Sil 1.1

[debo]

A couple of monster quibbles:

1) Why aren't elemental serpents flagged as dragons? Wish my Nargothrond sword worked on them.

2) Why aren't lesser vampires flagged as undead? Wish my Final Rest sword worked on them.

The vampires thing is a good question. It might make Final Rest more useful, since I never keep those anymore (There aren't many undead types that are dangerous, and free action is readily available elsewhere.)

I prefer that serpents stay the way they are, because serpents would be sort of a joke if you could just roll over them with Nargothrond (they have very low HP). I like that they force you to either have a heavy weapon or some other strategy of dealing with them (other than just picking up a random slay), but are easily dispatched once you've figured that out.

Nargorthrond is an interesting slay right now because it gives you a better change at fighting monsters who you are normally better off avoiding (esp balrogs and drakes). If it was just ezmode for serpents I might not like it so much

[Starhawk]

A couple of monster quibbles:

1) Why aren't elemental serpents flagged as dragons? Wish my Nargothrond sword worked on them.

2) Why aren't lesser vampires flagged as undead? Wish my Final Rest sword worked on them.

[debo]

Dump of questions/observations/issues from my last winner so that they don't get lost in the eternal shuffle of fresh meat down the ladder conveyor:

(Source: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=13748)

a) Throwing axes (and later Aeglos) were hugely useful throughout. I fired less than 10 arrows. Throwing weapons really are like a cheap version of opportunist, if you don't want to waste the XP on stealth. I did this mainly for purist reasons, as all my previous winners had been stealth based, and I wanted to win with 0 stealth

b) Melkor is badass in the beginning. Use that shit

c) Focusing on fundamentals (evasion and melee) is a lot better for me with 0 stealth builds than taking cute multi-attack abilities.

d) Song of Trees is actually really good. If I could do this again, I would avoid Inner Light altogether and just take Trees. That would save XP on the will tree that could be used in Song instead. The difference with Trees is that it scales with skill, whereas inner light does not.

e) I refused to take Sharpness this game out of moral principle (another ability that I always take) and I'm glad I did. It made things more interesting -- especially the throne room.

f) I think we could 'fix' archery by encouraging melee characters to throw more. bron just killed V with a 14 archery Dwarf, so yeah haha. I know archery is fun for everyone involved, but if we maybe made bows 1d4 or something instead of making it like shooting a shortsword with better crits, that would still let archery specialists own things. I dunno, I just found throwing to be really fun and I don't know how many other people like it as much as me.

g) Killing things fast enables you to avoid a lot of the "defensive" abilities. I avoided poison resistance for a long time and never took crit resistance, because if something got too hard, I was able to kill it in 2-3 rounds with the Great Axe.

h) Have we ever considered making every up staircase on the ascent into a shaft? I think 10 floors of ascent is enough to be challenging, and after that it just sort of gets grindy. The danger of stairs collapsing is always there, too. I was getting really bored by the end.

i) The ascent was made even easier for me because of Gorlim. Without it, I would have had a much harder time.

And:

==
Request: Can we fix how Silent Watchers work? A few times now I've been stuck in an empty room where they knock me out and just keep screaming. I have to sit there and jam 'esc' for literally 3 minutes before I finally save against stunning. I get the point -- they're supposed to disable you -- but putting the player in a quasi-infinite loop doesn't exactly seem fun
==

The latter is especially annoying -- it just happened to me again. There are many situations in the game where it's just you and a silent watcher (e.g. in a quartz vault or something) where the odds of a monster stumbling upon you are very low. I would like a chance to act every time I get knocked out, but barring that, it might even just be nice to get rid of the 'more' prompt in this situation, regardless of settings.

gg

[Starhawk]

Is there a difference between allocating XP points at character generation, or immediately after it at turn 1 when you start your game? The second method is more powerful since it lets you assign your initial 5000 xp's to special abilities as well.
If there is really no difference, I would suggest removing the possibility to assign XP points during character generation.

I could care less about power... I just want to save some keystrokes when I die again, and again, and again, and have to tap-tap-tap out the build again.

[Patashu]

Attacking, hitting, killing, getting a certain number of stacked critical hits, sleeping, etc a bunch of monsters at once sound like fun ways to go for ridiculous numbers and experiment with builds. I like.

[half]

I wonder what the 'Unlocks' entail?

The idea is to have a set of achievements -- say twenty different impressive things that range from milestones (first death, first time to 500 ft, first time to 1000 ft, first victory) to impressive but optional things (killing 8 monsters in a turn, killing Morgoth). The balance of these will take some working out and we'll decide whether to have any of them be secret (so that you can't see that it will be rewarded beforehand).

Some (or all?) of these achievements will unlock things in the game. For example, we might start with only Noldor unlocked and have (off the top of my head...) the first death unlock Sindar, the first forged item unlock Naugrim, the first victory unlock Edain etc. Or maybe the first victory would unlock Nightmare Mode. etc etc.

The main idea would be to help give people a sense of progress which can be lacking in roguelikes given that you 'lose' a large number of games in a row before winning your first one and people can get discouraged. Second to this would be giving some fun targets for insane builds to try to reach achievements such as the aforementioned killing 8 enemies in a single round (perhaps 8 is too few!).

We'd take various common criticisms of achievements/unlocks into account too. We wouldn't have too many trivial ones, and would try to have no grindy ones (e.g. play 100 games!). We'd allow an alternate way for people to directly unlock anything they want so that people who play on two computers wouldn't get messed around etc.

We'll probably store the information in the score file or in a new similar file that also has shared monster memory.

[half]

Are you sure? This skill level isn't even remotely fair.

Yeah, we're sure. Some of the people on the ladder need a bit more challenge -- it is going to be a completely optional mode though. The idea is that Noldor in Nightmare mode will be roughly as challenging as Edain are normally, or something like that. This will also mean that people who want a hard game, but also want to play an Elf can do so.

We're not yet decided on how the rules will change for the mode, but have quite a few ideas. It won't just be a matter of a few penalty numbers to all your rolls.

[Patashu]

I wonder what the 'Unlocks' entail?

I'm picturing something like DoomRL, where unlocks are mainly challenge modes and things that are really rare/circumstantial to get but awesome if you do.

[HugoVirtuoso]

After that (1.3) it will be getting Achievements, Unlocks & Nightmare mode.

I wonder what the 'Unlocks' entail?

[debo]

Sil: The Musical?

On Ice?

He is vulnerable to frost...

[Patashu]

After that (1.3) it will be getting Achievements, Unlocks & Nightmare mode.

Are you sure? This skill level isn't even remotely fair.

[Derakon]

I want an all singing, all dancing Morgoth.

Sil: The Musical?

On Ice?

[buzzkill]

The current big priority (1.2) is getting Tiles working.

Let me know what I can do to help. I suppose if I actually tried playing a game of Sil that might help, but beyond that.

[half]

I want an all singing, all dancing Morgoth.

You can already make him dance with Cruel Blow (as some have discovered). You can even dance with him if you take Flanking. Even better if you do it while hallucinating (I don't think anyone has reported on that feature yet).

I do agree that Songs for Morgoth (and Gorthaur!) are a pretty high priority.

The current big priority (1.2) is getting Tiles working. After that (1.3) it will be getting Achievements, Unlocks & Nightmare mode. Depending on how long these take there may also be some minor bugfix/feature releases in between. At some point I might do a poll to help work out priorities for some of the features.

[Psi]

I want a singing Morgoth above any other change

I want an all singing, all dancing Morgoth.