Sil-Q final beta release before 1.5.0

[Infinitum]

Wait, what? According to the manual unresisted elemental damage equals 1 extra damage die added to the roll, which matches my experience ingame? Did you do some code diving or something?

[bron]

Yes, you are right; unresisted poison (or fire or cold) gets an extra die in melee, so in that sense you get (some) protection (by not taking extra damage). But poison protection does not halve the damage, and multiple layers of protection do not stack. You can still get hit for 20 or 30 points of poison, even wearing double poison protection.

Whatever - just chalk it up to me whining ...

[Quirk]

The way the game thinks about the damage is that it is "mixed" damage i.e. if a Balrog hits you with a flaming whip, you're taking damage both from being hit and being burned. This is analogous to the way branded weapons work.

I agree that poison presents differently: you take all the damage as poison damage, not partial immediate damage and partial poison damage. This is somewhat easier for the player as some of the damage that should be done immediately is pushed into the future but it clouds representation of it as mixed damage and makes it look like more of it should have been resisted.

In terms of enemies that poison the player, I would be inclined to say that werewolves are definitely mixed damage, but spiders and serpents could possibly be represented as having more pure poison damage. I note though that sword spiders do not poison players but pack quite a punch so I am not sure of the consistency here.

[Quirk]

Despite my earlier statements, smithing is still interesting and fun. It's just (a little) different. Making a really powerful character via smithing now seems to demand more forges, but that's not an unreasonable limitation. My winning chars would make a lot of gear, and lastly a Masterpiece weapon at the 900' forge.

I'm very glad to hear this, and appreciate how open-minded you have been here.

A couple of specific points:

You can *decrease* the "special" bonus of a War Hammer of Crushing, allowing one to make a 4d3 War Hammer as an ordinary (non-artifact) object, at high but not impossible cost. I suspect that this is an oversight (?). Other objects (notably Shadow Cloaks) do not allow you to decrease their bonus. Admittedly, you can make a 4d3 War Hammer by starting with the Hador Enchantment, but that increases the smithing cost quite a bit.

So it is actually Shadow Cloaks which are the special case here - the Shadow Cloak base item has the stealth built into it, and so it doesn't have a special bonus. If you take a Mithril Corslet of Resilience or a Longsword of the Feanorians you can decrease the special bonus there also.

21 Smithing is quite an investment so I don't think a 4d3 warhammer is necessarily too good.

Song of Delving doesn't seem to work in the extreme lower-left corner of the map.

This is on my list to look into, but thanks for adding precision to the report.

The ascent seemed harder, despite the shafts. Have the "3-sils" monster bonuses gotten bigger? Or is it just my imagination?

Morgoth himself will get tougher the more Sils you have and be positioned closer to you on the escape, but the 3-sil curse is the same as always.

"Smite" is an interesting mechanic. It's certainly useful against high defense enemies (serpents, Kemenrauko), but the fact that you lose a turn even if you miss on the initial attack makes it dangerous. Particularly against Morgoth, where a mis-timed Smite can kill you.

Yes, it adds a lot of damage against highly armoured enemies and the front-loading of damage can kill an enemy without response, but you are effectively committing up front to making two attacks instead of one. This requires different risk management. Most of the time you want to Smite but doing so at the wrong moment can kill you.

I am happy with the skill though precisely because it changes the experience of play. For me the flagship skill of Sil is Flanking, precisely because taking it has such an impact on how the player approaches melee; my hope with Smite was that it would add a new tool yielding a dimension of fresh challenges.

[bron]

I just finished a high-smith, 50K, no-artifacts run on Angband Live, and thought I'd give a few thoughts:

The Smithing game is a bit different, and a bit less powerful. Since the only +Smith items available are +Grace items, and you can only make so many of those, I had to invest a lot more points in the skill. A 16 point investment can yield 27 smithing skill, which seems like a good compromise number; I could make a lot of good stuff, but within limits. And the occasional enchanted forge can help. I assume serially quaffing Grace potions can also temporarily increase your Smithing - I didn't try this.

A regular (not 50K) character seems like it would be hard to run as a high Smith. Sure, you ultimately get another 25K experience points, but you don't pass 50K until pretty late in the game, and so have a lot less time to hunt for forges in the "fully buffed" state.

The "final form" of Morgoth is very hard. It was pretty frustrating to get him down to two stars, but then only barely be able to finish the job. It seems like the power jump is too much. I used a poison branded glaive as my weapon of choice; what do other people find effective against Morgoth?

