unidentified item bugs?

[toothpix]

Hi! Thanks to Basilisk for a really good game:)

I found a few features that may well be bugs

- You can prepare alchemy recipes with unidentified ingredients. Yeah, I know that pink thing is ectoplasm but still..
- apparently you can identify any amount of same item at the shop for the price of one.. bulk price for my assassin's rings:)

[Unclever title]

Or you can right click the unknown item in your inventory and the shopkeep will identify it for about half the item price, don't know if all merchants can identify all items or not...

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Also, if you have an identified ectoplasm in your inventory, you can drop other unidentified ones on to it, and they're all instantly identified.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Most of these functions were intended. If you feel they should be changed for Book II, drop your opinions here.

- We purposely wanted you to be able to make potions from unknown ingredients; not knowing what an ingredient is doesn't mean it won't make a potion that you might recognize. This encourages experimentation.
- Dropping an unknown item onto a known item is like comparing the two items in detail, thus confirming the purpose of the unknown item.

The fact that Merchants are IDing all items in your inventory of the same kind would probably be considered a bug. I'll look into this.

[toothpix]

Why can't you drink unidentified potions, read unidentified books and scrolls and use unidentified equipment then?

I mean, just down the potion..

Simply _read_ the book! Or is it the case when you first need to know if it's in Central Thaermorish (DOS) or (Windows) encoding? Otherwise you get unintelligible symbols?;)

And the equipment.. well if it's a pointy stick of metal, why not poke the nearest goblin with it and see what happens?

[BasiliskWrangler]

Why can't you drink unidentified potions, read unidentified books and scrolls and use unidentified equipment then?

I mean, just down the potion..

Simply _read_ the book! Or is it the case when you first need to know if it's in Central Thaermorish (DOS) or (Windows) encoding? Otherwise you get unintelligible symbols?;)

And the equipment.. well if it's a pointy stick of metal, why not poke the nearest goblin with it and see what happens?

All legitimate points. We're going over every Book II skill with a fine-toothed comb to improve them. I've posted your comments in dev notes.

[toothpix]

Well, I mean it shouldn't kill the need for identify item and Lore either..

Concerning unidentified equipment, maybe if it were an item with bonuses, they would be applied by 1/3 or 1/2 and maluses would be applied fully. So you could see that an item has potential and identify it.

Or the best solution might be to have the stats from an identified item hidden from the stat screen.

By the way I would love to see items with mixed stats, i.e. bonuses and maluses.. Like a really heavy plate armor would add to your defence but make you slower.

[Unclever title]

Something that would make lore necessary or at least useful would be adding more items that can be confusable.

Consider this, perhaps one picks up some demon oil and has no idea what it is, it's clear that the object is in a flask so it seems as though it is a potion of some sort, thus the character might assume that it's drinkable. Drinking this would obviously amount in large HP damage at the least.

Now if you added poisons and other bottle based weaponry, perhaps a vial of super viscous goo, then other creative forms of accidental death could become available.

Some items are obvious how to use them but some objects require a bit of knowledge first. If it's possible I would suggest that for such an ambiguous item that there might be multiple ways to use it when it is unidentified.

Like if you come across a strange herb, you may not immediately know it's inedible. Considering food and drink are in effect for Book II then you even add the option of unidentified foods and liquids. This sounds like a lot of fun for at least the 1st few times you die.

[Turtle]

There's also the option of cursed equipment. So you could equip that unidentified armor, but you'd be taking a chance.

[toothpix]

Cursed would be too much of a rip-off from D&D don't you think?;) I'd rather the number just didn't show.. you put on an unidentified armor and your AC shows '??', so you don't really know if it became better or worse.