Sil 1.4 wishlist

[Guest]

(Assuming it is going to be a thing) Do you have any plans for it devs?

My wishlist

1: if you have no torch but have a weapon of Gondolin equipped I want the tiles around you to be turned blue when enemies are near by

2: magma pools (it's Angband they are bound to exist)

3: Utumno artefacts (I also want artefacts to feel more "special")

4: An option to go up Thangoridhrim when you reach the surface (it should have different map generation, new enemies and items to give players an incentive to go up there and maybe rescue Hurin

5: More interesting vaults and the ability to add tiles more easily (especially to the vault palette)
Also massive vaults (bigger than Morgoths throne room) AND vaults that are guranteed to spawn (and take up the whole floor) which will allow custom maps eg Barad Dûr which would be very cool

6: Fissures that bubble with magma at a radius of 1-2 tiles

7: Balrogs get fire breath ability and a ranged whip ability which can disarm

8: Palantir artefact it has 3 charges and will reveal the entire floor, after the 3 charges it will take a point of will when you use it

9: staffs that cause a flood

10: more ominous messages like "you hear a distant howl" an example I have come up with is "you hear growling" or "you hear the crackle of fire" which would mean a Balrog or Dragon are nearby, or "you hear a rumbling laughter" - Morgoth mocking you

11: Morgoth can occasionally set his will against you which will temporarily make enemies attracted to your position or it could slow you down or make you hallucinate

What do you guys think, I might come up with more ideas so be sure to check back

[Gwarl]

Some kind of buff to heavy weapons (greatsword, great axe), buffs to polearms and blunt weapons.

[Patashu]

Buff Throwing Mastery (THE least used ability in the game: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...5&postcount=50 )

Buff Strength In Adversity (bigger bonuses that kick in sooner)

Buff Smithing (or even indirectly buff it, such as by making difficulty settings that spawn less items, worse items and no ego items, so that there are officially supported modes where it would be better than floor trash)

Make it reasonable to NOT take Slaying/Sharpness, and give support for other songs in general (easier to get, better to use)

Add more pacifist ways to deal with Morgoth (such as Fear and Mastery: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8284 )

Buff Concentration (merge mpa-sil change to requirements, make it so Concentration is NOT broken by free attacks triggered by your other abilities)

Buff Parry (give an extra +1 or even +2 evasion if you use a blunt weapon)

[HallucinationMushroom]

It would be nice to have rfear on the skill tree somewhere.

[Philip]

Majesty would probably be too powerful with it, but it feels like a pretty natural fit.

[Infinitum]

No, I like that. It could do with the boost. The 1.3 wishlist thread pretty much applies for me still, but off the top of my head:

1) Rename Constitution and HP to Fate and.. something that's a synonym with divine protection. Providence kinda works. As does Aegis. Basically, the main character having plot armour instead of rapidly regenerating flows better with me.

2) Remove the food clock, as well as all food items. Vampiric and Regenerative items can remove turns from the minimum depth timer instead of draining food. This makes sense if you envision HP as plot armor and said items drawing the gaze of Morgoth.

3) Remove the light clock. Remove Torches. Have Lanterns burn indefinetly and have range 1. Bump magic jewels to range 2.

4) Remove greatweapons altogether. Rebalance weapon weight overall. Having a large spread of weapon weight doesn't work with player Strength generally being stuck in the 1-5 range and the easy availability of Momentum - lighter is always better.

5) Remove junk items and weapon classes, eg Scepters, Rags, Skeletons, broken swords.

6) Remove Daggers as a separate item class. Instead, make them replace fists as the default attack when the player gets unarmed.

7) Remove the Smithing tree. Smithing doesn't play well, is impossible to balance to a satisfacory degree and plain doesn't make sense lorewise.

8) Replace most consumables with Words of Power. Existing staves and most beneficial potions are already a shoe-in for spells, can be replaced almost on a 1-1 basis and "words of command" are canon in tLotR.

9) Replace the smithing tree with one relating to knowledge and wisdom somehow. Could deal with optimizing use of aforementioned words of power, identifying items, bosting other skills and general utility. The ultimate ability could be creating a single artifact using the existing smithing interface.

10) Repurpose current (cursed) items into something more interesting. Stuff like Haunted Dreams is interesting and evocative; drains-stats-and-sticks-to-you is not.

[wobbly]

6) Remove Daggers as a separate item class. Instead, make them replace fists as the default attack when the player gets unarmed.

Daggers as they are actually work for -1 str on a Doriath assassin.

[Guest]

Eh, the only one I agree with is 10, The others take away flavouring and resource management, physical hp makes more sense as does the hunger and light timer

[ripforareason]

- Add an ability making true 2-hand weapons more effective, in the Power tree.

