Minor variation

[ebering]

Introducing "ebering-sil" a.k.a mpa-sil plus some earthquakes tweaks and the quiver user interface for throwing.

https://github.com/ebering/ebering-sil

Check it out.

Get a Throwing Mastery win.

Knock the crown off in a duel of earthquakes.

Current change log:

- ebering-sil 1.3 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- throwing
        - throwable items can be placed in the quiver in place of arrows and
          thrown with f/F
        - throwable items held this way don't count as wielded for granting
          passives and abilities.
        - assassination and cruel blow now apply to thrown attacks, when made
          with weapons designed for throwing.

- monsters
        - Morgoth's crown can now be knocked off by earthquakes caused by the
          player. (Tricking a Kemenrauko into earthquaking Morgoth will not
          work.)
        - Morgoth's crown can now be knocked off by causing him to falter with
          Song of Mastery

- items
        - Horn of Blasting now creates an earthquake in power proportional to
          the player's will score, like the staff.

- abilities
        - Lore-Master does not identify all items
                - Instead it (after a perception check against staircasiness) reveals a
                  level feeling. Either valuable (forges and lesser vaults) or great
                  importance (enchanted forges and greater vaults).
        - Focused Attack and Concentration give bonuses to Sil cutting.

- interface
        - Split wield into two commands. 'w' works as the old wield, but always
          goes into the default slot. 'W' wields an item into an alternate
          slot, if applicable. These are the off-hand for two weapon fighting
          and the quiver for throwable items.

- character dumps
        - List starting skills in the notes
        - Note reaching multiples of 5 in a skill thereafter.

- bugfixes
        - Correctly apply monster protection to earthquakes.
        - Correctly give chanelling bonus to staff of earthquakes.
        - Fix Gorthaur's song to summon the correct monster.

Future plans

- char dumps
  - track consumables (generated, found, used)
  - action tracker a la crawl???????

- code cleanup?
  - do some things mirroring the vanilla 4.0.0 re-factoring (but not autoconf. never that.)
  - fix main-gcu so that it correctly takes advantage of colors
  - add background highlighting to curses for unwary monsters (doing this depends
    on the previous bulletpoint) if enough colors are available in the terminal.

- dgamelaunch support????????
  - probably not too hard, just a no menu main that must be started with correct flags for everything
  - milestones from standard player notes
  - mail scrolls with the notes items??? man would it suck if a big red D burned your mail though.
  - probably not

[ripforareason]

I like the idea of having Lore-master reveal things about the dungeon like forges and vaults. In theory, it could be a bit abusable with smithing, but you still have to go find the forge without falling through a false floor.

[ebering]

In thinking more about it I probably don't want to distinguish between vaults and forges. Just something like vanilla level feeling: could be dangerous, could be great rewards.

This isn't a stable release yet so (as edited above) changes will sneak in when I feel like it. Now available: a Mastery win condition.

I'm thinking also about changing the scoring formula. Killing V, while impressive, isn't the point. It doesn't make sense that a player dying after killing V scores higher than a 3-sil winner that didn't kill V. (Ok maybe I'm just mad that my ladder spot for my 3-sil is crap because I didn't kill V.) The current formula is your score is the number:

VDD,STT,TTT

Where

    V = { 1 if morgoth dead, 0 if alive}
    DD = { final depth (1-41), with up floors counting as 40-depth and escape at 41 }
    S = { #silmarils }
    TTTTT = { max{ 0, 99999-Turns }}

The easiest change is dropping the V digit. This way winners always score over dead players, with the best score going to the fastest 3-siler. Yes, killing V is impressive and deserves a reward; the reward is the easier time getting 3 sils and escaping. Would be interested in other opinions on the matter.

[Derakon]

The easiest change is dropping the V digit. This way winners always score over dead players, with the best score going to the fastest 3-siler. Yes, killing V is impressive and deserves a reward; the reward is the easier time getting 3 sils and escaping. Would be interested in other opinions on the matter.

You could also change it to DDVSTTTTT, so killing Morgoth doesn't matter unless you also win.

[Philip]

I don't feel like the scoring should change. Tolkien is full of legendary heroes who died soon after, or even while fighting their most impressive enemy. Being dead is only shameful when you were still carrying Silmarils, since that way they'll fall back into evil hands. The stated objective in the game is recovering a Silmaril, but killing Morgoth is killing Morgoth.
Maybe it should just be harder to kill Morgoth, so that people who recover the Silmarils still get an impressive achievement?

[taptap]

Wobbly will love you for the earthquake changes. He probably would have earthquake wins already, if it were possible in the versions he played.

