Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[wobbly]

Not so much a least liked as much as a couple of interface requests:

The , for herbs blends in with the . on my screen causing me to often miss them.

Exchanging between 2-hnd & 1-hnd + shield is convenient 1 way but not the other. I end up doing this quite a bit if I say, have a weapon of doriath & of gondolin. Perhaps keep the shield in it's slot & just disable it when wielding a 2-hnder? (or if you just fired a bow). I seem to remember at least 1 variant just changes the shield slot to a on-back slot when wielding a double hander.

Being able to access the manual in game would also be a bonus.

[debo]

This reminds me -- this would probably be a pain to implement, but if you go back in my chardump history you'll see a lot of comments written _after_ i've perused my notes like "OMG I FOUND FINGON AND I DIDN'T REALIZE?!?!?!"

When the game detects that you've discovered an artefact with Loremaster, or that you've seen a unique coming, or that you've entered a special area (ESPECIALLY THIS ONE), it would be nice to have a thematic message and possibly a prompt so that you realize it.

Like "you feel a chill as you remember Ulfang the Black from blarhgoutofwordsalready"

When I first started playing Sil, I would routinely find places on 800'-950' that seemed really dangerous, and would bail out of them, only to discover later that it was the Chambers of Thu, or Glaurung's Hoard, or whatever. If the game had told me I was somewhere special, I probably would have stayed

Even something as simple as duplicating the message that already goes into your notes and flashing it at the top of the screen would be badass.

[debo]

The , for herbs blends in with the . on my screen causing me to often miss them.

SO MUCH THIS. Dark-shaded small items in general are terribly hard to see, but the , is so close to the . of the dungeon floor that I miss them constantly.

Exchanging between 2-hnd & 1-hnd + shield is convenient 1 way but not the other. I end up doing this quite a bit if I say, have a weapon of doriath & of gondolin. Perhaps keep the shield in it's slot & just disable it when wielding a 2-hnder? (or if you just fired a bow). I seem to remember at least 1 variant just changes the shield slot to a on-back slot when wielding a double hander.

This is even worse with 2-weapon fighting -- I constantly trip over that prompt that says "wield in your off-hand? [y/N]".

[HallucinationMushroom]

If the game had told me I was somewhere special, I probably would have stayed

You read the messages? I'm too busy staring at the left side of the screen at my hp. Change the walls of the special rooms to blood red or something? Make all shrooms yellow and orange and pink? Make all uniques multi_color. There you go, all good. And ugly. Damn I'm feeling snarky today. I love you guys.

[debo]

You read the messages? I'm too busy staring at the left side of the screen at my hp. Change the walls of the special rooms to blood red or something? Make all shrooms yellow and orange and pink? Make all uniques multi_color. There you go, all good. And ugly. Damn I'm feeling snarky today. I love you guys.

That reminds me of something I wanted to put in the challenge thread -- play a game where you're not allowed to take more than e.g. 1 second to make any move lol

"speed sil"

I got the idea from watching your throne room video

[HallucinationMushroom]

Kind of similar to that, I've almost asked about adding a clock about 20 times, then decided against requesting said clock. I don't want there to be an implied hurry-the-hell-up tool, but, I've often thought it would be really cool to know exactly how much time I'm dumping into Sil. You could then scrape it for me Debo with your webscraper! I know Heng/Entro has a clock, and some other short variant... Xband, or tiny, I forget which. Edit: Tiny

[Patashu]

If you need a real timer for Sil, you can always use the excellent WSplit that speedrunning streamers use. Make a split for reaching each depth and try to set real time records, maybe It even has a built-in reset counter, to track your resets!

[taptap]

I wonder how a Sil would work were you start with 20k XP but all XP in the dungeon is effectively halved. When I got deep I always had the feeling that the beginning was tough but at a certain point I can blast away everything. Sure enough, a single misstep can kill even then - and it usually does. Be it
cats or any other easily underestimated opponent. Just sometimes it feels I spend a disproportionate time dodging around orc archers and running away from sword spiders (which is in a way good so the game is a challenge all the time), but troll guards I can take down in two moves.

[HallucinationMushroom]

This is a little like the post I made in the concepts thread, where I give my character a set amount of xp using debug commands, but he never uses any more. It is a lot of fun, but understandably breaks the opening game, which can lead to breaking the rest of the game if you build your character in such and such a way. I play this now and again with 45,000xp, which is a lot, even though compared to the 80,000+ you usually get by the end it's not as much. It's a lot of fun, and a challenge if you put your points in less than optimal ways, which is fun too. Maybe try monkeying with it, make some of your own edits to the idea?

I could ramble on and on about the 'why' I did this, but to boil it down, since so much is stripped out already... hp gain, low magic, general numbers mechanics... why not push it further and remove xp as well?

[BlueFish]

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.

Careless is a relative term, but I lose CON to violet molds at least 40% of my games, in the early-game. With one-radius light, they're unavoidable in corridors. Definitely qualify as my least liked feature of Sil so far. But I love and appreciate Sil and I'll keep slogging on with my stealth melee @ commanded by an unfortunately unobservant and careless captain of the keyboard.