I was surprised to find that the "infinite arrow production" bug is still in the game i.e. have 80 arrows in the first quiver slot, and 70 arrows in the second quiver slot. Now drop the 70 arrows directly onto the floor. 19 arrows get added to the first quiver slot from the group being dropped, bringing the first quiver slot up to 99, but nevertheless 70 arrows (not 51) hit the floor.

Song of Delvings seems to be inconsistent. Despite my earlier reports, it does seem to work ok in the lower-left corner. But it doesn't always find traps and/or staircases. I don't quite understand the conditions that cause this. But it does seem to be pretty good at locating forges at a distance.

[Quirk]

The "final form" of Morgoth is very hard. It was pretty frustrating to get him down to two stars, but then only barely be able to finish the job. It seems like the power jump is too much. I used a poison branded glaive as my weapon of choice; what do other people find effective against Morgoth?

I think you are right that Vengeance would have helped, though perhaps I should increase Morgoth's power a little more smoothly. I am impressed that you managed the kill with a 50K character at all.

Morgoth is balanced with two goals: that kills should be rare and much harder than three sil victories and that the fight should be relatively short and brutal to avoid player frustration.

I was surprised to find that the "infinite arrow production" bug is still in the game i.e. have 80 arrows in the first quiver slot, and 70 arrows in the second quiver slot. Now drop the 70 arrows directly onto the floor. 19 arrows get added to the first quiver slot from the group being dropped, bringing the first quiver slot up to 99, but nevertheless 70 arrows (not 51) hit the floor.

I too thought this had been squashed though it was some time ago it was last brought up, and I have a hazy recollection that the replication may have been different for the last instance. Is this reliable every time?

Song of Delvings seems to be inconsistent. Despite my earlier reports, it does seem to work ok in the lower-left corner. But it doesn't always find traps and/or staircases. I don't quite understand the conditions that cause this. But it does seem to be pretty good at locating forges at a distance.

Thanks to your earlier post I looked into it and found a quite embarrassing bug caused by a typo misplacing an x for a y. This is fixed in my master branch and will be sorted for release. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

[bron]

infinite arrow production

Yes, it seems to be consistent.

I stumbled over this by accident, and then tested it to be sure I understood the conditions. It seems to happen when the arrows in the second slot are dropped on the floor; the arrows in the first slot are less than 99, but are increased to 99; and there are still some arrows left over that hit the floor. Under these conditions, the arrows that get added to the first quiver slot are not subtracted from the arrows that hit the floor.

[bron]

Here's an underhanded trick that occurred to me after I finished the game: If you know Masterpiece, you can begin Smithing something that takes 3 more skill than you have. But you also sing Delvings (or anything else you know), and carefully arrange for your voice to give out just before the piece is finished. This interrupts the smithing just before the end. Now you quaff a Grace potion, and finish the piece. This allows you to stretch your supply of Grace potions, using one one per piece, rather than needing to serially quaff a bunch of them the whole time. Note that I didn't actually try this so I don't know that it actually works.

Note that I think you *should* be allowed to boost your Smithing by quaffing Grace potions for the (full) duration of the work, I just think the thing described above is somewhat out of bounds. Note that it's not just singing; anything that interrupts you will do the trick- your light going out for example. I don't have a good answer to this. It's niche enough that it could just be ignored for now.

[bron]

Also - is the 900' forge now not a guaranteed thing? I've had a couple of runs that didn't have a forge when I entered 900' for the first time. OTOH, I have been consistently finding a forge at 300'. What's the truth about guaranteed forges in the latest version?

[bron]

Also - looking at the code, and thinking back on it, despite my whining on the topic I believe the main problem I was having with Morgoth's "final form" is that when he went to 30 evasion I just wasn't able to hit often enough, despite the "balanced" re-rolls. I think the solution to that, at least for that particular character, would have been to gather even more healing potions, and to make two +3 Accuracy rings, rather than the Evasion rings. I'd still miss a lot, and get pummeled even harder, but I think it would be enough to tip the scales.

[Quirk]

Also - is the 900' forge now not a guaranteed thing? I've had a couple of runs that didn't have a forge when I entered 900' for the first time. OTOH, I have been consistently finding a forge at 300'. What's the truth about guaranteed forges in the latest version?

They got pushed earlier, to 100', 300' and 500'. This sets smiths up early, but after 500' they're falling back on Delvings, Revelations and exploration to find more.

[smbhax]

Thanks for working on the game! : D

I'm a total newbie and all I've managed to find are some small interface and documentation issues that are no doubt old and known. Here they are just in case:




- Tutorial - Gauntlets note: says "penalty of -1 to your attacks" instead of "penalty of -1 to your accuracy"

Screenshot: https://smbhax.com/stuff/misc/silq150b2_01_gaunt.jpg
Video: https://youtu.be/TQphAkVMM_A?t=1325

The note on the (-1) [+0, 1d1] Gauntlets in the tutorial says "this means that they give a penalty of -1 to your attacks..." It goes on to say "armour and weapons in Sil come with trade-offs between attack (chance of hitting; damage) and defence (chance of evading hits; damage reduction)."

