Sil 1.1

[Scatha]

Hey all. I've been playing Sil for the last week or two and am really liking a lot about it. In many ways it is so fresh compared to Standardband.

BUT (and I know I'm going against the grain here) I am getting very frustrated with the timer. I've had a few promising characters that were doing ok until they got a little too deep and couldn't retreat up the stairs to a safer level.

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm sorry that you've been finding this feature frustrating. We do think it improves the game overall, but it's useful to find out exactly what people enjoy or don't, and we can think about this.

The way to enjoy the timer is probably to think of it as a challenge to be overcome. How can you modify your build so that you'll be strong enough to deal with 500' by the time you have to? Then you can also regard getting to each new depth as a real achievement.

Of course it may just be that that's not how you enjoy games. I'd be interested to hear what you think.

[debo]

You realise that you still get a discount for Danger? Also it's larger than it used to be (5 now). We can manage this because it works when carried, so there isn't the asymmetry of combat/noncombat items.

Now THAT's fun I hadn't realized that, thanks for letting me know!

[Scatha]

One thing I disagree with in 1.1 is the removal of smithing bonuses for adding curses / negative effects to your equipment. The justification was that they were just put on smithing kit and not suffered throughout the game.

Yes, we like the general idea of players making mixed-blessing items, but we couldn't work out how to balance them to give a proper discount for general play but not be an automatic choice for smithing. (We think the old discounts were actually a bit too small.)

b) Curses actually makes smithing equipment more difficult to use. If you put enough darkness as a curse on your smithing things, you won't see monsters in your forge until they're right next to you. (I've died this way before.) Hunger makes long forging times scary (Almost died this way before). Danger means that you're paying a price for your smithing kit the whole time you carry it... and so forth.

This is interesting, but again the issue is that it's hard to find a balance point where it's not obvious that you should put curses on your smithing gear but it's also sometimes tempting to put them on other equipment.

You realise that you still get a discount for Danger? Also it's larger than it used to be (5 now). We can manage this because it works when carried, so there isn't the asymmetry of combat/noncombat items.

[Patashu]

Otherwise, concerning the problem of the timer being too fast, how about an easy mode, with twice the time per level and perhaps other bonuses, but half the score?

Why present a choice when none is needed?

[Philip]

I suggest you play around with different builds for a little more. I used to always die at 500 feet and through death and various builds figured out what to avoid, what to run away from and what to kill before it kills me.
Why are you unable to kill stuff? High monster protection? Cart around some heavy weapons. Cat warriors taking you down? Invest in melee and evasion.
I think that part of what is killing you is wasting time. If you find yourself going down 3 levels at once, from 400 to 550 you had to spend at least 3050 turns at 400 feet, which is somewhat excessive. Try uploading character dumps of dead characters, then we can tell you what went wrong.
Otherwise, concerning the problem of the timer being too fast, how about an easy mode, with twice the time per level and perhaps other bonuses, but half the score?

[st.patrik]

Going Out on a Limb

Hey all. I've been playing Sil for the last week or two and am really liking a lot about it. In many ways it is so fresh compared to Standardband.

BUT (and I know I'm going against the grain here) I am getting very frustrated with the timer. I've had a few promising characters that were doing ok until they got a little too deep and couldn't retreat up the stairs to a safer level. One in particular fell through a trapdoor at 400' and landed at 550' (how such a fall didn't kill him I don't know!), and despite even a little savefile scumming (I know I shouldn't admit that here) couldn't survive for any length of time. I found a couple of staircases back up, but I must have overstayed my welcome because I couldn't get up them - just somewhere else at 550'.

I'm sure I have a suboptimal build, etc., and I know Sil is probably geared towards the more hardcore crowd, but those of us who like to bumble around, experimenting with slightly less than perfect combinations of skills would like to enjoy it too! Unfortunately the timer eventually takes that away - inevitably I end up in over my head and can't go back.

I know it's a feature. I'm not unsympathetic to rewarding diving. I personally like that killing your 400th orc soldier gives you no experience. That makes sense to me. But the timer is kinda killing my enjoyment of an otherwise very fun game.

Just one gamer's 2 cents...

[Patashu]

'Penalties for XXX duration' while boring in games where you can 'rest it off' are actually interesting in the context of Sil due to the hard time limit and the decisions demanded on how to spend it.

[debo]

I don't want new curse mechanics! *5-year-old foot stamp

[ekolis]

You might also like this curse mechanic...

[jujuben]

Here's a thought that might make mixed blessing equipment a little more interesting/dangerous: make some of it (including all curses that decrease smithing costs) semi-sticky. Semi-sticky items take a few turns so take off, sort of like how some of the more simulationist RPGs handle heavy armor, so you won't be able to just do a quick change if some nasties pop around the corner. If you've got a few turns to burn, though, you should always be able to put on your best gear. I imagine this working similar to the resting interrupt, with a "continue taking off xxx? y/n" dialogue any turn a rest would be interrupted, until you've successfully switched out equipment.

[debo]

One thing I disagree with in 1.1 is the removal of smithing bonuses for adding curses / negative effects to your equipment. The justification was that they were just put on smithing kit and not suffered throughout the game.

a) This isn't true for me -- I frequently put hunger or danger on things that I couldn't eke out otherwise, esp. on builds where I wasn't gunning for Masterpiece.

b) Curses actually makes smithing equipment more difficult to use. If you put enough darkness as a curse on your smithing things, you won't see monsters in your forge until they're right next to you. (I've died this way before.) Hunger makes long forging times scary (Almost died this way before). Danger means that you're paying a price for your smithing kit the whole time you carry it... and so forth.

c) Same thing goes for stat drains. I've often made +1 CON -1 GRA armor (or opposite) where I would now just not bother to make it at all. I find that interesting -- and there are even artefacts of this type, IIRC. I also liked the -4 DEX +4 Smithing hammers/gloves because it was _scary_ to get caught forging with those things.

I'd like to see a nominal bonus go back to curses. It was already very sparing for curse-types (at most +2, IIRC, and you couldn't stack bonuses). Maybe it needs some rethinking re: stat-drain bonuses, but I personally would like to see both of those return.

[debo]

I've just seen the new smithing costs for branding and sharp weapons. Ouch. What sort of percentage gain have they had?

I went through this a little while ago b/c I was going to mention it on one of my videos:

"Common awesome smithing options and their cost increases"

Speed   25 -> 30   20%
BCold   16 -> 24   50%
BFire   14 -> 20   43%
BPois   12 -> 16   33%
Sharp   15 -> 20   33%

[Scatha]

I've just seen the new smithing costs for branding and sharp weapons. Ouch. What sort of percentage gain have they had?

I'm not sure what the percentage increase was. They used to be severely undercosted compared to other bonuses you might put on your weapons, so it was almost never right to make an artefact weapon without one or both of these. To some extent that was a helpful factor in making Weaponsmith competitive, since the top artefact weapons were so good (now toned down a bit).

For 1.1, we tried anew to balance the cost of these against stat points, resistances, etc. Actually the aim was to leave them slightly attractive in comparison, but not overwhelmingly so.

We'll watch Weaponsmith, as I'm happier that Armoursmith is balanced (and they function quite differently), but I don't think giving a great discount to one particular use is the right way to balance it.

[Psi]

I've just seen the new smithing costs for branding and sharp weapons. Ouch. What sort of percentage gain have they had?

[decoy]

Hey folks, I just wanted to thank you for releasing Sil 1.1. I haven't had much time to play lately, but I can't wait to try out the new version! I suspect I'll go back to exploring for a bit now that there are so many new things and game mechanics to discover.