Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[BlueFish]

Does the strength bonus for Charge work correctly? According to the "combat rolls" window, I'm gtting the same number of sides to my damage rolls as I get without charge. The accuracy bonus from the dexterity bonus does seem to be applied though.

This is just a normal attack, using a long sword.

[debo]

Does the strength bonus for Charge work correctly? According to the "combat rolls" window, I'm gtting the same number of sides to my damage rolls as I get without charge. The accuracy bonus from the dexterity bonus does seem to be applied though.

This is just a normal attack, using a long sword.

Damage sides are only applied if your weapon is heavy enough. You get 1 damage side per point of strength per pound of weapon weight.

If you have 2 strength and charge a monster with a 3lb 2d5 longsword, your effective strength is 5. But you're only wielding a 3lb sword, so you'll still only get 3 bonus damage sides (2d8).

(This changes when you buy momentum, but is otherwise now constant for all weapons.)

[bron]

One (extremely minor!) gripe I have is the the descriptions of some of the Abilities are too vague without any (to me) sensible reason for it. Now, I can understand if you don't want to drag out the gory details of exactly how, say, Knock Back works in the short Ability summary text. But I see no real reason for not explaining how, say, Heavy Armor Protection works. I mean, you do it for Hardiness after all.

So here are some abilities whose descriptions I think should be improved, and straw-man proposals for those descriptions:

Heavy Armor Use: Increases your protection by 1dX, where X is the weight of your armor in pounds, divided by 15 (rounded down).
[I should also interject here that the game should make it more clear that the "total weight" number shown on the Equipment screen is actually the total weight of the *armor* (only), not the total weight of the equipment.]

Poison Resistance: Opponents with a Poison Melee attack no longer get an extra die of damage. Does NOT offer additional protection against Poison Breath attacks.

Inner Light: Does not increase your light radius, but does add +1 to the light intensity in all squares within your current light radius.

Song of the Trees: Increases light level by 1 per 5 points of Song.

Song of Staying: Increases your Will by 1 point per 3 points of Song. Increases your protection by 1dX where X is Song / 3

[andrey]

Is it possible to make an inventory bound only by weight and not by amount of things? I find myself constantly dropping good items, which is a bit annoying. We could add an ability that allows carrying more stuff.

[Antoine]

Should the Naugrim get some innate fire resistance?

A.

[Patashu]

Is it possible to make an inventory bound only by weight and not by amount of things? I find myself constantly dropping good items, which is a bit annoying. We could add an ability that allows carrying more stuff.

Part of the game's balance is around the fact that you can't carry everything, even though there's so much good stuff you'd love to. Same for Brogue.

[locus]

Things that bother me about Sil:

1. Molds don't get marked on the map when you first encounter them. Every time I run into a violet mold in the dark, pass my will check, retreat, then accidentally run into the same violet mold again and fail my will check, I feel like going back to Crawl with its wonderful exclusion system.

2. Molds don't get a prompt "are you sure you want to move next to this mold and have your constitution drained" so if you are fighting a wolf or something and not being careful and it moves out of your way you can lose a point of constitution.

3. Forging is too random as to whether you'll ever find a second forge. I know you implemented a system that makes forges appear more regularly, but it seems like that only helps if you fully explore levels, which most of the rest of the game discourages you to do. And then enchanted/artifact forges make a huge difference depending on a die roll.

4. As an aesthetic matter, I'd prefer if items the player can ID by appearance such as Orcish Liquor, Miruvor, and most artifacts would just auto-ID, to remove a pointless part of the learning curve.

5. Song of Sharpness is too mandatory. Even non-combat characters need it to cut the Silmaril out of the crown if they don't find a sharpness weapon. And it's a huge investment for a character that might not otherwise even want to bother with Song.

6. The inventory rearranges itself such that I can't learn where my throwing weapons and healing potions are, I have to check every time.

[andrey]

Part of the game's balance is around the fact that you can't carry everything, even though there's so much good stuff you'd love to. Same for Brogue.

I agree with you, though I am not saying to remove the limit completely. There is still a burden limit. This will also make the Strength attribute more attractive.

If you still feel it is unbalanced, make it an ability that costs XP.

[Derakon]

If you still feel it is unbalanced, make it an ability that costs XP.

