The 'treasure hunter' talent sucks.

[gut]

Yep, I said it. It just plain sucks. It wastes two talents right away:
'Alert' Pe +1 will rarely extend your visible radius, and (to my
knowledge) has no other benefit. 'Miser' means a bit more gold, but
gold isn't really hard to come by in ADOM. To compare those two
talents to the benefit you would get from talents like 'quick' and
'very quick' is just laughable.

So how about the 'treasure hunter' talent it's self? Well, it causes
more items to be generated, but aren't there other, more efficient
methods of generating items? Stair hopping in the ID will generate
items very efficiently, especially books, potions and scrolls. Picking
pockets also generates items efficiently. A fluff ball, plus a wand of
trap creation, plus the light spell, can generate hordes of (high
danger level) items, with incredible efficiency.

Of all of the above methods, to quickly generate great items, how
many are really needed? None. Yep, that's what makes me realize that
'treasure hunter' is useless. ID hopping is much better... and I
seldom use that. Pickpocketing is better... and I never use that.
Scorching gremlins is way better... and I never do that either. If all
of these 'item generating' methods are more effective, and I don't
bother with them, then why should I bother with 'treasure hunter'?

If the ID wasn't available from exp. level 1, then yeah, maybe. If the
pickpocketing skill wasn't available at exp. level 1, then OK, I could
see that. If gremlin massacre wasn't available for higher danger level
items, then sure. However, these things are easily available, more
effective, and still seldom used. Which only goes to further expose
'treasure hunter' as mediocre. (I don't mention the casino, as that is
only for the late game.)

The only benefit that I can see to 'treasure hunter', is that it is
passive. It just happens 'on the go' so it takes no effort. This might
be useful for those who dislike using any scumming methods, but how
useful? If you have already started playing with restrictions, you
probably also know how to win without having to rely on powerful
items. Probably, other talents would serve you better, especially in
keeping early game PC's alive.

What does 'treasure hunter' cost? Probably the 'Heir' gift, and some
of those can be really cool. The 'Heir' gift requires 3 starting
talents, and chasing the 'treasure hunter' beast requires 1, so unless
you start with 4 (gnomes suit you?), you miss out.

Even in the best case scenario, you will still have to do without some
of the (possibly) life-saving benefits of other talents. In the early
game, extra speed, PV, DV, and PP's can mean a lot to your survival.
The three talents needed for 'treasure hunter' will cost you these
possible talent lines:

DV - 'Careful' 'Shield Specialist' 'Shield Expert' (Having 4 bonus DV
points is like growing a third hand, and equipping an extra shield in
it. You could also pursue 'Very Careful'.)

Speed - 'Quick' 'Very Quick' 'Greased Lightning' (+2, +3, and +4
respectively. These talents do not just help you to escape danger more
easily. They also enable any PC to safely kill Hotz and gang with
missiles. This means a heap of early game gold, and exp. points.)

PP's - 'Potent Aura' 'Strong Aura' 'Mighty Aura' (+3, +6, and +9
respectively. A grand total of +18 PP's can really help a wizard's
early game survival. It allows them to book cast earlier, and thus
train the Mana stat earlier. Also, if your starting spell is acid
bolt, these can make the difference between being able to cast it once
or twice. Not to mention that these talents open up powerful magic
talents, making them quickly available.

PV - 'Hardy' (3 HP's may not seem like a lot, but how often have you
been taken down to exactly 0 HP's eh?) 'Tough Skin' (Need I even
mention the early-game value of PV points that are not vulnerable to
equipment damage. It does require your To stat to be at least 12
though, so elves may not benefit. 'Iron Skin' (Only if your To stat
is at least 15, so again it's not for elves, and maybe gnomes. Also,
you are now just one step away from being 'immune to pain', one of
the best talents in the game.)

Of course there is the theory of just choosing 'Alert' as your first
talent, then chose talents that actually HELP your PC. The logic being
that you can always get 'treasure hunter' later. The problem with that
(as I see it), is by the time you get finished with choosing the
helpful talents, you are nearing the casino, which renders 'treasure
hunter' completely worthless.

[DeSt]

Main benefit from Alert - Missile Weapon Master. 3/4 of mine winners had it.

