Limiting the Area Cleaner

[Wids]

After a near-disaster last night (one involving Falteine dropping her extremely expensive bastard sword and getting killed soonafter), I thought to ask if it's possible to add a line to the area cleaner script, so that items over a certain value (and therefore are not trash) won't be deleted. During a frenzy of fighting and looting, it's not always possible to keep your inventory uncluttered, and switching weapons in those conditions can turn treacherous. So it's not always completely people's fault if they Hotkey a quick weapons switch and end up dropping something that took dozens of adventures to buy, more so if they end up getting killed because they accidentally dropped that weapon.

(Fortunately, Falteine was able to switch to an ordinary assassin's dagger that he had picked up; she ended up dropping a plundered greataxe and killing four hook horrors and two of those little evil, purple-skinned faeries with the weird, long names before she got her bastard sword back. Too bad she couldn't stand up to three bombardier beetles vomiting acid all over her and finishing her off. But at least she denied the Area Cleaner a chance to eat her fabled bastard sword.)


And on a similar note, I've decided that every one of my characters (except for the Monk and the Monk/Rogue, who have no need for melee weapons, since neither of them is of the infamous "Kama Cheese" powerbuild) should carry some sort of dagger as a back-up weapon. Daggers have the tiniest inventory footprints, and every Race/Class combination can equip one. So it might be a good idea...and the more magical the dagger, the better!

[kalbaern]

Even if a weapon/shield isn't gobbled up by the area cleaner after leaving the map, the game itself is bugged by this at times (mainly when the item was quick slotted) and you'll lose it even if you dropped it and picked it up again later.

Having the area cleaner leave items that are marked "not for consumption" would still rarely resolve the issue. Even "non-dropable" items can be forced from a character's inventory when quick slotted and no room exists for the swap to occur. The only sure cure is to keep adequate free space in your inventories to avoid the issue in the first place.

One thing I'll look into however is a widget to set your more expensive items as "plot". This would keep them from being accidentally sold. You'd then have to use the same widget to take away the plot property to sell them to a merchant later.

[Wids]

The "set to Plot" widget could be handy! I've dropped Plot items before (ie. that "Kryptic Note" from the mine dungeon with the ogre chieftain, the sorceress, three haggard miners and all those fifty-billion goblins), and they were still sitting there in the Orlbar cookpot area, even after I left and returned to Orlbar several times. So being able to set valuables to Plot and Not Plot would surely work out. Would this be any trouble to implement?

[kalbaern]

I'll delve into it next week when my schedule is lighter.