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.

[Psi]

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.

Having played quite a lot of Sil, I'd say the counter works fine for most builds and is nicely balanced. Where I suffer is with smiths, who take longer to acquire other skills because of the investment in smithing and also the huge amount of time it takes to forge decent items. I think forging times should probably be halved for starters. Sorry if I sound like a broken record.

[st.patrik]

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.

Thanks for your considerate reply. I definitely think that there is a style gap here, in that I enjoy tooling around trying new things, and Sil seems more oriented to power builds.

This is fine, of course. One of the things about making a game is you get to make it how you want.

But I wonder about either adding another race (Maia?) which would be even easier than Noldor, for the more casual/newbie types, or re-jiggering the current races from (according to my perspective) hard (Noldor), harder (Sindar/Naugrim), insane (Edain) to easy, hard, insane (or something like that). Or to put it another way, the Noldor, even though they are the easiest, aren't actually very easy, except to someone already experienced at the game.

Having played quite a lot of Sil, I'd say the counter works fine for most builds and is nicely balanced. Where I suffer is with smiths, who take longer to acquire other skills because of the investment in smithing and also the huge amount of time it takes to forge decent items. I think forging times should probably be halved for starters. Sorry if I sound like a broken record.

This is a helpful comment, in that most of my builds that have struggled the most have had investment in Smithing. I perhaps would have an easier time if I eschewed Smithing in favor of more immediately practical skills. But this gets back to the style thing - I would like to be able to tool around trying Smithing and also stay alive, and I am finding that hard to do.



Addendum -
The game in which I fell from 400' to 550' and couldn't get back was actually one of the most fun games of Sil I've played. I was (at 400') fighting monsters that were taxing the abilities of my character to a high degree, and it seemed like more and more were coming up the stairs, while I was trying to dispatch them without getting overwhelmed and taken out. I spent a long time on that level because it was such a challenge. Now if I hadn't had those points invested in Smithing maybe it would have been a cakewalk and I would have gone down the stairs sooner.

[emulord]

I think the current races should be kept as-is. They seem to work pretty well and seem balanced and in-flavor. +1 to Maia as a race even easier than Noldor.

I still don't like the timer. It feels wrong to have to balance play against a invisible constraint. Current dungeon layout, character experience, equipment, consumables, current enemies are all fun things to plan against. A invisible, abstract timer? not so much.

[Patashu]

I still don't like the timer. It feels wrong to have to balance play against a invisible constraint. Current dungeon layout, character experience, equipment, consumables, current enemies are all fun things to plan against. A invisible, abstract timer? not so much.

If there is no constraint, there is nothing to balance for. FTL has the 'rebels travelling from left to right across the map' turn clock, brogue has the food clock, Shiren the Wanderer has the 'mysterious wind' turn clock, Sil has the depth clock. It's a feature of good games.

[debo]

Now if I hadn't had those points invested in Smithing maybe it would have been a cakewalk and I would have gone down the stairs sooner.

Probably not 550-700' is extremely uncomfortable for most straight-up characters that don't find any crazy artefacts. (In my experience.) Once you're able to harvest some of the XP from those floors and get your skills up (possibly taking a few choice abilities), things smooth out a bit.

I find the appearance of cat warriors to be the first big "egad this is getting nasty" moment in Sil 1.1. It used to be Wargs, but half generously toned down that bump in the ride by quite a bit

[debo]

If there is no constraint, there is nothing to balance for. FTL has the 'rebels travelling from left to right across the map' turn clock, brogue has the food clock, Shiren the Wanderer has the 'mysterious wind' turn clock, Sil has the depth clock. It's a feature of good games.

I LOVE Shiren the Wanderer!!!

[Fendell Orcbane]

The Clock works...

Once you actually play through the game you realize how short it actually is, the timer makes the game seem more urgent. But think about it you are in Morgoth fortress and I'm assuming that the bad guys are coming to tell Morgoth about you. The timer is a big part of the game IMO.

[debo]

Was just recording a video (Episode 25, soon to go up) when I noticed what I think might be a couple of bugs:

1) I found a "serpentine ring". To show my viewers how brilliant I was, I predicted it was the Ring of Barahir. I wore it... and it didn't auto-id. Yet, I still had song of Este.

2) I tried to redeem myself by singing Este while wounded, to show how it sped regeneration. However, it didn't do that at all -- actually, it _stopped_ my regeneration.

I suspect that Este has never been tested at low song (mine is only 3). If the Este regen rate is being calculated entirely as [song score] / c, I can see how it may have been truncated to 0. I'm going to peek at the code later

3) When a Barrow Wight tried to entrance me, Barahir auto-id'ed.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Was just recording a video (Episode 25, soon to go up) when I noticed what I think might be a couple of bugs:

1) I found a "serpentine ring". To show my viewers how brilliant I was, I predicted it was the Ring of Barahir. I wore it... and it didn't auto-id. Yet, I still had song of Este.

2) I tried to redeem myself by singing Este while wounded, to show how it sped regeneration. However, it didn't do that at all -- actually, it _stopped_ my regeneration.

I suspect that Este has never been tested at low song (mine is only 3). If the Este regen rate is being calculated entirely as [song score] / c, I can see how it may have been truncated to 0. I'm going to peek at the code later

3) When a Barrow Wight tried to entrance me, Barahir auto-id'ed.

I can answer #3. Barahir has Free Action, which is why it auto-IDed. I'm not sure about the other two.

[debo]

I can answer #3. Barahir has Free Action, which is why it auto-IDed. I'm not sure about the other two.

Haha yup that part I understood

[debo]

L:1858 - 1862 xtra1.c in 'ability_bonus':
case SNG_ESTE:
{
    bonus = skill / 4;
    break;
}


L:2151 - 2154 dungeon.c in 'process_player' (aka longest method of life lol)
if (singing(SNG_ESTE))
{
    regen_multiplier *= ability_bonus(S_SNG, SNG_ESTE);
}

I think we probably want max(bonus, 1), or just (skill / 4 + 1) if you'd rather be generous

[half]

Thanks for the bug reports debo. I've now made a note of the failure to auto-identify and the problem(s) with low song score and Song of Este. As you can see, the songs were calibrated with their required skill levels in mind, and items that grant them can cause trouble. I'll have to check through other abilities too to make sure things like this are not happening.

[Scatha]

Song of Sharpness with Song < 6 may cause problems.

More generally many abilities might go wrong with negative skill scores, but these are very unusual (except stealth).

[Fendell Orcbane]

WTF or is this a bug?

So I just got killed by a Ururauko. I thought that I was pretty safe attacking it since I had a ring of frost. Plus I had a potion of elemental resistance. Well I guess wrong.

Here are the last two combat rolls before I bit it.

R(+26) 36 21 15 [+13] & -> (5d10) 35 23 12 [6-12]

R(+26) 38 7 31 [+13]& -> (4d10) 13 5 8 [6-12]

So did the resistance work at all? Or do Ururauki do that much damage?