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.

[WaveMotion]

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.

Tridents have a [+1]. And (as of 1.1) their weight helps you get the most out of Charge. Admittedly tridents are still not the best weapon to charge with.

I guess tridents are better to throw if your strength is greater than 6. This is also a marginal concern.

Ah... I spoke too soon. Charge is actually really neat now -- the +3 dex means your weapon gets better at what it does when charging. 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. Interesting. Charge might actually still be very useful for my stabby types -- more useful than it was previously, in fact.

Enough theorycrafting

The +3 dex is probably more useful for mitigating the melee penalty on whatever huge (your strength + 3)*(1.0 or 1.5)-pound weapon you are using. 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.

[debo]

I didn't actually get to test that, but in 1.0.2 charging at something didn't give you the assassination strike, I'm not sure if it's changed. If you have focused attack it's always going to be better than +3 anyway I'd think.

Congratulations on the new release, I'll mention this around ##crawl and hopefully bring some new players.

I just meant that in the early game, when assassination still sucks, I can potentially do good damage with charge and a light weapon. Alternately, I can use assassination to get the first hit off, and then switch to charge if needed -- +3 is quite a big help in the first half of the game.

[debo]

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.

[HugoVirtuoso]

In case the players didn't know, lanterns *do* stack in v1.1. I wanted to point this out.

[clouded]

Ah... I spoke too soon. Charge is actually really neat now -- the +3 dex means your weapon gets better at what it does when charging. 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. Interesting. Charge might actually still be very useful for my stabby types -- more useful than it was previously, in fact.

Enough theorycrafting

I didn't actually get to test that, but in 1.0.2 charging at something didn't give you the assassination strike, I'm not sure if it's changed. If you have focused attack it's always going to be better than +3 anyway I'd think.

Congratulations on the new release, I'll mention this around ##crawl and hopefully bring some new players.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I noticed that v1.1 underscores the importance of Identifying items, more_so_than_in_v1.0.x. During the journey of my third v1.1 character, three special items caused an Oathwraith to show up at 450ft, a record! Fortunately, I survived and, of course, picked up Lore-Master well_in_advance and tossed out the three offending *Dangerous* equipment afterwards. I'll let everyone figure what new *Dangers* lie within the new special_equipment_items.

Speaking of Charging, although it has some nice touches, it's not as strong as before, in my opinion. I doesn't have the double-dice damage. I realized this when charging a Giant multiple times... :/

[debo]

Ah... I spoke too soon. Charge is actually really neat now -- the +3 dex means your weapon gets better at what it does when charging. 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. Interesting. Charge might actually still be very useful for my stabby types -- more useful than it was previously, in fact.

Enough theorycrafting

[Patashu]

I like the sound of all these changes except...


...

Hmm...

I can't remember which one it was I didn't like! So I guess I like them all after all

Can't wait to play again!

[debo]

I'm very interested to see how the charge nerf affects the early game... heavy weapons are uncommon in the first few floors, so the +3 str part of the effect might not really assert itself until the deeper depths. I also won't be able to use Charge as a crutch for my stealth-stabbers in the first 700'

It seems like bruiser characters took a bit more of a hit in this release than stabbers, or even archers.

Also -- I remember some discussion of longbows being changed from 1d9 to 2dx -- was this tested and discarded, or is it still on the (ever-growing) chopping block?

[debo]

Dammit you guys, I was supposed to record my Sil 1.0.2 throne-room video tonight... now you've forced me to make a very difficult decision!!

These changes look awesome!! 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), and a lot of things were added that I didn't know were in the works. Very excited!!

I also spoiled myself and checked out artefacts.txt and monsters.txt... cool stuff!!! Several new flags that I don't recognize.

[Scatha]

I hope you also removed the ability to forge items with penalties (apart from Danger), then? Otherwise people will be wondering what's the point of putting penalties on items, or doing so thinking there's some secret benefit!

Sil is transparent enough about its mechanics that I'd hope nobody would think there was a secret benefit.

That said, several of the curses also have situational benefits. Finding cool uses for "penalties" can be great fun, and I wouldn't want to remove the possibility of that. Or perhaps that counts as a secret benefit?

[ekolis]

Hmm, the description for Polearm Mastery still mentions halberds...

[ekolis]

Cool! Time to give Sil another go-round!

- no longer get any benefits for putting penalties on items
- it seemed cool, but just lead to them being put on Gloves of Smithing an the like
- the one exception is Danger, which leads to quite a large difficulty reduction (-5)

I hope you also removed the ability to forge items with penalties (apart from Danger), then? Otherwise people will be wondering what's the point of putting penalties on items, or doing so thinking there's some secret benefit!

[Quendus]

Thanks for adding auto_more back in. I'm going to play Sil a lot more often now.