Can someone provide exact benefits of Treasure Hunter talent? Items generated on level? Item drops? Total increase?

[Evil Knievel]

The early game survival aspect of many talents might be true, but early game survival in general is not garuanteed. Maybe you save creating 10% of the characters you create anyway. But then, mathematically speaking, we all will continue creating chars up to infinity. Thus, both numbers should be ridicously large in the end, with a factor of even .5 not changing anything. Now, you should think about the possibility, that your personal game expertise might increase faster under less favorable game conditions... And finally, after starting up a new computer, people choosing treasure hunter instead will enter the bug-infested village 10% sooner.
But to be serious: If you start to stick to some kind of strategy in adom (like always choosing treasure hunter), then you will destroy the variety of the game. That's all about adom - you can try anything, and nothing (sane) is totally wrong (Who of you really tried to burn down that animated forest?). You can start up anything, just to see how it goes. Be spontaneous!

[M_bowwarrior]

About talents, is there somewhere a tree of talents in order to know what allow what ?
I've seen a list one day, but it's difficult to find what you want in a list. And a tree is more adequate for this case.

[DeSt]

Improved Guidebook has nice table of talents.

[Silfir]

"If you have already started playing with restrictions, you probably also know how to win without having to rely on powerful items."

Correction. We know how to survive until we get the powerful items we need to rely on. And I have to say, the hassle is eased TREMENDOUSLY if you get 50% more loot. Treasure Hunter is all about preventing hassle. Stair*spit*hopping, gremlin *spit* bombing, pick*spit*pocketing and casino *spit* restocking are all alternatives to get the loot you need, but they are all boring, time-consuming and extraordinarily cheap. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

Besides, if I'm good enough to play with restrictions, I don't need no stinking early game survival talents. I'd much rather have more loot. A good suit of armor obtained early is much more helpful than the PV talents could ever be.

EDIT: The offical Guidebook has an excellent list. The Improved Guidebook might offer some additional code-dived info lazily copy-pasted within the stolen text.

[M_bowwarrior]

EDIT: The offical Guidebook has an excellent list. The Improved Guidebook might offer some additional code-dived info lazily copy-pasted within the stolen text.

yes, an excellent list... not a tree...

no one know where a T could be found ?

[Grey]

The "Improved" Guidebook talent tree is actually quite nice - one of the few things Pavel did that I approve of. It simply takes the manual information and organises it into a big tree chart that is easy to follow. Very handy when considering which talents to go for.

Anyway, back to the original subject, I did do some research on the Treasure Hunter talent a while back:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...e8fc489e9daa6/

As seen from my research it gives around an extra 15% chance that a monster will drop an item when killed (code-diving supposedly says 12.5%). By that I mean if the normal chance is 10% the resultant chance will be 25%. In the early game at least this seems to double item drops. As far as I could tell this included guaranteed drops like bows/arrows from kobolds/raiders (so more chances of a nice stack of slaying or penetrating ammo) and in theory would thus apply later to pick axes from dwarves and eternium armour from chaos knights - all nice to have. More importantly it means double the armour in the early game (extra PV), double scrolls (you'll find which is identify much quicker) and double water (always handy). It also means extra money early game from selling items (when gold is still useful), which can maybe get you access to some nice buys from the black market. Through the game it means a much better chance for all of Gaab'Baay's ingredients early on if going for an ultra, as well as generally more PoGA, SoCRs, etc.

Of course you can get by without. And of course you can use horrible scummy methods for certain items (though I'd say all methods are more of a nuisance - TH at least doubles the effects of gremlin bombing). And of course other talents might be more handy at the very start (I usually choose Long Stride before TH). But in general I want to have this talent by level 12, so that it will still benefit me throughout. I especially want it in time to help me get more blankets and eq for the Tower.

[reich]

I was quite shocked to see recently this talent being declared the best of all on various forums. Until then I was completely unaware of it's existence 'cause I never bothered to take either Miser or Alert, since those seem completely insignificant

[Ars]

It's all about the ease. I don't want to set up gremlin bombs or stairhop because it's lame and boring. TH is nice, because I don't have to do anything like that. I just hate searching for that AoLS. And an extra chance for things like eternium weapons of penetration is always nice. Sure the game can be easily completed without, but same goes for the other talents too.

I don't always pick it though.