First release

[Quirk]

UPDATED:

https://github.com/sil-quirk/sil-q/releases/tag/v1.3.2

There are Windows binaries as well as Linux. No Mac, sorry, and I haven't committed my changes to the Windows makefiles to get mingw working.

Savefile is incompatible.

CHANGELOG FOR RELEASE 5:

• Morgoth is much tougher, and gets harder to kill as he gets more damaged.
  
• Throne room enemies crowd you less at the start.
  
• Morgoth's crown takes less to knock off.
  
• Sils require three different tests, only one of which is helped by Sharpness.
  
• When fleeing to the surface, all the stairs are upshafts and downshafts, going 100 ft at a time and there are twice as many of them.
  
• Songs of Slaying, Sharpness, Este are all gone.
  
• Song of Challenge makes enemies too aggressive to think straight. This means archers and scouts will close to melee range, and enemies will pile into corridors after you without waiting to flank you. Of course, making everyone who can hear you upset and aggressive probably has some downsides, but I can't think what they might be.
  
• Song of Thresholds lets you turn every door into a Glyph of Warding. The better you sing, the better your ward. The best warding is nearly unbreakable. You also gain a bonus to Evasion when defending a threshold.
  
• Song of Delvings slowly reveals the permanent features of the map around you, along with any creatures of stone that might be slinking through those rocky passages.
  
• Song of Aule has more of a forge flavour, and grants resist fire.
  
• Vengeance is a skill that replaces Defiance on the Will tree; it grants you an extra damage die when you get injured in melee. It goes away when you score a successful hit, and I'm afraid you can't stack damage dice by getting hit a lot; my testing confirmed that that got very broken very fast.
  
• Leaping now jumps all traps except roosts and webs.
  
• Mewlips no longer have map rot. They should still present some challenge.
  
• Horns of Blasting damage creatures of stone.
  
• Lug is a bit less lethal again.
  
• Savefiles are broken between version and now save as 1.3.2 - this is so anyone actually killing Morgoth now has their bragging rights visible from the version.

CHANGELOG BEFORE RELEASE 4:

• Throwing Mastery and Momentum are gone.
  
• Knock Back now lives where Throwing Mastery used to. If people like it there it stays as is. If they don't I'll consider how it may be buffed.
  
• Impale, which lets you impale through two aligned enemies at once with a polearm or greatsword, is where Momentum was. I like this. It's staying.
  
• Smashing Blow is where Knock Back was; it helps weapons to break through armor. This isn't super exciting. If people find it useful it stays.
  
• Whirlwind Attack is no longer restricted by walls; it now has a 50% chance of halting every time you deal damage.
  
• Cruel Blow and Crippling Shot have been rebalanced to connect more at lower critical levels and less at higher critical levels. More work may be needed.
  
• Filthy rags are gone.
  
• Strength and Song of Freedom prerequisites are gone.
  
• On early levels monsters are a little less alert.
  
• Forges should now appear at 100, 500 and 900 feet. Other forges may be generated as well.
  
• Quarterstaffs are now 2d4.
  
• Quarterstaffs of Vaulting, Warhammers of Crushing, polearms of Piercing all added. Rings of Damage are now Rings of Archery (these are an actual thing, google thumb ring). Daggers of Murder are stealthy.
  
• Channeling now auto-identifies staves and lets you get 2x as many charges out of them.
  
• Non-unique monsters scared from the level net you experience.
  
• Lorien and Mastery slightly boosted (effect is about +2 Song).
  
• Slow Poison is now Antidote, and cures you.
  
• Blunt weapons do bonus damage against armour. Armour only absorbs 3/4 of the damage the blunt weapon deals - this is better than 25% Sharpness where the amount of damage you would do is less than the armour roll. Damage dice remain low to compensate.
  
• Careful Shot is now replaced by Rout, aim with +5 to hit against fleeing enemies. This gives casual archers a good tool particularly in the early game, but is unlikely to be overpowered late on.
  
• Merged Clarity, Mind over Body and Resist Fear into a new skill, Indomitable.
  
• Moved Strength in Adversity to Mind over Body's slot. It now boosts Dex as well.
  
• New skill - Defiance - saves you from a death-blow and sets your current and max HP equal to your Will.
  
• 256-colour terminal support.
  
• mpa-sil screen centering fix merged.
  
• Gorged status is gone. Eating more than you can stomach only spurs your digestion to new heights (you still shouldn't eat all your food at once, but you'll manage to get that herb or potion in when full).
  
