Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[Starhawk]

I've groused enough about Mewlip amnesia on this forum, but I'd like to go on record in this thread that I still consider amnesia the single most annoying, unfun feature of the game. I won't try to claim again that I can write down the whole map whenever I encounter a Mewlip (admittedly that was a stupid argument) but I can still say that in a year of playing Sil I've never run into a situation where I felt I was in danger due to amnesia—at least violet molds do your character actual harm.

It's a very gentle but real form of harm: you'll spend a few extra turns trying to remember exactly how to get to the stairs. This takes time off your timer and is therefore harmful.

[fph]

Offtopic, but wikihack is frequently outdated and sometimes vandalized. Next time, consider linking to NetHackWiki instead, which is maintained and updated by the current NetHack community.

Not that I'm blaming you; [...]

Thanks for the tip, good to know! I suppose your link was meant to be to this page.

(in this case, the contents of the two pages are identical anyway).

[tungtn]

Nethack has an option to disable rest-on-space. Actually, wikihack says about it ...

Offtopic, but wikihack is frequently outdated and sometimes vandalized. Next time, consider linking to NetHackWiki instead, which is maintained and updated by the current NetHack community.

Not that I'm blaming you; Google's ranking algorithms tend to mean that whatever appears at the top of a search just stays there, no matter how good or bad it is.

EDIT: Fixed link, derp. Now yet another link feeds Google juice to that damn wikia site.

[half]

My #1 annoyance is getting the tombstone screen when HP hits 0 (and not -1 like in Vanilla and other variants).

It's not my fault there is an off-by-one error in Angband...

[wobbly]

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.

A couple more where I had the wrong impression until reading the manual:

concentration: "Gives you a +1 bonus to attack for every round spent attacking an enemy ...."
"particular enemy" as it says in the manual clarifies a lot.

subtlety: I had to check the manual to find out whether it worked with "hand & a half" weapons.

[jujuben]

Haha aww... I'm sad to admit that I actually really love that ability. It makes them scary, but in a different way.

There's nothing quite like Mewlip + Gorcrow = a completely black screen...

[HugoVirtuoso]

One way to make Newlips worse is to make them natives of deeper levels, increase amnesia frequency, and give them higher HP. This way, if Newlip do the amnesia while Shadow spiders, Gwathraukar, and all the nastier foes are nearby, Newlips would be much scarier.

[debo]

I've groused enough about Mewlip amnesia on this forum, but I'd like to go on record in this thread that I still consider amnesia the single most annoying, unfun feature of the game. I won't try to claim again that I can write down the whole map whenever I encounter a Mewlip (admittedly that was a stupid argument) but I can still say that in a year of playing Sil I've never run into a situation where I felt I was in danger due to amnesia—at least violet molds do your character actual harm.

Haha aww... I'm sad to admit that I actually really love that ability. It makes them scary, but in a different way.

[HugoVirtuoso]

My #1 annoyance is getting the tombstone screen when HP hits 0 (and not -1 like in Vanilla and other variants).

[fph]

I also play Nethack, where spacebar is the "rest for one turn and let all the adjacent monsters have a free hit" button. Escape is the only key that's guaranteed not to be linked to any in-game action in any roguelike that I play!

Nethack has an option to disable rest-on-space. Actually, wikihack says about it:

There is an option to rest when space is pressed, but this is not considered desirable.

I'd suggest *not* to change the current behaviour in Sil; esc is a rather standard key to bring up a menu.

[WaveMotion]

I've groused enough about Mewlip amnesia on this forum, but I'd like to go on record in this thread that I still consider amnesia the single most annoying, unfun feature of the game. I won't try to claim again that I can write down the whole map whenever I encounter a Mewlip (admittedly that was a stupid argument) but I can still say that in a year of playing Sil I've never run into a situation where I felt I was in danger due to amnesia—at least violet molds do your character actual harm.

[clouded]

I dislike how a player using subwindows is afforded more information on a given turn than one without subwindows. Yes, it's fine for this information to be more easily available, but to me it's unacceptable to have subwindows give an advantage like this. Examples:

If a player is carrying an unknown special weapon in their pack, they will be able to see the glyph glowing should they be using the inventory subwindow. A player not using this will need to spend a turn to throw this item or equip it in the dark in order to see this. Solution is to show the glyphs in the 'i' screen like the subwindow.

If a player steps on top of a weapon, using the inventory subwindow they can see its weight. Without this window they must pick it up and look in their inventory (probably also having to drop an item first), this can equate to taking 3 or 4 more turns than with subwindows! Solution is to either show the weight of an item when you examine it, or a much better would be to show a message like: "You see here: A Longsword (+0,2d5) 2.4 lb." This would be an enormous reduction of hassle for those without subwindows.

And obviously the most significant: Combat rolls are completely hidden without the subwindow. Adding these to messages would be sort of crazy with the one line message area (though an option would be nice...). At the least, you should be able to bring up the combat roll log as you can the message history, it is probably more important after all.

[Nomad]

Isn't there an option that forces you to use enter or some other cmd key to clear the more prompt? Or am I remembering things wrong?

FWIW this is why I use Esc to clear more prompts

Same here. I think Angband has or had the option to only clear -more- prompts with spacebar, but I also play Nethack, where spacebar is the "rest for one turn and let all the adjacent monsters have a free hit" button. Escape is the only key that's guaranteed not to be linked to any in-game action in any roguelike that I play.

So now that I've found that option for switching off the Escape menu I'm a much happier player!

[debo]

If you do end up changing the key binding there is a stupid one I do. I hit "l" to look at something & it clears the -more- prompt. Then I press the arrow key & it attacks something or moves somewhere stupid. I occasionally lose characters this way. I know it's my own stupid fault but I doubt I'm the only one.

Isn't there an option that forces you to use enter or some other cmd key to clear the more prompt? Or am I remembering things wrong?

FWIW this is why I use Esc to clear more prompts

[wobbly]

Many people prefer this the other way around (i.e. Escape over Enter), and Escape is more typical for brining up menus. However, I think there is still an option to disable escape for the menu (and use 'm' instead).

If you do end up changing the key binding there is a stupid one I do. I hit "l" to look at something & it clears the -more- prompt. Then I press the arrow key & it attacks something or moves somewhere stupid. I occasionally lose characters this way. I know it's my own stupid fault but I doubt I'm the only one.