Sil screencasting / let's play

[HallucinationMushroom]

Ah, cool. Well, after 4/1/1/1 anything would seem easy! I was wondering if you gearing up for a 2hand mattock wielding roflstomper, or your dual wield idea. With a 4 strength, you are like that elf, you know, the one with the barbells and meat diet.

[debo]

I've got two more in the tank, I'll upload them sometime this week. (Which I guess is sort of a spoiler alert, but hey.)

[debo]

Sproing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODXXX0am4FE

[Rainmaker]

debo hurry up and upload that vid. I can't get my 1.1.1 working so I'm having to live vicariously through you

[debo]

lol sorry I've been busy, will try to upload next episode today

[debo]

OK next one is up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmIi-BkTrAI

[Rainmaker]

So I've been trying this out for a while now and I think it's time to give it a rest. Without the extra dex/con from a 3-4-4-3 start I can't consistently make it past 400-450 even with the artistry start. Not sure where I'm going wrong, but I think just not having the points in smithing rather than stealth means I'm hopping into places I really shouldn't be.

[debo]

It took me absolutely forever to learn how to play without stealth. I found that I didn't really have to know what each monster did or how strong they were when I played stealthy.

When I switched to no stealth, I had to get a feel for the depths when e.g. I'd need extra light, or free action, or true sight, or fire resistance, not to mention how each monster moves and how to play positionally.

This build is not a good one to learn these things with, IMO. The artistry start is great, but the stat allocation I used is mostly just for laughs. Try the artistry start with something like 2/5/4/3 or 2/4/5/3/ and you should find it a bunch easier to survive the early game.

[taptap]

It took me absolutely forever to learn how to play without stealth. I found that I didn't really have to know what each monster did or how strong they were when I played stealthy.

Regarding no stealth play: I consider now a pretty low stealth character but I plan on taking opportunist. So today when travelling home I calculated with 6 skill and 1 ability the dexterity point in the stealth tree costs me 5500 xp - say I aim for 20 skill points in both melee and evasion. So basically taking the dexterity point from stealth instead of taking the skills costs me only 1500 xp for 6 additional stealth, 1 archery and maybe a benefit for some checks using the base stat as well. I really tend to succumb to this calculation and take stealth later on, even if I played without it for most of the time.

[Scatha]

So basically taking the dexterity point from stealth instead of taking the skills costs me only 1500 xp for 6 additional stealth, 1 archery and maybe a benefit for some checks using the base stat as well. I really tend to succumb to this calculation and take stealth later on, even if I played without it for most of the time.

Thanks, this is interesting. It suggests that we may have put the skill requirement for the point of Dex in the stealth tree a little too low! The stat points are supposed to be rewards for people pushing that skill, and if it's too cheap to just take the skill for the sake of the stat point it makes the choice less interesting.

On a similar note, there seems to be a bit of a problem about people taking Song just for the throne room. I'm not sure if this is just the current trend in our top players or if really is a dominant strategy, but maybe we should think about tweaks there (these don't just have to be nerfs; they can include making some things better in the early game).

[debo]

I think there are two things going on here:

a) The general trend towards powergaming on this forum means that you should basically always take sharpness. There's no other skill I can think of that so suddenly and dramatically increases your damage potential.

b) For people who are just trying to win the game (get one sil and get out), I don't necessarily think we're realizing just how possible it is to extract the sil with e.g. a big heavy weapon and a strength potion. The difficulty is that you need to take multiple chances at it, probably while the entire throne room is trying to eat you. Having anything of sharpness makes life far easier.

As for stealth, I wouldn't mind seeing that stealth 'dexterity' ability made more expensive. I'd say it would be smarter to give it a prereq, but there isn't an obvious one to use (picking disguise or assassination would be rewarding/penalizing different potential playstyles, I think.)

I know I often find myself taking 7 points of stealth with melee characters to get Opportunist. It's not enough stealth to keep me out of trouble, but Opportunist is such a big help that I don't mind. Once i'm at 7, I almost always dump a few more points in to get Dexterity, even if I'm taking Dexterity on the Evasion or Archery trees too.

The difficulty is that I don't think that characters who are specializing in stealth often need to dump a ton of points (e.g. 20) into it for it to be effective. Setting the Dexterity prereq even to 15 would be sort of a crummy thing to do to e.g. pacifist builds.

I don't see anyone complaining about Will only requiring 12 (or whatever) pts of investment to get Con, and that's the only place you can get it. I think it's because it has a prereq of Hardiness, which is not a universally helpful ability.

Now I'm just rambling

[debo]

Idea: Have we ever thought about making Angrist a guaranteed find / drop in the throne room, if you haven't found it already? Say, you're guaranteed to find it if you open up enough chests?

That would basically mean that sneaky type characters could search around until they find the weapon that is guaranteed to get them 1 sil, while everyone else could just try to hammer their way through the problem (figuratively speaking). It is a fairly thematic weapon for the locale. Bonus points if you find Beren's hand in a chest, or something

[HallucinationMushroom]

Would it be possible to have the crown lower it's protection roll by 1 or more for each attempt to wrest a silmaril... sort of like, chiseling it out? Right now, it's sort of a, it can or can't, where this way you could eventually break it out. I dunno, probably just a dumb thought.

Bonus points if you find Beren's hand in a chest, or something

Carcharoth should have a chance to bite your hand off at the gates, taking your silmaril with it in his burning belly!

[HallucinationMushroom]

On a similar note, there seems to be a bit of a problem about people taking Song just for the throne room. I'm not sure if this is just the current trend in our top players or if really is a dominant strategy, but maybe we should think about tweaks there (these don't just have to be nerfs; they can include making some things better in the early game).

Do you mean the song of slaying ramp up in the throne room by this? If so, perhaps just a hard ceiling or more incrementally diminishing returns? For the most part, slaying works for me as it is probably intended. At 950' with about 13 song, I would sometimes hit +5 but not often... Since I kill a lot I would find myself with 1-2 waiting for me each time I sang it if I had saved my voice from previous singings. In the throne room, and gates, it seems to ramp very quickly since, well, the throne room has a legion of meatsacks all willing to lend a hand to the superbuffed and ready to kill. Morgy's own servants thwart him in this respect.

[taptap]

Thanks, this is interesting. It suggests that we may have put the skill requirement for the point of Dex in the stealth tree a little too low! The stat points are supposed to be rewards for people pushing that skill, and if it's too cheap to just take the skill for the sake of the stat point it makes the choice less interesting.

On a similar note, there seems to be a bit of a problem about people taking Song just for the throne room. I'm not sure if this is just the current trend in our top players or if really is a dominant strategy, but maybe we should think about tweaks there (these don't just have to be nerfs; they can include making some things better in the early game).

It is still more expensive in the example and it is of course dependent on the number of abilities taken earlier... yes, it is more expensive for a specialist. But this is always the case with the escalating costs. This is also the reason why opportunist is so attractive w/o stealth specialisation, the ability itself only costs 500xp. With CON I actually believe people who take the CON point like hardiness as well (personally I took hardiness several times, but never the CON point). If you take a prereq for DEX I would say take Vanish then it is indeed limited to people specialising in stealth (all builds: melee, archer, pacifist) although I start to regret writing my earlier post here. I have only one win under the belt and already my ideas lead to nerfs.

Imo Song of Sharpness (and woven themes, unwavering voice ...) is just expensive, so I can't afford it much before the throne room. If I could I would take it earlier.