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)

Double dupe penalty

I have a 1st level Tourist with 17 charisma and who is wearing only his Hawaiian shirt. He dropped a scroll in a shop on dungeon level 2 and the shopkeeper offered him 20zm for it. He dropped another scroll in the shop and the shopkeeper offered him 27zm for it. I identified the first one and it was enchant weapon. It looks like I'm being charged an extra penalty for being a double dupe.

Haven't read the 3.6.1 code to see whether that's true for sure. --JMike (talk) 12:49, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

The sell price tables don't account for dupe penalties, but as said elsewhere, "When you sell an item, the price will be one half the base price of the item, or one third the base price if you are a dupe". Enchant weapon is $60, so 20 is one-third of that, and there are $80 scrolls where 27 is one-third of that. Doesn't seem like a bug of any sort and I don't think a double-penalization is happening here. The table doesn't list sell prices for dupes, is all. (The reason they don't is because instead of two numbers they'd have to list four - one for all possible combinations of dupe/nondupe and shopkeeper taking 25% off the sell price or not - and two of those are rare cases.) --Phol ende wodan (talk) 13:04, 20 March 2021 (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)

Potions are heavy and not that useful (in normal games), that's why. However, things change once you do conducts.

This is a conduct-proof way to identify potions of each price group:

50 -- sell at food store (booze & juice), mine's end amethyst (booze to juice), unihorn (sickness to juice), dip unpoisoned missile (sickness), alchemy products (juice, booze, see invisible)

100 -- dip poisoned arrow (healing, full healing), monster starting inventory (confusion, healing, xhealing, sleeping), unihorn (confusion, hallu). Only restore ability does nothing on all tests.

150 -- unihorn (blindness), wield it and blind yourself (blindness), monster starting inventory (blindness, invisibility), nymphs and mine's end (object detection). Only gain energy and monster detection seem to be indistinguishable, which wastes precious alchemy input. If nothing else, quaff candidates when both possibilities would be useful.

200 -- dip a wand of polymorph first (only potion of polymorph will say "Nothing happens."), monster starting inventory (full healing, speed, polymorph (the latter is much rarer)), alchemy products (full healing, enlightenment), dip poisoned missile (full healing). But multi-step alchemy is not a good way to distinguish levitation and enlightenment because you usually start that only once you have enough levitation. (Recall pacifists do not get death drops, and levitation cannot be alchemized.) Suggestions are welcome.

250 -- drop anything that can be applied (except the potion), and press a.

300 -- monster starting inventory and monster usage (gain level, paralysis).

Any other fully conduct-proof methods that don't waste potions are more than welcome. Monster starting inventory also means monsters will drink or throw those potions (except object detection in case of nymphs). --Tjr (talk) 20:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

err... I can assure you monsters aren't going to quaff blindness, confusion, and sleeping. :P Wooble (talk) 12:36, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

My bad, they throw them. Fixed. --Tjr (talk) 18:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Price identification of wands

I don't think that price iding wands should be so downplayed. If your wands are already price ID's it wake engrave IDing easier and potentialy take less charges.

--Tourist Supremacy (talk) 18:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't make engrave IDing significantly easier, and then you have to walk around with an un-IDed and potentially useful/life-saving wand between where you pick it up and a shop that can price it for you. The article doesn't really downplay anything; it specifically mentions the very few cases where price ID might save a charge (death/sleep and the vanishing wands). Wooble (talk) 18:25, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Potion identification

I don't think this is the appropriate page for a long discussion of potion ID that is not related to price ID - it would fit better in Potion#Identification. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 16:30, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, moved it --Nethacker (talk) 17:50, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the recent table edits

My opinion is that both versions of the tables are intimidating to look at and difficult to use. There are links to several excellent 3rd-party tools at the bottom of the page, and if it's possible to import one of them into the wiki or alt.org, that would be ideal. If not, I still think it should be fine to direct users to them, since at least gridbug.de has been up for a while and doesn't show any signs of going anywhere. Then we could get rid of those tables and make the article much more readable. --Darth l33t (talk) 21:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I have no horse in this race until I actually sit and look at the matter, but due to the amount of defunct links I removed not-all-that-recently, I will volunteer that users should get in the habit of saving several of these external NetHack resources to the Wayback Machine sooner rather than later. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 21:41, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I would also highly prefer it if both editors discussed the matter of the tables here rather than edit warring. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:10, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

