Sil 1.2

[taptap]

I'm a little surprised at the woven themes nerf honestly, it seems like the major problem of the Song tree is that you can only sing one song at once so it's hard to want to buy a lot of songs. I don't usually play singers (just drop a bunch of XP near the endgame for the mandatory Song of Sharpness) but in theory Woven Themes should help with that issue.

I am working on a a stealthy singer-archer right now (no melee, minimal evasion, no will). Stealth/Lorien first, then more and more archery, then mastery at one point. Woven themes looks far less mandatory now than in the previous version, even as a singer.

[half]

It autoided on the first long corridor it lit, but neither of the small ones before it.

I am also wondering what the intended way to open chests is now that lore master does not identify them - is there another way other than _Understanding?

I'm not sure why radiance didn't immediately identify. If other things fail to ID, do let me know.

I don't quite understand the issue with the chests as I've never IDed them. You can search to find the traps (though it is very difficult), or just try to open them and be hit by the trap (my usual choice) or use Freedom effects.

[half]

Just loaded it up, looks good so far though a few of the changes make me sad...If you haven't, you might want to make arrows' native depth 50' as well. Found a shortbow at 50', which was one thing...But if the idea is to make archers easier to start, an archer cannot fire with bow alone.

I'm happy with it just being a little easier.

[half]

I noticed a few changes to Smithing that didn't make the change log - horns are now available and the costs for mithril items are now much lower (thanks for that one!).

Good point. Feel free to point out any other failures to document -- I've evidently let a few slip past.

[half]

Love following this game. Any thoughts on the eventual possibility of online play and/or tiles?

We have no plans for online play, but tiles are the main plan for 1.3. I think I'll require some help to get them working for Mac (which is my main development platform), but it looks like the new Mac port for Vanilla should be a great starting point.

[half]

Here is one bugfix that you might want to include in 1.2.1.

Thanks for that. I've added it.

[half]

I'm a little surprised at the woven themes nerf honestly, it seems like the major problem of the Song tree is that you can only sing one song at once so it's hard to want to buy a lot of songs. I don't usually play singers (just drop a bunch of XP near the endgame for the mandatory Song of Sharpness) but in theory Woven Themes should help with that issue.

One of the main reasons for the Song changes was that we want more people to get more diversity of songs. I think that previously Woven Themes was a bit of a must buy for anyone who more than dabbles in Song, which meant that all other Song costs went up by 500 experience and that people mainly went for the two songs they wanted to weave and then Woven Themes (and Unwavering Voice). Making it a bit less good might help with this (though I can see the effect in the other direction too). That said, Scatha was the main proponent of this particular change so he might be able to fill you in.

[absolutego]

There are two things about chasms that are bothering me:
- I've found vaults with loot you can only reach with leaping. I'm fine when it happens by accident but I don't like that it happens by design. Not necessarily related to this, but maybe there could be a consumable that fills in chasm squares (and/or digs them out).
- There are some interface problems with it, the most grating of which is that when you're out of LOS they show as black squares instead of their glyph, as if they were unmapped. Is this a problem with GCU or is it intended to work this way?

The rest of the changes seem nice, although I'll have to play through the changes to songs. Good work!

[half]

There are two things about chasms that are bothering me:
- I've found vaults with loot you can only reach with leaping. I'm fine when it happens by accident but I don't like that it happens by design. Not necessarily related to this, but maybe there could be a consumable that fills in chasm squares (and/or digs them out).

The loot that you can only reach with leaping is definitely deliberate. Why don't you like it?

Note that there are actually a few ways to get around chasms, though I'll let people work these out for themselves. You thus might be able to get some of those 'unreachable' items without Leaping.

- There are some interface problems with it, the most grating of which is that when you're out of LOS they show as black squares instead of their glyph, as if they were unmapped. Is this a problem with GCU or is it intended to work this way?

That is a GCU problem. I think chasms use 'D' as their standard colour, which darkens to 'd1' when out of sight. On 16 colour builds d1 is the same as d which is black. Setting chasms to a different colour in the terrain file would be a work around, or changing the darken() function. As a general note, I'm not sure what to do about GCU colour issues. I design the game for 32 colours and I think 90%+ of players use 32 colours and it is quite a bit of extra effort to try to get everything to degrade gracefully to 16 or 8, especially if some of those are fixed by the terminal implementation to by magenta or bold or something strange like that.

[Scatha]

Not necessarily related to this, but maybe there could be a consumable that fills in chasm squares (and/or digs them out).

Earthquakes can create chasms. There is some attraction in having a consumable which lets you pass chasms -- perhaps some abstracted version of rope -- but we haven't yet found a concept and rule we're happy with.

[absolutego]

The vault I'm thinking of had easterling archers on islands surrounded by moats, and another moat at the center which had Nargil; it's probably "Bracket Islands"? I think abilities buying you loot with no other way to reach it is bad design (if there are work-arounds I haven't found them yet; it did occur to me that _earthquakes might do something). Stealth and perception make your life easier, and you could do something similar with e.g. shortcuts you can leap over for less/no fighting. You could at least leave diggable walls as an alternative. I don't find one vault particularly offensive but I'd hate to see it become a trend.

That is a GCU problem. I think chasms use 'D' as their standard colour, which darkens to 'd1' when out of sight. On 16 colour builds d1 is the same as d which is black. Setting chasms to a different colour in the terrain file would be a work around, or changing the darken() function. As a general note, I'm not sure what to do about GCU colour issues. I design the game for 32 colours and I think 90%+ of players use 32 colours and it is quite a bit of extra effort to try to get everything to degrade gracefully to 16 or 8, especially if some of those are fixed by the terminal implementation to by magenta or bold or something strange like that.

You're right, I tried other colours and they do show out of LOS; it's ugly but playable. I don't know how colours work at all but mpa-sil fixed many GCU problems, so I'll bug MarvinPA about it sometime.

[Psi]

I don't quite understand the issue with the chests as I've never IDed them. You can search to find the traps (though it is very difficult), or just try to open them and be hit by the trap (my usual choice) or use Freedom effects.

I was just second-guessing why that feature had been removed - I presumed there was an expected/encouraged way to achieve the same end - ie a better chance of safely opening a chest.

[Psi]

I'm currently down at 750' and still getting those vaults full of terrified Easterling archers. Seems a little unfair on them.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I've just found a second 3 use forge on 100'. I can't recall ever finding more than 1 forge at 100'. Just a heads-up in case this is unintended.

I'm loving the horn of warning option, or... the horn of come-get-some, as I think of it.

Edit: I should've mentioned that the two forges spawned in rooms connected by a short corridor, probably.

[debo]

I'm currently down at 750' and still getting those vaults full of terrified Easterling archers. Seems a little unfair on them.

That sounds fair to me, they're the worst