Use Your Potions and Scrolls | Hacker News Reader

Use Your Potions and Scrolls

jerry.wtf

175 pointspersonjerry58 comments

Open articleView on HN

I see this in many retired people I know. Still saving, not spending wisely.

Using 2 hours of precious time to save $2.

Investments with a time frame that is longer than their expected remaining life.

Driving across town to get a couple of percent off a tank of gas - actually wasting petrol and time.

Hoarding stuff that they will never use - often stuff that would be useful to their kids or friends.

Then again I see the opposite in some people: drawing down a reverse mortgage like they'll be dead in 5 years and ruining their finances. Smoking and boozing and otherwise ruining their health because they "haven't got long to live".

Yup. My parents will drive 10 minutes one way to save $0.10 on gas. Assuming a 20 gallon tank size and filling from empty, that's a savings of $2.00. At 20 minutes for $2.00 savings, the expected value of that action is $6/hr, ignoring the additional gas and wear/tear which would lower number that even further. They are not poor people.

Are they retired? Their time is worth nothing, at least apparently not to them. And the thrill of saving that $2 is worth something, as is the resulting mild brag they can tell their friends.

I love the second point, that the act of saving itself has added value. I often hack together my own tools instead of buying available commercial ones (stuff like notes apps, cloud sync, ...)

The act of not buying another subscription just feels good, monetary value is negligible.

Being retired def changes your relationship to time. It stretches as needed or desired. Sometimes your perceptions of things and activities expand to fill the time available.

The part that baffles me is the cognitive dissonance between wasting time in this manner and subsequently complaining about not having enough time to do things.

Not only that, it also goes the other way. If you're retired, you can't easily pick up another shift or do some overtime if you need to balance the budget, so the most available option for trading time for money is in finding savings.

And people always forget to account for taxes. Purchase prices are in after-tax dollars and hourly wages aren't. Between sales tax, state and federal income tax and government benefits phase outs from earning more money, the wage-equivalent value of saving a buck can be around double the nominal hourly wage.

And taxes strongly discourage trading time with others: I can't trade an hour of work with somebody else because my hour gets taxed and their hour gets taxed.

In New Zealand the marginal tax rate for the median earner takes more than 1/3rd of your wages. The top marginal rate is 39%. It isn't motivating!

All else equal, even if it takes you twice as long to do something (compared to employing someone), you are often better off doing it yourself.

Some retired people I know are bored. Driving across town gets them out of the house and gives them something to do.

One thing people often miss is how valuable to society this is.

Many don't have time to price shop. However any pressure such as this, rewards competitive pricing, and damages gougers.

It does matter.

Sometimes my mind is blown away with how some people come up with these kind of saving ideas

Meanwhile, gas station operators want you to buy their expensive fuel. $6/hr is not bad if it makes the greedy not any richer.

If they're smoking and boozing that hard, doesn't it seem kind of likely that they'll be dead in 5 years?

That would be an extreme case.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the reasoning for that sort of self-destructive lifestyle doesn't make sense on 2 fronts. First, living an extremely unhealthy lifestyle will of course shorten your life, exacerbating the tragedy that life is short / YOLO. Second, it will significantly degrade your quality of life during that time.

It takes a surprising amount of effort to kill a human body through these drugs. It's how their abuse got so popular in the first place, since their damage only becomes really apparent over decades of excess.

It's hard to break old habits or misconceptions.

Can't enjoy a meal because it is overpriced. Or similarly, won't pay $3 for a cold drink in the sun at the beach, since it is $1 in town.

In a completely different direction...

I played skyrim and noticed that I had lots of upgrades, and great equipment and was kind of overpowered.

So, I would go back and play the game naked. (not a new game, just start with the character I had built up)

I would start out with no equipment and just make do with whatever I found. Use the first sword or pants I found and go from there. Kind of fun.

> It's hard to break old habits or misconceptions.

It's especially necessary when one's circumstances change a lot. It's true for pretty much everyone that the opportunity cost of not using your assets increases as you age - but increasing financial security also changes the calculus in a way which is difficult to unlearn.

> It's hard to break old habits

Yes, you've hit the nail on the head. I've noticed how people hate paying £9 for what ought to be a £7 lunch. Doesn't seem to matter much if they're fresh out of university, or half way through a high-income career.

I suppose it shifts from being an immediate financial concern, to an old habit, or perhaps a matter of principle.

I think we fear the implicit judgement that we feel is being made about us. Imagine that everyone knows that the fair price is £7. The restaurant sells it at £9 - what does the make that purchaser? A fool for overpaying - even if they can afford it, even if they actually want to support the restaurant financially, the purchaser will feel judged as a fool. As is often the case with shame, nobody else might even have noticed, let alone actually be judging, but that doesn't negate the feeling!

My theory is that a large amount of 'luxury' commerce is simply giving the customer an excuse not to feel shame, because no longer do they feel a fool, but now they are a special customer with discerning tastes.

