Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[half]

I know. Molds penalize early armorer builds in this regard for no particular reason (well, as much as a stationary enemy penalizes anything really - they're only ever an issue without light or when playing sloppily). Also, taking ones armor off in preparation of fighting something feels metagamish and weird.

Don't think of them as pathetic monsters, but as more interesting rubble. One of the main things they do early on is create interesting roadblocks that you have to work around. Unlike rubble, there are more and different options to deal with them, including cases where you can squeeze past at some risk.

Taking off one's armour before fighting things makes lots of real-world sense. Different armour was optimal against different weapons/abilities. If they are fast, or have very piercing attacks you historically wanted light armour. If you could get armour strong enough to block their blows you wanted that (and no stronger). This is actually a major point behind Sil's combat. I designed it to replicate this interesting complex rock-paper-scissors of real world weapon to armour matching. It is not always worth changing your standard setup, but at least different setups are ideally matched to different things.

[taptap]

This is one of my least favorite things in the early game - removing your good armor when fighting green worms. It's tedious but basically necessary.

I never do that. I fight with only one worm adjacent to me at a time.

[BlueFish]

I know. Molds penalize early armorer builds in this regard for no particular reason (well, as much as a stationary enemy penalizes anything really - they're only ever an issue without light or when playing sloppily). Also, taking ones armor off in preparation of fighting something feels metagamish and weird.

This is one of my least favorite things in the early game - removing your good armor when fighting green worms. It's tedious but basically necessary.

[Infinitum]

I know. Molds penalize early armorer builds in this regard for no particular reason (well, as much as a stationary enemy penalizes anything really - they're only ever an issue without light or when playing sloppily). Also, taking ones armor off in preparation of fighting something feels metagamish and weird.

[debo]

(and investing in early armor..?)

Just to address this one minor point -- afaik, all of the mold attacks ignore armor.

[taptap]

Lakes, mines, shafts etc. wouldn't all this require a persistent dungeon?

[Infinitum]

Just finished my first ascension this weekend (early Angrist and Shield of the Swan providing the extra oomph to propel me through the midgame difficulty increment), wrote a short essay on essentially me trying to redesign the game from the ground up, realized I sounded like an entitled prick and decided to go for bullet points instead. That I do like the streamlined experience in general and the atmosphere in particular should go without saying.

Interface: Are there plans for mouse support? I play on a laptop without numpad and would very much like to see this implemented for all the usual reasons. Also, dark food items and herbs are almost impossible to distinguish from floor tiles at a glance.

Dungeon layout: Brogue has spoiled me in this regard, but more diversity in dungeon features wouldn't go amiss - lakes, shafts, mines, barracks, furniture, workshops, lava, dedicated lairs like Ungolianth's nest, natural caverns etc. It does get more slightly more varied from the old square rooms formula deeper down in the dungeon but most of my games end pre-500'.

I confess I'm not a fan of the Angband format with functionally infinite dungeons (with all the problems and workarounds this pertains, eg minimum depth), but changing that is maybe probably a bit of a tall order at this point.

Item weights: Why the .1 lb increments? They do nothing ingame except adding token encumbrance and making smithing optimal stuff fiddlier than it should be. Also in contrast to the general sleek design elsewhere.

Item swaps: Yes, I know they're a mainstay of the genre and the game is balanced around them, but I feel it'd be more interesting if the main character couldn't balance several suits of armor and secondary greatswords around. Also stacking potions of the same type not taking additional space doesn't make sense. I'd love to see player being limited in their carrying capacity due to unwieldiness rather than weight, but I seem to be in the minority here.

Early Monsters: I just don't see why Centipedes, Molds, Worms et al would care about my characters presence, much less aligning themselves with the lord of darkness. Thematically it makes no sense whatsoever, and in my opinion they don't even play all that well - molds are inherently uninteresting penalties for not investing in early light (and investing in early armor..?), and Worms basically boil down to being forced to abandon that part of the level y/n (in case they woke up and got out of hand when you fought more pressing monsters or not).

Earlier stat restoration: I guess this ties in to the aforementioned vermin. Overall, I find most strategic elements in roguelikes (ID game, food finding, stat drains, armor degradation etc) boring at best and frustrating at worst, and having drainers appear several hundred feet before any reasonable shot at finding restoration is decidedly obnoxious.

Smithing: Somethings off here - it's supposed to reduce dependance on item drops yet creates the scummiest types of characters due to being utterly dependant on finding Forges (and also the idea of nonchalantly taking the time to man a forge in the middle of Angband is quite strange to me). Also, It'd be nice to have a Smithing exploration mode from the menu to help plan out characters without resorting to the interwebs (not that there are any good wikis around mind).

Door abuse: Turns out that if its one thing tactically inclined enemies in this game just won't abide by is having a door closed in their face. This makes circumventing their pack ai trivial once you learn to retreat to good spots.