As an inexperienced player, I registered for the wiki solely to participate in this discussion. I was using the previous version of the table and found it simple to use. When the most recent revert changed it to the current version, I thought I must be misremembering the article title or otherwise on the wrong page, because I found it completely confusing and unusable. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 12:58, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

If we do want the article to feature a lookup table, then I agree that it's simplest to have one table containing all the possible base prices (barring enchanted weapons and armor), rather than splitting them up into lots of smaller tables so you have to find the right one. I also say get rid of the 3.4.3 tables, or move them to a subpage like was done with MC, since the only ones still playing the old version are veteran players who don't need the info. --Darth l33t (talk) 13:26, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

"the only ones still playing the old version are veteran players who don't need the info" isn't likely to be true because purists are a thing, though I do agree that the subpage may be a viable idea. I'm still waiting for Leniad and Bruce Elroy to chime in on this so we can come to a consensus. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 20:46, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

They might not be aware of the conversation. Does this wiki have a ping system? Otherwise, could leave a note on their talk. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 03:58, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

so, the main reasons I made the initial edit was due to how cumbersome they were to use and how unreadable the page was with a million tables crammed into it - I played vanilla for many years (and recently have been trying out different variants) but every time I come back to play it would take more time to identify things because I'd have to constantly scroll all around the page to check several tables to find what the base prices were (although in all my years playing I had no idea there were 3rd-party tools at the bottom so mea culpa on that one ha!). I definitely agree that both versions aren't perfect as there's a lot to deal with either way - if you're only IDing one type thing then having a single table to look at might be simpler at first, but in the long term having one big table for base price is going to be way less work than bouncing back and forth every time you hit a general store.

re: edit warring - apologies on my end for the revert of the revert - I had looked for a thread like this but hadn't seen anything (thanks Umbire for the heads up!). I had hoped if there were issues that there would be a discussion as opposed to a complete undo - I opted to do a blanket revert as it was quite a bit of work to make the original change and didn't want to lose that. In terms of end result I would by all means hope to fail forward, as it were, instead of going back to the old way though so if people have suggestions I'd definitely prefer to iterate instead of obliterate. I'm happy to be the one to make the changes, whatever they may be - linking to an external tool doesn't seem like a bad idea although I would think the wiki is generally expected to be the source of truth instead of the other way around. One thing to point out re: versions is that most (I think?) popular variants are based off of 3.4.3 so while it is definitely annoying to have both I don't think it's safe to completely do away with the older version - maybe relegate to variant-specific pages since there's a lot to take in?

re: the new version being unusable for new users - how can we improve that? do people know that price ID is a 2 step process (one for shop price => base price and one for base price => possible items) in almost all cases? is there something better we can be doing to explain the process there? it took me a couple games to adjust but it is definitely way, way faster now. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 12:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

There is a clear demand, from Vaticidalprophet and others, for the wiki to host static price ID tables that easily allow you to plug in three things - the object class of an item, the quoted price of the item, and your Charisma (if buying) - and get out a set of possible items. The current page does not do this, because now you need to go look up an item's base price in the "Master List" and then cross reference it in another table which tells you what objects have that base price. User-experience-wise, that poses a real obstacle.

Relying on external tools is insufficient, since those external tools could disappear at any time without warning, and also since they could get out of date if the DevTeam decides to change the pricing rules or the base prices of objects. On the wiki, anyone has the ability to correct those.

One idea that occurred to me, touching on what Darth l33t said, is to shunt *all* the price ID tables, as they existed before the recent edits, into their own pages, which then get linked from here. These could be subpages of this one (Price identification/Price tables) or separate top-level pages (NetHack 3.6 price identification tables). That would also clear up the uneasy tension of this page catering to both 3.4.3 and 3.6 players. In general, the wiki is supposed to document the current release of NetHack without getting crammed full of asides and extraneous sections about how things used to work, so by rights the 3.4.3 tables shouldn't be on this page, but they've stuck around likely due to their usefulness for 3.4.3-derived variants. This page would then contain no tables at all.

To what Umbire said, continued edit warring will result in this page getting locked and rolled back to before the edit war started, so please try to achieve consensus. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 13:39, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

> There is a clear demand ... a real obstacle.

