Statistics: The abilities winners use in Sil 1.3.0

[Psi]

Song of Mastery is insane, but building to that point is the hard bit. Once you get enough points in song there is nothing that can touch you (see this melee character with [+17,1-1] armour as an extreme example). It really doesn't need buffing. Lorien is similar.

[bagori nd]

Throwing Mastery would probably become okay if it let you stuff throwing weapons in your quiver. Though even then, melee abilities are super expensive. Anyone who is going for melee to the degree that throwing mastery is better than unskilled bows will want around 7 skills or so. The 8th skill costs 4000 XP. That's about two levels of Melee, or even more in other skills, likely.
Put another way, for any decent investment in Melee, Throwing Mastery is probably about as expensive as Opportunist, which is better IMO. Opportunist also gets you close to Exchange Places, which is excellent.

Put a third way, elves can get Archery 10, Flaming Arrows, and Dexterity for 6k xp. By late game that Dexterity is worth 3-4k in itself, since it's essentially a point of Melee and Evasion (and I guess Stealth), so you're effectively paying 2k or so for a ranged option.

[Philip]

Oh yeah. Throwing Mastery is probably doomed then really.

[ripforareason]

The thing with the songs is, if you are playing a melee character, chances are you want to get Song of Slaying for Morgoth. Song of Sharpness with Woven Themes is good if you want insurance on being able to kill him, and Sharpness also makes serpents vastly less annoying. Most characters will also need Song of the Trees by shadow spider depth to avoid dying to them. So if you want to kill Morgoth, which you do because the ascension is very unfun when he is not dead, you already have 4 song abilities pretty much fixed, which leaves some of the other songs like Este, Staying, etc. in a place where they are simply too expensive to be worth the XP, but are cool when found on artefacts.

[Patashu]

protopulse on the /r/roguelikes discord brings up a good point - why do so many winners take Leaping? (42 wins out of 208 total)

[ripforareason]

Presumably people get Leaping on the ascent, especially after killing Morgoth, to make it go by faster, since you will have leftover XP without any other real use except maybe exchange places. I sometimes take Sprinting for the ascent but never Leaping, since you can usually just tunnel to the stair with a Mattock of Belegost. If Morgoth is alive this can be problematic, but I always kill him. I can't think of any reason to take Leaping in the main game, there are too many other good evasion abilities. There would need to be like, Ringil or Anglachel/Anguirel/Saithnar over a chasm for me to consider it.

[wobbly]

I take it more then others do I suspect. It's a prereq for sprinting. Now dodge is better if you're going to dodge flank or riposte but I tend to stand & fight more. Leaping/Sprinting is nice if you're archer-ing a bit. Jump a chasm, rain arrows on them.

[ripforareason]

I don't get it. I can see plenty of places where, even if you aren't using dodging/flanking for some reason, Dodging would provide some utility, for example, dodging arrows or running from fast-moving enemies. Leaping isn't going to do a whole lot for you, in contrast. I don't really think Sprinting is that good, either, considering how many herbs of terror and potions of quickness you can find in the game. I guess you can leap over a chasm and shoot like you said... I don't really like archery much though, I haven't gotten much success with it.


I don't know, I guess I feel that there are a few abilities in each skill that are clearly better than the rest, that make the other abilities too expensive to consider using, despite them being theoretically interesting to use. To be fair, it seems like several of these abilities, especially in the Will and Song trees, are designed for Stealth characters. And some are just useless like Curse Breaking and Mind Over Body, and probably Eye for Detail.

Actually, I can make a list:

Melee: Finesse, ZoC, Follow-Through, Momentum (very good lategame), Strength, Rapid attack (Throne room only, otherwise it makes you weaker). Power tree is bad in comparison, and free attacks are good.
Evasion: Dodging, Flanking, Parry+Riposte, Dexterity. The really good thing about dodging+flanking, aside from generating interesting combat, is that you can get "haste" by using !quickness.
Stealth: Opportunist, Cruel Blow (I don't really do stealth but free attacks and confusion are good)
Perception: Lore abilities, Rauko-Bane, Keen senses (very useful), Concentrate would be here but it is broken by other useful abilities that give free attacks.
Will: Hardiness, rPois, constitution
Smithing: Artistry seems kind of useless
Song: Slaying, Staying (actually really good), Trees (if no keen senses), Sharpness, Woven Themes. I think the other songs are more stealth-oriented...