- Get rid of 2-use forges. One of the most frustrating things in the game for me.
- Make the forge turn-count clock depend on having seen the forge, rather than it simply spawning, so that your smithing run isn't ruined by a false floor.
- Make the Hunger and Haunted Dreams curses worth 1-2 points on a smithed item, but activate whether or not they being wielded.
- Allow the making of generic Feanorian Lamps of Grace, so that there is less light juggling and inventory manipulating - carrying Lesser Jewels of Grace for <+1> smithing is frustrating
- Allow higher bonuses on generic Crowns of Grace, up to <+3>
- In exchange, remove Amulets of Grace (they're just worse versions of Blessed Realm), and Blessed Realm is actually useful and not just a space-eater.
- This will prevent smithing from getting too high with smithing kits, but reduce the number of items to juggle. Sometimes I have had to carry my usual Con amulet, Blessed Realm for light, and Grace for smithing.
- Maybe bring back cloaks of grace? I have no idea whether or not the Mastery build is actually overpowered relative to a character using mostly melee to supplement smithing, but I think it's almost surely weaker than archery and smithing.

- Add a Fear Resistance ability in the Will tree
- Do what people above said wrt. Strength In Adversity
- Is Majesty actually good? Maybe it could be better if it could cause enemies to fail attacks based on your light radius, to tie in with Inner Light.

- It would be nice if Song of Staying was a bit easier to get, or if there were no pre-reqs in the Song tree

- Merge the mpa-sil Concentration requirement. It is a cool ability but it is useless in Vanilla because Focused Attack is useless. Also do what Patashu said above and don't have it be broken by silly things.

edit: Mithril axes as a 1-handed weapon cold be cool. Maybe something like (-2, 2d6)[+1]

[taptap]

Remove momentum. Restore the glory of great axes and greatswords! I don't understand why people want to streamline everything else out of existence (moving Sil ever more to a single "best practice" build), but don't want to remove the ability that broke things in the first place.

[Patashu]

Remove momentum. Restore the glory of great axes and greatswords! I don't understand why people want to streamline everything else out of existence (moving Sil ever more to a single "best practice" build), but don't want to remove the ability that broke things in the first place.

If Momentum is removed, will we get Stun back?

[ripforareason]

Remove momentum. Restore the glory of great axes and greatswords! I don't understand why people want to streamline everything else out of existence (moving Sil ever more to a single "best practice" build), but don't want to remove the ability that broke things in the first place.

Not sure this would really change that much. It would just shift the meta-game from light weapons like mithril longswords to bastard swords since they're strictly better than greatswords, and you can often utilize all your strength points with rapid attack. the problem is more "greatswords being strictly worse than bastard swords in most cases", the exception is basically having Saithnar or Calris but then you also have Anglachel and Anguirel which are better since Saithnar doesn't have free action any more and walking around with Calris makes me feel insecure.

On top of this, axes are IMO almost strictly worse than swords even if you are a Naugrim.

edit: also, there are a whole lot of good swords in the game. If I look at recent-ish morgues that got reasonably far in the game, I see a whole lot of Glamdring, Delmereth, Anglachel, Anguirel, etc., and not really a whole lot of generic ego weapons.

[taptap]

1) Remove momentum.
2) Remove damage rings. (Usually better than somewhat similar strength rings.)
3) Add a no regeneration mode. (For stealthy chars to play around in.)

There are two things breaking the logic of strength and sufficient weight for larger dice, one is momentum, the other is damage rings. Without them you had a clear choice: increase the size of your dice or increase the number of your dice. And there also was the question how to leverage peak strength when buffed, which tends to be 4 points higher still.

When an ability looks like an autopick to you, yes you ripforareason , then it just might be too good, especially if it knocks out a whole lot of gameplay as irrelevant. (And looking at the winner ability statistics momentum is one of the most common picks even though only introduced later.)

Now, I don't particularly care about "current meta" "best practice" builds. The one thing that kept Sil fresh enough for me to return now and then is the possibility to win in many different ways. I believe this was a design choice. What I see in some proposals in this thread is streamlining into one or two optimal brawler builds while removing non-optimal but previously viable options.

[wobbly]

I'm going to 2nd what taptap is saying. Damage rings are an automatic pick, I'm always going to wear 2 to fight Morgoth & when you add in momentum shortswords & deathblades reach d14/d15 which melts Morgoth. I'd also consider making Finrod rarer or weaker, so the choice isn't so often Finrod or clearly inferior boots.

Disagree with removing focus. As ripforareason has said he always takes it in mpa-sil. It's too good if you're not paying extra. Plus focus is part of builds like polearms or assasination and such.

[wobbly]

Removing prerequisites on songs might be good, it's incredibly annoying having to take slaying or aule on a pacifist if you want sharpness for the crown. Also while I like Elbereth it would be nice to take freedom on a non-elbereth singer.