Go through all treasures

[VictorGijsbers]

I'm planning to go through all the treasures in the game (i.e., the Items file), in an attempt to improve what may be improved and remove what is just uninteresting. Every treasure should be cool.

I'll update this issue as I make changes. Comments are welcome.

• Essence of caution: increased +2 retreat bonus to +3; removed random initiative loss (not visible enough); instead, added a -1 spirit penalty.
• Necklace of torment: the person being dealt damage in combat (either the wearer or the person attacked by the wearer) no longer receives a small initiative penalty, but must now skip an entire turn writhing in agony.
• New cursed version of the diadem of the priestess: the demon lord's diadem. Gives you a +4 spirit bonus, but 2/3 of the time (the player cannot know this), it is set to summon a demonic mistress after a set number of turns. This demonic mistress uses her mind-reducing whip to enslave the player and carry him/her/it off to serve the demon lord in Hell. She can, of course, be fought and defeated, which would give the player a mind reducing whip... could be useful!
• Metastasio'ss hat: removed, for now.
• Shirt of muscles: still a +2 body item, but is now know as the bodice of physique.
• New cursed version of the bodice of physique: the bodice of breathlessness. It gives a +2 body bonus as normal, but tightens when the player concentrates, giving a -2 body penalty for every level of concentration.
• Asbestos vest: removed, for now.
• Boots of the war dance no longer give initiative bonus, but now give a +1 dodge bonus.
• Boots of wandering no longer give initiative bonus.
• New: gauntlets of grip, give a +1 parry bonus.
• New: greasy gauntlets (cursed hidden identity of gauntlets of grip), sometimes makes your weapon be knockec from your hands.
• Monk's robe: Miranda's robe now grants -2 body, +1 mind, + 1 spirit.
• Mouser's sword: renamed to sneaking sword. Deals +2 damage when used by someone who is hidden.
• New: blindfold, gives you blindness when worn. (Works like goggles of blindness, but isn't cursed.)
• Plate mail: now gives -2 body instead of random initiative loss. Also, its description tells more about what it does.
• New: periapt of prophecy. An epic item that only works when you are under the influence of ment. It then gives you a rough but always correct prediction of your attack roll each turn.
• New: psychedelic cloak: does nothing unless the player is under the influence of ment. When that happens, becomes covered in psychedlic colours that distract everyone else, decreasing their mind scores (while the effect is active).
• Except for rust grenades, all rusted grenades now have a 50% chance of not working.
• Flash grenades now blind temporarily.
• Fungicide contraption: also kills rust spores in adjacent rooms.
• Scroll of the blade: slightly less powerful.
• New: singing sword, a cursed version of Mouser's sneaking sword. Can be engaged in a singing contest!
• Fafhr'd sword is now the claymore: for every 4 points of body, it has a 5% chance of destroying any weapon which it parries or by which it is parried.
• Healer's sword is not the holy sword: it deals 1 extra damage to all undead and demons for every 6 points of spirit that the wielder has.
• Defender's sword is now the immaculate sword, which is incorruptible. (Cannot rust, cannot be disintegrated, and so on.)
• Fearsome axe now actually instils fear: the target has a mind-based chance of being unable to react to an attack.
• New: the fearsome axe can turn out to be the cursed fearful axe. This axe sometimes makes the player to afraid to attack (which makes her skip a turn), though the effect is made more rare by having a high mind score.

[curiousdannii]

A few of the item names feel a bit awkward to me. I have a few suggestions which you can take or leave!

Bodice of body -> Bodice of vigor / Bodice of physique I would never think of gloves when reading the word "guantlet", though maybe that's just me. Maybe change it, or change the description to make it more clear what they are. Sneaky sword could be changed to Sword of sneakiness The demon lord's diadem -> Diadem of the demon lord

[ektemple]

I agree on the bodice of body. (I also wonder if a non-gendered term might be better than bodice, but on the other hand it's kind of fun to think of a bodice as an item for warfare.)

Gauntlet is a very common term for an armored glove, at least on this side of the waters. It's all over the place in fantasy and historical fictions, including even Assassin's Creed. I have a hard time coming up with any better term. On the other hand, you have a point that it might be nice to mention that it is a glove for the benefit of folks who haven't encountered it before. (On the third hand, I've never resented any work that sent me to the dictionary, but I have a feeling I'm in the minority there.)

I like the sound of sneaking sword rather than sneaky, but that's probably idiosyncratic.

[curiousdannii]

I had to move the references to the people out of the Items extension -- by referencing them before they were defined the order of people listed in "remember" and the new powers menu was incorrect.

Alternatively we could move the monsters extension before the items extension in story.ni, but I don't know if that might have other consequences.

