Sil-Q final beta release before 1.5.0

[Infinitum]

Well, I did suggets it sort of. Most combat bruisers want some stealth for Opportunist and not activating too much of the level at once, and it does prevent pulling sleeping monsters by bow. And it makes dealing with dragons much, much more dangerous since at the very least they get another turn to entrance or breathe. Grace is also nowhere near as strong as extra melee/evasion or hp, and the Will tree has a lot of competing abilities for combat characters.

[bron]

Sorry for the delay in responding to this.

What do I like about smithing? Mostly, I think it's about building up the character, step by step. As you say, trading a harder middle game for an easier end game. You build the character via skills and abilities; smithing is like that in spades.

But it's also about building the character to be hugely powerful, to crush your enemies and see them driven before you. And not just because you got lucky and found Ringil or the Boots of Feanor, but because you personally and deliberately made those powerful items, via skill and hard work and sacrifice.

Nobody likes consuming inventory slots to carry smithing gear, but it's a choice, a trade-off. The potential to make something wonderful by sacrificing inventory in the present.

In current sil-q, it is easier to make modestly powered items. A Sword of Gondolin say. But nearly impossible to make really powerful items, mostly because you can't raise your smithing score to the levels needed. You can maybe use Masterpiece to make *one*, but that's just not a large enough payoff.

There don't seem to be any items that raise your Smithing score directly anymore, so you have to use +Grace items to supplement the points put into Smithing. At best, that's a Robe+2, Helm+1, Amulet+1, Lamp+1, and a Weapon+1. That's a reasonable set, but smithing costs are higher than they were, so it's not really enough. Plus several of these items require relatively high smithing scores to make them in the first place, which means you have to put a lot of points into Smithing in order to make them, and you can't really afford that until later in the game, which in turn means you have less opportunity to make that investment pay off.

At this point, I'm going to make some highly speculative and totally untested statements about what would make Smithing more interesting and fun for me personally. Take them for what they're worth: I'd like to see more Smithing actions, which means more forges, which in turn means making each forging action be less significant. One possible way to do this would be to dispense with "Artifice", and make each of the choices in the Artifact menus be an Enchantment, and allow multiple Enchantments to be put on the same piece, one at a time, with increasing numbers of "forge uses" required for each additional Enchantment, and probably an increased cost to Enchant an already Enchanted item. You could make a lot of simply Enchanted items, or just a few really powerful ones, or something in between. The work done on a piece early on the start would not be irrelevant, it would be a step toward the thing you ultimately want e.g. first you make a non-magical (+1,2d6) [+1] Longsword, then later you add (Defender), still later you brand it with poison, and finally just before going to face Morgoth you make it Sharp. Thus, the equipment progresses, just as the character progresses.

[Quirk]

Posted a long reply, forum ate it. Sorry if this is overly terse, am now low on time.

What do I like about smithing? Mostly, I think it's about building up the character, step by step. As you say, trading a harder middle game for an easier end game. You build the character via skills and abilities; smithing is like that in spades.

But it's also about building the character to be hugely powerful, to crush your enemies and see them driven before you. And not just because you got lucky and found Ringil or the Boots of Feanor, but because you personally and deliberately made those powerful items, via skill and hard work and sacrifice.

This is the old "linear warriors, quadratic wizards". I like this too, because I like playing wizards. Unfortunately this makes the late game suck for routes that have more linear power gain, and pushes players to Smith as a route to higher scores whether they like Smithing or not.

At this point, I'm going to make some highly speculative and totally untested statements about what would make Smithing more interesting and fun for me personally. Take them for what they're worth: I'd like to see more Smithing actions, which means more forges, which in turn means making each forging action be less significant. One possible way to do this would be to dispense with "Artifice", and make each of the choices in the Artifact menus be an Enchantment, and allow multiple Enchantments to be put on the same piece, one at a time, with increasing numbers of "forge uses" required for each additional Enchantment, and probably an increased cost to Enchant an already Enchanted item. You could make a lot of simply Enchanted items, or just a few really powerful ones, or something in between. The work done on a piece early on the start would not be irrelevant, it would be a step toward the thing you ultimately want e.g. first you make a non-magical (+1,2d6) [+1] Longsword, then later you add (Defender), still later you brand it with poison, and finally just before going to face Morgoth you make it Sharp. Thus, the equipment progresses, just as the character progresses.

This is a very interesting idea, though the flow you've described would be a little difficult in practice I feel. Jumping from defender to defender + poison, or poison to poison + sharp makes for a huge upgrade, and would be difficult not to make lumpy.

I did have a somewhat similar idea for a skill called Reforge, which would let you reshape an artifact into a slightly more powerful artifact of the same type. The old artifact powers would be lost though, so you might for example replace slaying orcs, wolves, dragons and raukar with flame brand.

However, this would require some reshuffling of Smithing power level again as I am not looking to make it head and shoulders the best late game choice, and looking at wobbly's ongoing Morgoth-killing run it's clear it's still possible to build some powerful gear as things stand. (FWIW I think wobbly's smithing on this run has Smithing in a place I am quite happy with it - most gear customised to fill niches the character needs without being dramatically better than normal end-game gear, plus an uberweapon).

[Quirk]

Grace is also nowhere near as strong as extra melee/evasion or hp, and the Will tree has a lot of competing abilities for combat characters.