I would respectfully disagree that the edits I made are worse than what it was before - it is definitely an iteration on something that's been the same for almost a decade though so it is going to require people give it a chance instead of just undoing all changes because it is different. As someone who has been using this page for years I find that every time I come back I forget how cumbersome it is to use the old way (old habits die hard, and all that) - I would argue that the most valuable input we can get is from people who never knew the old way (and note that those that just learned the old way are probably going to be the most irked by the changes).

If people make an effort to adopt and improve the changes I think they'll find it to be much quicker and easier to price ID things in the future (except maybe that one person that can never remember the base price of acid/oil potions). Realistically, price IDing items is always going to be the same process regardless of item type: find the base price and then find the set of items that match that - not to mention the fact that having several tables with the same information is going to be a nightmare to update in the future should they change (the 3.4.3 vs 3.6.0 tables is exactly that). Note that the vanilla way does not take into account the additional hoops some variants introduce to ID the base price (e.g. role / race modifiers) and so trying to include that information would make the old system even more impossible to navigate cleanly.

If there's no objections I'd like to continue to iterate and improve on the changes I made - I tried to keep it limited in order to not overwhelm people but as that's apparently not the case I think there's definitely some streamlining to be had here that will make it even simpler to manage (both from a player and wiki editor perspective). --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 14:47, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

As someone else mentioned above, I am of the opinion that both versions are very cumbersome and confusing to use. Hopefully, a nicer solution can be reached in the near future especially with many eyes on the page right now. That said, I would expect many people would be very unhappy with such significant changes to the page whether or not these changes are "better". Think about how many people felt when sokoban was changed to allow flipped levels. I still hear droves of people complain about it to this day. From a new player's perspective, this change may make a lot of sense, but older players that have been doing sokoban for years (or using the price identification page in this case) would object because they are so used to doing it a certain way. I can say that I was definitely confused when I flipped through the page a few days ago, and I have not been playing/using the page for nearly as long as others. I think change is definitely needed here, but it should be discussed before making such huge edits.--Shadow Rider (talk) 16:10, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

re: talk first you are 100% right in that regard - I did not realize this had a talk page (and still don't see how to access it via the page itself lol). Also agree that the tables themselves were (and are still!) extremely cumbersome - back when they were first implemented you could see them all on one screen so it wasn't as bad. There's still improvements to be made so hopefully with more eyes on it we can continue to improve it instead of leaving things as it was - e.g. any mention of specific prices should be on a separate page. This page should strictly discuss strategies and be completely price agnostic IMO. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 16:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, I still think that the older tables were quite straightforward to use: you want to identify a scroll, go to the scroll table, go to the column for your charisma, figure out the possible rows, and you get the possible items. And I'm not alone: at least one other user thinks it was simple enough to use the old tables. The new ones still need cross-referencing whenever you want to use them (unless you know stuff by heart... but then you'd not need the tables in the first place). I won't edit the page anymore... I think pointing out the problem was enough. I can still use the old versions by opening the edit history and clicking on the correct version. People with more time and will to help new people by keeping an usable version of the tables might want to revert/edit the page further. --Leniad (talk) 19:40, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

While everyone is entitled to their own opinion and experience, it sounds like you're using the tables to try and ID something immediately - while that is possible some of the time, price ID is going to take more bits of information to figure out the exact item in a majority of cases. I doubt many people have the tables memorized (I definitely don't), and given that some things can't even be fully ID'd by using them makes it more of a puzzle to solve than a cheat sheet to look up answers from - in general #naming classes of items with their base price is going to be a pretty quick and dirty way of keeping notes for items (especially since trying to write all of the possible things it could be often times won't even fit). In general the base price of something can also help indicate how risky it is to use un-ID'd - some sets of items can be safe to use (e.g. base 60/80z scrolls) whereas others are inherently risky (e.g. anything b200z or above is akin to playing russian roullette). I don't by any means have the tables memorized and going into any shop is almost guaranteed to have me walking out with things #named with just their base prices on them to help ID (or to give an idea of what might save my ass in a pinch) in the future. Given that every item follows the same exact price lookup rules, it doesn't really make sense to split up and repeatedly duplicate the same info for determining base prices of things when most of the time you're not going to be able to figure them out immediately. Personally, I usually just mark down the prices and move on unless I can BUC test it and I'm in need of something (e.g. filling an armor slot or looking for a specific scroll / etc).

