Sil-Q final beta release before 1.5.0

[Infinitum]

In any case while I may fret about tweaks, considerable skill is needed in any case to navigate an Edain to such a victory, so congratulations again, it's a notable achievement.

Hey, thanks! Dunno about "fixing" melee/evasion, but the quick and dirty way to increase endgame diffiulty is probably to remove Treasure, Foe and Revelation staves altogether. Not being able to hunt down uniques and vaults for fun & profit would put a serious hamper on 950'-900' scumming.

[wobbly]

Found a bug I think: Thorns ('&') are visible when player is blinded

This was a change made long ago. You can't see them, as far as accuracy is concerned, but the symbol stays as they are immobile.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Found a bug I think: Thorns ('&') are visible when player is blinded

[Quirk]

I recently found a Curved Sword of Murder. Is this new? I thought the "of Murder" weapons were limited to exclusively one-handed weapons.

Curved Swords are one-handed weapons.

[Quirk]

Kill was mostly me skillfully finding Anguirel, Maeglin and Finrod on the same character. I had really good equipment finds in general. The 8+ staffs of treasure and recharging helped.

Thanks for the run-down. Obviously there was a bit of luck getting to a critical mass of evasion (good rings, silverhand adding another point, Maeglin and Finrod) which made you very difficult to kill, but still: 48ish Evasion with Dodging and Dex potion is exceptionally high. This close to blanks everything but Morgoth's final phase. This is game-breaking levels of Evasion, and currently the only things that really mess with Evasion are mostly contained by stacking free-action.

I think also relevant is the damage output - Oath of Silence going from +1 Dex to +2 Str adds a lot of damage here particularly with Rapid Attack (2 damage sides * 3 dice * 2 blows and possibly another 2 * 2 from a Vengeance die) - and I need to think a little bit about whether the Oath of Silence change tips the meta toward heavy weapons too much particularly as you took Finesse over Power, which I think is probably suboptimal for your final loadout. Giving up Songs like Freedom and Staying in the throne room is fairly significant, but with such high Evasion they're less necessary.

I say this because sufficiently high damage output means you only need survive Morgoth's final phase for a few blows.

On the one hand I don't want fights to drag out because the player lacks damage output, but getting to practically invulnerable defences should come with a tradeoff. I feel you weren't at much risk against Morgoth, and dropped him very fast.

Probably my main takeaway here though is that 40 Evasion is partially possible through only having 8 Will, and examining how to keep evasion builds honest probably involves making Will more directly relevant in non free-action contexts.

In any case while I may fret about tweaks, considerable skill is needed in any case to navigate an Edain to such a victory, so congratulations again, it's a notable achievement.

[Nick]

I noticed that 'piece of dried meat' tastes foul, but yet doesn't hurt player, which is of course ok. But, shouldn't the text be changed to something other than 'foul'?

Was there a canonical reason why the meat is foul yet not hurting the player?

Foul doesn't need to mean poisonous. Frodo, talking to Sam about orcs: "Foul waters and foul meats they'll take, if they can get no better, but not poison"

[HugoVirtuoso]

I noticed that 'piece of dried meat' tastes foul, but yet doesn't hurt player, which is of course ok. But, shouldn't the text be changed to something other than 'foul'?

Was there a canonical reason why the meat is foul yet not hurting the player?

[Infinitum]

Orcs be all about murder. Curved swords don't really share ego types with non-orcish weapons. You can use the smithing interface to check it out.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I recently found a Curved Sword of Murder. Is this new? I thought the "of Murder" weapons were limited to exclusively one-handed weapons.

[Infinitum]

Perception/Will isn't really required until you start running into Sulraukar so a 2330 Hador kinda sorta plays like an elf with the melee bonus. Not so bad in all, althouh I had to burn more consumables for difficult fights than otherwise. I thought I'd need Inner Light to compensate for not having song of the trees, but 4 light + keen senses proved enough. Early amulet of constitution and the helm of brilliance helped alot.