I've fallen for that fallacy many times. Only in very few cases does luxury imply higher quality; usually the illusion is formed by the addition of almost worthless decoration (such as folded napkins in a posh restaurant, bought wholesale for literally two a penny).

> Can't enjoy a meal because it is overpriced.

This is my problem precisely with food

I’ve come to conclusion that it’s quite deep character trait. You can change your attitude to spending but it will be hard work. It won’t happen automatically when your life situation changes but you actually need to make a conscious decision one day and then retrain all your automatic reflexes and try to stay vigilant. Like getting fit or anger management or similar things where you try to control your behaviour with will power. Extremely hard.

Folks who grew up in an environment where they were lacking necessities tend to keep the fridge full and lots of supplies "in case something happens". They compensate due to uncertainties that they had growing up.

Folks who grew up always having plenty don't usually worry much about keeping food reserves or waste.

It's clear why this happens: circumstances change but people don't often stop and re-think attitudes which they've incorporated.

i'm always too paranoid that what I think is the Big Bad (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigBad) is actually just another Dragon (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDragon)

or if I know I'm at The End, how should I know how many stages the Final Boss has (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueFinalBoss)

my pockets during the final cutscenes may be stuffed to the gills, but at least I made it

> For instance, using a ‘Speak with the Dead’ scroll on a certain suspicious corpse unveiled a questline I would have otherwise missed.

this is a pretty common scroll, you can buy them from most stores, and later learn a spell to use it constantly

if you want to be brave, blow that Orge Horn (https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Lump%27s_War_Horn) during a fight with like three mud monsters

I am an even worse horder than Jerry, to the point of making my most fun games un-fun. I am a bit crazy in how I play games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 (and eventually BG3).

I have this obsession with playing optimally at the highest difficulty level. So I have to collect every resource, craft all the best items, etc.

But collecting all that stuff is actually quite a tedious click-fest in many modern games like D:OS2. (Dallas' bedroom on Lady Vengeance is a prime example.) And it requires going to every nook and cranny of the world map.

So I can't stand leaving anything behind, and I'll never end up using even half of it, but what if I do need it and I don't have it later on?

I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and I don't have that problem with this game, though the solution may be unsatisfying to many. I've already hit max level on everything, and upgraded everything that I can. There isn't that much loot in the game in general (each mook has one or two items), and that can be quickly picked up and broken down as needed. I have more money than things to spend it on.

So I spend my time exploring the world rather than managing the character's inventory.

The Nintendo Switch Zelda games also do a pretty good job of balancing all the inventory / crafting. The resources regenerate (fruit trees grow more fruit over time) so it isn't necessary in most cases to try to grab everything whenever you see it.

I had a similar obsession. Being aware that I’m not immortal and have finite time to live helped.

With any game that offers crafting and deconstruction, I max out my deconstruction options. It lets me think less about resources themselves, and more about what to do.

For Cyberpunk, this meant that I had 'infinite money' by buying out every 10e priced beverage from vending machines, shredding them, and profiting on the resale value of the components. Not sure if that's been changed, but it was a FANTASTIC source of money and materials.

The other punishment for playing that way is how much you run into inventory and/or weight limits.

And yet it's still hard to convince myself to just skip looting all the useless junk

That's definitely something I struggle with, both in videogames and real life. There's also a related thing with taking time to enjoy the things that I have bought or saved up for or worked so hard to get. It's not necessarily that I'm worried about using them up, but rather that I've already become focused on the next thing and don't take a break to savor the current one. I've gotten better about that over the years, but the reminder is still appreciated!

I have this thing where it’s very difficult for me to use something that I know will run out and can’t get more of.

And so I have a lot of wine that I don’t drink because this vintage isn’t made anymore (obviously), and if I finish that bottle I can’t replace it with another one (technically I can I guess, but you have to find a seller and it’s not cheap).

I recommend the 10 thousand dollar mountain bike skill tree. It comes with fantastic physical skill development opportunities and outrageous adrenaline factor. Best of all, the wear parts are all obvious and cheap! Designed to burn, as it were! A clutch against the very fabric of reality, that you might modulate your potential energy dissipation rate as you fly by it...

Go pick up a bottle you could afford to replace if it broke by accident. Throw it outside to break it or give it away. Write about how you feel about it every few days for a week or two. I'd read it, I have this problem sometimes too.

I would add that sometimes the one use items are really more like muscles. If you dont use them they decay. If you never ask a friend for a favor are they really your friend? Will they be there for you when you really need it if you never borrow a cup of sugar?

BG3 possibly fixed this problem for me. It not only throws scrolls and potions at you at every corner, especially later on the fights can be significantly harder than they need to be if you don't use those consumables. Physical resistance in stronger enemies literally halves the damage you do and using an oil reverts that. And when a boss can one-hit kill with a fire attack maybe that fire resistance item doesn't look so uninteresting anymore.

