Not Used: Identifying items

As a rogue I of course have a lot of Lore because I'm a cheap SOB and don't want to waste money at a vendor to ID something or lose the money at the vendor who says they can't do it.

Here's the rub: I see the same gems, cheap necklaces, heck, most of the drops are completely the same minus a few things. Why then with a huge lore would I have to identify every bloody thing I see in a drop??? From a piddly bird in starter area to an ancient dragon, constantly seen items stupify the PC. Gold is the only thing one can recognize without ID.

How about an "if seen 100 times, player ID's item outright"?? If there's an itemlevel ID for each object, then can a lore check happen? I don't know how it all works but thought I'd check.

If you're killing lava elves, you pick up a LOT of gems and it's a real PITA to ID 7000 gems in a night.

Yes, I could go buy that tool with 3 daily uses to ID the gems at once (minus the light gems and uncut stones... huh... why wouldn't it ID uncut stones as a jeweler's tool???) **BUT** I hate having to put all my gems that are already ID'd back into the gem bags the way I had them to begin with. Not exactly a "feature" worth having.

Techless One here....

I like the idea that mundane items could be more readily ID on sight, but am unxertain on how this could work based on past personal history; sacrificial flame perhaps?

Personally, I hold the idea that mundane items shouls not require ID unless something is unique; would really help out in Goblin and graveyard areas where said items are seen commonly.

Just a note, regarding the uncut gems, you don't need to ID them to use the Gemcutter's tool.

You can ID everything in your inventory at an alter to Kalas for a mere 5k... saves you the time and effort....

BUT.. I believe it is done this way because without actually examining something how can you be SURE nothing is special about it... there are a few necklaces/rings out there that appear to be just plain ol tat, and they are easily dismissed as such too unless you ID them first....

Imagine two books on a table, the cover is the same, the artwork the same, they are the same shape and thickness, they both look to be the same age. By looking at them they are the same book, both useless. Unless you picked both of them up and examined them you would never know that one book has a hollow inside and is filled with squashed cheese sandwiches ... ...

I understand the perspective that Rusty has mentioned, but just having the gems identified would save the PITA time it takes to ID them in order to stack them out of the way between kills. My toon has seen enough rocks that she should know what they are on first sight, at least the cut ones which are the majority. It's such a PITA clog that sometimes I deliberately don't pick up rocks except the super valuable ones. You could even leave the gem-appearance light stones unidentified, if the million regular ones become painlessly identified by my toon, who does have a decent Lore.

And as I've mentioned elsewhere, the gem-identifying magnifying glass is useless, because it erases every identified gem out of every bag and duplicates them all over the inventory pages. Don't even know what would happen if there's not enough space for it to do that, probably lose all of one's valuable stashed gems if there's no room for the script to duplicate them on the inventory pages.

Ramana Jala wrote:
And as I've mentioned elsewhere, the gem-identifying magnifying glass is useless, because it erases every identified gem out of every bag and duplicates them all over the inventory pages. Don't even know what would happen if there's not enough space for it to do that, probably lose all of one's valuable stashed gems if there's no room for the script to duplicate them on the inventory pages.

I haven't experienced it myself--so cannot be hundred percent sure, but if the inventory is filled up, the remaining gems would likely just drop on the ground underneath the PC.

This is something I suggested a long time ago - IE. To have mundane items be pre-identified.

I understand the rationale for why it is the way it is...

I just think the tedium caused simply fails to enhance the fun or the immersion. Would be a very welcome thing if mundane items could be pre-identified - a time and fun and hassle saver.

I gotta agree ... a sword is a sword is a sword ...

At my previous PW, I think knowing an item was linked to one's Lore in such a way that if you had a decent Lore, you didn't have to ponder over it (i.e. click the Examine button). Since my toon obviously has enough Lore (when I click the Examine button, all the mundane items are described), then there should be a way to just bypass the Examine necessity and have them identified.

I do think that the Lore ranks should still be part of the equation, but doing their job in the background, to get rid of the PITA tedium of all those Examines.

And although I don't know how to script such a thing, another idea is that if you've seen an item before, you should be able to recognize the same type again. This particular idea would not even a function of Lore so much, at least not after the first identification.

Main point is to show that changing the mundane items to be pre-identified will improve the Aenean experience. Seems pretty darn clear this is a fact, at least to me.

As for automated identification, that sounds wonderful on the surface. I do think, however that when lore gets up high enough, it would completely remove the action of examining to identify even the rarest magical items, which strikes me as going a bit too far toward the convenience end of things.

What I would like to see is a middle of the road solution, where by mundane items are automatically acquired in an identified state (regardless of lore skill), and other non-mundane items up to a certain value (or rarity) could have an automated lore check in the "OnAcquire" script that would handle identifying them if the PCs lore is high enough (it would even be fair to raise the DC of this check from the default value due to the convenience of it being automatic, and a higher DC would simulate being 'that good' that a PC doesn't need the usual time to examine the item - also an incentive to get really high lore skill, as there is little payoff right now unless the PC has the creature lore feat).

