No items on the ground in the ID?
issueid=1231 09-04-2012 05:12 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by grobblewobble: 72
No items on the ground in the ID?

Stairhopping is a famous exploit where a player enters the ID and presses <><> etc until he sees an item on the ground. Especially effective with wizards, because they gain a lot of spellbooks quickly.

A simple fix could be: don't generate items on the ground in the ID?
Issue Details
Issue Number 1231
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Linux
Status Implemented
Priority Unknown
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 3
Implemented Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 7
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 3
Votes against this feature 10
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




12-29-2012 12:22 PM
Ancient Member
I'm entirely against it. ID item generation is nowhere near game-braking and hardly an exploit in the same league as banshee in animated forest or gremlin bombs.
The former of the two methods I used on regular basis, but I realize it's an obvious scumming technique/exploit and I have nothing against making trees invulnerable to banshee wail.

But as someone mentioned, with a wizard's starting spells, you run out of spells quickly without finding enough spellbooks. The argumentation that other classes start with similar gear and no spells is pointless - I chose the wizard specifically to use spells and not use melee.
Hence the higher spellbook item generation and more efficient spell casting. If I wanted to play with spells till lvl 7-8 and then switch to melee due to lack of spell castings, I'd pick entirely different class, a druid maybe or priest.
It's not like I stairhop till I get all spells, but at least till, on top of starting spells, I have one or two extra offensive spells at spell knowledge 600-700. Then I know I won't suddenly run out of spells and will have to switch to melee in the middle of UD.

With this feature, wizard class looses its purpose, at least to some significant extent.
Without some drastic reduction in spell knowledge cost for each casting, if only for wizard, it brings this char down to melee in many early situations, contrary to the class description and purpose.

This feature takes away from the game experience and gives nothing in return.
Too bad it's already implemented but one can hope that since there are three times as many votes against it, it might yet be changed back to what it was.
Otherwise what's the point of voting for or against it when decisions are made without considering those votes?

12-29-2012 12:44 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
I'm entirely against it. ID item generation is nowhere near game-braking and hardly an exploit in the same league as banshee in animated forest or gremlin bombs.
The former of the two methods I used on regular basis, but I realize it's an obvious scumming technique/exploit and I have nothing against making trees invulnerable to banshee wail.

But as someone mentioned, with a wizard's starting spells, you run out of spells quickly without finding enough spellbooks. The argumentation that other classes start with similar gear and no spells is pointless - I chose the wizard specifically to use spells and not use melee.
Hence the higher spellbook item generation and more efficient spell casting. If I wanted to play with spells till lvl 7-8 and then switch to melee due to lack of spell castings, I'd pick entirely different class, a druid maybe or priest.
It's not like I stairhop till I get all spells, but at least till, on top of starting spells, I have one or two extra offensive spells at spell knowledge 600-700. Then I know I won't suddenly run out of spells and will have to switch to melee in the middle of UD.

With this feature, wizard class looses its purpose, at least to some significant extent.
Without some drastic reduction in spell knowledge cost for each casting, if only for wizard, it brings this char down to melee in many early situations, contrary to the class description and purpose.

This feature takes away from the game experience and gives nothing in return.
Too bad it's already implemented but one can hope that since there are three times as many votes against it, it might yet be changed back to what it was.
Otherwise what's the point of voting for or against it when decisions are made without considering those votes?
Wizards have always been considered to be a little overpowered compared to most other classes, and I don't think losing stairhopping for books is really going to screw them up so much that they "lose their purpose".

And I really don't see why it's such a big deal that you actually have to explore the ID to find the spellbooks, rather than relying on the law of large numbers to bring spellbooks to you in a minimum of actions. Basically, the ID isn't meant to be a magical place that you go to easily obtain things that were made to be moderately difficult to find, but the stairhopping exploit made it easy to find them, as long as you don't mind the monotonous process involved.

Perhaps you didn't notice that the ID does still get items. Only the stair rooms lack items, in order to prevent players from stairhopping. ID exploration is just as valuable, with the exception of stairhopping. And since it was an exploit rather than an intended game feature, complaining about it being fixed is like complaining that you can no longer get under the map on a multiplayer FPS because they patched the map hole that let you get down there.

12-29-2012 12:55 PM
Ancient Member
It's impossible to explain why no items are generated on stair levels in ID from the game-lore point of view (as long as gut doesn't join the discussion).

Instead, why not differentiate specific spellbooks' DL?
Rather than DL1, make all ball spellbooks have a DL 5 or 6, teleport a DL 8-10, wish is already rare enough, create item/mystic shovel/death ray could have even higher DL to reflect the power of respective spells they grant.

