How I beat Sil….
I started out not knowing too much about Sil other than what I learned from the tutorial. So I didn’t know much about the monsters and what they could do to me. I also wasn’t sure about what abilities to take and what stats to boost. I will start out by saying that it seems to me that most players tend to use a smith/song slinger type build, or a stealth/melee build.
When I first started out with the game I had planned on using a song/melee based build. Sadly this did not work out too well for me. I’d find my self surrounded by orcs and while I might be able to repel them with Song of Elbereth, I would sooner or later encounter Snow Trolls or Wargs and I’d be made short work of.
Then I tried pumping up stealth which worked until I would be caught by Wargs…who I would not be able to fight.
With my character Gunar I finally hit upon the perfect template for a character that could avoid anything that he didn’t want to fight and yet be able to fight when he HAD to. Yet despite making it down to 950 ft. and having reasonable combat skills he died at the claws of a young fire drake. I did commit the sin of save scumming and so I was able to go down to the Throne Room.
And I’m very glad that I did because I had no idea of HOW I would get a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown and having gotten one how I could escape the retinue of Morgoth. SO after 5 death’s I figured out how to get a Silmaril off his crown and escape. Now that I knew what to do I was ready to put a character in the green.
After about ten or so different characters death’s I managed to get a character(Valgalien) to a point where he could survive the deeper levels of the Iron Hells. One of the things that I did with Gunar and with Valgalien was I boosted his Con at the expense of Str. I thought being able to survive a few more hits was more important than dishing out more damage.
I noticed in one of HallucinationMushrooms dumps that he was using charge to cause more damage…and once I tried it I was hooked. I also noticed that people were picking up sprinting. Sprinting is another key ability that enabled me to survive a bit longer. The next ability that I considered essential was Loremaster, because you can’t count on being able to find an ID staff and just quaffing potions is a waste. Plus you just have more choices in terms of gear to use without having to try stuff out. Sil isn’t very forgiving and the wrong choice often is the last one that you get to make.
From then on I focused on my Will ladder because you can survive more stuff if you can resist being confused,stunned and poisoned. I also choose Hardiness for the extra protection. Also Inner light is a great help, being able to see is really important as many monsters create shadows and make it really hard to hit them.
So at this point 500 ft down I finally invest some points into stealth and pick up Disguise. Although I have been basing my game around being stealthy I realized that I needed to get the essential abilities first and make do with stealth mode, light armour and whatever stealth items I could find. At this point in the game I have kept my options open on which abilities to invest exp. on . Often the magic items I have found will dictate what abilities I get first. I have also been investing in Melee and Evasion, because while I planned on avoiding the really hard fights I also realize that sometimes you will have to fight. Werewolves are really good at spotting you and Shadows are easy to walk into, so boosting Melee and especially Evasion is important. Another thing that I noticed is that Giants became a lot easier to fight because although they can hit hard they won’t hit often if your Evasion is high enough and they are easy to hit. Orcs are sort of like this, but they don’t tend to hit that hard.
So at this point I started focusing on getting my stealth high enough to buy a point of Dexterity. First though I needed Exchange. Exchange had saved me from a couple of tight spots and I consider it quite important. The next important ability was Vanish. Sprinting + Vanish can get you out of a lot of tight spots. Sprinting,Exchange and Vanish I would say were key to my escaping Angband with a Silmaril.
The next ability that I focused on getting was an extra point of Con. By now I think you can see that I tend to plan for the worse and so I like having as many extra HPs as possible. The next ability that I picked up was Assassination, because I thought it would help in the throne room.
For whatever reason I wasn’t able to have a nice stock pile of potions and so I reluctantly made my way to the throne room because I thought that it was possible that I might get caught in a tight spot that would waste my very limited supply of potions…and I didn’t need to hang around the throne room for much time anyway.
So down I went.
