Sil

[Antoine]

It is annoying how every character appears to be L1 in the oook ladder, even if very experienced.

Could you assign characters a nominal level (perhaps some function of their experience and stats) - it needn't have any affect on gameplay but it could appear in the chardump and hence be used to rank characters in the ladder?

A.

[bio_hazard]

I assume you're talking about what the game terms Abilities (things like Finesse, or Weaponsmith, or Song of Elbereth) rather than Skills (things like Evasion, Perception), as I don't think you ever get free Skill points. The free Abilities arise when a character has an affinity for a certain Skill, and then each Ability associated to that Skill is 500 experience cheaper, and in particular the first one, which would normally cost 500, is free.

There are two reasons why the player needs to go and add them:
- Although the first may be free, before adding experience to any skills the character doesn't meet the pre-requisites for any abilities.
- More importantly, it's your first one which is free, regardless of which you choose that one to be. There's a choice for the player here. Of course it usually makes sense for them to get at least one ability in the tree, but the player can choose which one.

Thanks! Yes, I meant abilities. I didn't realize it wasn't always the first in the list that was free.

Stick with it! I'll offer a couple of (fairly general) pieces of advice: choose the locations of your fights carefully, and be prepared to run away (and perhaps take the stairs) if things start to go badly. The orc uniques can be tough, but you can generally escape from them if you're careful. If you want to post character dumps on the ladder, we can offer more specific advice.

I tend to not like going back up stairs- that's a habit I'll have to get used to. I've been doing the "clear a level, then descend" style, and should be beating more tactical retreats as well as not being afraid to bounce around in the 100-200 levels more to get a few more abilities or skill-ups. A couple of deaths have been trying to get that one last hit on a hard-hitting orc instead of running away. Some have been just being stupid once I get surrounded by an escort- rather than fighting for the stairs I'd just start swinging semi-randomly because I figured it would be over.

I'll check out the ladder and see how other people are doing their skill points and ability upgrades.

[Scatha]

There are a couple of things I find a little confusing in the attribute/skill area

- It looks like there are free skills at start-up sometimes. (i.e. they cost no XP to buy). Is there any reason not to take them? If not, is there any reason not to automatically grant them to the player without need to manually add them?

I assume you're talking about what the game terms Abilities (things like Finesse, or Weaponsmith, or Song of Elbereth) rather than Skills (things like Evasion, Perception), as I don't think you ever get free Skill points. The free Abilities arise when a character has an affinity for a certain Skill, and then each Ability associated to that Skill is 500 experience cheaper, and in particular the first one, which would normally cost 500, is free.

There are two reasons why the player needs to go and add them:
- Although the first may be free, before adding experience to any skills the character doesn't meet the pre-requisites for any abilities.
- More importantly, it's your first one which is free, regardless of which you choose that one to be. There's a choice for the player here. Of course it usually makes sense for them to get at least one ability in the tree, but the player can choose which one.

-What "skill point" actually means.

[...]

I've figured it out now, but this could be made clearer in game and in the manual.

Thanks for pointing this out. It can be easy for us to overlook ambiguities when we know what it's supposed to mean.

I'm really enjoying this game, even though I haven't gotten past 250'. I seem to run into the first orc unique, then have another group of orc soldiers come down the stairs behind me. Of course, last game I equipped an un-ID'ed Amulet of Danger.

Stick with it! I'll offer a couple of (fairly general) pieces of advice: choose the locations of your fights carefully, and be prepared to run away (and perhaps take the stairs) if things start to go badly. The orc uniques can be tough, but you can generally escape from them if you're careful. If you want to post character dumps on the ladder, we can offer more specific advice.

[bio_hazard]

There are a couple of things I find a little confusing in the attribute/skill area

- It looks like there are free skills at start-up sometimes. (i.e. they cost no XP to buy). Is there any reason not to take them? If not, is there any reason not to automatically grant them to the player without need to manually add them?

-What "skill point" actually means.

For example, lets say I start a character, and after initial distribution, it might look like:

Melee 7 = 4 + 3. One would reasonably think that this is 7 skill points.

