Sil 1.2

[half]

Not sure what a player is supposed to do against cats with exchange places. I just end up consuming all my pots of quickness and herbs of rage when I get sucked up in those whirpools of death that seems essentially unavoidable.

Interesting. How are other people finding them?

[Scatha]

Their combat stats were weakened. I guess they are a bit easier now for some characters (but substantially harder for others).

There are several ways to approach dealing with cats. Note that they have low Will, so any horn/staff/song will be fairly effective.

[BlueFish]

Not sure what a player is supposed to do against cats with exchange places. I just end up consuming all my pots of quickness and herbs of rage when I get sucked up in those whirpools of death that seems essentially unavoidable.

Strongly considering removing the ability from them in the edit file. Cats were already one of the most dangerous monsters in the game in 1.1. Then this ability was just added to them without modifying anything else in their stats.

1.2 is a significantly harder version of Sil.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Meant to pick this up before. Since you always roll at least a 1, and win ties, a score of 14 (or 4 and the sustain) will be enough. With, say, Will 10, you have a 10% chance of losing the point, if they choose the touch attack (1/3 of their melee attacks) and hit. That's probably under 2% total per round spent next to them.

Of course with lower Will this number goes up, but even at Will 5 it's likely to be less than 10% of rounds spent adjacent that lead to drained Str. Sure, you'll get unlucky sometimes, but these are a lot less dangerous than dragons, and if your strength is already low you can take steps to avoid getting drained lower.

Thanks! This is very helpful for me.

[Scatha]

I may be wrong but I thought other effects only applied if damage was done.

Most are, but they normally only make sense if there's a wound (e.g. vampire biting you).

Note that it works the same as the player abilities. You can knockback without getting through armour, but cruel blow or crippling shot won't force a test without damage.

[Psi]

Why not, if damage is blocked by armor.

I may be wrong but I thought other effects only applied if damage was done.

[Scatha]

Edit: To answer your actual question, for complete immunity you'd need 15 will, or 5 will and a strength sustain. I don't think rings of str +0 start showing up quite as early as wights do, though

Meant to pick this up before. Since you always roll at least a 1, and win ties, a score of 14 (or 4 and the sustain) will be enough. With, say, Will 10, you have a 10% chance of losing the point, if they choose the touch attack (1/3 of their melee attacks) and hit. That's probably under 2% total per round spent next to them.

Of course with lower Will this number goes up, but even at Will 5 it's likely to be less than 10% of rounds spent adjacent that lead to drained Str. Sure, you'll get unlucky sometimes, but these are a lot less dangerous than dragons, and if your strength is already low you can take steps to avoid getting drained lower.

[debo]

On a lighter note, does anyone else feel like they're in a washing machine when they're caught in a group of trolls? I feel like the kid getting bullied in the schoolyard.

[LostTemplar]

Should trolls be able to knock you back without actually doing any damage - seems a bit odd.

Why not, if damage is blocked by armor.

[Psi]

Should trolls be able to knock you back without actually doing any damage - seems a bit odd.

[clouded]

I think it would be nice if there were a couple of early (by which I mean, from 50') potions that give +1 to two stats and -1 to two, +str/+dex/-con/-gra and the reverse. There are almost no potions that help you out early on, the best you can hope for is quickness and those are too valuable. The minor stat potions would also work for restoring a little bit of stat drain and more importantly they would give sustains (useful for use-IDing).

Additionally, slow poison could instead give you regen for 25 turns or such, it would act similarly for poison and would be useful otherwise aswell.

[taptap]

@psi:

You still have unwavering voice for 1.2.0, it is called woven themes, so hurry

To me dual wielding smithing hammers smelled like an exploit right away (you know, how you are holding the thing you are smithing when you have two hammers to work it?). Given that most ridiculously overpowered chars are all smithing chars, I am really happy with the change.

[half]

Dual wielding hammers was never intended, or balanced for.

The point about stat potions and restoration is interesting, though. There's a good case for making the herbs slightly more common throughout the dungeon, but particularly early.

While we never balanced for dual smithing weapon use, bron and Psi are right that this has brought high-end smithing down a bit. We're probably pretty OK with that as high-end smithing gets broken more than anything else in the whole game. We think that Smithing is probably still fine, but it is interesting to note that some of the changes, such as fewer stat potions, will hurt Smithing without that being our intention, so we'll bear that in mind.

I've made it possible for herbs of restoration to start appearing natively at 250 ft, though less commonly, for 1.2.1.

[Scatha]

Dual wielding hammers was never intended, or balanced for.

The point about stat potions and restoration is interesting, though. There's a good case for making the herbs slightly more common throughout the dungeon, but particularly early.

[Psi]

So this means no more dual wielding of Smithing Hammers? Or a hammer plus a Spear of the Vanyar? I don't mind this from a flavor point of view, but it is yet another nerf to smithing. And if stat potions are more rare, that can be a significant blow to a high-level smith (shooting for around 30 smithing). I admit that eliminating the stat cost of Slays is a nice move for a mid-range smith (20-ish smithing), but I don't think it makes up for losing the additional smithing gear slot at the high end. Might some additional compensation be offered? Make Hammer of the Forge be an Enchantment? Make Aule be 1 + Song/4 ? Something like that. And also, I think 'shrooms of Restoration should be made more common, because of the extra draining monsters, the reduced Stat potions, and for smithing.

I hadn't thought about the dual Hammers being nerfed! My main concern was losing unwavering voice for Aule and as you say, the reduced stat potions.