I don't feel like the scoring should change. Tolkien is full of legendary heroes who died soon after, or even while fighting their most impressive enemy. Being dead is only shameful when you were still carrying Silmarils, since that way they'll fall back into evil hands. The stated objective in the game is recovering a Silmaril, but killing Morgoth is killing Morgoth.
Maybe it should just be harder to kill Morgoth, so that people who recover the Silmarils still get an impressive achievement?

It is pretty hard. Harder w/ every new version. It isn't even the objective.

Even just for seeing more varied builds I would like the change, but then I liked to play singers and other odd builds (no ability) when I last played.

If you are taking ideas: For singer/stealth/archer centric play, I would like to see how a "realistic-tissue" challenge mode without default-regeneration works. (Much less fighting for sure.)

[wobbly]

I'm fairly neutral on the scoring. What's good in the current system is you can easily pick kill/not kill & no. of sils from the score. People tend to note pacifist or challenge games on the dump. The only irritating thing is the ladder doesn't seem to have an option to sort by turn count.

[ebering]

Even just for seeing more varied builds I would like the change, but then I liked to play singers and other odd builds (no ability) when I last played.

Ranking more varied builds in a more equal fashion is my goal. If you look through the ladder at winners you see a variety of builds and play styles, but the ladder toppers are much more similar and tend to have two flavors: masterpiece and hacknslash (there's a lot of variability within the melee tree for different modes, but that's only one skill tree!). With the changes I've made giving two new ways to get at the crown (Song of Mastery and some kind of earthquake) I'd like any sort of ranking of ebering-sil games to encourage players to take advantage of these things.

I don't want this whole thread to be de-railed by scoring, though! Particularly I'm interested in feedback on the Lore-Master ideas, and the following two throwing changes:

- more throwing
  - Grant assassination bonuses to thrown attacks
  - Add Throwing Mastery as a prereq for Momentum, remove one of the others??

The zero Throwing Mastery in Patashu's stats suggests something needs a change. At the same time I don't want the changes I make to depart too far from half and Scatha's vision. It's been explicitly said that throwing is meant to be supported but for the most part not encouraged. My current assessment of the state of throwing is that it's discouraged both from an interface screw PoV and a balance PoV. The first one I've fixed, the second one I'm not sure what to do.

If you are taking ideas: For singer/stealth/archer centric play, I would like to see how a "realistic-tissue" challenge mode without default-regeneration works. (Much less fighting for sure.)

I've flipped through this forum for ideas before. It sounds interesting, but new challenge modes would be low on my priority list. My hope is that perhaps code cleanup a la vanilla 4 will make the Sil codebase friendlier for others to modify.

[wobbly]

- more throwing
  - Grant assassination bonuses to thrown attacks
  - Add Throwing Mastery as a prereq for Momentum, remove one of the others??

The zero Throwing Mastery in Patashu's stats suggests something needs a change. At the same time I don't want the changes I make to depart too far from half and Scatha's vision. It's been explicitly said that throwing is meant to be supported but for the most part not encouraged. My current assessment of the state of throwing is that it's discouraged both from an interface screw PoV and a balance PoV. The first one I've fixed, the second one I'm not sure what to do.

I'm not sure what to suggest here without trying it with the better interface. In theory throwing mastery+finesse should be viable with throwing spears just from the way spears critical & the fact you can throw at melee range. It's just going to end up expensive long term on a melee build.

There's a 2nd interface problem with throwing, & that's using glowing weapons against light sensitive enemies. Currently if you walk over a final rest spear when fighting whispering shadows it'll auto-pickup, causing the light to go out.

[t4nk]

Feature request: remove levels 21-40. That is, when the player goes upstairs from the Morgoth's room, the game displays this text:

Up through the dark and echoing gloom	
as ghosts from many-tunnelled tomb,	
up from the mountains' roots profound	
and the vast menace underground,	
his limbs aquake with deadly fear,
terror in eyes, and dread in ear,	
together fled he, by the beat	
affrighted of his flying feet.

...and teleports the player to the final level (with Carcharoth & co), just like in Tolkien's poem.
After getting silmarils the most interesting part of the game (and story) is over; extending it is just tedium. Yes, it makes the game more difficult, but in an unfun way. E.g., by that time your character's development is over, so it's time for the game to be over as well. Also, the ascention promotes grinding (staves of revelations, exp. for exchange places, etc), which seems antithetical to the goals of Sil.
I know that mpa-sil makes all upstairs on the ascent work as upshafts, but that's not even a half measure (more like 10% measure). And it's bizarre and "gamey". So I'd sugget to just remove the whole ascent thing, except for Carcharoth level, which is very cool.

