Make the identification game less regimented. Currently, a rational spoiled player (who will not take the risks associated with direct use-ID) is restricted to indirect use-ID (and monster use-ID) of most objects until such time as they can find a general, book, or scroll shop, at which point they can price-ID the scroll of identify and other items. Once identify is known (and could be blessed), the good items (as determined by price ID) can be fully identified. This is problematic because it’s not at all a gradual process, and it feels like it should be.

Some ideas have been floated to remove price ID outright (presumably, a shopkeeper would pay the same amount for each item of an object class as they currently do with amulets). This has some advantages; price ID is tedious, encourages stashing to some extent (because stashing near a shop where you can ID new things is good), and roguelike players who don’t primarily play NetHack tend to hate its price ID system. In this case, either the scroll of identify should start out identified for all characters, so that identification doesn’t take forever to get off the ground, or some other mechanic should be added so identify is easy to pick out for spoiled players (such as retaining price-ID for only that scroll).

A designer may not want to get rid of the price identification system entirely. But there are some options for amending it. Overall, it should become less regimented and predictable, and less necessary of a strategy. NetHack’s entire idea of price tiers doesn’t appear to be based on much of anything, and having items organized into tiers makes it easy to disregard entire sets of items once their base prices are known. Ideas include:

• Change price ID so that each item is assigned to a “band” of possible prices. There are four price bands, and each item class has its base price randomized based on its band. The price bands show up on unidentified items, e.g. “an expensive scroll labeled KIRJE”. Some items might fall into more than one price band.
• Implement price tiers (e.g. all scrolls cost either 100, 150, 200, or 300), and items are placed into 1-3 possible tiers at the start of the game.
• Fuzz the prices of items so that it’s not possible to definitively say what an item is, only that it’s cheap or expensive.
  • One way to do this is to scatter the base price of each previously tiered item each game on an interval so that it overlaps with the intervals from other previous tiers, perhaps a random number from 1/2 the original price to 2x the original price.
  • Or fuzzing is done on a per-shopkeeper basis. Each shopkeeper sees each type of object as having a different base cost, based on hashing their monster ID. Asidonhopo sells a scroll of fire with a base cost of 86; Enniscorthy sells it with a base cost of 103.
  • Or, do away with tiers entirely and simply scatter the base costs permanently. A ring of free action might be 240 or 260 base, because it’s on the higher end of usefulness in the former 200 tier. Some fuzzing would probably be needed here to keep things from being unambiguously identified.

The scroll of identify’s confused effect allows you to pick any monster you can see and “identifies” them, giving either the same information as using a stethoscope on them, or the same information as probing, or possibly even more information (such as their resistances and status effects).

Remove the scroll and spellbook of identify, and in place of them add in items that work like a touchstone: each such item is useful at identifying the type of items of a particular object class, like touchstones are for gems. Also like touchstones, certain roles and races have affinities or advantages with various of these identifier items.

To reduce the reliance on general stores and the tedium of throwing scrolls into shops to price-identify them, all shopkeepers will buy scrolls of identify, or at least look at them and go “ew that is a really cheap scroll” so you can figure out what the identify scroll looks like.

Make indirect identification more common and reliable through the game, but make the scroll of identify less likely to identify multiple items and impossible to identify your entire inventory. Thrones can still identify your whole inventory as a random effect.

Explore mode characters start with 5 blessed scrolls of identify.

The confused scroll of identify, if non-cursed, identifies a random unknown object class and adds it to your discoveries list, even if you’ve never seen any of that object.

Blessed scrolls of identify, if the player selects a container, will bring up a second menu that allows items in the container to be identified.

Make blessed identify give no more type-identification than uncursed identify, but it will identify the beatitude and spe of all its items. Uncursed identify will identify the beatitude and spe of some, but not all, items; the rest will only be type-identified.

Make identify scrolls generate blessed more often (perhaps 1/3 of them blessed, 1/3 uncursed and 1/3 cursed, or 1/2 1/3 1/6, or something) to remove the incentive for players to hoard everything until they can get holy water.

Remove the ability of ID scrolls to give a full inventory ID, or make blessed ones give a guaranteed type-ID of everything in inventory. Confused blessed scrolls of ID give a full ID of charges, beatitude, and enchantment on all items in inventory, but NOT type-identification.

When reading a scroll of identify when confused, you get enlightenment (you’re “identifying yourself”).

The spell of identify is an unlimited replacement from the scroll that makes them rather useless, so nerf the spell so that it only type-identifies items (beatitude, enchantment, and charges will not be considered). If you want to learn these things, you must use scrolls of identify.

• Alternatively, blessed scrolls of identify could be buffed, for example they always give a full identification of everything in inventory, or they identify several additional object classes that are not yet in your discoveries list.
• Also, the identify spell could scale with skill, so that it identifies beatitude at Skilled and enchantment/charges at Expert.