New curses for Sil?

[Derakon]

Something that gave you continual migraine headaches, perhaps? That'd interfere with your ability to concentrate in general, which sounds like it'd impact perception.

[saarn]

still haven't gotten time to try Sil, but I've always wanted to see a game that reproduced the mechanic of the powerful magic item whose use corrupts and binds the user. One way this might be done would be to, over time, permanently transfer some of the player's stats over to the item and even have the item boost the transferred stat a bit. As the player uses the item more, he becomes more in thrall to it since dropping it would be catastrophic. Might work as a companion to sticky curse in category C / motivation ii?

[ekolis]

Ooh, that sounds like an awesome idea, at least from a thematic standpoint - from a gameplay standpoint, doesn't it just reduce the player's available options?

[jujuben]

Re: corrupting/binding curses, I really really like it, so long as the early stages are done carefully. My thoughts (quick and dirty, and likely too complex, but somewhere to start):

Because it *does* take away options, this should NEVER be a sticky curse, or a fail-to-ID curse. The item should auto-ID, the player should be warned regarding the long term dangers of using it, and the initial cost of ditching the item should be only minimally dangerous/expensive. As the item grows in power, the cost of ditching it should increase. The final form of the item should always be *STICKY* (ie: now a part of you, can never drop even with curse breaking/sanctity), and have sufficiently nasty ill effects to make one or more typical endgame challenges almost unbeatable.

One potential power-growth mechanism would be XP pool manipulation. Each item of this type should have a series of progressively more powerful forms (set up similarly to the crown, perhaps?), scaled to the max XP a typical winner who found it at 50' and took max time to descend would get.

While carrying/using the cursed item, all XP gained would go x% to the item, and y% to the player for use in skills/abilities, where x and y depend on how corrupting the item is supposed to be, and what stage it is in (later stage = higher x%).

[saarn]

I agree it should be immediately obvious to the player that an item is corrupting. Maybe even when it comes into view "you feel a sinister attraction to the foo." The gameplay goal should be that a player using one of these items feels like "I can stop at any time"-- the gradual corruption should be entirely self-induced.

[Derakon]

So these would be Sil's heavyhanded drug analogue?

[debo]

This item-dependence thing is a super cool idea, but I'd rather not see something of that complexity in Sil

v4, anyone? lol

[jujuben]

So these would be Sil's heavyhanded drug analogue?

Perhaps, but an analogue drawn from themes Tolkein used, both with the Rings (Ringwraiths, Gollum, Bilbo) and the Palantir (Saruman and Denethor). Not as familiar with First Age mythos, but Gorlim comes immediately to mind as a good candidate, based on the flavor from his helm in V.

[jujuben]

So these would be Sil's heavyhanded drug analogue?

Speaking of heavy handed drug analogues, there was a corruption in ADOM that spoiled potions/food. Might make for some nasty gloves (changes to poison as you pick it up) or amulet (changes to poison as you drink it and it passes through the loop).

[half]

The closest we have to this at the moment in Sil is Smithing. For most items you need to sacrifice a part of you (Stats or experience) to make an item, such that together with the item you are more powerful than before, but without it you are weaker. This is more supposed to emulate Sauron's relationship with the Ring than Frodo's relationship with it. Stat restoration is probably a little too prevalent for this to work as well as I intended it. Also, the ideal would be to have (e.g.) an item that grants +2 Strength, but costs 1 Strength, whereas in Sil +2 Strength is normally too good, and +1 / -1 only pays off once you restore the stat.

[myshkin]

So these would be Sil's heavyhanded drug analogue?

This is your brain. This is your brain inside a Helm of Hit-You-Over-the-Head-With-a-Frying-Pan. Any questions?

[half]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Here are the things I'm currently considering, some of which cam from this conversation:

1) Increase the number of wandering monsters
    - i.e. double frequency with which monsters are created at the stairs
    - something like this occurs in 1.0.2 when carrying 2 or more Silmarils
        - although the Silmaril version is about a tenfold increase
    - goes with Danger (adds 50ft depth) and Wrath (wakes nearby creatures)

2) Draw a particular type of creature to the level
    - I'm thinking of having a 1% chance of summoning an undead creature to a staircase each turn

3) Rage
    - permanent rage
        - would require a sticky curse and may be too good when that is removed
        - could replace whirlwind attack on weapons of fury for example
    - or triggered on killing, or doing a lot of damage or something

4) Fear
    - permanent
        - this would require some serious compensating bonuses
    - or triggered on low health
        - possibly with some kind of will save

5) Hallucination
    - permanent hallucination

6) Elemental vulnerability
    - to fire or cold or poison
    - lowers your resistance by 1, where resistance -1 is double damage

Of these, (1), (2), (3b), (4b), (6) would work as hidden curses, whereas (3a), (4a), (5) would be obvious upon wielding them, so would require sticky curses or compensating benefits. Since we are looking for potential hidden curses, I'm therefore more inclined to the former set.

One thing to note is that elemental vulnerability is pretty nasty. Even if -1 resistance were treated the same as 0, lowering your resistance from 1 to 0 could easily mean instant death from fiery dragon breath. It might therefore have to be restricted to cold/poison or to items that auto-id on wield (e.g. an artefact that gives an ability bonus).

Any comments on some of these that you would like to see in the game (or hate to see in the game)? Or are there some bad unintended consequences of any of these?

[debo]

My favorite of those is the one that summons undead. It sounds spooky as hell It might be good to add a couple of more dangerous undead mobs to the list if this is done, because the current ones are pretty easy to overcome.

Although, the idea of being swarmed by oathwraiths and wasting away to nothing is pretty spectacular

[debo]

Also, if bloodlust curses are added to Sil, my very first goal will be crafting an artefact greatsword called "Stormbringer"

[WaveMotion]

Personal opinion: I'd really rather not see any more sticky curses in this game.

Hidden curses are part of one of Sil's strengths: an id system that lets you deduce item properties by trying them out and observing their effects. In a recent game, I went down the stairs with some unidentified amulets, and noticed that the monsters on the level were significantly harder than they should have been. I guessed that I had to be carrying Danger, so I had to drop all of my amulets and fight my way to the stairs through tons of out-of-depth creatures. I don't think I've had this much fun with curses in any other roguelike!

But if sticky curses become common enough, players will inevitably be encouraged not to equip certain unidentified item types until they have _Understanding/_Sanctity/Lore-keeper. As a result, an id system that invited attention and experimentation from the player will be de-emphasized in favor of a binary no-brainer. This is already the case for gloves and lanterns; unless it's early in the game and I don't care, I will never put unidentified {special} gloves or lanterns on because they may be Weakness or Clumsiness or Shadows and I just don't want to take the risk. This is not an interesting way to do curses, though it's the implementation used by most other roguelikes.

(In fact, I'd love if sticky curses were removed altogether and remade into hidden curses, e.g. Lantern of Shadows into a curse that intensified enemies' darkness effects, Weakness and Clumsiness into curses that drained respective stats occasionally. But that's not the topic of this thread.)