************ Spoiler Alert!!!!***********
For those of you who have not seen the Throne room yet…its scary. Because you have Troll guards and a Master Vampire at least right by the stairs…plus you can’t leave with out a Silmaril…..and the level doesn’t reset. So no room for mistakes here! Although I didn’t have a staff of revelation I knew what the layout was because I save scummed my last character. I know some people will whiny about it, but I’m too busy to lose a character and have to come all the way back until I figured out how to actually get a Silmaril from Morgoth. To me it was a time saver. Anyway, where was I …okay so I knew that layout and a staff of Foes let me know who was around. When I saw the list … I got scared all over again…Glaurung( next to Morgoth),Ungoliant ( on the right side next to the cat exit)Smaug,Lungorthin( top left side) and Ancalagon( top right side)
I tired making my way down the left hand shaft, but I couldn’t find the secret door and I didn’t want to risk using the staff of freedom I had, so I made my way in by the left hand main door. And then kept to the left and went down the left hand side. I might have knocked something out on the way down, but I probably didn’t want to take the risk. I then made it past Morgoth and into the bottom right chamber to see if I could get my hands on some of the loot in the room. After I got some advice from Scatha and HugotheGreat I decided against it. I’m not sure how getting Morgoths crown to fall off works but I used my axe of Nogrod and then used my potion of Strengt, my potion of Constitution ,my elemental resistance potion and one of the two potions of quickness I had left and knocked Morgoth’s crown off with my third shot. I then switched to Anguirel to remove the Silmaril which I was lucky enough to get off on the first try. I then equipped it since it’s the best light source in the game. Glaurung, entranced me but I snapped out of it quickly and switched to my helm of defiance. I then made my way to the left shaft and used my staff of freedom to open the secret door and I had to switch places on the exit. I might have used a healing potion or two to make good my escape ….but escape I did.
The run to the surface was rather uneventful because my stealth was high enough so that Morgoth never spotted me when we ended up in the same room. I tended to sneak around everything, I DID have to take on Dagorhir and friends…but by that point I got a Dragon horn longbow and I soften them up before I made short work of them with Anguirel.
Then at the gates I avoided the side rooms and went for the exit. Carcharoth didn’t see me but I wanted to kill at least one more unique before my exit, so I shoot him up and cut him down when he got in range…I did buff my Con one time before we fought. The fight was short and sweet and I just walked away with my Silmaril.
BTW I forgot what tags to get the scrolling dump display...let me know and I'll edit this.
I started out not knowing too much about Sil other than what I learned from the tutorial. So I didn’t know much about the monsters and what they could do to me. I also wasn’t sure about what abilities to take and what stats to boost. I will start out by saying that it seems to me that most players tend to use a smith/song slinger type build, or a stealth/melee build.
When I first started out with the game I had planned on using a song/melee based build. Sadly this did not work out too well for me. I’d find my self surrounded by orcs and while I might be able to repel them with Song of Elbereth, I would sooner or later encounter Snow Trolls or Wargs and I’d be made short work of.
Then I tried pumping up stealth which worked until I would be caught by Wargs…who I would not be able to fight.
With my character Gunar I finally hit upon the perfect template for a character that could avoid anything that he didn’t want to fight and yet be able to fight when he HAD to. Yet despite making it down to 950 ft. and having reasonable combat skills he died at the claws of a young fire drake. I did commit the sin of save scumming and so I was able to go down to the Throne Room.
And I’m very glad that I did because I had no idea of HOW I would get a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown and having gotten one how I could escape the retinue of Morgoth. SO after 5 death’s I figured out how to get a Silmaril off his crown and escape. Now that I knew what to do I was ready to put a character in the green.
After about ten or so different characters death’s I managed to get a character(Valgalien) to a point where he could survive the deeper levels of the Iron Hells. One of the things that I did with Gunar and with Valgalien was I boosted his Con at the expense of Str. I thought being able to survive a few more hits was more important than dishing out more damage.
I noticed in one of HallucinationMushrooms dumps that he was using charge to cause more damage…and once I tried it I was hooked. I also noticed that people were picking up sprinting. Sprinting is another key ability that enabled me to survive a bit longer. The next ability that I considered essential was Loremaster, because you can’t count on being able to find an ID staff and just quaffing potions is a waste. Plus you just have more choices in terms of gear to use without having to try stuff out. Sil isn’t very forgiving and the wrong choice often is the last one that you get to make.
From then on I focused on my Will ladder because you can survive more stuff if you can resist being confused,stunned and poisoned. I also choose Hardiness for the extra protection. Also Inner light is a great help, being able to see is really important as many monsters create shadows and make it really hard to hit them.
So at this point 500 ft down I finally invest some points into stealth and pick up Disguise. Although I have been basing my game around being stealthy I realized that I needed to get the essential abilities first and make do with stealth mode, light armour and whatever stealth items I could find. At this point in the game I have kept my options open on which abilities to invest exp. on . Often the magic items I have found will dictate what abilities I get first. I have also been investing in Melee and Evasion, because while I planned on avoiding the really hard fights I also realize that sometimes you will have to fight. Werewolves are really good at spotting you and Shadows are easy to walk into, so boosting Melee and especially Evasion is important. Another thing that I noticed is that Giants became a lot easier to fight because although they can hit hard they won’t hit often if your Evasion is high enough and they are easy to hit. Orcs are sort of like this, but they don’t tend to hit that hard.