This kind of thing is always extremely tricky to balance compared to the current system, because suddenly the cost of carrying X is not "one inventory space and negligible weight", but merely "negligible weight". Let's say that the developers want the player to be able to carry 75% of the consumables that they would ideally have (and to make up the remainder through careful play and spending XP on abilities). Let's further say that they want the player to be able to carry a couple of swap pieces of gear. How many additional potions and herbs should you be allowed to carry by forgoing carrying an 8-pound jerkin? A 3-pound sword? I hope you can see how balancing this is difficult. Especially if the target weight for the consumables that the player "should be allowed to carry" is, say, 10 pounds. Potions and herbs don't weigh much, after all.

NetHack allows you to carry as much as you can handle based on your strength. But NetHack also implicitly assumes that you are making stashes of gear that you'll be returning to later (not to say that you must do this but it's very common); it also simply doesn't make many items available to the player.

The bottom line, though (in this and every other roguelike), is that you shouldn't be allowed to carry everything you want to carry. Items are there to let you be prepared for things, and you shouldn't be allowed to be prepared for everything.

[ekolis]

Sorry if someone's mentioned this already, but the damned neverending bands of marauding orcs that keep coming up/down the staircases!

[half]

Poison Resistance: Opponents with a Poison Melee attack no longer get an extra die of damage. Does NOT offer additional protection against Poison Breath attacks.

Thanks for all of these. Good ideas. Except that this one is incorrect. Poison Resistance works on poison breath attacks just as fire resistance works on fire breath attacks etc. Or if not, then that's a bug.

[bron]

Poison Resistance works on poison breath attacks

You're absolutely right of course; can't imagine where my head was at on that one. Although describing how it actually works might be a little wordy for the short description. May be something like "Provides one level of resistance against poison breath attacks, which is cumulative with other forms of poison resistance" and counting on a description in the manual to fill in the details? I admit I'd like to also see "One level of resistance cuts poison breath damage by one-half, two levels cuts it by two-thirds, etc." but all three sentences may well be too long for the short description. Whatever you decide.

[half]

Heavy Armor Use: Increases your protection by 1dX, where X is the weight of your armor in pounds, divided by 15 (rounded down).

Inner Light: Does not increase your light radius, but does add +1 to the light intensity in all squares within your current light radius.

Song of the Trees: Increases light level by 1 per 5 points of Song.

Song of Staying: Increases your Will by 1 point per 3 points of Song. Increases your protection by 1dX where X is Song / 3

I've changed these in line with your recommendations.

[taptap]

I agree on throwing weapons. It is very hard to use them (I only ever tried spears) efficiently - not that they don't do enough damage, but I tend to discard better quality for stackable items all the time and there is really no way I hold on a single throwing axe with a slay on it unless I need a warning system.

Smithing: I never played an endgame with a smithing character but the high commitment to smithing combined with the uncertainty of forges and/or power to defend forges when you find them frustrated me somewhat. But it certainly is powerful.

I would consider taking away the second hand slot for smithing bonus and the masterpiece skill point burning, this might limit the range of available skill values enough to deescalate the smithing costs somewhat. Smithing is also the only skill which isn't transparent right away, but only after you took all the abilities (I never understood the effects until I took every ability at least once, not to speak of the modifiers for artifice, artistry, enchantment) That Mithril makes enchanting easier is also not that well explained in-game.

I agree that Loremaster is too cheap. In my games non-perception chars tend to take it, but perception specialists (that already want at least 4 other abilities on the tree and the grace point) end up avoiding it. The ID mini game is quite limited as you only have monster pickup / drop, creating items and use identification - and throwing, but I never do that. I don't understand why the smithing abilities allow you to create things, but not to identify the very same items you would be able to create.

I realize I agree to most what fph wrote but just wrote more paragraphs about it. Well...
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I don't share the feelings about worms, they were only a problem when I played without stealth and only mediocre damage output - even a few cheap points of stealth and habitually closing doors, not to talk about generally better damage output which reduces noise significantly basically solved the worm problem. I don't share the feelings of some regarding violet molds either. Violet molds are so rare now, that even with my careless play I rarely lose constitution to them anymore.

[locus]

I'd like to say in response to people complaining about Lore-Master that it's only the existence of Lore-Master that keeps me from listing "the ID minigame" among my least liked features of Sil.