal armour is a huge benefit even if cursed or have some minor annoying intrinsic.
Leather/Studded leather is sometimes worth it but more risk/less reward.
Nr3 is a spear, if you don't have a weapon, or dagger/shortsword, any 1h spear is decent damage (d8+) and polearms have the best defensive bonuses.

Cloaks and bracers are safe to try and cursed isnt too bad.
Rings and amulets are both good and bad, I rarely risk wearing them except for the ones that have fixed names.
Metal boots and helmets are good to wear.

Really bad things:
Drinking potions, poison and especially disease can easily be fatal in early game.
Zapping wands, wand of ball lightning tend to bounce and cause suicide, same goes with wand of far slaying, they are also very common in the early game.
Wielding junk weapons, getting stuck with a cursed knife isnt fun and can get you cornered when you don't have ranged options.
Wearing gauntlets of peace as non caster, they give -15 -15 melee and missile and autocurse.
Wearing girdle of weight, adds a huge amount of weight when worn, a lot more than what they imply.

[JellySlayer]

The above tips are very good. Generally, you can equip-ID some stuff. It's just knowing what's safe and what's not, which takes some time to learn. Here's a few equipID tricks:

-Weapons can be identified using a ratling fencer/duelist or master swordsman. They can disarm your weapon, so if you get stuck with something cursed, just wait a few turns and they'll get rid of it for you.
-There's only one bad amulet, so you may as well just wear whatever you find.
-In the very early game, any shield except small is probably worth equipping even if cursed. Regular large or tower are quite decent. Unusually heavy shields (160s, 210s, 260s) are crystal and are very good.
-Rings are generally safe to equip/wear unidentified except adamantium/onyx/ordinary group, since you could get stuck with a cursed ring of damage. Autocursing is probably ring of the fish. There's a very small chance of getting doom or weakness that will screw you over though.
-Non-brass bracers can be safely equip-IDed always. If they don't auto-ID, then they're one of the best types.
-Don't equip-ID any girdles or gloves unless you know curse status. These prevent you from access other parts of your equipment if cursed, and cursed girdle of carrying/weight in particular are quite bad.
-Equip armor if it's a better PV class than what you have, and is better than a robe. So if you have leather, studded leather or better is okay to equip. If you have chain, then you're basically looking at elven chain, plate, or higher metal.

[edit]
A few more:
-Wands. If you don't mind wasting charges, all wands can be safely tested a wilderness area. At worst, you'll wrench a zero charge wand and destroy it. You may not always be able to ID the wand directly, so you'll have to rely on the message output that they give, which can occasionally be a bit opaque. The only exception to this is glowing wands, which are always wands of wishing, and should never be used while cursed (as the wish may fail). These are extremely rare and not found in low level areas. At least you'll know which wands are damage wands, and which one is the nasty ball lightning wand, though.
-Never drink ID potions unless you have literally no other choice. Most potions are harmless, but it's more likely that you'll poison yourself rather than heal yourself.
-With scrolls, the most common are light, darkness, power, and identify, so once you get more than 3 of the same type, it's probably one of these.

[Soirana]

So my question is, where, roughly, does Adom fall on this spectrum? I know that some roguelikes pre-identify scrolls of identify. Should I be reading unidentified scrolls looking for scrolls of identify, or not? Should I be trying to work out strategies for identifying items by using them, or should I be patiently waiting, hauling all my loot to a safe area, and looking for other clues about item identities? At the moment, I'm mainly looking for an overall strategy to get me started here, not all the fine points. (I feel like I can't start learning the details until I have some kind of mental framework to attach them to.)
Somewhere in between, I guess.

Long term (mid-game onwards) player typically reads blessed ID periodically. There is an early mid game (or late early game whatever player's definition sequencing is) which can ID all stuff (there are some requirements since alternative reward can be generated).

So typically ID problem exists early on unless you are on challenge (wanna stay illiterate/blind/etc).