[taptap]

Feature request: remove levels 21-40. That is, when the player goes upstairs from the Morgoth's room, the game displays this text:

Up through the dark and echoing gloom	
as ghosts from many-tunnelled tomb,	
up from the mountains' roots profound	
and the vast menace underground,	
his limbs aquake with deadly fear,
terror in eyes, and dread in ear,	
together fled he, by the beat	
affrighted of his flying feet.

...and teleports the player to the final level (with Carcharoth & co), just like in Tolkien's poem.
After getting silmarils the most interesting part of the game (and story) is over; extending it is just tedium. Yes, it makes the game more difficult, but in an unfun way. E.g., by that time your character's development is over, so it's time for the game to be over as well. Also, the ascention promotes grinding (staves of revelations, exp. for exchange places, etc), which seems antithetical to the goals of Sil.
I know that mpa-sil makes all upstairs on the ascent work as upshafts, but that's not even a half measure (more like 10% measure). And it's bizarre and "gamey". So I'd sugget to just remove the whole ascent thing, except for Carcharoth level, which is very cool.

Since this is likely a popular request: The ascent is only boring when you 1) routinely kill Morgoth so lack the tension of Morgoth on your heels 2) done it many times already (+ 3) don't die on the ascent). This is not the case for many players. It also removes an option to only grab a Sil in the throne room and have a go at Morgoth later. (An option for some archers not equipped to take on V in his lair.) The ascent is only a fraction of playing time, imo streamlining it away suits certain builds, but does little for variety and misses the main point. Like in mountaineering, reaching the peak isn't the most important thing, coming back safely is. At least for me the most memorable playthrough is one where I died at 50' (in the Beren competition), that came pretty close to the literary original even lost Angrist in the throne room.

[debo]

The ascent is boring when V is dead, and unbearably annoying when he lives. It's maybe interesting the first couple of times, but especially with the songs from 1.2 it's really obnoxious. The only redeeming part of the whole thing is the gates, which are super fun.

I think if the ascent was super truncated (4-5 floors) or took place in an alternate level type (some sort of secret stairs like the secret ones in Moria, I dunno) it would be worth it. Right now whenever I play a character that makes it to the throne room without killing V, I just suicide it and don't bother posting the dump.

It does sound like some people like the ascent, though. So perhaps I'm just in the minority.

[ebering]

Feature request: remove levels 21-40.

No. I like the ascent. It plays very differently for different kinds of characters and is definitely not trivial. ~60 of the 560 ladder characters with at least 1 sil don't escape alive. 5/35 in mpa-1.3.0 and 10/109 for all 1.3.0 games.

Also, the ascention promotes grinding (staves of revelations, exp. for exchange places, etc), which seems antithetical to the goals of Sil.

I agree with this, but the current meta is also, to produce a winner, scum 950ft for throne room gear and more consumables than you'll ever really need. I think addressing this will solve both problems.

I know that mpa-sil makes all upstairs on the ascent work as upshafts, but that's not even a half measure (more like 10% measure). And it's bizarre and "gamey".

I disagree. The divine light guides the way. It's divine it can break rules. In terms of scumming for revelations in particular the motivation could be removed by having a Sil grant mapping on the ascent, guiding the way out. But I'm not of a mind to tweak the ascent at this point.

[HugoVirtuoso]

The ascent is boring when V is dead, and unbearably annoying when he lives. It's maybe interesting the first couple of times, but especially with the songs from 1.2 it's really obnoxious. The only redeeming part of the whole thing is the gates, which are super fun.

Maybe the post-Morgoth-death monster Al should be changed by *a lot* to make them 100x more aggravated and faster to compensate To get an idea of what I mean, take the monsters from ToME 2.3.x's Angband dungeon. Here, the monsters, even your then trivial Stone Trolls, are waaay faster, stronger, and harder to kill by DarkGod's design. This will definitely make it less boring.

[wobbly]

Maybe the post-Morgoth-death monster Al should be changed by *a lot* to make them 100x more aggravated and faster to compensate

On a character strong enough to kill Morgoth that just sounds pretty annoying. Some level of Ag/Sil could be interesting for pure sneakers. Or could be just annoying, hard to tell without testing. Currently if you have enough stealth to sneak the throne room, you're pretty much able to just walk out on the ascent. I think Morgy's pet doggie might actually be more perceptive then he is. If you sneak past him without disturbing him you often can walk through a room with Morgoth hunting you without problems.

Mostly I think the ascents fine: On some builds it's an annoyance but easy, some it's hard & you've still got a bit of game left.