[VictorGijsbers]

Aw, am I the only one who loves the sound of "bodice of body"? Though I just realised that everything depends on how it is pronounced. I was assuming it is "bodiss", but perhaps it is pronounced like "bodies"? "Bodiss of body" sounds awesome, "bodies of body" sounds awful. And while full may seem to be better than some, awful is not better than awesome. ;)

Gauntlet is a standard RPG term. But I suppose that using the word "gloves" in the description can't hurt.

I've been trying to avoid calling everything "the A of B", hence the "demon lord's diadem" and so on. If you think this is a flawed objective, let me know. (There is this cheap fantasy vibe surrounding the "A of B", Every bad fantasy writer calls his books things like "The Path of Daggers", "Temple of the Winds", "Game of Thrones", "Pawn of Prophecy", "City of Golden Shadow", and so on, and so forth.)

I like "sneaking sword". (It turns out to be the cursed singing sword! Hm... not easy to do, given that Mouser is holding it, but otherwise it would be a great idea. The singing sword would of course give you a huge penalty to hiding.)

[ektemple]

I pronounce bodice as you do, Victor, but it's actually not the sound that I object to (not speaking for Dannii here, obviously). It's that "body" would never be used that way in English, because body isn't a quality. Neither is "mind"--though "spirit" is. A Bodice of Spirit (Suspenders of Spirit if we prefer alliteration) is quite natural, but you'd need to go with something like Bodice of Bodily Puissance or Mantle of Mindfulness to capture the sense of a quality, or else just go with Bodice of the Body or Mantle of the Mind for a different sort of effect.

Now, Kerkerkruip does treat body as a quality: It becomes a measurable thing due to its use as a faculty, and so bodice of body makes some sense in that regard--but it still sounds odd. There's also the chain of associations: The bodice is a feminine article of clothing, and Bodice of Body kind of sounds like an enhancement to the female form... (If you're an etymology buff, bodice of body is also a bit weird-sounding, because bodice means--etymologically--bodies.)

I think avoiding the standard fantasy trope A of B is a worthy goal.

I like the sneaking/singing sword!

[curiousdannii]

Bodice is a great word, but body just doesn't belong with it. Can't really explain why. So that's why I suggested vigour and physique -- two words that might be better, and are femininesque too. And I'd be all for some more feminine objects! How about a garter?

Yeah we don't want everything to be A of B. The Sneaking Sword is good. I don't like "The demon lord's diadem". Maybe because it sounds as if the demon lord is known to us, but he isn't.

[VictorGijsbers]

OK, I turned the bodice of body into the bodice of physique. I've also added two new items that only work when the player is under the influence of ment. I'm quite happy with the periapt of prophecy, an epic item that -- when you are under the influence of ment -- predicts the strength of your attack roll. I.e., it says things like "If you choose to attack, your performance will be weak." or "If you choose to attack, your performance will be heroic." These predictions are always true, and therefore very useful!

[VictorGijsbers]

Not unimportant change: flash grenades now blind temporarily, for 15 - (body/3) - (smoke penalty) turns. This should make them more useful.

[ektemple]

I like the new periapt! Say, is Kerkerkruip the only roguelike that features explicit drug consumption? If fantasy adventurers were real, I'm sure their attitudes toward drugs wouldn't be far off from Lance Armstrong's. Instead, we're meant to believe that they quaff sanitary "potions" with no addictive potential whatever...

If I were interviewing Victor for a mainstream publication, I suppose I'd also have ask whether the permissive state policies toward drugs in the Netherlands influenced the game.

[VictorGijsbers]

The Binding of Isaac has the player consume pills that are definitely meant to invoke drug use. But it was published one month after Kerkerkruip! :) Not sure that we were the first, though; I don't know enough roguelikes to make an educated judgment about that.

One of my aims with Kerkerkruip was to recreate something of the atmosphere of the original sword & sorcery, where sex and drugs, squalor and slavery were as common as you would expect them to be in a world where life is cheap and people live by the sword. Most later fantasy was sanitised (we can blame Tolkien, who, after all, is to blame for almost everything that is bad about modern fantasy), and doubly so in computer games. Ment -- which is obviously a drug and leaves you permanently scarred -- was part of this darker, more realistic aesthetic.

I don't think I was influenced by the Dutch drug laws, no. After all, those only apply to soft drugs, not to anything you would snort, like cocaine. (Unfortunately. While I'm opposed to the use of almost all drugs, I'm even more opposed to the war on drugs, which I believe to be completely counter-productive. Legalise, regulate, discourage -- to me that seems to most pragmatic position.)

[VictorGijsbers]

I have gone through all the items, and improved most of them (see original post for details). I now believe that all items in the game are at least somewhat interesting! If you know stuff that can/should be improved further, we could discuss it in the forum or in a new issue. I'm closing this one.

[VictorGijsbers]

(By the way, I hope you all hate me for adding five new cursed items in the process. ;) )