Sil Builds/Challenges/Concepts/Stupid-Ascension-Tricks

[bron]

rather than a fear based attack it is more domination of their will

Ok, how about this then:

"And now suddenly I have a vision of you striding fearlessly through the caverns of Angband, singing triumphantly, while all around you the denizens of evil stand slack jawed and immobile, helpless before your sheer awesomeness."

Better?

[Psi]

Better?

Yeah, that'll do

[bron]

So I was thinking about a new challenge: minimum skill level. Try to win with the lowest maximum points in any skill. No more than 10 points in any skill seems like a hard but not impossible challenge level, but it sorta seems like someone who really understood smithing might be able to do it with only 8 (by using Artifice to make up for some of the lack). And it doesn't really seem like 7 is possible.

I'm taking a break from Sil to play in the current competition, but I think I'll pursue this afterwards. Assuming nobody else has already set an impossibly high bar by then.

[HallucinationMushroom]

This seems like it would be in the same vein as the jack of all trades challenge, since maximizing utility from small skill numbers would prompt you to spread your experience points around as much as possible, and likely buy lots of abilities, but without the nag of worrying about difference from lowest and highest skills... like max-minning. Sounds fun!

If you set max skill points invested at 10, and spread across all 8 skills, you'd hit max at, what, 44,000? If you then bought 4 abilities from each, you'd still only hit about 84,000 or so.

Or, are you saying that the maximum skill score cannot breach 10, regardless of skill points invested? That would be excruciating, but I'd love to see a scenario where it could work. That would be ingenious.

[bron]

Or, are you saying that the maximum skill score cannot breach 10, regardless of skill points invested?

No, I was talking about skill points invested, not the actual score. I can't imagine how to win if your actual *score* were not more than 10 in all categories. I think it should be possible to do if you use "skill points invested" as the limiter. For instance, you could get 10 points of melee, plus five points of Dex (six, if you take the Archery Dex ability), plus make and/or find some rings of Accuracy, plus affinity, plus a good sword, and you should be able to get an actual score over 20. Not great, but probably enough, possibly coupled with Master Hunter or Focused Attack. It seems like it might be an interesting challenge to try to use various abilities and tactics to try to overcome a lack of raw skill. But maybe Smithing just overpowers all other options. Maybe try it with 10 points, but without Artifice? I don't know, but there seems to be fertile ground for several challenge levels. Each lower limit cuts out various useful abilities, making it harder to overcome the lower limit. I think 12 is clearly possible; 10 is probably possible, but hard; 8 maybe might be possible, but very hard; I doubt that 7 is possible. And forbidding Artifice would probably make everything a lot harder. I'm not sure you could go below limit 10 without Artifice.

Like I said, I haven't actually done any of this, so I could be way off base. But it seems like it could be an interesting challenge.

[clouded]

There have been a few red mage attempts, here is mine: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=13997

It is maybe the worst death I've had in Sil, death to poison on 950ft with 21 combined healing items. I didn't use smithing much, instead using a lot of perception, which is a typical strategy of mine. It's a lot easier than no magic, that is for sure, not much harder than playing normally I think.

[bron]

There have been a few red mage attempts

I'm not familiar with the "red mage" meme, but yes, that looks pretty much exactly like what I had in mind, except I don't really care about "balance", just "max".

[clouded]

I'm not familiar with the "red mage" meme, but yes, that looks pretty much exactly like what I had in mind, except I don't really care about "balance", just "max".

Red Mage was a class in the older Final Fantasy games, it is the jack-of-all-trades class, being able to cast low level spells of most types of magic and having melee capacity (and being bad at all of those things, of course).

Keeping all skills balanced was a bad idea... it's really not fun to try and play the early game with 3 in melee/evasion, let me tell you!

[HallucinationMushroom]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=13988

Here's mine! I had fun with mine... not entirely sure why I never tried it again. If I took your take on it, that is, just having a bar of 10, I probably could do better off neglecting some of the skills I have no experience in, like stealth, archery, etc.

[debo]

I took a 30 min break from videogameless conduct to try out this fun build idea:

Edain Hador 4/2/2/1

Put 9 (!) points into melee, take Charge and Momentum right off the bat. That's it.

Stupid? Yes. Fun? YES!

Longswords and bastard swords have been great for this, but even spears are handy if nothing else is showing up.

Most of the early monsters are easy to outmaneuver so that they rarely get a swing at you. It's not until archers start showing up in the dark that you actually need stuff -- i.e. getting a shield and some decent armor. With a shield + enough XP to get blocking, you will be set for a while.

I've also found those bell-things (the name is totally slipping my mind right now for some reason) to be nasty with only 1 Gra, but that's at least manageable if you have a good memory.

Edit: This is something I sort of tried to pull off with Belegost dwarves -- their extra con was handy, but the dex penalty was actually really hard to get over. The melee proficiency + base 0 dex actually makes this a bit easier, I think. I also usually play the first 500' Con-drained by a point or two (I hate taking keen senses) and getting drained with low Con is actually not that big a deal b/c you only lose like 4 base HP when your Con is so low to start with

Edit2: Tried a few more times. This is legit hard. I think this is sort of what WildKhaine used to do (start with 0 evasion and then slowly add to it) but shit is it hard. You really aren't allowed to miskey at all!

Edit3: Spears are actually insane if luck is with you. I've been hitting like 3d15 or 4d15 with good crits on a charge

Edit4: Deepest I've made it so far was 400'. Things started getting easier then (had 10 base evasion) but turned a corner into a giant and was unluckily instakilled

Edit5: Finding heavy armor on 150' is a huge help (corslet or hauberk) -- archers are a lot easier to deal with, given some footwork.

Edit6: Where I really want to go with this build is Dodging -> Flanking, and Finesse + Sublety + ZoC with a good deathblade. 3.0lb + 6 strength = xd15, and I'm sure I get easily get 3 or 4 crits per blow that way. Problem is I don't think many deathblades get that heavy. Makes charge kinda useless but +3 to hit is nothing to sneeze at anyhow!

[HugoVirtuoso]

What about Sprinting? Sprinting is a like a free Potion of Speed, after going 4 turns in one direction.

[debo]

What about Sprinting? Sprinting is a like a free Potion of Speed, after going 4 turns in one direction.

Might be useful! I rarely take sprinting anymore -- I consider it more of a nice-to-have now, whereas before it was more of a necessity for me. It generally just helps me get into worse trouble, faster

[HallucinationMushroom]

Good luck with your Hador. You know, everytime I see an item of Hador's house, or a Hador character, all I can think is... HODOR HODOR HODOR HODOR HODOR HODOR. HODOR? HODOR!!!

[debo]

Good luck with your Hador. You know, everytime I see an item of Hador's house, or a Hador character, all I can think is... HODOR HODOR HODOR HODOR HODOR HODOR. HODOR? HODOR!!!

I'm back to the straight and narrow. I hope someone actually good at Sil will try it out lol

[jujuben]

This Hador start is certainly fun, but leads to a lot of frustrating insta-deaths. Does will affect the chance to move in the correct direction while confused? I ask because a brown mold in a corridor just killed my latest attempt (still at will 1), after no less than *seven* failed attempts to retreat in a row...