#244 Alchemy identification range increases with level
This behavior was observed on the metalforge server.
At alchemy levels 1-4, using the alchemy skill only identifies items on
your current tile. At levels 5-16, it also identifies all items one tile
away. At level 17, the range is increased to two.
This is rather a nuisance, because I've been using a command like this
to identify items one at a time:
get 1 s;north;north;use_skill alchemy;dropall;south;south
But now that my alchemy is level 17, this identifies all of the items in
the starting stack at once, wasting most of the xp I would have gained.
I will have to move three north instead. And perhaps the range will
increase even more at higher levels.
Limited experimentation seems to indicate a similar effect for smithery,
though it appears to work asymmetrically, with range in some directions
but not others. This asymmetry may apply to alchemy as well.
Is this an intended effect, to discourage high-level alchemists from
using repeated identification to gain xp? Or just an unintended side
effect?
If it's not intended, it would be nice if the range stayed at zero, only
working on your current tile, for all such skills.
server/serverskills.c do skill ident
skill->level > 64 area=7x7
skill->level > 16 area=5x5
skill->level > 4 area=3x3
else area= 1
I propose a fix like so: If you are able to ident an item, and it's in a stack, just multiply the experience gain by the number of items in the stack. This extends the benefits of mass identification to all players, regardless of whether they know scripts even exist, have the technical experience to use them, or have the time to spend on running them.
If this means that there is now too much exp gain from identifying items, then reduce exp gain by some factor, maybe half.
I can think of various possible fixes for the experience issue:
1) don't allow unidentified items to merge, so you don't need to pick one, move, identify, drop, move. I think it will unfortunately create many items in the game, wayyyyyyy too many...
2) multiply identify experience by number of items, as Draug suggested. This IMO isn't great because it's a all-or-nothing scenario (get either 0 exp or all exp), and players using a script or anything else will not use that...
3) have the server handle the multiple items directly, and for each attempt identification, count how many are identified, and give exp accordingly. This is the simplest fix, but it's weird because on the one hand the character stacks similar items when unidentified (thus it knows they are the same) but won't correctly identify some.
4) change how unidentified items are merged, by having eg many unidentified "ring" as one item with a nrof, but keep trace of what rings there are actually. When attempting to identify, pick one randomly. It won't be that easy to do though, but it may be the "nicest" fix.
Here's a patch implementing choice 3).
The aim is to maximize experience when using skills for identification or sense magic/curse, without the use of a client-side script.
When using sense curse or magic, experience is directly multiplied by the number of items (no random in this case, just a level check).
When identifying a group of items with a skill, attempt is made for each of the items, and identified items are split from unidentified items. So the behaviour is exactly like picking and identifying one by one.
Solution 4 could be implemented later, but it'd require more changes to the server.
Patch applied, the need to attempt identification item by item is now removed, thus increasing the range won't matter for experience purposes.