• Artifact with Throwing Mastery replaced.
  
• Concentration prerequisite removed.
  
• Song of Este prerequisite removed. Song of Este boosted a little. Now sustains stats as well. This is a temporary fix until the Song tree can be more properly reworked.
  
• Deathblades gone, two new orc uniques added.
  
• Smithing costs tweaked. Slays are cheaper, sustains are cheaper, resistances are cheaper; sharpness is more expensive. Abilities cost less experience at the lower end and more at the higher end; they're very slightly cheaper to add.
  
• Artistry is gone. You can now modify item stats simply from having Weaponsmith or Armoursmith. It's not quite as cheap as it was.
  
• "Enchantable" items like sceptres, crowns, robes etc are now more enchantable than they were.
  
• Expertise is the new smithing skill. It reduces your costs by half, rounding down. A lot of things that you'd otherwise only craft with a Herb of Restoration handy are now more easily available once you have the skill.
  
• Smashing Blow is gone for something more interesting: Coup de Grace. It's now possible to satisfyingly murder enemies whose health is less than your combined strength and dexterity without any prospect of them escaping. You can use this to finish off almost dead enemies or swat a fragile evasive thing. At the moment there are no prerequisites; I rely on your feedback to let me know how much balancing it will need.
  
• Lorekeeper and Loremaster are gone.
  
• Alchemy takes up the slack for identifying potions and herbs and staves, and tells you when things are cursed.
  
• Someone capable of enchanting items with Enchantment can tell precisely what enchantments are present on an item.
  
• Forewarned tells you all about enemy stats, and adds a hefty bonus of 1/4 your Perception to your Evasion - provided you've invested more into the former than the latter.
  
• Skeletons are searchable. Orc skeletons will give you fairly terrible stuff which will probably still be worth considering at 50 feet. Other skeletons may do better for you.
  
• Light levels give bonuses to perception for traps and secret doors. The worst traps (acid and false floors) are easier to disarm than before.
  
• Horns have been overhauled. They now work like breath weapons. In particular Horns of Force behave quite differently (and IMO more usefully) than they did.
  
• Daggers and sceptres and crowns are now more likely to have enchantments on. Longswords and bastard swords will be a little rarer early on.
  
• Artifact rarity has been rebalanced a bit. Some non-broken artifacts have been made less rare, but artifacts are rarer in general.
  
• Rog's hammer is in. It is suitably powerful, but is not without dangers.
  
• Various other bugfixes are in: monster protection is applied to earthquakes, !a inscription no longer lets you spot invisible monsters, Gorthaur is back to summoning Oathwraiths.
  
• Broken swords are out. A new artifact spear is in.

Enjoy!

[Quirk]

Oh also if you find any terrible new bugs? Please let me know.

[Quirk]

So has anyone actually tried this? It would be good to get first impressions, even if there are more considered opinions to come.

[Bucephalus]

Burned through maybe a dozen characters now. First thoughts:

Changes to stealth: I'm OK with this. Early game Sil is pitiless, and makes getting certain builds off the ground (smiths, archers) essentially a gamble. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Today I think I'd like to fight nine wolves at once. Heck, I'll even do naked!".

Whether or not this is the "right" solution for early game, I think it was broken, and I think you've fixed it.

Impale: YES. Prereqs make for an interesting choice. Polearms and greatswords, truly Sil's bastard weapons, have been redeemed by this, IMO. One obvious question: If I can hit a guy two squares away if there's another guy between us, why can't I do that when there isn't?

Whirlwind: Looks good on paper. Of course the reason nobody took this is because the only circumstances where it was viable were also character-endingly untenable, utterly avoidable, and obviated by herbs of rage.

>Throwing Mastery is gone.

Good.

Knock Back: I always felt this was underrated. Not sure how I feel about this.

Strength prereq gone: Probably a change for the better. Its prereqs had the unfortunate consequence of steering characters in directions they wouldn't otherwise go, despite its being a skill we almost all take.

Cruel Blow and Crippling Shot: Never took these. Maybe I'll reconsider.

Other changes: Ego quarterstaves? Nice.

In summary, and with all due respect to half (who turned my favorite roguelike into something arguably better), these changes have me questioning how I could go back to vanilla, and that's if you were to stop now. Please keep it up.

[Quirk]

Firstly: thanks, this means a lot. You've inspired me to get out of bed and get back to trying to get forges to spawn reliably at depths 100, 300, 500, 700 and 900 as a first step to improving smithing.