However, on ability buy-in, I try to buy Charge in the Melee tree.
(Requires 5, you have 4).

I've figured it out now, but this could be made clearer in game and in the manual.

I'm really enjoying this game, even though I haven't gotten past 250'. I seem to run into the first orc unique, then have another group of orc soldiers come down the stairs behind me. Of course, last game I equipped an un-ID'ed Amulet of Danger.

[Satyr]

Another question - how are skill points gained? The manual says that skill points come with experience. But in some skills I gain no points. With my "warrior" I have zero will, so I cannot get the Mind over body, which seems important.

You have to put the experience into the skills yourself. Just go to the character screen ("@"-key) and press "i".

[Storch]

Interestingly, I usually find enough light but in my many attempts (hours of play) I have never seen anything to eat. Something killed me every time before I starved - so far the food is not the limit anyway so it is not problem for now :-)

Another question - how are skill points gained? The manual says that skill points come with experience. But in some skills I gain no points. With my "warrior" I have zero will, so I cannot get the Mind over body, which seems important.

[Narvius]

Oh, right. I forgot that. Sorry.
In my opinion, that bonus should show up only in the damage total though, not in the weapon description, since the latter shows the actual raw stats of the weapon.

[half]

Food generally serves as something to push you forward. In my opinion, this works well neither in V (push button to not die) nor in Sil (pray you find food).

I think this has mainly been bad luck. In my (extensive) experience, I find that the 'food clock' makes me a little anxious, but doesn't kill me or force me on much faster. What it does is to provide an interesting tension around the items and monsters that speed up or slow down your consumption. Some monsters (notably Oathwraiths) cause hunger. This can be a real problem unless you can deal with them at range. There are also items such as vampiric swords and some artefacts that cause hunger as a drawback. This means you either need to reserve them for special occasions, or to use an equipment slot with a ring of sustenance or similar, or use an ability getting Mind over Body or the like. So basically food is a limit resource, which should be just OK if there are no special pressures, but then there are interesting ways to spend it or renew it.

Finally, I should add that the effects which increase or decrease hunger are all a factor of 3 and stack. So if your hunger rate could be 27x or 9x or 3x or 1x or 1/3x or 1/9x etc. You really don't want to suffer from magical hunger at the time an Oathwraith attacks, or its effect is magnified too...

Bug report.
I have a battle axe. When equipped, I have a total damage output of 3d8 (at 2 strength), and the axe shows as (-3, 3d6). When it rests in my inventory, though, it shows as (-3, 3d4).
Savefile.

This isn't actually a bug. The axe really is (-3, 3d4) but like a Bastard Sword it is a Hand and a Half weapon, so you get an extra 2 damage sides when using it two-handed (without a shield). There are a few other weapons like this too. It gives you an interesting choice of how to use it.

[half]

I am dying of hunger. All characters. No food whatsoever. Am I missing something?

That is quite odd, and I'm not sure what is going on. I almost never have trouble with food (over more than 100 games), and I don't get the Mind Over Body ability. You do have to identify the herb types (all of which can be done from use) as Herbs of Sustenance are particularly useful and Herbs of Emptiness are particularly bad. I think that food drops are more common overall when you get deeper. All potions and herbs provide a small amount of sustenance, so be prepared to eat/drink them in emergencies (even the negative ones), though again it never comes down to this for me. There are rings of hunger and rings of sustenance, the latter of which will be useful for you. You could forge one yourself. Rings of Hunger are not cursed in Sil, which actually makes them nastier as you don't notice you are wearing one.

Ultimately my guess is that you are just having bad luck, and I'd advise getting Mind over Body when you eat your last bit of food (and taking off unidentified rings at that point too). Starting with no points in Will, it only costs 1,100 experience to get Mind over body, which is pretty cheap.

I have more trouble with light, though this mainly just means having to turn back to torches if my lantern runs out, rather than moving to complete darkness.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'm halfway to the bottom and have only seen one food drop. I've only used the stairs going downward and have the slow-hunger trait so I still have my initial food stockpile, but lack of food is certainly cause enough to make one nervous! Same case for light, so far. I'm probably going to have to burn some experience to learn either the song of light or how to forge a lantern.

