Sil 1.1

[half]

All in all Charge now seems more explicitly geared toward heavy weapon users than for light weapon users, and significantly less great for both in comparison to previous versions. This is a good thing—now interesting tactical alternatives like Polearms or Focused Attack no longer have to compete with something that doubled your damage output.

This is exactly right.

We had found that Charge was so good that when balancing the game we had to distinguish between characters that got it and those that didn't ('sure this balrog was easy, but that was with a Charge character...'). This was my fault, as I had thought combats would last long enough that the extra Charge damage would be a small component, but it was high enough to often reduce combat length to one or two rounds, making it *very* strong. Now there should be a lot more legitimate choice in melee character abilities.

We still want Charge to be a stronger than average ability, as it is tactically fun so we want people to be encouraged to get it, but now we hope that will be 1/3 of characters or so, instead of 2/3 or so. We'd love to hear comments about whether we have succeeded in this goal, or whether it is too strong or weak in its new form. I think it will take a little while to sort out though, especially as its old form was far too strong and this will definitely appear weak in comparison.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you have a perfect weapon for it and are charging, it is like having 4.5 more stat points (1.5 Dex + 3 Str). Given that 1 Dex is considered a very powerful ability, you wouldn't need to be charging all that often, or with all that perfect a weapon to get good value from this.

[half]

Question -- why do we still have tridents AND spears? They seem exactly the same to me? This is not a criticism, it's actually something I've been wondering about for a while. Tridents are just a bit heavier, IIRC.

There is no good reason for this really. Both are mentioned as weapons in the works of Tolkien, but tridents are very specialised, so they are really just there for flavour.

[half]

Some things are missing that I expected (cruel blow / etc having effects dependent on proportion of HP damage inflicted, Morgoth getting some more significant abilities)

These are still on the to-do list, but we thought the changelist was more than long enough for a release and we wanted to get the important changes out to the players. We also wanted to get on with adding two major new features to the game, but I'll explain more about that in a new thread later.

[half]

So +3 to DEX with light weapons means that you'll get better criticals (more dice), whereas +3 to STR with heavy weapons means you'll get more sides.

The +3 Dex is definitely nice on its own, giving (+3). However, it is still weaker for light weapons users than the old Charge, as (+3) gives about half an extra die of criticals, while the old version doubled your base dice, giving light weapons users a whole die.

[Psi]

We still want Charge to be a stronger than average ability, as it is tactically fun so we want people to be encouraged to get it, but now we hope that will be 1/3 of characters or so, instead of 2/3 or so. We'd love to hear comments about whether we have succeeded in this goal, or whether it is too strong or weak in its new form. I think it will take a little while to sort out though, especially as its old form was far too strong and this will definitely appear weak in comparison.

The old charge really came into its own against high protection enemies - serpents and grotesques (and Uldor!) come to mind. Whereas stealthy stabbers can overcome serpents at least with high criticals it is more of a challenge to other builds. I've mentioned to Scatha, that I am finding smiths particularly troublesome. The old charge was powerful enough to compensate for all the XP pumped into smithing, without it life is a lot harder.

[half]

The old charge really came into its own against high protection enemies - serpents and grotesques (and Uldor!) come to mind. Whereas stealthy stabbers can overcome serpents at least with high criticals it is more of a challenge to other builds. I've mentioned to Scatha, that I am finding smiths particularly troublesome. The old charge was powerful enough to compensate for all the XP pumped into smithing, without it life is a lot harder.

This does seem to be good evidence that the old Charge was distorting the game too much.

Regarding serpents, we've made them slightly erratic (25%) and have lowered the protection on the ancient ones to [6d4]. This will make them slightly easier.

[Psi]

This does seem to be good evidence that the old Charge was distorting the game too much.

I agree that it was probably too powerful, but my concern is that (non-archer) smiths, may now be very hard to build. Smiths do not get powerful until the late game when their smithing is high enough to forge great artefacts. Before that point you are just trying to build a character that can survive whilst trying to assemble as many smithing items as possible. In an ideal world I would probably build a character and then pump smithing, but with the forge 'smoothing' you are at risk of missing too many forges along the way (admittedly I don't know how this works though!).

[Nick]

There is no good reason for this really. Both are mentioned as weapons in the works of Tolkien, but tridents are very specialised, so they are really just there for flavour.

Ooh, interesting! Where are tridents mentioned?

