Smithing, again

[wobbly]

Strength -> Damage +1

Most of what you say is probably good, I just wanted to note that this will make life harder for str 0 doriaths, who sometimes use str boosters for carrying capacity.

Edit: Also webs. & I sometimes use herbs of rage to use a shovel at str 0 though rage herbs & stat potions I assume don't change.

[debo]

Appears you can still sort of do this if you're lucky enough to find the sceptre of thu

Good lifehack! Can you add smithing skill or abilities to sceptres that you forge yourself??

[Infinitum]

Smithing, no. +2 Grace is kinda-sorta doable with mid-high level smithing (24; Sceptres have the easier smithing flag iirc) if you don't mind waiting for another forge for the payoff. For 28 skill and danger you can add two-weapon fighting if you don't want to add it to your build naturally, or go for a +2 Grace/Song with danger for 27 (which could be worth it as an offhand for singers). Alternatively, you can try to find a feanorian/shadow longsword and call it a day.

[wobbly]

Dual +2 song/grace hammers are +3 each with song of aule + a stack of voice, may work on a singing build... may not. I've wanted to do dual-scepters for a while though not sure I can actually live through the pain of getting it to work.

[phaethon]

Hey, a smithing discussion! I actually really like smithing in Sil, though it probably does deserve a lot of tweaks (don't read nerfs). The thing I like most about Sil in general is the strategy of using XP to customize your character. In games like Moria, you have only the class/race you chose before setting foot in the dungeon and the items you find. No other adaptation is possible. In Sil, I constantly bank experience until I need it for something. That way I can actively shape my character based on what RNG gives me. As you progress through the dungeon, your character becomes less adaptable since you can’t respec points. Smithing is another complicated system that interacts with the other game systems to let you adapt.

With the current system, the keystone of a smithing build for me has been a crown of lore mastery. Identifying potions is great for early/mid game survival, and lore master essentially boosts the XP curve since you immediately get the XP for identifying new items well before staves of understanding. I usually craft a crown of lore between 300'-450' if forges spawn nicely. I spend 8 skill points in Smithing and get Armorsmith, Enchanting, and Artifice to make it work (costs ~5,100 XP for a Feanor + 500 to craft the crown). Buying lore master outright costs 7 skill levels in perception and 2 skills (4,300 XP). So the difference early game is effectively 1,300 XP and I can use the Perception skill tree for better stuff like Rauko Bane. Using the 100' forge on evasion boosting armor (or jewelry if going that route) mostly makes up for that difference too. If you stop putting XP in smithing there, it seems like it’s fairly balanced. An added bonus: I can ID restoration and stat boosting potions without wasting one.

As for master smiths, there are two scenarios:

1) Graceful smiths are very powerful. They paid their dues mid-game trying to boost song up enough to make Mastery work. I think the late game power is just fine given the terrible mid-game, and pretty much only Feanor can pull this off consistently (or extreme player skill). For a Feanor, Lembas lets you forge a +Grace item on the 100’ forge with no risk; dwarves aren’t so lucky. If any rebalancing is needed here, it probably needs to happen with the Song ability tree (either Aule, Mastery, or the tree structure) with the goal of toning down the late game. As far as XP, it works out essentially by neglecting Evasion and Will, and instead dumping all that XP into smithing and song. If the mid-game gets nerfed much harder, it may eliminate the play style completely. Survival is already extremely turn inefficient even with a Feanor. The only danger late game comes from potentially getting 1-shot if an enemy sneaks up while you aren't singing. I find graceful smiths really fun to play in the current system. The worst part is catching that second forge. It's a huge setback if you miss it.

2) Master smiths come out about the same as a non-smithing character (at least mine do). They have the flexibility to smith a needed item to fill in the gaps if RNG was unkind. Going masterpiece means you get one item that's stronger than anything in the game. They generally have weak skills and have to make up for it with stat boosting gear. Like infinitum said, you can’t craft any really good stuff without going grace + song. You just trade XP and turns for gear. If anything, smithing needs to be boosted here.

