Newbie to Sil

[Raajaton]

Just looking for a few tips and pieces of advice on starting my journey into Sil. I'm pretty new to it, and never really know what I'm doing with my exp in the beginning of the game. Mostly I've been told that the "Noldor bruiser" archetype is a fairly safe way for beginners to dive into the game. I assume this comes from some mixture of melee and evasion ... perhaps stealth or smithing?

Coming from Angband, I can definitely see there's an even greater need to be extremely wary of what monsters you fight, and which to run from. The lack of phase door and teleportation has definitely made the early game a bit of a learning experience. I feel I would likely enjoy playing a stealthy character, sneaking up and assassinating things I know I can handle, and trying to sneak past the stuff I'm unsure of. Any suggestions on how to go about starting that sort of character?

[taptap]

Just looking for a few tips and pieces of advice on starting my journey into Sil. I'm pretty new to it, and never really know what I'm doing with my exp in the beginning of the game. Mostly I've been told that the "Noldor bruiser" archetype is a fairly safe way for beginners to dive into the game. I assume this comes from some mixture of melee and evasion ... perhaps stealth or smithing?

Coming from Angband, I can definitely see there's an even greater need to be extremely wary of what monsters you fight, and which to run from. The lack of phase door and teleportation has definitely made the early game a bit of a learning experience. I feel I would likely enjoy playing a stealthy character, sneaking up and assassinating things I know I can handle, and trying to sneak past the stuff I'm unsure of. Any suggestions on how to go about starting that sort of character?

There are different ways to start such characters. You can start with stealth+song before diversifying into melee for assassinations or you start without any stealth at all play a fairly standard melee character (however, gearing your abilities towards assassination say finesse, subtlety) and add significant stealth only later in game - when you already afforded a significant set of abilities combining well with assassination (subtlety, focus, maybe lorien and listen). The second way is imo easier. Playing assassin style right away from start never really worked for me. A "hunter" (stealthy archer) is probably easier to play than "assassins" (stealthy, subtle melee), simply because upon failure you will more often have a chance to run.

[skadefryd]

A "stealth bruiser" would be hard to pull off. Being up in your enemies' faces in melee typically demands very high protection, which means heavy armor, which will tank your Stealth score. Either that, or very high evasion, but that strikes me as extremely risky. One bad roll against a tough troll, rauko unique, or dragon and you're boned.

[debo]

A "stealth bruiser" would be hard to pull off. Being up in your enemies' faces in melee typically demands very high protection, which means heavy armor, which will tank your Stealth score. Either that, or very high evasion, but that strikes me as extremely risky. One bad roll against a tough troll, rauko unique, or dragon and you're boned.

Noldor stealth chargers actually work okay, in my experience. I've won a couple of them. Basically, it's like a stealth assassin, except you use a big two-hander or whatever for the initial damage burst rather than a light one-hander. It's also helpful to be able to do consistent damage if the target survives, which most subtle stabbers have a harder time with.

If you find something totally OP like one of the black blades or Saithnar, this is especially fun.

High evasion is probably the way to go with these, although I have done some higher-protection ones as well. You only need about 15-20 stealth to go undetected by most things, and Noldor start with very high dexterity.

This is possibly not the easiest of newbie builds, and it's also probably not something you'd want to try with one of the challenge races; but, it's not that bad overall.

Edit: I just saw the OP -- if you're looking for a bit of a intro, I did this video series for 1.1.1 that should still work reasonably well, although 1.2 is harder. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...wHnb9TU8rY14TT

[Raajaton]

Thanks for the suggestions gentlemen. I'll definitely watch your video tonight debo. I was really hoping to get some quality game time in this weekend, but ended up being too busy

[Raajaton]

Also, is there a way to configure the term windows? I'd like to have a window to display messages if possible, but I didn't see a way to set them in the 2-3 minutes I had a chance to look around.

[debo]

Also, is there a way to configure the term windows? I'd like to have a window to display messages if possible, but I didn't see a way to set them in the 2-3 minutes I had a chance to look around.

It's there, and it works pretty much the same as in vanilla iirc. I haven't played non-GCU in a really long time though, so I don't remember how to do it

I think the default mac port already sets up windows this way, sort of.

[Raajaton]

Ahh, I found it. I was looking through in options within the game, and never bothered to check the "Window" tab at the top.

[taptap]

Either that, or very high evasion, but that strikes me as extremely risky. One bad roll against a tough troll, rauko unique, or dragon and you're boned.

Naw, the real problem with high evasion is being surrounded, pitted, webbed, invisible and dark opponents (halved evasion) or entrancement (no evasion). All these problems are minor irritants when in heavy armour (w/ critical resist).

Maybe someone can do the math but at least against dragons (red/white D) with their low evasion, low protection, high damage a fencer with high evasion, medium protection probably does better than a medium evasion, high armour bruiser in my experience.

[wobbly]

A "stealth bruiser" would be hard to pull off. Being up in your enemies' faces in melee typically demands very high protection, which means heavy armor, which will tank your Stealth score. Either that, or very high evasion, but that strikes me as extremely risky. One bad roll against a tough troll, rauko unique, or dragon and you're boned.

Here's one of mine with disguise & charge. Still a long way to go but you can see it's workable.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16419&ok

The same setup in a Fingolfin is surprisingly solid.
Edit: Maybe take out the lesser jewel of brightness & take an extra ring of protection on a fingolfin. Get charge earlier or something.