So at this point I started focusing on getting my stealth high enough to buy a point of Dexterity. First though I needed Exchange. Exchange had saved me from a couple of tight spots and I consider it quite important. The next important ability was Vanish. Sprinting + Vanish can get you out of a lot of tight spots. Sprinting,Exchange and Vanish I would say were key to my escaping Angband with a Silmaril.
The next ability that I focused on getting was an extra point of Con. By now I think you can see that I tend to plan for the worse and so I like having as many extra HPs as possible. The next ability that I picked up was Assassination, because I thought it would help in the throne room.
For whatever reason I wasn’t able to have a nice stock pile of potions and so I reluctantly made my way to the throne room because I thought that it was possible that I might get caught in a tight spot that would waste my very limited supply of potions…and I didn’t need to hang around the throne room for much time anyway.
So down I went.
************ Spoiler Alert!!!!***********
For those of you who have not seen the Throne room yet…its scary. Because you have Troll guards and a Master Vampire at least right by the stairs…plus you can’t leave with out a Silmaril…..and the level doesn’t reset. So no room for mistakes here! Although I didn’t have a staff of revelation I knew what the layout was because I save scummed my last character. I know some people will whiny about it, but I’m too busy to lose a character and have to come all the way back until I figured out how to actually get a Silmaril from Morgoth. To me it was a time saver. Anyway, where was I …okay so I knew that layout and a staff of Foes let me know who was around. When I saw the list … I got scared all over again…Glaurung( next to Morgoth),Ungoliant ( on the right side next to the cat exit)Smaug,Lungorthin( top left side) and Ancalagon( top right side)
I tired making my way down the left hand shaft, but I couldn’t find the secret door and I didn’t want to risk using the staff of freedom I had, so I made my way in by the left hand main door. And then kept to the left and went down the left hand side. I might have knocked something out on the way down, but I probably didn’t want to take the risk. I then made it past Morgoth and into the bottom right chamber to see if I could get my hands on some of the loot in the room. After I got some advice from Scatha and HugotheGreat I decided against it. I’m not sure how getting Morgoths crown to fall off works but I used my axe of Nogrod and then used my potion of Strengt, my potion of Constitution ,my elemental resistance potion and one of the two potions of quickness I had left and knocked Morgoth’s crown off with my third shot. I then switched to Anguirel to remove the Silmaril which I was lucky enough to get off on the first try. I then equipped it since it’s the best light source in the game. Glaurung, entranced me but I snapped out of it quickly and switched to my helm of defiance. I then made my way to the left shaft and used my staff of freedom to open the secret door and I had to switch places on the exit. I might have used a healing potion or two to make good my escape ….but escape I did.
The run to the surface was rather uneventful because my stealth was high enough so that Morgoth never spotted me when we ended up in the same room. I tended to sneak around everything, I DID have to take on Dagorhir and friends…but by that point I got a Dragon horn longbow and I soften them up before I made short work of them with Anguirel.
Then at the gates I avoided the side rooms and went for the exit. Carcharoth didn’t see me but I wanted to kill at least one more unique before my exit, so I shoot him up and cut him down when he got in range…I did buff my Con one time before we fought. The fight was short and sweet and I just walked away with my Silmaril.
Code:
Here is the dump [Sil 1.0.1 Character Dump] Name Vangalien Age 1,933 Str 5 = 1 +1 +3 Sex Male Height 7'1 Dex 8 = 4 +4 Race Noldor Weight 168 Con 10 = 6 +4 House Fingolfin Gra 2 Game Turn 29,716 Melee (+30,3d8) Melee 30 = 16 +8 +5 +1 Exp Pool 982 Bows (+11,2d12) Archery 11 = 0 +8 +2 +1 Total Exp 74,182 Armor [+24,5-15] Evasion 24 = 18 +8 -2 Burden 113.9 Stealth 23 = 11 +8 +4 Max Burden 248.7 Health 37:123 Perception 10 = 8 +2 Depth 0' Voice 28:28 Will 18 = 12 +2 +3 +1 Min Depth 0' Smithing 2 = 0 +2 Light Radius 6 Song 2 = 0 +2 You are the only child of a warrior from the house of Fingolfin. You have light grey eyes, wavy brown hair, and a fair complexion. [Last Messages] > You have been severly poisoned. > You miss Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. > Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst misses you. > You miss Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. > Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst bites you... > You hit Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. > Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst misses you. <2x> > You miss Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. > Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst bites you. > You have been badly poisoned. > You miss Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. > Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst bites you. > You have been severly poisoned. > You hit Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst! > You have slain Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst. [Screenshot] ....... ~...