As far as improvements, I strongly feel an improvement in forge generation would be the biggest help. I even forked the source code on GitHub to demonstrate a different implementation (it’s only a few lines of code to change). Forge gen is currently only based on when the last forge was generated. This means that if you got lucky with the second forge, your luck will snowball and your character will be too powerful. If you get unlucky, you may only have 6-8 forges for the whole game. Controlling forge generation means you can’t waste 5 forges just crafting up smithing gear. It indirectly fixes some of the problems with overpowered smithing builds. That combined with mild rebalancing of how many skill points you need to smith certain items, and I think it’s not bad.

Another interesting rebalance would be to make Masterpiece a given. A character can choose to burn their skill points at any time by crafting something too difficult. That would in effect lower the XP required in smithing for non-grace master smiths. A graceful smith only needs 10-12 points in smithing anyway. Might work.

[Psi]

Interesting discussion! My apologies for the death of smithing...

To be honest I find smiths to be really difficult to play in a "true" (for want of a better word) way. If you invest as you go along then you do tend to fall too far behind the Melee/Evasion curve to survive. The options I tend to go for are the armour/artistry start which allows you to breeze through the early levels and then advance smithing when I feel comfortable to or play quickly ignoring smithing altogether until 750+ and then go all out building smithing kit which I did for my most recent character on the ladder.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but at the moment, smithing mid-game gear is just too expensive.

[wobbly]

I'm not sure what the answer is, but at the moment, smithing mid-game gear is just too expensive.

Well partially this depends on how you're planing on approaching the endgame/throne room.

If you're a warrior you'll find better gear.
If you're trying to beat the smithing game you're wasting time on mediocre gear.
If you just want to turn invisible & grab a sil then +2 stealth in 3 slots adds up to 6, & is plenty.

[debo]

IMO boosting the quality of found stuff (which happened in 1.3, I think) was sort of an indirect nerf to smithing also. I actually don't see why you would ever bother going heavy into smithing unless you wanted to do something cute or clever, which is perfectly fine I guess.

[Psi]

IMO boosting the quality of found stuff (which happened in 1.3, I think) was sort of an indirect nerf to smithing also. I actually don't see why you would ever bother going heavy into smithing unless you wanted to do something cute or clever, which is perfectly fine I guess.

That is exactly the problem. The only reason to go smithing is to do something you couldn't do otherwise and you pay a big XP price for that. There is no middle ground to follow during the game.

[Patashu]

Questions for experienced smiths:

1) What version of Sil was Smithing the best in?
2) What version of Sil was Smithing the most balanced in (ease of winning compared to non-Smithing builds)?

[ripforareason]

Ok, now that I've won a "pure smither" type I feel qualified to comment on this.

- It seems that smithing is a form of winning more, provided you can actually win at all, as of 1.3. To start making really good items, you are going to need around 15 base smithing, and around 8 base song, along with song of Aule. This amounts to around 12k xp for the smithing and 15k for the abilties, assuming you start as a Noldor^Feanor with 3443. If you are going to run a 27k XP deficit, you had better hope for some good drops.

- Though you could argue that the magic number is 13, which lets you make rings of accuracy and evasion [+4] assuming an 18-19 point smithing kit (7 grace, 4 points from Aule, 4 from your warhammer, 3 from gloves of the forge,

- Even when you play the character well, there is a huge luck element in finding forges, especially if they are behind a chasm.The quality of your character can come down to how many uses of Revelations are available to you. You also need some degree of luck with herbs of restoration.

- Missing an early forge can easily derail a smither and force a restart.

- The long durations for smithing better items are really frustrating. I understand the idea behind the tradeoff but I think the durations are a bit much, especially when there is a Kemen on the level that will interrupt you 10 times, or a Nameless thing that will make grinding noises offscreen and make you stop smithing. This also makes it not really possible to use grace potions as a smithing aid, which might otherwise get you up to 4 smithing, depending on your Song.

- Song of Aule runs out too quickly, making you have to stop and rest for more voice and then restart again, sometimes 2 or 3 times per item.

- Smithing doesn't seem worth it as a gap closer. The improvement in item quality as of 1.3 makes it unlikely that you will smith anything better than you find on the floor until 900' or so, since most of your descent is spent building the smithing kit.