Changes to stealth: I'm OK with this. Early game Sil is pitiless, and makes getting certain builds off the ground (smiths, archers) essentially a gamble. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Today I think I'd like to fight nine wolves at once. Heck, I'll even do naked!".

Whether or not this is the "right" solution for early game, I think it was broken, and I think you've fixed it.

This was almost a little accidental. I was trying to improve stealth a bit, but much of the feedback I was getting was from people having it fall apart from them later on. I considered undoing it. Now I'll keep it.

Impale: YES. Prereqs make for an interesting choice. Polearms and greatswords, truly Sil's bastard weapons, have been redeemed by this, IMO. One obvious question: If I can hit a guy two squares away if there's another guy between us, why can't I do that when there isn't?

Oooh. In the place where "you attack the air", maybe I could check one step further if you have a polearm or greatsword and see if you can reach.

Whirlwind: Looks good on paper. Of course the reason nobody took this is because the only circumstances where it was viable were also character-endingly untenable, utterly avoidable, and obviated by herbs of rage.

This may even be too good, but if it is I'll try to find some trade-off. Fall-backs I've considered are stopping the first time you score a hit, and decreasing your evasion slightly.

Knock Back: I always felt this was underrated. Not sure how I feel about this.

Going to keep it where Throwing Mastery was, now, and see if it gets more popular as something easily accessible early on without prereqs. It does make for a different play experience and that's valuable.

In summary, and with all due respect to half (who turned my favorite roguelike into something arguably better), these changes have me questioning how I could go back to vanilla, and that's if you were to stop now. Please keep it up.

Right! On with smithing.

[Quirk]

New release - please check the first post for details.

[Patashu]

Guaranteed forges! Fear, sleep and mastery buffs buffs! These look like some exciting changes. Looking forward to how this variant evolves.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Rings of Damage are now Rings of Archery (these are an actual thing, google thumb ring).

Say what? Rings of Damage were so nice. Why remove them?

[Quirk]

Say what? Rings of Damage were so nice. Why remove them?

Precisely because they were too nice, and broke the relationship between weapon weight and damage (like Momentum).

From another thread:

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.

Light weapons can get some toys back when they aren't magical autopicks any more.

[Quirk]

New release.

[Infinitum]

Downloaded; no obvious bugs on startup. You fixed the initial forge appearing at 50' if taking the up stairs? A little conflicted on Hammers; on the one hand they need a boost, on the other I find percentage abilites somewhat jarring. There are other ways eg re-rolling in case of completely negated damage rolls.

[Bucephalus]

I explored the entirety of upstairs DL 50 with a nominal smith, not finding a forge, before descending in disgrace—then, found one (guaranteed).

I like this, a lot.

I've rightfully sung praises to this branch. If you're not playing, try it.

Sil-Q (release 3) (10/15/2017) - https://github.com/sil-quirk/sil-q/r.../tag/v1.3.1-q2

[Quirk]

Downloaded; no obvious bugs on startup. You fixed the initial forge appearing at 50' if taking the up stairs? A little conflicted on Hammers; on the one hand they need a boost, on the other I find percentage abilites somewhat jarring. There are other ways eg re-rolling in case of completely negated damage rolls.

Rerolling complicates calculations like nobody's business.

For instance, taking a really simple example of 1d3 attack vs 2d4 armour, with 64 possible outcomes, there are 1/64 ways to do damage (ignoring for now how much); adding a reroll nearly doubles the chance of connecting, but even two more rerolls won't match the odds of doing damage going to 1d4; if you start with 1d4 attack, one reroll is nearly but not quite as good as going to 1d5; if you start with 1d5 one reroll is better than going to 1d6...

In actual fact the more your damage roll average exceeds the armour roll, the more the reroll makes some damage probable over and above over the case where no reroll is in play. However, once we start calculating the average damage, the higher dice for the non-reroll case come into play again.

So, the case you would want them to be good - when the average armour roll is decently better than your average damage roll - is a case where rerolls are likely to be underwhelming. And calculating when they are actually good is a sit down with pen and paper job.

I'm not going to pretend that absorption percentages are entirely simple to work with mentally either, but I think the relationship is more intuitive and you always have the floor of doing 1/4 damage even if the armour roll completely exceeds the damage roll, so if you're facing a lightly armoured enemy you are probably better without them and against a heavily armoured enemy they start to come into their own.

All this is a way of saying that mechanics that involve rolling dice are a royal pain to get right.

[Gwarl]

Updated on angband.live

[debo]

Re: dice problems -- anydice.com is really great for analysis.