#.. ~~..... .~.@... .~~...# ..~~... ...~... [Equipment] a) The Bastard Sword 'Anguirel' (+3,3d5) [+1] 5.0 lb It cuts easily through armour. It increases your hunger. It cannot be harmed by the elements. It does extra damage when wielded with both hands. b) a Dragon-horn Longbow of Radiance (+0,2d7) [-1] 5.2 lb It fires shining arrows. It can shoot arrows 20 squares (with your current strength). c) an Onyx Ring of Protection [+0,1d2] d) a Bloodstone Ring of Accuracy (+2) e) a Ruby Amulet of Constitution <+0> It increases your constitution by 0. It sustains your constitution. f) a Silmaril It sustains your grace. It grants you the ability to see invisible creatures. It cannot be harmed by the elements. g) Studded Leather of Stealth [-2,1d5] <+3> It improves your stealth by 3. h) a Shadow Cloak [+2] <+2> It improves your stealth by 2. It creates an unnatural darkness. i) (nothing) j) a Great Helm of Defiance [-2,1d3] <+3> It improves your will by 3. It provides resistance to fear. k) a Set of Leather Gloves of Power <+1> It increases your strength by 1. l) a Pair of Leather Boots of Softest Tread [+0,1d2] <+1> It improves your stealth by 1. m) 48 Arrows of Piercing They cut easily through armour. They can be shot 20 squares (with your current strength and bow). n) 52 Arrows (+3) They can be shot 20 squares (with your current strength and bow). [Inventory] a) 8 Pale Herbs of Rage b) a Black Herb of Healing c) a Wrinkled Herb of Restoration d) 2 Clear Potions of Miruvor e) 2 Murky Brown Potions of Orcish Liquor f) 3 Pale Green Potions of Healing g) a Green Potion of Quickness h) a Sparkling Blue Potion of Dexterity i) a Golden Trumpet of Blasting j) an Ebony Staff of Freedom (4 charges) k) an Oak Staff of Light (6 charges) l) a Golden Staff of Foes (2 charges) m) a Mahogany Staff of Majesty (7 charges) n) an Emerald Ring of Warmth It provides resistance to cold. o) a Round Shield of Frost [+0,1d4] It provides resistance to fire. p) a Crown of True Sight <+3> It improves your perception by 3. It provides resistance to blindness and hallucination. It grants you the ability to see invisible creatures. It cannot be harmed by the elements. q) a Greatsword of Brilliance (-2,3d5) [+1] 7.3 lb It lights the dungeon around you. It requires both hands to wield it properly. r) a Mithril Longsword (Vampiric) (+1,2d5) [+1] 2.2 lb It drains life from your enemies. It increases your hunger. It cannot be harmed by the elements. s) The Great Axe of Nogrod (-4,4d5) <+1> 11.0 lb It increases your strength by 1. It slays orcs, trolls, and raukar. It provides resistance to fire. It cannot be harmed by the elements. It requires both hands to wield it properly. t) a Shovel (-3,3d1) <+1> 6.5 lb It improves your tunneling by 1. It requires both hands to wield it properly. [Notes] Vangalien of the Noldor Entered Angband on 15 Feb 2012 Turn Depth Note 555 100 ft (Charge) 1,317 150 ft (Dodging) 2,022 200 ft (Lore-Keeper) 3,340 250 ft Slew Gorgol, the Butcher 4,048 300 ft (Sprinting) 5,724 350 ft (Lore-Master) 6,382 350 ft (Clarity) 6,919 400 ft (Inner Light) 7,865 400 ft (Hardiness) 8,597 500 ft (Poison Resistance) 8,862 500 ft (Disguise) 10,906 450 ft (Keen Senses) 12,074 550 ft Slew Uldor, the Accursed 12,985 550 ft Slew Gilim, the Giant of Eruman 13,627 600 ft (Finesse) 14,269 600 ft (Follow-Through) 16,355 700 ft (Exchange Places) 17,428 750 ft (Vanish) 18,409 750 ft Found The Longsword 'Orcrist' 19,869 750 ft Found The Bastard Sword 'Anguirel' 20,152 800 ft (Dexterity) 22,516 950 ft (Constitution) 23,487 950 ft (Assassination) 24,659 900 ft (Critical Resistance) 24,811 900 ft Found The Great Axe of Nogrod 25,526 1,000 ft Entered Morgoth's throne room 25,715 1,000 ft Found The Massive Iron Crown of Morgoth 25,720 1,000 ft Cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown 25,721 1,000 ft Found The Massive Iron Crown of Morgoth 26,068 900 ft (Whirlwind Attack) 26,689 900 ft Slew Dagorhir, the Elfbane 29,638 Gates Entered The Gates of Angband 29,704 Gates Slew Carcharoth, the Jaws of Thirst 29,715 Gates You escaped the Iron Hells on 18 February 2012. 29,715 Gates You brought back a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown! ['Score' 041170284]
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