I would disagree with this. The ladder is mostly topped by Smithing and Song builds (Staff of Earthquakes/Channelling abuse aside, though this also was Grace-reliant). Grace is rarely as immediately impactful, but it tends to impact more non-linear ways of scaling up.

[Infinitum]

I wouldn't necessarily use the ladder as balance feedback. There's a handful at most people regularily logging runs, and a lot of those are for bragging rights. Also I don't agree that endgame smithing is overpowered; past 850' or so is comparatively trivial for any combat build.

In its current form smithing ha a problem in that more smithing skill gives linear dividends, but costs are whatever a (100+200+300...) sequence is called. Then again, even if you fix that there's still the bigger problem of crafting in games just not meshing well with random loot.

[fph]

whatever a (100+200+300...) sequence is called.

It's called "quadratic": indeed, 1+2+...+n = n^2/2 + O(n).

[HugoVirtuoso]

I've killed off the Thrallmasters a number of times, then one or more Thralls become alert to what's happening...After the thrallmasters are dead, how do I interact with the Thralls? What gameplay purpose do they have now? Also, if I'm surrounded by the Thrallmaster and the Thralls at the same time, does that increase the Thrallmasters' ability to attack?

[Quirk]

I wouldn't necessarily use the ladder as balance feedback. There's a handful at most people regularily logging runs, and a lot of those are for bragging rights. Also I don't agree that endgame smithing is overpowered; past 850' or so is comparatively trivial for any combat build.

Depends what you consider trivial or whether you are talking about current smithing or previous version smithing. Morgoth kills are predominantly smith based. In terms of being able to grab a Sil, most reasonable builds can thrive at 850' and after, combat or not.

With regard to the ladder entries I've been there for quite a number of the higher ranked ones on Angband.live. I think they are reasonably representative of strong play.

IIn its current form smithing ha a problem in that more smithing skill gives linear dividends, but costs are whatever a (100+200+300...) sequence is called. Then again, even if you fix that there's still the bigger problem of crafting in games just not meshing well with random loot.

Costs may be 100+200+... but this is the same for every skill and the XP handed out is floor adjusted to compensate i.e. it is not linear either. Put together skill progress vs XP is more or less linear.

Smithing dividends are not however linear in the way that investing in Evasion is. The tipping point where most gear has extra Evasion bolted on is one non-linearity, extra stat points another. With smithing kits the rewards were very much more non-linear as getting to sufficiently high Smithing meant a snowball of stat points, resistances and weapon effects.

Anyway, I think in the post smithing kit world this non-linearity has been much reduced, and I am less scared of Song builds right now, though it is far from clear they need any extra help. I will think on this a bit and probably talk to a few players.

[Quirk]

I've killed off the Thrallmasters a number of times, then one or more Thralls become alert to what's happening...After the thrallmasters are dead, how do I interact with the Thralls? What gameplay purpose do they have now? Also, if I'm surrounded by the Thrallmaster and the Thralls at the same time, does that increase the Thrallmasters' ability to attack?

If you see an Alert thrall rather than a Dejected thrall, move into them and they will make a request of you. Alert thralls are a different, brighter green or a different tile.

Thrallmaster ability to attack is not influenced by thralls.

[wobbly]

+grace is very build dependant. If you are straight down the line melee/evasion its basically a pt of will. If you are using song of staying it doubles to +2 will plus extra voice. Same on a smith add the cost for a smithing pt. The perception kick is minor but if you rely on hunter, listen or concentration it's a minor small bonus.

By the way Quirk your post read as a little heated, not sure that was intended.

[Quirk]

By the way Quirk your post read as a little heated, not sure that was intended.

Fair, have been ill a lot lately and it's made me grumpy. Will tone it down a tad.

[Infinitum]

Eh. We've been having the same argument for years. I'm mostly doing ou of habit at thi point.

[HugoVirtuoso]

The interaction with Thralls. Is this in the Sil-Q manual? If not, it should be

[Quirk]

The interaction with Thralls. Is this in the Sil-Q manual? If not, it should be

No, the manual doesn't cover commands/interactions currently - but there's probably a good case that the help screen should.

[bron]

FWIW I think wobbly's smithing on this run has Smithing in a place I am quite happy with it - most gear customised to fill niches the character needs without being dramatically better than normal end-game gear, plus an uberweapon

I looked at wobbly's post on the ladder, and I'm clearly missing something. Perhaps wobbly can enlighten me? The question I don't understand is, How was Narth able to kill Morgoth? You claim in the game notes that the final weapon is both Sharp and Branded, but the item description in the equipment list just has the brand, not sharpness. But even if it were both Sharp and Branded, AFAICT Narth doesn't have Rapid Attack so I don't see how he could deliver enough damage for a kill? Am I just plain wrong about that, or is there something I'm not seeing?

I've been playing around with some 50K smithing characters (similar to my comp 217 character) to challenge my own assertions about all this, and so far I've been able to produce some very powerful archery characters, and been able to smith some reasonably powerful items. Without Rapid Fire, and Flaming Arrows, and with the weight restriction on the bows, an Archery based Morgoth killer seems unlikely, but getting a Silmaril is definitely doable. I need to start exploring Melee characters more seriously.

Anyway, it's kinda looking like I may be snacking on Crow soon enough.