Talk:Price identification

What other factors need to be accounted for in price identification? My character with 10 Charisma just bought a potion priced at 444, thinking it had to be one of the most expensive tier, and hoping for gain level. It turned out to be an uncursed potion of oil, which is listed on this wiki with a base price of 250. That should have cost (250 x 1.33) = 333, so there must have been some other modifier operating. (I know I wasn't hungry, so it wasn't subject to the hunger tax for food items.) -- 99.183.213.175 06:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

-- It's the random 33% markup, tied to object id when buying. Tjr 16:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I picked up a scroll for 400gp. It's unidentified (+33% cost) and my charisma is 9 (+33% cost). This would make it cost ~240gp. There are no scrolls that cost ~240gp. So what is wrong in my calculation? --Havvy 10:20, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

The 33% unidentified markup is random. If you only factor in the 33% charisma markup (which is always applied), the base price comes out to 300gp, and there are four 300gp scrolls. -- Qazmlpok 12:48, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Kicking walls to use-test regeneration

Of course you can kick a wall, but that will wake up and attract nearby monsters. You don't want a nymph waiting for you right outside the shop. Let's propose safe alternatives if there are any. If you want to re-add kicking, please discuss it here, too. --Tjr 00:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Advice to wish for a wand of death from early wands of wishing

Can we remove this for once and for all, everywhere it appears? If you're that worried about dying before you get 1000 gold, you can seriously just wish for 2 scrolls of charging and 5000 gold (the shopkeeper doesn't claim it). To a character that's about to get at least three of magic resistance, reflection, speed boots, and an artifact weapon, not to mention good AC from whichever DSM, a wand of death is something of a waste of a wish - so is 5000 gold, but it's a hell of a lot less risky. The wand of death is only really useful against Rodney later on, and by then you'll have more wishes from the castle wand, not to mention Orcus' wand.

The other advice in that paragraph isn't terrible. Zapping a shopkeeper with an early wand of death - that's not horrible advice. It's of course just as risky, but an early wand of death is not so great a find that you'd care too much about losing that game, and the early gold and inventory can indeed be useful. As for wishing for a figurine of an Archon, that's not bad advice if you were already planning to do it - since you run that 10% chance of a hostile one no matter when you wish for it. -Ion frigate 07:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Why is price identifying potions so down played?

I find it critical in categorizing potions, wands and rings. A hell of a lot more can be done in any early game and also in illiterate games with regards to potion identification than just avoid polymorph and go bananas with 300 zm potions. It is the method of categorizing them for further analysis when needed, e.g. all 50 zm potions can be diluted early when water is needed, 100 zm are easy to close up equally after seeing some monster usage, 150 zm potions have gain energy and that's it, 200 zm is an interesting category but also contains only 5 potions with speed and full healing used by monsters frequently, 250 zm is again trivial as is 300 zm) --Kynde (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)