Boulder beetles first appear around dungeon level 10 or in the early levels of the lair. There key feature is the 4* of AC or up to 20 points of damage reduction combined with a fairly hefty 76 hp. That means if you have some kind of weapon that does around 20 damage (pretty decent at this stage of the game) this is not going to work out well.
To compensate boulder beetles are weak to poison. This is were the poison darts come in. Even a char with zero throwing skill and miserable dex can generally take down a boulder beetle with a dozen poison darts without too much trouble.
There are alternatives, a scroll of poison or poison magic can work as well. If you main weapon has the poison brand or your char deals a ton of melee damage that is fine too. But all these are a lot more specific and not necessarily available in a pinch.
Which means any char should pick up the fairly common poison darts even if they have no plan to ever train any throwing or don’t intend to throw anything else. But unfortunately darts are currently not in the standard auto pickup list. Which turns this into a rather beginner unfriendly gotcha mechanic. If you know you should pick up poison darts you are fine, if you don’t you may get screwed.
So I would suggest that poison darts (and probably all other darts as well) are moved to the list of items that are automatically picked up on startup. I know I could manually change that list and even if I don’t if I manually pick up the first poison darts I see, the game will automatically continue picking them up but both of these assume that one already knows that you want to pick these up.
So for additional beginner friendliness (and help for people who are sometimes forgetful like me) please move darts to the list of items that are automatically picked up by default. Whoever doesn’t like that can easily remove them from there if desired.
4 Thanks
I always turn on autopickup for darts at the start of the game (or usually when I first remember to, on D:2). So Having that happen automatically would be nice.
this isn’t technically true though. If you have in your inventory curare darts and no other darts, currently you will automatically pick up curare darts and no other darts. This is useful if your inventory is full.
If darts were auto-pickup, you would stop every time you found some other kind of darts.
If you disable dart pickup, you wouldn’t automatically pickup curare darts anymore.
Poison darts my beloved. I never skip them and the curare ones.
Thanks for the tip!
1 Thank
Edit your rc file. Seek out the options_guide
autopickup = $?!+"/
The above is the default list. The valid symbols are
) Weapons
( Missiles
[ Armour
/ Wands
? Scrolls
" or = Jewellery
! Potions
+ or : Books
| Staves
0 Orbs
% Talismans
} Misc. items
$ Gold
Gems
• Baubles
Note that whether items are picked up automatically or not, is
controlled by the in-game toggle Ctrl-A. Also note that picking
up takes a turn, but only one turn (regardless of the number of
items). If you teleport or blink onto a square with interesting
items, these will not be picked up.
check compatibilities. I swear some options don’t work as expected, perhaps they still work on stable release?
This forces autopickup for curare until you specifically disable it on the menu:
autopickup_exceptions += <curare
or try:
autopickup_exceptions += dart
And Orbs are nothing else other than the Orb of Zot
Well yes, I can adjust the options in the game to make that happen. But that assumes one already knows one should pick up poison darts so it doesn’t do anything for the beginner friendliness I wanted to improve.
All is fine.
One wanders the dungeon aimlessly and finds some poison-tipped darts. One knows what those can do and choose to ignore them with plenty of space in inventory. Brigands will naturally cherish them. Knights will naturally scorn them. Berserkers only need rage. Adventurers do as they please.
It all comes to preference and roleplay I guess. Tho I understand. At times there was no autopickup for nets and immolation