[debo]

I agree that it was probably too powerful, but my concern is that (non-archer) smiths, may now be very hard to build. Smiths do not get powerful until the late game when their smithing is high enough to forge great artefacts. Before that point you are just trying to build a character that can survive whilst trying to assemble as many smithing items as possible. In an ideal world I would probably build a character and then pump smithing, but with the forge 'smoothing' you are at risk of missing too many forges along the way (admittedly I don't know how this works though!).

My experience with smiths is that I generally found 0-1 forges between 200' and 800'. What if you find one every 100' now? Wouldn't the things you incrementally build make it a bit easier than you suggest?

I do think the days of making a character with 6+ artefacts are over. However, if there is a way to still do that, I'm sure you'll find it :P

[half]

Ooh, interesting! Where are tridents mentioned?

Ulmo's one is what I'm thinking of. There might be others.

[half]

I agree that it was probably too powerful, but my concern is that (non-archer) smiths, may now be very hard to build. Smiths do not get powerful until the late game when their smithing is high enough to forge great artefacts. Before that point you are just trying to build a character that can survive whilst trying to assemble as many smithing items as possible. In an ideal world I would probably build a character and then pump smithing, but with the forge 'smoothing' you are at risk of missing too many forges along the way (admittedly I don't know how this works though!).

We'll see how it goes. It is hard to work this out a priori. If smithing needs to be improved, then we should probably do that through the difficulty settings for items rather than through Charge.

As for the forge smoothing, the general frequency of forges (other than in vaults) is halved. However, if you haven't had one generated for a few thousand turns there is a chance that one will be guaranteed on the next level. This reaches a 100% chance after 5,000 turns without a forge being generated, so at least 6 forges should be generated in a full game. In terms of the late game, you are unlikely to see more than 1 of these bonus forges, so you will roughly get half as many late-game forges.

One consequence of all these changes is that it may not be as good to make meta-smithing artefacts as it was. I think gloves of the forge will still be smart though. Ultimately we'll have to see how it plays.

[getter77]

Congrats on this incredibly well-wrought looking release---though I can't help but find it amusing that if you'd held it just a tad longer it could've landed for ARRP 2012!

[Psi]

My experience with smiths is that I generally found 0-1 forges between 200' and 800'. What if you find one every 100' now? Wouldn't the things you incrementally build make it a bit easier than you suggest?

Not for me. With smithing there is a breakpoint at 12 where you can make the rather desirable Round shield of Deflection [+2,1d3] and at 13 where you make =Accuracy(+2). After that You just want to get smithing as high as possible for making artefacts. With smithing times now so long, you cannot afford to waste time on stuff of limited use.

We'll see how it goes. It is hard to work this out a priori. If smithing needs to be improved, then we should probably do that through the difficulty settings for items rather than through Charge.

Agreed.

As for the forge smoothing, the general frequency of forges (other than in vaults) is halved. However, if you haven't had one generated for a few thousand turns there is a chance that one will be guaranteed on the next level. This reaches a 100% chance after 5,000 turns without a forge being generated, so at least 6 forges should be generated in a full game. In terms of the late game, you are unlikely to see more than 1 of these bonus forges, so you will roughly get half as many late-game forges.

Ah ok, I thought the chances of generating forges was reduced the more forges you saw - similar to artefact generation. In which case I don't need to worry about skipping forges. Maybe the optimum strategy will be just to play a character through until the mid-to-late game and if they get lucky with _Revelations convert to smithing?

One consequence of all these changes is that it may not be as good to make meta-smithing artefacts as it was. I think gloves of the forge will still be smart though. Ultimately we'll have to see how it plays.

If that is the case then smithing scores will come right down which coupled with all the increased costs may make smithing a bit pointless. You need to be able to make kit considerably better than the standard artefacts to make up for the 20k+ XP invested in the smithing skill. But as you say, we'll see how it plays.

[Philip]

On windows XP, the windows for damage rolls, equipment and such are empty. I'm sure this didn't happen before. Otherwise, congratulations on the release!
Also, Nick, time for a competition, right?

[HallucinationMushroom]

Ah, congrats on the release!

I think charge has done a good job of bringing axes to the early game. I often see the -3, 3d4 ax crop up early in the game and wonder, who can actually use that thing at this point? My dwarves usually wear longswords up to 500' just to hit reliably, but now charge+axe breaks out their early game warrior potential.