- Since you don't start smtihing anything really cool until 900-950', it feels like another form of 950 scumming. You make all these neat items, get interrupted repeatedly, and then it's time to go down and fight Morgoth.

- 2 use forges are really disappointing.

- The inventory juggling with the smithing kit is frustrating.

- Speaking of the smithing kit, why can't we make Feanorian Lamps of grace, or crowns of grace <+2>?

If you hand a decent player a Noldor^Feanor, and they take the right skills at the right time, chances are they will be able to get a Morgoth kill with 3 Sils without much trouble. This cannot be said of a Feanor smither.

[krazyhades]

Every time I see a forge I get excited thinking, and then remember how unfun it is to actually try. You know there's a problem when new players excitedly ask "Hey how should I do smithing?" and the veterans correctly advise: "Don't.'

[seraph]

i almost never feel like i missed a forge. more often i find a forge and there is nothing useful that i can make.

[ripforareason]

i almost never feel like i missed a forge. more often i find a forge and there is nothing useful that i can make.

I sort of have a schedule for them:

- Round Shield of Deflection [+2. 1d3], gloves of the forge <+2>, boots of speed

- Crown of Grace, Rings of Accuracy and Evasion [+2]

- Loremaster Crown

- Gloves of the forge <+3>, lesser jewel of grace <+1>, amulet of grace <+1>

- war hammer of smithing <+4>

- Amulet of grace <+2>, Amulet of Con <+2>, something else

- Boots of great speed (maybe)

- Masterpiece weapon with frost, sharpness, and danger

If I have more forges I want to make rings (acc/ev [+4], str/dex<+2>, or dam<+2>), a shadow cloak [+4] (rF, rC, rFear), mithril greaves of dex <+2>, feanorian lamp of brightness, gloves with some combination of str,dex,momentum and rapid attack, amulet of con <+2>, and so on. Ideally, you can fill some slots with artefact items off the floor, and then fill your otherwise-decent slots with smithed artefacts. With this sort of character, missing one forge can put you off schedule, and due to the way forge gen works, can lead to fewer forges in the game overall (I think)?

I think a few changes I'd like to see are some subset of:

- Halve the time it takes to smith items, to 5 per difficulty.
- Allow the making of generic crowns of grace <+2> and Feanorian lamps of grace.
- I'm not completely sure how the forge generation algorithm works, but as far as I know, the game can start to force forge generation if it's been 2000 turns since a forge last generated, and I think one is guaranteed after 5000 turns? I think it might be better if the player had to actually find the forge in order to get the counter going again. This way, you won't feel bad if you failed to find a forge and don't have to explore every corner of the map. You might still see one that you cannot access due to chasms, but it doesn't happen too often.
- Let Lembas and Herbs of Restoration restore more of your stats. I actually assumed they fully restored your stats/grace until I tried smithing, because I've never gotten drained more than one point in anything until then.
- Make the "Haunted" curse apply even when not worn, and make it worth 2-3 points of difficulty reduction.
- Don't make Song of Aule take song points to use. Trying to make a high-difficulty item can take well over 1000 turns due to stopping to restore voice. This is especially annoying when there is a Kemenrauko interrupting you repeatedly and then running away in terror after 1 hit, or a Nameless Thing grinding away in the distance.
- Make Masterpiece an intrinsic ability, and potentially replace it with an ability that makes artefacts require only 2 forge uses to smith.

These suggestions are based off playing a character that was a heavily-armored warrior that smithed weapons, armor, and rings. From what I've read on old forum posts, you can also make a "graceful smith" that uses song of mastery and stacks grace. I haven't tried this yet, and I'm not sure how far in to the game it becomes powerful, but the further grace-boosting items might make this archetype overpowered.

[bagori nd]

It's left field, but I wonder if part of the problem is that it's too easy to get a V/three sil win. Dedicated smiths trade a harder middle game for endgame power, but because good skilling decisions and non-horrible item luck are usually enough to kill Morgoth anyway, they don't have much to use all that extra power on.

It might be interesting (and perhaps more consistent with half's original intent?) if killing Morgoth basically required you to either be a dedicated smith or have incredible luck with artefacts.