The artifice was only for another source of FA on the bow since I couldn't sing Freedom or Staying. Smithed shortbows are an outlier in that their stats don't matter, and you can pile lot of resists on them compared to Marchwarden bows. Hence "third ring". In hindsight I should've gotten Extra fear and stun resists instead of sustains since Dragons/Watchers were a nuisance and Vampires went pop in close proximity to my character.

Closest call was a Wraith casually showing up at 700' before I had a source of FA, forcing me to run across the entire map whilst being slowed and entranced. Thankfully a bunch of trolls and cats were present to help create distance from it. Also Sauron casually showing up and putting me at 2 hp before buffing up in the chambers of Thu.

Kill was mostly me skillfully finding Anguirel, Maeglin and Finrod on the same character. I had really good equipment finds in general. The 8+ staffs of treasure and recharging helped.

[Quirk]

Surely you meant to say THREE Morgothslaying Edain?

Re: difficulty:

Okay. That's very impressive. Very quick Morgoth kill in the throne-room also. Am a bit curious about your Artifice aside, was that just to establish you could make useful artifacts even without any grace?

+3 Evasion ring is a nice find.

Any more pointed thoughts you have on difficulty, given by my proposed new scoring mechanism you've submitted what would be a Sil-Q highscore? Was this an especially lucky run? And what was your strategy early, I presume you switched to greatswords late?

Would appreciate being talked through this run a bit more.

[Infinitum]

Surely you meant to say THREE Morgothslaying Edain?

Re: difficulty:

Then Morgoth sent forth a terrible cry, that echoed in the mountains. Therefore that region was called Lammoth; for the echoes of his voice dwelt there ever after, so that any who cried aloud in that land awoke them, and all the waste between the hills and the sea was filled with a clamour as of voices in anguish. The cry of Morgoth in that hour was the greatest and most dreadful that was ever heard in the northern world; the mountains shook, and the earth trembled, and rocks were riven asunder. Deep in forgotten places that cry was heard. Far beneath the ruined halls of Angband, in vaults to which the Valar in the haste of their assault had not descended, Balrogs lurked still, awaiting ever the return of their Lord; and now swiftly they arose, and passing over Hithlum they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire.

[Quirk]

How about reverting Morgoth's difficulty & aggression back to his 1.4.1 version? Consensus says that was the toughest Morgoth, period.

Morgoth in 1.4.1 was a long slog of attrition that frequently ran the player out of potions before they had Morgoth on the ropes. I don't think this was fun.

Current Morgoth is slayable by truly overpowered characters but definitely requires a step up from a three-sil win, and in general the fight is decided one way or another within a couple of hundred turns. I think I like this, though the ladder is of course dominated by highly skillful players who are capable of building Morgoth-killers.

I intend just before release to add an increment to score for wins with Sindar/Naugrim/Edain characters (I think the first two are roughly equal in challenge but am willing to hear counter-arguments). Given we have only two Edain Morgoth kills to date I think honouring this as the crowning achievement of the game on the scoreboard is fair, and I think current Morgoth is already pitched to make doing this extremely hard. Any stat tweaks from here will probably be minor, though if I can find other ways to make the dynamic of the fight more challenging without just buffing stats I may incorporate these.

[Infinitum]

I used to do that actually. Sharp Dangerous Mithril Greatsword used to be 22 skill to make, which was very doable for less than 10k experience with a Masterpiece Hammer and some found gear, and with some luck you could make it [+2] and get very efficient Parry. Still a sidegrade from a found sharp weapon tho.

Speaking of smithing Quirk; considered simply adding "-X smithing" to all +X Grace items if you've started down on this path?

Bows of the Falmari should id when fired, not when picked up for consistency.

Picking up stuff from skeletons displays the un-Id'd item message, even if the item is/will be Id'd immediatly afterwards.

[wobbly]

Infinitum's kill looks reasonable. That's crazy evasion + saithnar. It seems reasonable to me that that power level without saithnar should work, otherwise anyone aiming for the kill will smith to guarantee the weapon.