trigger

[Lunar Opticfibre]

What is a good trigger to identify items?

Whenever
After killing a mind flayer
After finding a unicorn horn

When do you decide it's time to identify items?

[jim in austin]

Post by Lunar Opticfibre
What is a good trigger to identify items?
Whenever
After killing a mind flayer
After finding a unicorn horn
When do you decide it's time to identify items?

Usually some combination of one or more blessed scrolls of identify
and a surplus of potentially useful stuff. "Potentially" since
everything has already been price/beatitude identified and
I can then select the most likely items first. And, of course,
I have packed my open inventory with everything unknown in hopes a
scroll "runs the table"...

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Lunar Opticfibre
What is a good trigger to identify items?
Whenever
After killing a mind flayer
After finding a unicorn horn

I don't see why those incidents should affect an identification trigger.
(Mind flayer in theory, yes, but you should avoid them, and they appear,
modulo special cases, comparably late in the game.)

Post by Lunar Opticfibre
When do you decide it's time to identify items?

As soon as possible, of course. Use different levels of identifications.
BUC-identification as soon as possible (use pets, or yet better, altars).
You can try out most armor after you've identified them as non-cursed.
Price ID as soon as possible your items, note the prices with the items;
that gives you the chance to immediately handle some items appropriately
or classify them for later use. For example, BUC-price-ID'd scrolls of
enchant weapon can be used to enhance your weapon. A cursed scroll with
a price of 300 could be genocide that you might want to identify with
your first scroll of identify, so that you can reverse genocide dragons
to manufacture a dragon scale mail. Or potions of price 50 can be first
turned with unihorns and amethysts to create larger stacks and then to
dilute large stacks to obtain water for holy water prayers. Scrolls of
ID should possibly be stacked and blessed for the best multi-ID outcome.
Sometimes it's good to use even a single cursed scroll of identify if
you want to know a specific item to rely on it (may be useful applied
to identify non-cursed(!) amulets). You may want to identify rings of
price 200 with larger priority. As said, whatever you have, identify
it with all available means, including pets (BUC-ID), shops (price),
scroll of ID (ideally stacked and blessed) or spells, identify items
you know to find in special places (nymphs: potion of object detection,
niches: scrolls of teleportation), name items that are offensively
used by monsters (potions of paralysis, confusion, blindness, scrolls
of create monster, etc.).

Janis

PS: For more details on identification see also David's recent post
about his updated identification spoiler.

[Philipp Lucas]

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Post by Lunar Opticfibre
What is a good trigger to identify items?
Whenever
After killing a mind flayer
After finding a unicorn horn

I don't see why those incidents should affect an identification trigger.

Unicorn horns are useful for identifying potions; not only within the
price 50 group, as you note yourself later, but also for hallucination,
blindness or confusion. I can see why one would consider a unicorn horn a
useful trigger for potion id.

[Janis Papanagnou]

Post by Philipp Lucas

Post by Janis Papanagnou

Post by Lunar Opticfibre
What is a good trigger to identify items?
Whenever
After killing a mind flayer
After finding a unicorn horn

I don't see why those incidents should affect an identification trigger.

Unicorn horns are useful for identifying potions; not only within the
price 50 group, as you note yourself later, but also for hallucination,
blindness or confusion. I can see why one would consider a unicorn horn a
useful trigger for potion id.

You are correct that a unihorn opens the option of a few more items for a
class identification (class = the three potions you mention plus sickness;
though for sickness it's unnecessary because you can use any projectile to
identify that potion[*]). I'd not call it a trigger to start identification,
though. I think there's no specific "trigger" necessary since you have a
couple options; for BUC, class, price, and full ID (I gave some examples),
and the key is to _start as soon as possible_ with all means you have, not
to wait for any specific "trigger".

Janis

[*] The unihorn I mentioned primarily to achieve building larger stacks for
effective dilution (so that fountain don't drain out before your stack of
potions are all diluted).