[LostTemplar]

About food and time limit.
I have some different thought about this for my variant.

Food is not really a time limit, it is more a rest limit, if you kill monsters fast, you gain extra food, if you rest too much (or use stair too much, that in my variant costs about 7 times more food then it does in sil) you starve. (it is important, that food is relatively heavy, so you cannot get food stock for moderately long time, you have to get food constantly)

As for pushing forward, there is nothing more then desire to win, and get a high score. You get lower score for going slowly, also staying at low levels gives allmost no reward and does not help surviving deeper levels later.

I see problem in time limit as it is implemented here. The problem is not the limit itself, but the fact, that it is obviously better to go as slow as possible, so this fact, coupled with hard limit removes the main choice of roguelike "Am I confident to go forward ?"

[Narvius]

Oh. Heavy armor... yes. I think my heavy bias towards fragile speedster sword/spearmen is starting to rear it's ugly head.

But, that's one good thing that roguelikes do for me. They force me to use everything I have at my disposal to get further (which, incidentally, is why I play nosell in V). That's GOT to color off onto my real life behavior at some point.

[Edit]
On the topic of food.
Food generally serves as something to push you forward. In my opinion, this works well neither in V (push button to not die) nor in Sil (pray you find food). It's well-enough done in DC:SS, where food is readily available as long as you kill stuff (most of the time), and coupled with a low respawn rate of monsters and monster meat rotting, it keeps you going.
Sil has a much more effective means of pushing the player forwards (diminishing XP return and the much more explicit min depth). I'm in favor of removing food altogether - the only use I see is keeping the player from staying on any given level for too long, since it is more likely to find food when you advance. But! Even if a player wants to spend several million turns on one level farming orcs for that 1 XP per head, he WILL be royally screwed once he gets dumped in Morgoths face after that. And there could be some other mechanic to prevent ungodly amounts of time spent on a single level.
So... This would of course slightly decrease the pool of magical items, and therefore drain some likely XP from the global pool... and probably other implications. But still.

Bug report.
I have a battle axe. When equipped, I have a total damage output of 3d8 (at 2 strength), and the axe shows as (-3, 3d6). When it rests in my inventory, though, it shows as (-3, 3d4).
Savefile.

[Storch]

As mentioned, Mind over Body is always available, but most of the time I don't think this should be needed. Can I ask: are you finding you're wearing rings of hunger on death? Alternatively, are you using the stairs a lot? Each time you use the stairs uses 100 turns worth of food (as well as 100 turns on the turn count, which is counted for the forced descent) -- this is meant to discourage abuse of the stairs.

I have zero will points, so no Mind over body. I am playing very simple warrior type. No rings of hunger. I will try to avoid stairs if that makes the problem worse. My point was that I have not encountered anything to eat in the dungeon. Perharps I should herbivore some herbs?

[Scatha]

Then, I usually do fine until I meet orc archers. Often, I defeat them, but barely. And the few cases I don't defeat them, I'm meat.

I'd avoid them, but usually once I realize they are there, they notice me and chase me through the entire level. Effectively.

I could make a run for the stairs every time, but... eh. :/
So, any hints on how to dispatch them? I'll try putting a few points into Song/Elbereth in the next few games and see how I fare.

There are actually a number of different strategies for dealing with orc archers. For instance: heavy armour (high protection values) is pretty effective at stopping the arrows (evasion is less good, since your evasion is halved against archery); you can kill them with archery of your own -- in a situation where only one of them can fire at a time if it's still a problem; you can sneak up on them and kill them before they notice you (or sneak past them); you can chase them with Sprinting or Opportunist. I hope you can get one of these to work for you!

I am dying of hunger. All characters. No food whatsoever. Am I missing something?

As mentioned, Mind over Body is always available, but most of the time I don't think this should be needed. Can I ask: are you finding you're wearing rings of hunger on death? Alternatively, are you using the stairs a lot? Each time you use the stairs uses 100 turns worth of food (as well as 100 turns on the turn count, which is counted for the forced descent) -- this is meant to discourage abuse of the stairs.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Ah, thanks for the chardump help! I was staring right at it and totally missed it.