Use consumables and long rest often in this game, your experience will certainly be more enjoyable.

Some good game-related advice, specifically for roguelikes, that I often think about and apply IRL:

“The goal is to die with an empty inventory”

Fantastic.

I also like to apply the Dwarf Fortress adage to pretty much any game I play: "Losing is fun" :)

The computer science counterpart is the Optimal Stopping Problem. There's no real equivalent solution irl. In a country without a safety net, and if you don't have a trust fund, then constantly preparing for black swan events is only rational.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

Evaluating each chance to use one specific favor, based on your perceived need for it at one moment and its potential outcome, feels equivalent to interviewing one job applicant in this classical problem.

Collecting favors then doling them out rationally is rational.

Being a favor doomsday prepper with an ever-growing favor stockpile is not.

People also love discharging their debts, so you accrue intangible goodwill by liquidating those assets.

That is under the assumption of optimal control i.e. parametrized by the Bellman equation. In real life (for a normal individual and not e.g. a high net worth person or corporation) if you hit a non optimal scenario, your life is over and you are trapped in a local minima.

Slay the Spire on higher ascensions forces learning this, where potions shouldn't be held for more than a couple floors unless they solve a specific fight (like thorns vs stabby book or heart)

Did you watch any of lifecoach's slay the spire streams? He has some very impressive win rates/streaks and is I think much more conservative with potion use than most players.

He's playing Watcher. But yes, to maintain his high winrate he's optimizing to mitigate bad rolls

(re Watcher, I'm not saying his results aren't impressive, but its not comparable to the original 3, see first run of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xLmKGqwAIU where baalor wins vs heart using only starter cards)

In slay the spire, both HP and Potions are limited resources, so throwing a potion to save HP is not necessarily a wise decision if you're at a low risk of overflowing your potion inventory and won't save much HP. There's also deck dependance here where you CANNOT win certain fights with your current deck without having a certain potion saved, but you CAN survive the fights until that fight without using potions with minimal to no HP lost.

The better analogy in this case is the resource gold, where it's usually a trap to pass up buying a useful item in order to save your gold for a better once since that will cost you HP on average/will increase your variance of HP loss and end runs. There's items in the game like "Maw Bank" which generate gold each floor until you spend it at a shop which tempt your monkey brain into dying halfway through the game without having visited a shop once. While saving potions for half the run happens regularly, saving gold for half the run tends to end poorly.

"a living Red Mage minus one Cure spell is more versatile than a dead Red Mage": https://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/12/12/episode-100-white-ma...

Said no Necromancer, ever. :D

You are simply a horrible little monster and I pray for your quick and merciful death

I can relate.

This also made me think of this article Are you playing to win or playing to play (https://commoncog.com/playing-to-play-playing-to-win/) which is about doing things that aren't necessary to achieve the goal, but which you do to feel like you've done it right (as opposed to objectively doing it right).

An example from the article is someone who doesn't want to win at Street Fighter using throws, because they are seen as cheap: "Throwing violates the rules in their heads even though it doesn't violate any actual game rule"

Saving you potions feels like a rule derived from efficiency or frugality, trading off leveraging the resources you have.

Lots of mind traps here.

Yeah me and my friends had endless arguments about throws in SF2. Not just the throws but how they were done: jump with heavy kick timed to keep them blocked into a throw was cheap; walking quickly into them to throw wasn’t. Bizarre how complicated our notions of “fairness” can be.

We played that game (and its many sequels) to death…

It interesting to see that computer games and rpg-metaphors have reached such an universal understanding in our society that we can ponder our life using concepts taken from them.

This reminds me of a social media post I saw recently; apologies for the third-hand link: https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/192f2uf/use_...

     While we are at it: throw out the boxes of your old phones, expecially if you have already thrown out the phone itself 5 years ago. Please. I promise you don't need them and you could use an extra drawer.

This hits close to home.

I don't agree, unless you really need to go for SBF style risk management. Predicting the future is hard, it's good to leave a buffer.

His argument though is that the things you think are one time use items actuakly arent. I dont think he's saying use everything you have as soon as you can. Hes saying actually uae them sometimes.

>tools with a cooldown

I really enjoyed this line. Seems like a good median point between extremes of scarcity or abundance mindsets.

I think it might be related to food. Modern food, especially in the west, is so bad that most people are chronically malnourished, and that state may switch you into the hoarder attitude.

Very cool life advice that I can personally resonate with very much. I also kept these damn scrolls, and managing the inventory was a task on its own, due to them taking up so much space.

He's right.

Be respectful though, there's a spectrum between "too shy to ask" and "annoying grifter". You want to sit somewhere in the middle.

Honour your commitments and repay your debts. Look for win-win situations. Help the tide raise all the boats. Don't emotionally manipulate your mark or take advantage of people's ignorance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com