Bridge building

[clawbugmenot]

Bridge building is one of the most useless skills in the game - hard to train, requires carrying log to build bridges and all in all over frost magic is easier to acquire. Adding levitation will diminish its usefulness even more.

What about changing this skill to Building and making it possible to build all sorts of stuff in the game. That will add some new tactical possibilities and make the skill useful again.

For example:

• Build bridge. Requirements: log.
• Build door. Requirements: log.
• Build wall. Requirements: huge rock
• Build forge. Requirements: huge rock
• Build statue. Requirements: huge rock + scalpel
• Build altar. Requirements: huge rock + holy water
• Build pool. Requirements: huge rock + 10 potions of water

Huge rocks are rare enough so that skill cannot be abused into creating unlimited things. Building options can be further limited by requiring specific skill level like the recipes for the Alchemy.

[blunk]

Bridge building is one of the most useless skills in the game - hard to train, requires carrying log to build bridges and all in all over frost magic is easier to acquire. Adding levitation will diminish its usefulness even more.

What about changing this skill to Building and making it possible to build all sorts of stuff in the game. That will add some new tactical possibilities and make the skill useful again.

For example:

• Build bridge. Requirements: log.
• Build door. Requirements: log.
• Build wall. Requirements: huge rock
• Build forge. Requirements: huge rock
• Build statue. Requirements: huge rock + scalpel
• Build altar. Requirements: huge rock + holy water
• Build pool. Requirements: huge rock + 10 potions of water

Huge rocks are rare enough so that skill cannot be abused into creating unlimited things. Building options can be further limited by requiring specific skill level like the recipes for the Alchemy.

Neat idea but not sure how practical it'd be.
Make wall sounds like it could be abused.

I think one of the main issues is you
1. need to carry the logs a long way and
2. it takes a lot of time (days and food)
3. some race/class combos arent strong enough to carry the logs (especially if you have no decent options for light armour/weapon)

Maybe if we'd be able to make them into lighter planks in the forest so you don't need to go as many times back and forth.
Make this a plank bridge that supports less weight compared to a log bridge.
This would
A. also make bridge building more viable for the somewhat weaker races.
B. make it trainable in the same forest squares where you chop the logs.
C. removes the need to carry redundant logs.

The time where bridge building would really shine, ie early game rivers is where you either wont have a hatchet, have way too low skill value, not enough food for the process or can't go back up because you're in ud.

[SinsI]

Build pool. Requirements: huge rock + 10 potions of water

10 copies of potions of water is going to be very hard to select from UI POV (and water is not that abundant, so this option is almost useless considering the cost).
And pools are colored, so it makes more sense to require a few non-water potions.
Maybe even add a SI to explain extra powers?

Huge rocks are rare enough so that skill cannot be abused

They are abundant enough to make it feasible to provide every single level with an altar.

Build altar. Requirements: huge rock + holy water

Instead of holy water, it is better to only allow to build them in "holy/unholy aura" rooms.

[JellySlayer]

I think being able to build altars could probably allow for some very cheesy strategies, even if the requirements were quite high--eg. build an altar in a narrow hallway at the entrance to a greater vault, elemental temple, D50 etc. and sacrifice everything. Huge rock + holy water isn't nearly limited enough, IMHO--you can find plenty of huge rocks by mining, or you can scum them off of some of the larger giant type monsters.

[_Ln_]

Can anyone explain to me about the current fascination with building in games? Every major release, every minor release these days boasts "you can build structures" like it's a holy grail of gaming design.

[Soirana]

Huge rocks are not rare. Some monsters (like guaranteed ogre guardian in HMV) use them as ammo, so PC can stock at will.

Trikster god in Crawl gives portable altar (which is lovely), I don't think it's considered to be broken thing (PC would loose lots of loot and xp saccing greater vault and gain what? (cheesy access to artifacts?))

[IGB]

Good idea, though probably needs higher requirements:

Build bridge. Requirements: log
Build door. Requirements: log + wooden stick
Build wall. Requirements: 2 x huge rock
Build forge. Requirements: huge rock + unholy water + heavily damaged room
Build statue. Requirements: huge rock + scalpel + holy water + incredibly ancient room
Build altar. Requirements: huge rock + holy water + supernatural entity room
Build pool. Requirements: huge rock + 15 potions of water (needs to be in stack) + holy water + humid room
Build torch: wooden stick + bandage + potion of oil

[clawbugmenot]

Can anyone explain to me about the current fascination with building in games? Every major release, every minor release these days boasts "you can build structures" like it's a holy grail of gaming design.

Well in that case ADOM was waaay ahead of time when it allowed building bridges, doors and traps.
[offtopic]It's not fascination, it's more about adding something new in well-known genres. Plus it was not possible earlier as it required proper support from the game engine (physics and so on)[/offtopic]

On topic - it's not about adding constructing element as much as thinking, how the skill can be made usable again. Adding new game mechanic just seemed logical here.

[SinsI]

Build pool. Requirements: huge rock + 15 potions of water (needs to be in stack) + holy water + humid room

Ridiculous.
When was the last time your character had accumulated 16 potions of water (with only one of them being holy!), and how many pools have you seen by that point of time?
What do you think is more useful - 16 potions of holy water or ability to drink a bit from a random pool?

[Blank4u47]

Ridiculous.
When was the last time your character had accumulated 16 potions of water (with only one of them being holy!), and how many pools have you seen by that point of time?
What do you think is more useful - 16 potions of holy water or ability to drink a bit from a random pool?

I think it makes sense, how are you going to get a pools' worth of magic water into a pool without lots of magic water? However you are correct in that it's infeaseable from a gameplay perspective. Perhaps instead there could be a never ending flask of water somewhere in the game?