Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[Infinitum]

the only things that wouldn't work are never-cursed, equippable items like hunger, blight, winter's chill, but those are not very well-designed to start with (as opposed to e.g. treachery or the cursed weapon egos).

+1. Actually I think only Winter's Chill wouldn't be affected (out of serpent/frost troll depth) - Hunger is easily ID'd by going down a hunger level whilst wearing it (ditto sustenance items) and carrying around poison potions in order to test unknown armors for Blight works as inventory space allows.

The only items that are hard to use-ID as long as you know the tricks to it are +0 stat jewelry, adornment, cold/fire affecting items (since the monsters they protect from are generally best left alone) and Staffs (unless you don't mind setting up ridiculously elaborate situations that is - then again the only -important- staffs that don't auto-ID are Sanctity and arguably Freedom; the rest can wait until knowledge), and there are more than enough knowledge charges to go around for those.

I have mentioned this before but the ID system gets quite formulaic after a few playthroughs; It does add some space tension for the inventory but that's about it really. I could stand to see it go as well.

[locus]

They don't exactly get it free, but lore-master is a lot more accessible to the House of Finarfin.

[debo]

I always wondered how the game would play if you got the xp for a new item discovery even if you don't know what it is yet. So, I see a red potion, I get 100XP, and identifying it strictly serves to let me know when and how to use it safely.

[absolutego]

id-on-sight is a very significant change and i don't think you'll find much traction here. i would lobby for id-on-use though. it's pretty much what you get in practice without the ridiculous edge cases (no need to wait 100 turns next to a worm or a spider so it poisons you and you can id !slow poison for xp, bashing doors so you can get stunned to id clarity, farming slowing or blinding traps, weird food thingies not id-ing unless you cross a satiation threshold, etc). the only things that wouldn't work are never-cursed, equippable items like hunger, blight, winter's chill, but those are not very well-designed to start with (as opposed to e.g. treachery or the cursed weapon egos).

you might want to try marvinpa-sil sometime, it does alleviate some of these things (no perception checks, artefacts always id, a few more consumables id on use, and lore-keeper is a bit more useful). very late edit: haha i forgot to mention monster recall; i would *refuse* to play without that.

[groovy9]

At the risk of necroposting... I just started playing Sil in the past week. My only beef is the beef I (nearly) always have with roguelikes. I HATE the inventory ID game. Hate it. With the burning passion of 1000 horny teenagers.

So I edited one line of code and am playing a version of Sil that auto-identifies items for me. I'm fine with it not identifying monsters. I can get Loremaster if I really want that too.

I do like the fact that basic weapon and armor stats don't require identify, and Loremaster is there, but frankly, the game is hard enough, considering I still haven't gone past 500 feet with a Noldor. I figure once I beat it with an Edain, I can switch off the identify feature. But frankly, I'm never likely to pull that off.

Feature suggestion that just came to mind: Since Sil already uses races as a form of difficulty setting, you could give one of them an innate loremaster ability. Or give it to everyone until the first time you win, then take it away. Just a thought.

[half]

Is a Potion of Slowness ever useful?

I find these and potions of confusion/poison useful for safely identifying free action, clarity, slow poison.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Throw them at orcs and hilarity ensues

Same for Potions of Confusion, too!

[debo]

Is a Potion of Slowness ever useful?

Throw them at orcs and hilarity ensues

[Patashu]

gorged is the only situation in which a herb of emptiness has some utility. you rarely see people use it, but i thought that everything but skeletons is supposed to do something sometimes.

Is a Potion of Slowness ever useful?

[taptap]

gorged is the only situation in which a herb of emptiness has some utility. you rarely see people use it, but i thought that everything but skeletons is supposed to do something sometimes.

[wobbly]

Just noting there are a couple of other circumstances under which gorged will kill you (I've lost characters to them):

Eating unidentified herbs in an emergency & getting a herb of sustenance.
Being gorged from restoring grace with a lembas wafer after forging.

[Infinitum]

Is the latter needed though? There effectively isn't any system in place now and it kind of works out since consumables are too scarce to use with abandon anyhow.

[Patashu]

The main motivation behind the way the gorged status works is the 'realism' aspect. We don't want players to be able to eat all their food all at once rather than having to hold it in their inventory. We do want herbs and potions to help stave off starvation in an emergency, so they are folded into the food system.

Thanks for bringing the problem up.

I'm suggesting two meters, hunger (for your food, and herbs and potions would also slightly increase it) and potiondrunkness (for deciding if potions and herbs, when consumed, have an effect or not).

[Derakon]

Vanilla just put a cap on how much nutrition you can "store" in your stomach; past a certain point eating food wastes it to no effect. Any reason you don't want to do that in Sil?

I agree that being able to use herbs and potions for some minimal nutrition is valuable.

[Scatha]

The main motivation behind the way the gorged status works is the 'realism' aspect. We don't want players to be able to eat all their food all at once rather than having to hold it in their inventory. We do want herbs and potions to help stave off starvation in an emergency, so they are folded into the food system.

Thanks for bringing the problem up.