Early on:
potions - basically quaff Id pots is good way to kill the char. (Might want to read http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Use-based_identification for non-autoID stuff).
Orange is always water, white seems to be always pot of rust removal (latter is poisonous if drunk).

wands - these can be used if you know all the tricks (you can try http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Material_based_identify?oldid=8930, since wiki does not really allow to delete stuff :(). As rule of thumb don't zap the way potential bolt could bounce into char and don't touch 4 stone wands unless you feel lucky or really know what you are doing.

armor: scrapping your first 10PV (or something close) is really important, so you want to equip anything what gives guaranteed PV, so stuff like leather boots/leather caps/clothes is no go.
regular gauntlets should not be touched, cause of gauntlets of peace (you can ID the latter through monsters picking and equipping them)

amulets: well, there is little benefit of having unknown amulet on your neck, so might as well not to bother. Silver amulets are protection, which are decent, glass is light which is potentially useful and wooden I think is always prot from undead which is crap.

rings are typically worn, to deal with potential cursed damage some players equip unknown ring left finger first.

scrolls... well, I typically pile them on. in times of need go for bigger stack (3+ stack likely ends being ID/uncursing /power). Using scrolls upon finding seems wasteful for me.

weapons:
IMHO, anything with good base dice (non-whip/non-dagger) and which does not stack with other stuff should be dragged to shop for price check. cause that is how the prefixes work.
armor with good prefixes is maybe 2x better than regular, b ut weapon might be easily be 5x (of devastation variety). Since prefixes are rare early on, anything stacking can be discarded.

If you happen to find disarming monster (ratling fencer is most likely early on) you can cycle through weaponry, using him to get rid of cursed stuff. IIRC, these don 't disarm non-wepons, so you can't find all cursed stuff sadly.

Shops are cute place to visit since anything you see in shop is IDed (and all scrolls/pots/tc of that type will be ID too), so early peaking in to famous black market can be somewhat useful.

[Blasphemous]

Keep in mind that B/U/C status distribution among items is roughly fixed.
The general rule of thumb is that with sufficiently large sample, 80% of items are uncursed, 10% are cursed and 10% are blessed.
Thus, stacking items have a very high chance of being uncursed and are rather safe to equip-ID.

Of course, there can be situations where you find two or three identical items that stack and yet are cursed but that is an excessively rare situation.

[pblack]

Some tips:

1) Hoard everything that is potions/scrolls/wands. Those are almost 100% useful sooner or later.

2) FREQUENTLY but not always, the most common type of low-DL scroll you find are ID ones. So if you happen to have holy water it is usually safe to dip your largest stack of scrolls in it and read one. At worst you will read some other blessed common scroll and that is 99% safe to do. Nowadays I can even guess which scrolls are ID ones by their name. There is a pool of possible names and some are more common than others. However I have no data on this.

3) As mentioned. You can safely upgrade your gear from robe to leather to studded armor (for example) because even a cursed one will probably be better than what you are wearing.

4) The largest stack of any item is 99.99% of the time the most common variant in uncursed status. So the largest arrow stack you have will always be uncursed (0, 1d6) arrows (exception being when you FIND a whole stack instead of accumulating one, that stack you found can be anything), the largest stack of leather armors will nearly always be [+0 ; +2] ones, and so on. So this is another way of preventing you from equipping cursed items.

5) Vendors give more gold for blessed variants and less for cursed ones. So if you have multiples you can guess which have the better status.

6) If you are hoarding tons of crude knives/battle axes go to a shop and sell all but the highest value ones. Equip them safely to check why they are worth more than the rest.

7) There is no way of predicting armor stats or prefixes/sufixes (apart from weight related ones) but I find it is good practice to always keep unstacking items for ID in case one has a valuable prefix/sufix.

8) In a pinch, if there is NO HOPE, you can drink all potions (except white, watery and orange) in hopes of getting healing or invisibility. It is more or less safe but almost certainly a waste of potential gains from them.