New curses for Sil?

[half]

(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.)

I don't think that's off-topic, and I appreciate hearing about this. We've been using the term 'curse' rather loosely to refer to different kinds of negative effects, one of which is stickiness. To be clear, none of the new negative effects described above would *be* sticky, but some might only be found in conjunction with the stickiness. So there wouldn't really be a 'new sticky curse', but there would be new items with sticky curses and other negative effects (a bit like how we could already add some new gauntlets with a sticky curse and -3 to archery if we wanted).

I think that some negative effects are interesting enough to want them to see play, and if they only work with a sticky curse too, then I'm OK with that. I think lanterns of shadows are a neat example as I really like the flickeringness and the way they flicker down to negative light (sometimes darkening a fully lit room). I find them very atmospheric. They *could* work without stickiness, but would need to have a positive attribute to balance the flickering. That would make them a bit more complicated, but would be OK too. I'm less bothered by the sticky mechanic than you (as long as it is applied sparingly), but its flavour is also pretty weak (especially in Tolkien), so I do appreciate advice for generally avoiding them and even getting rid of some (or all) current ones.

I should also mention the ability Curse Breaking, which actually removes quite a lot of the risk of wielding unidentified gloves etc. If you weren't going to get many Will abilities, then it is at worst just a small chance of needing to pay 500 or 1000 experience if you can't live with -1 Str until you find a staff of sanctity. I think wielding gauntlets of weakness is less of a big deal than stepping next to a violet mold, for example.

[Patashu]

I never bother getting curse breaking anymore, I just scum 500-2000ft until I find some green worm masses, and if I'm past that point I've probably found a staff of sanctity at some point.

[Scatha]

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.

My feelings are roughly that:
- (2) is better than (1) because it's more recognisable and cooler (the issue is having a monster type which occurs frequently enough that it can always be depth appropriate; I think we're just about okay with undead)
- (4b) is better than (4a), and also better than (3b) (but the latter is in some ways not really a curse)
- I like fear triggered on taking damage with a Will save at difficulty equal to damage taken.
- (5) is cool, because hallucinating is fun and probably doesn't happen enough
- but it would stop being fun if it occurred too much, so this would be one to use sparingly
- with the different elements available, (6) has quite a lot of space to play with.

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).

On the other hand by the time young fire drakes come along most players will have a reasonable amount of ID. But it might still be better applied to the other two as I agree it's best not to surprise players with death. Poison is particularly tempting, since there's always some time to react.

Overall I think (4b) and/or (6) would be best, by a small margin. Between them I think we could get non-auto-identifying negative items for all the slots.

One other thing to think about might be to have Lore Keeper recognise any item with a negative attribute as cursed, rather than just sticky curses.

We'd love to hear from more of the players, though! Some of you know this game pretty well by now.

[debo]

This is unrelated, but the discussion of elemental brand vulnerabilities reminded me of it:

I was spleunking through artefacts.txt a while ago, and I noticed a BRAND_ELEC flag in a number of places. Does that just basically have no effect now? It's still on some artefact called Celeg Aithorn, which I've never found before (it looks badass).

[Scatha]

This is unrelated, but the discussion of elemental brand vulnerabilities reminded me of it:

I was spleunking through artefacts.txt a while ago, and I noticed a BRAND_ELEC flag in a number of places. Does that just basically have no effect now? It's still on some artefact called Celeg Aithorn, which I've never found before (it looks badass).

That's right. We used to have lightning breathing serpents, but decided that that was more elements than we needed, and the flavour of lightning was weaker than any of the others. Celeg Aithorn is from Beleg's Song of Sharpness, and seems to be a mythic item associated with lightning, so the code was left in to support that (but as you say, it's ridiculously rare -- about twice as much as Ringil, which I think has only been found once on the ladder). I don't think anything resists it.

[debo]

That's right. We used to have lightning breathing serpents, but decided that that was more elements than we needed, and the flavour of lightning was weaker than any of the others. Celeg Aithorn is from Beleg's Song of Sharpness, and seems to be a mythic item associated with lightning, so the code was left in to support that (but as you say, it's ridiculously rare -- about twice as much as Ringil, which I think has only been found once on the ladder). I don't think anything resists it.

Yeah, looks like it has 1 for rarity. I did a bit of sourcediving and put myself into debug mode to generate Celeg Aithorn. The brand does indeed work Cool stuff.

(It took me a few minutes of staring at grep output to realize that I could do 'R' -> enter artefact number -> ctrl-A -> C to feed the proper argument to the create artefact routine lol)

[T-Mick]

I like the idea of some super-rare sword with a brand that nothing resists. Seeing as it's some weapon of mythical proportions, that's very fitting.

You two don't plan to remove it, do you?

[jujuben]

the idea of some super-rare sword with a brand that nothing resists. Seeing as it's some weapon of mythical proportions, that's very fitting.

I like the way Sil tries to balance everything. In that spirit, a super rare unique (possibly Dragon?) with a nasty breath that you can never resist might make an interesting counterweight. Territorial, so as not to be *too* nasty, and with a sweet hoard for the stealthy and/or suicidal.

Speaking of territorial monsters, and getting back on-topic: how about a curse that makes territorial monsters (probably best to keep it at one type per curse) follow you. For Dragons, it should probably be obvious, so as to prevent ID from causing instadeath, but it could be rolled into Dragon-Horn Longbows, and any other items that get added later that happen to be made of dead Dragons. Anything like Vanilla DSM is probably way too powerful for Sil, even with a curse like that, but there should be a way to make something similar both interesting and within the scope of the game.

[Patashu]

I like the way Sil tries to balance everything. In that spirit, a super rare unique (possibly Dragon?) with a nasty breath that you can never resist might make an interesting counterweight. Territorial, so as not to be *too* nasty, and with a sweet hoard for the stealthy and/or suicidal.

The fire breathing uniques are essentially this already, they do so much damage that resistance just makes it non instadeath

[half]

(It took me a few minutes of staring at grep output to realize that I could do 'R' -> enter artefact number -> ctrl-A -> C to feed the proper argument to the create artefact routine lol)

Sorry about that! This is something I inherited from V, and is quite ridiculous. I've actually improved debug mode quite a bit in Sil, but didn't touch this silly interface thing.

[Psi]

-- about twice as much as Ringil, which I think has only been found once on the ladder).

I've found Ringil twice and I think I've seen someone else with it too. Never seen Celeg Aithorn though.

[debo]

I've found Ringil twice and I think I've seen someone else with it too. Never seen Celeg Aithorn though.

Clouded just found it on his last game, currently on the ladder -- and then it looks like he threw it away

[Psi]

Clouded just found it on his last game, currently on the ladder -- and then it looks like he threw it away

I've never used it either. Now if it was sharp...

[clouded]

I have found the lightning sword too, I don't remember which game it was or what character type it was either because I don't think I actually used it, why I didn't I have no idea, even it was a pacifist char it's sharpness so I would have kept it... I didn't save the log of that game for some reason, what a shame!