This would effectively remove the most powerful spells from early game availability, but still leave fire/frost/lightning/magic bolts around for picking at an early level, since the wizard character already has one of those from the start.
I never understood why all spellbooks have the same DL despite such obvious differences in usefulness.
It the same situation as with potions - potions of water have a DL of 3 or 4, while PoGA - DL1. How much sense does that make? Should be the other way around. Why vials left after using potions of water are discarded? It should be possible to refill them using water from an underground river or even lake... but I'm straying a bit away from the subject.

The fact that wizards are slightly overpowered compared to other classes has nothing to do with having several mandatory spells at an early stage of the game.
The power of wizards comes later in spell cost reductions and ability to read spellbooks effectively. Finding those earlier does not mean you can breeze through the rest of the game, not more than getting emerald dagger in UD vault playing an assassin. It doesn't mean you can't die. With careful playing every c/r combination can win, with enough carelessness, even the best PCs die.

As for ID exploration, it takes a lot of real life time compared to in-game results. Believe me, I explore ID often because stair hopping is boring and tedious, but it is the tradeoff of getting useful items.
Next thing I hear will be RFE regarding vaults - remove the drops because they are too easy. Then remove tension rooms because those can be abused too. And so on.

If you don't like ID stairhopping, simply don't do it. It doesn't give a boost big enough to overall character performance to justify the removal of item generation in stair rooms and chars made this way don't exactly skip half of the game since they are so powerful after visiting ID.

12-29-2012 01:30 PM
Ancient Member
With tension rooms and vault you have to kill the monsters with stairhopping it's just given away. With exploring ID levels it not just given away.
I don't know about spellcasters running out of castings, during normal play they find heaps upon heaps of spellbooks and what prevents them from bookcasting?

12-29-2012 01:42 PM
Ancient Member
PP costs prevent them from casting.

during normal play they find heaps upon heaps of spellbooks
I don't know what spellcasters you're playing normally but my wizards often run out of castings without some help from ID in form of spellbooks.
Initial spell knowledge, assuming a high starting value of 20 Le, gives you about 600-700 spell knowledge with starting spellbook.
Considering that around 1/3 of spellbooks are offensive spells, it's not so easy to find enough and not run out of offensive spells during the course of leveling between 1-12.
After that with spell cost reductions and some extra locations becoming available, it ceases to be an issue but before that... I'm speaking from experience and I know that every 1 in 3 wizards either runs out of offensive spells or gets perilously close to running out, which forces my hand and I have to specifically search for more spellbooks in high monster generation areas. It pretty much turns the game into a journey to find more spellbooks, while occasionally doing quests, visiting locations and killing monsters. The way I see it, looking for more offensive spells should be an added value, not the single focus of early game. ID stairhopping gives me exactly that, which is why I will always defend it.

12-29-2012 02:13 PM
Senior Member
Vote win or not (people who have no experience with hopping will not vote so skew towards +good is expected) the underlaying fact is loot generation in game-guaranteed areas is low. Hence another thread each week: Mid-game what to do as have no good eq.

12-29-2012 02:38 PM
Ancient Member
It's impressive how conservative people some people in this community are, wanting to keep things as they were just because that's how they were, even if they don't make sense at all.

If the problem is that you think there isn't enough loot now, the sensible thing to do is to create an RFE to increase the game's loot rate, rather than to reintroduce a boring exploit.

If the problem is that you think wizards don't get enough castings, the sensible thing to do is to create an RFE to increase the number of castings given by books, rather than to reintroduce a boring exploit.

To be honest I think most complaints are baseless and exaggerated. I have played lots of wizards, won with wizards, and never stairhopped (I do take TH), and I have always had enough castings to be comfortable during the whole game. Of course, this doesn't mean "enough castings to acid ball every goblin rockthrower that crosses my way". But the limited castings system is there so that you have to save spells a bit and not just cast blindly all the time, if TB wanted you to kill every single large bat by spamming spells he'd just have made books give unlimited castings. I can attest that if you save spells just a little bit (i.e. not use the really powerful spells against weak monsters that you could single-hit kill in melee even with a wizard) castings last you the whole game.

Anyway, that's arguable, but what's totally absurd is to ask for exploits to be reintroduced instead of rebalancing the game in a constructive way. If the problem is not enough loot or not enough spells, the fix is obvious (more loot and more spells - or maybe more subtle stuff like giving DL's to spellbooks - that would be nice too) rather than keeping boring scummy techniques that don't make sense either thematically or from a gameplay point of view (because they're a bore for the player).