[taptap]

Careless is a relative term, but I lose CON to violet molds at least 40% of my games, in the early-game. With one-radius light, they're unavoidable in corridors. Definitely qualify as my least liked feature of Sil so far. But I love and appreciate Sil and I'll keep slogging on with my stealth melee @ commanded by an unfortunately unobservant and careless captain of the keyboard.

Well, I usually spend a few points in will and play with quite high grace and I like perception (keen senses) too - you want listen anyway sooner or later if you are playing stealth build.

[debo]

OK, I was on a trip recently with a long flight, and I killed about 30 Feanor artistry starts 4/3/3/3 (which I now call the "beefcake build")

I have two comments:

a) I really hate shadow spiders. Seriously. They are not fun anymore. I think it would be way more interesting if shadow BATS could blind you, because 1) gorcrows did that a few floors ago, so I can sort of see the pattern, 2) it would be more a case of other monsters having to be around to kill you, rather than the bat doing it.

I frequently have characters with a lamp and inner light who fight a shadow-spider 1-1 when they can SEE it and still basically almost die to it most of the time. And you can't even run. I get so sick of meeting these damn things.

I think it would be a lot more fair if the blindess thing moved to the bats. I'd even like shadow spiders to have speed nerfed, but that is probably going too far.

There is no other spider in the game that I'm really afraid of. The next ones in sequence are basically a joke compared to shadow spiders -- at least you can run from the other ones if you can't see them.

The difficulty curve with spiders in general is sort of weird. Sword spiders are very dangerous. Distended spiders... sometimes, but really they're sort of pushovery. Shadow spiders are off the scale. I can't even really distinguish between the next two types (gorgoroth and ancient) because usually I just roll over them.

[debo]

b) I've noticed a weird pattern with most of my games.. I was trying to figure out why the game suddenly becomes so difficult at 600', and I think I've found the answer.

For the first 500', I rarely meet monsters out of depth. Maybe 50'-100', sure. But as soon as I hit 550' or 600', I almost always have to be prepared to face the next 300' of levels all at once, because there are often rooms that house VERY out-of-depth monsters. I've had many games where I fight greater werewolves long before I see a single vanilla one.

I never used to notice this before, because I often played stealth characters and could sneak around things.

This isn't really so much a complaint -- I don't mind it all that badly -- as it is a question -- did you guys really intend for the game to play this way? I imagine the monster depths were supposed to progress fairly evenly, but because "interesting room" probability goes up with depth, you are frequently going to be meeting out-of-depth monsters at deeper depths. So that begs the question -- are monster depth levels really that meaningful past 600'? Is this an accidental "interaction" of two features, or did you sort of see it working this way?

It might be interesting (or perhaps not) if out-of-depth monsters could somehow be confined to their "special rooms". The wandering monsters in this game generally have no qualms about opening doors to special rooms and letting everything leak out if you make the slightest bit of noise I dunno. This is more of a ramble than a complaint

Actually you know those special rooms with warding symbols trapping a monster in them? That could be neat trick to use more often... that way if I peek inside a special room and see, say, Fingon hiding in a corner surrounded by monsters 200' out of depth, I can _choose_ taking the risk to go in there and fight them, instead of having the choice made for me...

[clouded]

I'm not sure what you mean about not being able to run from shadow spiders, they have the same territorial behavior as the other spiders. Shadow bats blinding you would be much more annoying to me, maybe they wouldn't be able to kill you (I don't even know what melee they have to be honest) but now you would have an even faster monster with even higher evasion that you can't shake off blinding you. If anything, I'd like to remove shadow bats, they don't particularly add anything and that way you know all of the things around 500ft that emit darkness are going to be something nasty.

On the topic of the thread, a few things came up for me when I played again recently too.

Firstly, the way monsters are displayed as "an enemy" when you are examining them while raging. It's a pointless bit of interface screwing, since it is easily bypassed by recalling when examining them (of course, the correct thing here is being able to see what things are always, not restricting recalling or something silly).

Secondly, the ascension. I've complained about it before and even complained about it in this thread a little, but I'm going to mention it again because I really get sick of it. It puts far too much emphasis on having certain skills and items, especially revelations and drastically increases in difficulty and length if you don't have them. I don't particularly like ascensions in any roguelike I've played, I appreciate the feature of Angband that you can just quit the turn you kill Morgoth and say "finally I don't have to play this anymore".

[debo]

Hmmn, interesting comments on the ascension. There are some parts I really like -- the gates are SO COOL, for example. But I think I'd enjoy it a lot more if every upstair was an up shaft. Generally after I've beaten the throne room, I want to win the whole game. Climbing 20 floors + crumbling stairs can take a REALLY long time though, especially since you feel like you've "won" already.

I didn't realize shadow bats moved faster than shadow spiders. In any case, I still think you're wrong If you have light radius 1 or 2 and a shadow spider sights you from a hallway, it's on top of you before you really know what's happening. You can 'run' and try to take advantage of the territorial thing, but if it gets one blinding hit in good luck trying to take advantage of territory. At least shadow bats move erratically. I actually like the bats as a monster.