Items of sufficient value or rarity should still require manual examination and sufficient lore to identify (which is how it currently works).

I believe this is a technical possibility, but would need to confirm.

First, I want to agree wholeheartedly that the main point of all this discussion is that changing mundane items to be more automatically identified would greatly improve the Aenean experience. To smooth out even annoying areas of minor importance such as this can greatly increase enjoyment.

As to the rest of what Dave says, I have no great opposition, just two points:

I don't see very much of any problem with a very high Lore skill removing the action of examination for all but the most special and rarest magical items, the only question being the cut-off point for implementation of automatic-identification versus examine-identification. A high Lore skill, after all, means that you're quick on the draw about these things and you've seen it all, pretty much. I guess whether a huge amount of middling-special items need their Lore adjusted for this avenue, would be a consideration in the trouble to implement it this way. This would after all, be an incentive to obtain more Lore if identifying those middle-rarity items at first sight is important to you. I think that those classes that are prone to acquire Lore, like Bards, should actually have it a little easier in just picking something up and saying, oh look, a whatever, and amazing all the others that only have low Lores. But this feature is a minor issue, and if it's difficult to implement, then just leave the examine-id route for middling items.

More significantly then, I don't really agree that even stupidly-simple 'mundane' items should be acquired identified regardless of Lore skill. If you're as ignorant as a box of rocks, then even simple items might be something you're not sure of. Even a simple copper necklace or a common gem could be something you're not sure is special or not. In real life, I still have a hard time identifying gems, and I'm a jewelry artisan. So this is an incentive to obtain a small amount of Lore. I don't want to change the small Lore requirement for identifying gems and copper necklaces, I only want that once I've learned about them, (or even just have enough Lore to know about them, if it's too difficult to script a 'seen-before' feature), I don't have to click-examine each one from then on until forever.

We all agree, of course, that special or rare items should still require manual examination and sufficient Lore to identify. As I see it, this discussion only covers from the stupidly-simple mundane items up to defining what constitutes the middling-special ones.

Just a quick note here. Part of what has been described, nwn already has covered, to a degree, if you have the lore to ID an item, a quick logout/login will ID every item you can do. While it's certainly not the most efficient way of doing things. Just wanted to make awareness of this for those which didn't knew of it.

It could certainly be neat if there was a quicker way of identifying large batches of mundane/common magical items found throughout one's travels (if one has the lore for it, I kinda agree with what Ramana wrote--a dumb, but physical strong halforc with low int/wis would certainly have a hard time recognizing items from one another). ^^

Thanks for that info, Angel. I had wondered why some items became identified mysteriously!

Although yeah that doesn't help with the identifying gems after each and every kill just to stack them away.

And I'd had in mind the strong but dumb half-orc who couldn't tell one gem from another, too, lol.

Yeah, it's not the most efficient way of identifying things; but if someone has a full inventory of items and a decent lore score, it's certainly a lot quicker, not to mention cheaper, to re-log than go to the nearest altar of Kalas to ID everything for 5k gold. (epic level characters may be able to scoff at the 5k gp price, but at low levels (like below level 20), such an amount can be A LOT of gold.

Angel of Death wrote:... if you have the lore to ID an item, a quick logout/login will ID every item you can do.

I've been experimenting with this logout/login method. It will indeed ID gems and a few mundane items. However, my toon has a base Lore score of 25, and there's still a lot of items I would have expected it to ID and it didn't, which my toon readily IDs with the examine method (without equipping any enhancing items). Anything with any magical properties at all, no matter how minor, it doesn't seem to identify.

Initial suggestion not used.

Sure, at first glance many items may look the same, but you actually have to look closer to figure out if there's anything special about an item. Plus, with the NWN game engine, it won't let you equip an item if you don't already know all it's properties. Unlike PnP D&D, you can't swing around that +20 sword of awesomeness unless it's completely identified.

Also, for some items I am working on modifying the loot generation system to have a chance of randomly assigning basic properties such as attack bonuses and enhancement bonuses, based on variables already on creatures that might get them. So that rusty goblin sword might just be a short sword +1, even if it looks just like all the other goblins' short swords.

For next module update, I'm altering the jeweler's magical lens script so that it no longer restacks/moves all the gems. Instead it will just go through and identify any cut gems that aren't already identified. Stacking function removed, since there is not a way for scripts to put anything into a container item (like a gem pouch), and running loops through inventory for every single gem being identified, looking for pre-existing stacks of the same exact type, would be a very laggy script...especially for those PCs hauling around hundreds of items in their inventories.