Because it says "penalty of -1 to your attacks" rather than "to your accuracy," and later says "attack (chance of hitting; damage)," I got confused and thought that by "attacks" it meant that the "(-1)" stat for the gauntlets meant they give -1 to both accuracy and damage.

The 1.5.0-beta2.pdf manual in the root directory, under Combat - Weapons and Armour, on the other hand, calls a (-1) on a piece of armor "a penalty to accuracy." I'm guessing this is the correct statement, and that the tutorial should say "accuracy" instead of "attacks" when talking about the (-1) on the gauntlets.




- Tutorial - Shortsword note: "that it is bears an enchantment" typo

Screenshot: https://smbhax.com/stuff/misc/silq150b2_02_sword.jpg
Video: https://youtu.be/TQphAkVMM_A?t=1797

The note about the shortsword in the tutorial says "indicating to the perceptive player that it is bears an enchantment against orcs." The "is" is superfluous and confusing, and should be removed.




- Tutorial traps note: "can be disarmed while holding down Control while attempting to move into it" inaccurate if "hjkl" move keys option is on

Screenshot: https://smbhax.com/stuff/misc/silq150b2_03_traps.jpg
Video: https://youtu.be/TQphAkVMM_A?t=2057

The note in the tutorial about traps says "like most traps, it can be disarmed by holding down Control while attempting to move into it..." However, if the player has the "Move with hjkl etc" Interface Option set, and tries to move with them while holding Control, the game will not execute a trap disarm function, but will instead execute the "underlying key" for whichever hjkl key you pressed--and the trap will not be disarmed.

Perhaps the note could explain that with hjkl keys on, the user can instead use the / key followed by a direction to disarm traps. (The old D key also works.)




- Skills menu: ESC or other key acts like Enter (confirm) if alphabetic shortcut key used to select ability

Screenshot: https://smbhax.com/stuff/misc/silq150b2_04_skills.jpg
Video: https://youtu.be/TQphAkVMM_A?t=8131

Since the xjkl keys don't work at all for navigating list menu screens such as the Skills menu, I resorted to browsing through ability descriptions in the Skills screen by picking skills and abilities directly via hitting the key corresponding to their "x)" alphabetic key label. This seems to cause a minor bug to occur once you've selected an ability that way, however: at that point, hitting ESC to back out acts as though you hit Enter to learn the ability, bringing up the "Are you sure you wish to gain this ability? [y/n]" confirmation prompt.

For instance:
1) From gameplay, hit Tab to bring up the Skills menu
2) On the Skills menu screen, press a to select the Melee skill
3) Press d to select the Polearm Mastery ability
4) Press the ESC key
-- Instead of backing you out of the Ability list, the "Are you sure you wish to gain this ability [y/n]?" prompt appears, as if you had hit Enter instead of ESC.

I found this also happened if I hit the p key instead of ESC; those were just the two keys I tried.




- Skills menu: available menu navigation keys not shown

Some menu screens, such as the Character Creation screens, list the navigation keys available for those screens at screen bottom. The Skills menu screen, however, does not tell the user what keys to use--so the user may not immediately know they learn a skill by selecting it with various navigation keys and finally hitting Enter, for instance.




- Help menu (mouse): Selecting "Contents" causes a "Cannot find help file" warning window to appear

Screenshot: https://smbhax.com/stuff/misc/silq150b2_05_help.jpg

When I selected "Help--Contents" from the game's top mouse menu, a window titled "Warning" appeared in the middle of the screen, saying "Cannot find help file: C:\Program Files\Sil-Q\lib\xtra\help\angband.hlp"--that was my correct directory for the game, but no "help" subfolder exists under "lib\xtra" in my fresh installation of 1.5.0-beta2.

There is a "tutorial" file in "lib\xtra," although I don't know how to open it so I can't tell if that's what was intended. I tried giving it a ".hlp" extension and then opening it, but this opened a Microsoft Support page https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...7-1a149da3973b saying "The Windows Help program is not supported in Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 or later versions of Windows Server. The Windows Help program is available for Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 only. Microsoft strongly recommends that software developers discontinue using the Windows Help application."




- Game references/files for "the manual" are unclear

Multiple confusing documentation issues regarding "the manual":

a) I encountered multiple recommendations by the game text--I think mostly in the tutorial, for instance in the note at the end of the basic part of the tutorial ("You now know more than enough..."; Video: https://youtu.be/TQphAkVMM_A?t=3207 ) --to read "the manual" for more information about the game's functions. It wasn't quite clear to me what exactly was meant by "the manual," although perhaps I missed some more specific direction given at some point.