Starting Equipment: As it currently is every single game starts off with a swift "u-" on the nearby sword. I for one wouldn't mind starting out with say a short sword and short bow with a small stack of arrows instead. This would also help making Archer starts less finicky.

[half]

I'm not a big fan of blocking as a requirement for controlled retreat either. It makes just as much sense to me to use the extra reach of a 2hnder to fight a retreating battle as a shield. An alternative path for cruel blow other then assassination might also be nice.

As for waiting with block, it can actually be useful on a tanky character with song of elbereth & little damage output. Sometimes your surrounded & just need to survive a couple more rounds till everything starts running.

I don't think Blocking *is* really a requirement for Controlled Retreat. As far as I recall, there are two pre-requisites, Flanking and Blocking and you can have either. So it is just one option, not forced on the player at all.

I like your point about Song while Blocking. Blocking goes well with anything that lets you do stuff without using your turn. I normally think of Focused Attack, Riposte, Zone of Control, Polearm Mastery etc, but Song of Elbereth and Song of Este also work. Indeed Song of Staying is probably quite good to boost the protection to invulnerable levels and lower the downside of the 'wasted' move.

[wobbly]

I'm not a big fan of blocking as a requirement for controlled retreat either. It makes just as much sense to me to use the extra reach of a 2hnder to fight a retreating battle as a shield. An alternative path for cruel blow other then assassination might also be nice.

As for waiting with block, it can actually be useful on a tanky character with song of elbereth & little damage output. Sometimes your surrounded & just need to survive a couple more rounds till everything starts running.

[taptap]

Warhammers are supposed to be pretty niche in Sil since they are not used much in the canon. (I'm pretty sure dwarves are said to use them in a couple of places). Note that you would need Momentum in your example, and that you didn't include the rather common +1 quasi-strength due to fineness (which is really nice on hammers). Your example does show that you really want your hammers to be at the heavy end though.

Yes, I just was surprised that with fine bonus, power and two handed, you are almost even at 3 (real) strength (which is possible right at start), you only get past axes when you have momentum and more strength+weight/momentum or damage rings. However, with such an high strength you could probably take a mattock right away. Of course having an option for one handedness may be very helpful.

Controlled retreat:

Sure, controlled retreat + polearm mastery is great, but when adjacent to an enemy at a given turn before being able to retreat further I attack with polearm instead of waiting. And when did you last use one handed polearms anyway (blocking requires shield)? I do very rarely with slaying spears, such as Nargothrond or Spear of Boldog, but only in situations where I wouldn't want to reduce my damage output even further.

[mrrstark]

Is anyone actually doing this? I mean resting a turn and only attack with controlled retreat? I like controlled retreat, but I never would bring myself to rest and retreat. It just feels wrong.

Why is it wrong?

Controlled retreat + Polearm mastery is great, you get a free attack as they approach, then you step back, free attack, rinse repeat, and if they're moving at your speed, it's very deadly.

For more tanky approach, doesn't blocking + controlled retreat make some sense? Maybe not optimal, but I've never really understood the blocking mechanic requiring you to rest unless it's in conjunction with something like controlled retreat or focus.

[half]

I.e. the hammer starts to do more damage on normal hits with effective 7 strength. --- Wait that isn't so bad, with 2 quasi-strength from two-handedness, 1 from power and 4 base strength and maybe 3 from charge.

Warhammers are supposed to be pretty niche in Sil since they are not used much in the canon. (I'm pretty sure dwarves are said to use them in a couple of places). Note that you would need Momentum in your example, and that you didn't include the rather common +1 quasi-strength due to fineness (which is really nice on hammers). Your example does show that you really want your hammers to be at the heavy end though.

[taptap]

Heavy Armor Use is also weird in that it requires fairly sizable investment in Evasion, when one of the points of going the heavy armor route is to not need Evasion skill.

I imagine heavy armour use to be the ability to be still moving around fluidly and with less fatigue in heavy armour, although Sil gives you an armour bonus instead of reduced evasion / melee penalties. If you think of it as additional armour added, because you can handle armour so well, it makes sense.

One thing I may not like are the way war hammers work. Take a fairly common 4 lb 4d1 war hammer vs. 4 lb 3d4 battle axes. The average damage (let us disregard criticals, which are slightly larger on the axe although not more common), is 4 + 2*strength for the hammer, 7.5 + 1.5*strength for the axe. I.e. the hammer starts to do more damage on normal hits with effective 7 strength. --- Wait that isn't so bad, with 2 quasi-strength from two-handedness, 1 from power and 4 base strength and maybe 3 from charge.

[locus]

Heavy Armor Use is also weird in that it requires fairly sizable investment in Evasion, when one of the points of going the heavy armor route is to not need Evasion skill.

[locus]

Yeah it's a little weird to have blocking as a prerequisite for stuff when it's totally useless if you don't have a shield. It makes the "Heavy Armor + 2Hander" build a lot less viable since you either have to take a meaningless ability or give up on the 1-3 protection you get from Heavy Armor Use.