12-29-2012 03:31 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Al-Khwarizmi
It's impressive how conservative people some people in this community are, wanting to keep things as they were just because that's how they were, even if they don't make sense at all.

If the problem is that you think there isn't enough loot now, the sensible thing to do is to create an RFE to increase the game's loot rate, rather than to reintroduce a boring exploit.

If the problem is that you think wizards don't get enough castings, the sensible thing to do is to create an RFE to increase the number of castings given by books, rather than to reintroduce a boring exploit.

To be honest I think most complaints are baseless and exaggerated. I have played lots of wizards, won with wizards, and never stairhopped (I do take TH), and I have always had enough castings to be comfortable during the whole game. Of course, this doesn't mean "enough castings to acid ball every goblin rockthrower that crosses my way". But the limited castings system is there so that you have to save spells a bit and not just cast blindly all the time, if TB wanted you to kill every single large bat by spamming spells he'd just have made books give unlimited castings. I can attest that if you save spells just a little bit (i.e. not use the really powerful spells against weak monsters that you could single-hit kill in melee even with a wizard) castings last you the whole game.

Anyway, that's arguable, but what's totally absurd is to ask for exploits to be reintroduced instead of rebalancing the game in a constructive way. If the problem is not enough loot or not enough spells, the fix is obvious (more loot and more spells - or maybe more subtle stuff like giving DL's to spellbooks - that would be nice too) rather than keeping boring scummy techniques that don't make sense either thematically or from a gameplay point of view (because they're a bore for the player).
+1 Totally. RFE for more loot placed. Can't say for spells, I avoid them (my first spellcaster got 2x further than any assassin/thief, they have too easy already, though I can see that no more free spellbooks would be hitting them the most harshly). As I loved getting that spellbook of invis eventually (means 3-4x more hopping on assassin) I decided to speak up, especially since dropping loot numbers is detrimental to the whole game (everyone loves loot). I'm not looking to reintroduce stairhopping, that was boring/lame. Fix the issue with lack of loot and everyone is going to be happy

12-29-2012 03:37 PM
Ancient Member
Al-Khwarizmi you make a lot of sense in what you say. The problem is that I see a lot of people posting about removal of this or that scummy or otherwise abusable/exploitable elements of the game and yet they don't propose anything in return.
Why people resort to using those techniques in the game? Because the alternative is less attractive. I will always suggest that it's better to change something rather than removing it.
Rather than remove random item generation in the stair rooms in ID, introduce appropriate danger level to most popular items; not because they are easy to get but because it makes sense from gameplay point of view. I could get every spellbook in ID other than wish in reasonable time and that was indeed an exploit. I'd not protest if there was some diversity introduced to DL for this type of items as long as it makes sense give the usefulness of the item in question.
But aside from that, spending 5 minutes in ID gives you a set of basic items that help with early game survival, like shields [+3,+2], some helms/armor/boots that get your PV to a fairly reasonable level of ~10.
What's wrong in that?
The problem is that you can eventually get most items that don't cease to be useful even in the endgame.
But rather than change the drop list to mundane basic items that would be typical to low level caves like upper ID, the drops from stair rooms are removed entirely.
Now the only place where you could reliably obtain very early game gear without considerable risk, is removed. \
Venturing into ID and exploring whole levels at PC lvl 1 is dangerous for low To chars due to traps, both on the floor and booby traps on doors and will only result in people spending much more time in ID than they previously did.
There will still be stairhoppers, they will adapt. The only achievement of this feature that I see is peace of mind of players that don't use stairhopping and think that if they don't do it then nobody else should.
I will say this again: ID stairhopping might have been an oversight but it's hardly an exploit, and by no means does it ensure victory.

12-29-2012 04:09 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
Al-Khwarizmi you make a lot of sense in what you say. The problem is that I see a lot of people posting about removal of this or that scummy or otherwise abusable/exploitable elements of the game and yet they don't propose anything in return.
Good point. Many RFEs are just: make this harder, more rare, make it even more less likely to yield any good. Who posts those? Usual suspects (66% of make it harder RFEs in last release were due to Grey(or is it Gray) thank you, I will not add here what I feel is neccesary, big FU.
There will still be stairhoppers, they will adapt. The only achievement of this feature that I see is peace of mind of players that don't use stairhopping and think that if they don't do it then nobody else should.
I will say this again: ID stairhopping might have been an oversight but it's hardly an exploit, and by no means does it ensure victory.
Exactly my feeling, by closing a hole without closing the issue you will always chase cheaters as in people who love this game so much as to come with alternative tactics, good for you, bad for the game

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