I am in no way trying to discount any one person's way of using this page, but given how price ID works it makes more sense to me to teach people the process of IDing specific things separate from the process for determining their base price (teach a man to fish and all that), especially since determining the base prices are not necessarily identical or straightforward for all variants or versions of the game. For example, with the old set of tables it would be fairly complicated both from a reader and editor perspective to include shop markups for role / race, whereas with the changes I made it simply becomes one more step in the process for determining the base price. If the prices and processes for all variants were taken into account (or if similar changes were rolled into vanilla) each table then even more information would be duplicated across the page making it even harder to maintain. The SLASH'EM table for example makes things a lot more complicated and confusing - it avoids duplicating some rows which haven't changed but by doing so leaves out a lot of information, forcing players that are using it to jump around the page even more if using the old way (whereas with the changes I've put forth the base price tables stay exactly the same).

There are definitely opportunities for simplification here, but this was only the first step I was making to improve things before people started piling on. I haven't made any changes since, but given that I haven't seen any objections I'm going to assume that means people are ok with adding more info and iterating further - anyone can feel free to speak up if they do object though and I'll try and break up changes into smaller bits so that they're easier to diff / change / revert if there's anything egregious. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 23:34, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

...there's a giant Discussion tab right next to Page on the top left side that should be readily visible when you edit. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 02:12, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

well that is the first - seems dumb that I missed it but also seems dumb that the tab is on the exact opposite side of every other setting / etc lol --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 15:01, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

With regards to the tables, I agree with Phol's suggestion to put them all in subpages. That way players who prefer to calculate the possibilities themselves see a concise, readable page explaining how to do so, while those who'd rather just look up the answers have the information they need a click away. Ultimately, though, I think the best option is to import one of the existing tools into the wiki if possible. If the wiki doesn't support them, maybe Paxed could put one up on alt.org? --Darth l33t (talk) 14:30, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Oops didn't see this before I responded - there is definitely a difference between the strategy of price ID and the actual price tables themselves (which is part of the goal that I was trying to achieve with my changes - different variants / versions have additional complications that make embedding tables fairly complicated). I'm happy to take a stab at all of that if that's cool with everyone. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 14:51, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I, too, created an account just to comment on this. I also found the old tables straightforward to use, and the new tables rather useless. I've never had to GAF about base prices. The page is titled Price Identification, not How Pricing Works. Now I guess I'm expected to memorize what base prices correspond to what items. ISTM the editor expects or can only imagine playing the way he plays. Personally, I use the offered buy/sell price of an item to name that item all of the things it could be and revise as other items are definitively identified (process of elimination). With the old tables, that just requires looking up the price directly in the per-item-type table. Now I have to figure out what that offered buy/sell price means the base price is with one table, and then go find that base price in another table. It's more work. Can we not have -both- a table that explains how base/offer pricing works as per edits -and- simple direct actual-price-to-item lookup tables as per before? --Ashen (talk) 19:09, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Okay, the community's opinion has been getting clearer and clearer by the day (especially on IRC). When it comes down to it, the only person defending the current makeup of the price ID page is bruceleroy99, and I'm hard pressed to answer why we've been letting the page stand as-is when most aren't seeing it as "improved". Therefore, given the increasing amount of people asking where their price ID tables went, I plan to roll back the changes to the last time they contained those tables. We can iterate from there. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 23:33, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I'd been hoping we could reach a compromise, given it's not like the edits were entirely """useless""" or detrimental, but... --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:35, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Well I'm glad yall didn't decide on the "my way or the highway" approach - nothing says democracy like using an unquantifiable group to back your opinion. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 19:11, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

...A group including people that were actively making accounts on here just to complain about this. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:16, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Right - of new players that would be decidedly the most impacted. It's a pretty big stretch to say something doesn't work when people freak out over more than a single line of change - and when admins are heavy handed and block any progress whatsoever any change is doomed to fail. I regret trying to help - clearly people are happier being stuck in their ways instead of exploring ways to make things better. You all can delete my account - I now have 0 desire to play this game again now, let alone put any more effort in on the wiki here. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 23:36, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

This is a completely unnecessary tantrum, especially considering we're willing to actually iterate the changes in question and similarly large changes have gone through without complaint (due both to prior discussion and avoidance of information loss), but if you insist... --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:40, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

The fact that you're calling this a tantrum speaks volumes - yes please do. --Bruceleroy99 (talk) 00:20, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

What else am I supposed to call the fact that we've stated a willingness to accommodate the information but take issue with how it was integrated, only to have that statement treated as though we want know changes at all? --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 00:40, 22 August 2022 (UTC)