I was unable to find a "manual" in the game's menus.

b) There are two pdf files with "manual" in their name in the extracted game's "lib\docs" folder: "Sil 1.3 Manual.pdf" (438 KB) and "Sil-Q 1.4.2 Manual.pdf" (4.28 MB). Judging from those titles, these are versions of Sil/Sil-Q manuals, but out of date ones. Possibly they should be removed to avoid confusion. Removing them would also save file space: the 1.4.2 manual alone accounts for about half of the game's total installation size.

c) There is a "Sil-Q v1.5.0-beta2.pdf" file (823 KB) in the game's root directory. This appears to be the actual, current manual. As such, it should have "manual" or something similar in its file name.

Since users may simply extract later Sil-Q releases into their existing installation folder, perhaps the manual should keep the same file name and location from version to version, ie "silq_manual.pdf," so that it will be overwritten by later versions, preventing further obsolete manuals from accumulating in the game's installation folders as time goes on.




- Manual: "dangerous place to tally" typo

In Sil-Q v1.5.0-beta2.pdf, in a paragraph discussing overuse of stairways, the text reads "making staircases a dangerous place to tally, say, while healing..."

"Tally" doesn't make sense in that context; probably "dally" was intended.




- Manual: "artefact" spelling differs from "artifact" spelling in game

Throughout Sil-Q v1.5.0-beta2.pdf, the spelling "artefact" is used when speaking of a particularly powerful type of item. The game, however, consistently spells this item type with an i rather than an e: "artifact"--in the Skills--Abilities--Jeweller section of the Skills screen, for instance.




Well, sorry for the cascade of minor things there. ^_^ I've been having a great deal of fun with the game so far and am looking forward to playing it more. : )

[Quirk]

Well, sorry for the cascade of minor things there. ^_^ I've been having a great deal of fun with the game so far and am looking forward to playing it more. : )

Thank you very much for reporting all these issues, it's reports like these that make the game better. Hope you continue to enjoy your play!

[smbhax]

Thank you very much for reporting all these issues, it's reports like these that make the game better. Hope you continue to enjoy your play!

Thanks! : )

In trying to map keys for Use and Look so I don't have to press Ctrl with u and l all the time under the hjkl key scheme, I stumbled across a few more documentation-related things:



Macros and keymaps are not documented

They're pretty confusing. I finally managed to get myself working alternate keys for u and l with keymaps--so I don't have to use Ctrl with them all the time under the hjkl keys option--but it took a long time: I had trouble with finding keys to put them on; trouble with trying them as macros at first and finding that makes whatever keys I put them on unusable for anything else in the game, like typing those letters in a character name; trouble with figuring out how to save and load them properly; and trouble with figuring out that keymaps have to refer to the "underlying" key function, so for Use in hjkl I needed to specify "u" rather than "^u". And I guess I still need to load a .prf file to get them into any new character I make; I couldn't find a way to have them--or my preferred Options settings--on as defaults for new characters.



; (repeatable direction?) key is undocumented

Pressing ; prompts you to input a direction to "repeat," or something, but it doesn't do continuous movement like . does, and it is not listed in the ? command list. I couldn't figure out what it does. (I found it when looking for a handy key to use for my keymap--for now I've mapped Use to it. : p)



[ (Monsters you can see) and ] (Items you can see) are undocumented

Stumbled across [ and ] when looking for potential keys for keymaps, and I'm glad I did! They aren't listed in the ? command list, yet they seem incredibly useful; Angband's "Item list" subwindow is one of two things vanilla has that I was really wishing this game had--the other being a persistent levels option--but ] at least goes a little way toward that. Both keys seems like something new players could benefit from knowing about.

(I would still really like to have an Item List subwindow though. ^_^)



\ and - are not listed in the ? command list

\ (brings up a seemingly redundant command prompt) and - (described on the Skills screen under Fletchery) are not listed in the ? command list.




#

[HugoVirtuoso]

More examples to supplement smbhax observations:

At the character sheet screen:
Pressing Enter/Return key exits that screen. Perhaps there should be extra message to indicate this is as intended or make Enter/Return not do that

Pressing Spacebar bring up the in-game log? Was this intended? Again, adding another statement on spacebar usage would be useful

When offering an item to an alert Thrall:
Although the Esc key cancels the offer, the prompt says "Esc" by itself. It should say "Press 'Esc' to cancel offer." I know this is self-explanatory but I want this to be more obvious to other players who are new to this