[Patashu]

I'm Sprinting's #1 fanboy. Sprinting reasons:

1) running away from enemies, even fast ones that would otherwise lead to your horrific demise if you had to disengage from
2) running towards enemies running away from you, like orc archers, fleeing uniques and so on, things that are usually a gigantic pain to deal with
3) sprinting/flanking synergy - attack 1.5x as fast by running in a circle
4) sprinting/flanking/dodging synergy - the above, but with +3 evasion
5) sprinting free hits secret tech (run away until your next turn is free, hit the opponent chasing you, repeat)
6) similar to 5), sprinting/charge free hits
EDIT: 7) charge/flanking secret tech, which again is in the same constellation as sprinting/dodging (you can activate charge off of a flanking attack. to do it, you need to charge in the right direction and then step diagonally past an orthogonally adjacent enemy, or orthogonally past a diagonally adjacent enemy.)

Yes you can use consumables to be fast, but you'll run out of them if you use them for every such situation where sprinting is useful.

Yes there are boots of sprinting, but 1 you might not find them, 2 now you have to put free action on a different slot.

[ripforareason]

I know that you can do charge + flank + sprint + dodge but I haven't really figured out how to chain it yet, and more often than not having a group of enemies in a room that you are fighting makes it hard to pull off. Usually, I save my quickness potions to be used as haste sources when fighting a balrog or Morgoth or something, and I often want parry + riposte and Dexterity later, so I'm not sure if I can justify sprinting. This is sort of what I was getting at, where there are some cool abilities that are like... 5th or 6th best in their tree, which makes them too expensive to justify unless you have an affinity. But only Edain have melee or evasion affinities so you can't afford to get too cute with abilities anyway. Or you can take an ability late-game with a Noldor when it is of no real consequence because you are overpowered by 950' and have nothing to do but scum for 17k turns.

[Patashu]

Yeah I suspect that my idea of the best easiest build to win is different from yours, which I think is great (it's when there's total consensus that an ability is good/bad that you know you've fucked up your game's balance lol). If you ever want to try dodge/flank/sprint/charge build here's my winner you can copy ideas from: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=19913

You can see I also get controlled retreat/knock back later and exploit all my different options to get lots of free, safe hits in different scenarios. Slaying/sharpness for the throne room and boom, easy game.

(I guess the real measure of if this build is good or just a gimmick is if it works for edain or not, which I've never tried.)

[ripforareason]

I usually do take dodging, flanking, and charge, but Charge is mostly useful for killing high-protection enemies with a greatsword, imo, and because it leads in to Momentum which is extremely good. I seem to find Glend almost every game that makes it to 650' or so, so I tend to just carry that around for serpents, kemen, and grotesques/watchers, since I don't think 2H weapons outside of Glend/Saithnar/Calris/Gaurin/Dramborleg are any good except as utility items. Since I often go for Cruel Blow, I don't need Follow-Through for Opportunist. I build all my characters to kill V since I don't like the ascent much when he's alive. It's probably the case that different sets of abilities or secret tech are viable but aren't really going to help you kill V.

[krazyhades]

IIRC the thing about charge is that it works with flanking attacks if you have the angle right

[Patashu]

IIRC the thing about charge is that it works with flanking attacks if you have the angle right

Yup It's fun to pull them off.

[HallucinationMushroom]

protopulse on the /r/roguelikes discord brings up a good point - why do so many winners take Leaping? (42 wins out of 208 total)

"Wow, leaping 27! That is surprising to me." -- HM, RIP. #feelsbadman