Sil-Q balancing toward first official release

[Quirk]

How about concentration as a partner to subtlety? Does is pay off?

I think they pull in different directions. Subtlety means no shield; this makes every hit you take more dangerous. For Concentration to be good you need to be in an extended fight. If I have Subtlety I hope most of the fights I engage in last at most two or three blows.

Cruel Blow on the other hand combos well to effectively suppress retaliation.

[bel]

Subtlety

I don't have much experience with different playstyles in Sil and don't know a lot about what skilled players do, so what you say might be right.

My main point is that if I understand correctly, you wanted to nerf lighter weapons in Sil-Q to balance them relative to heavy weapons. So you took away Momentum and Damage rings, which makes sense. But at the same time, you buffed Subtlety by a huge amount. Why was that necessary? Did you get complaints that light weapons are underpowered? If so, you might consider buffing Subtlety by a smaller amount, say, a reduction of 2.5 instead of 3.

A few comments:

(a) A lot depends on how one builds up a character and what items the game provides. One should be looking at not just an endgame character with a deathblade, damage rings and high str etc., but also the middle game with no further items. Subtlety, in this case, works well with minimal investment, since you can take it with 8 Melee and Finesse (which you want anyway, if you're using light weapons).

(b) The way I think about Sil is that light weapons can work better on low str characters, and heavy weapons on high str characters. Thus, one can look at a character with 1 str, vs a character with 3 or 4 str. For low str characters, the extra points can instead be placed in dex or grace, where they can be very useful.

(c) The list of popular skills is useful, but one has to keep in mind the limitations. It doesn't make sense to compare Subtlety with Eye for Detail -- the cost, the skill tree and the positions in the tree are very different. The key thing to note is that Subtlety is taken with a specific playstyle in mind. For instance, you can straight away remove almost all games where a player has taken Power -- in those cases, the player will likely not take Subtlety.

(d) What people like to play and what is powerful, are not identical. Not every player can appreciate the power of some feature, or the said powerful feature might involve a lot of keypresses or tedium, or careful play, or whatever.

[bel]

Subtlety and shields

One mostly unrelated point to the above.

I don't know how others play, but I often use both shields and subtlety. I just drop/remove the shield when I'm assassinating monsters, and then pick it back up again. When playing with a shield, I often go for blocking/focused attack/concentration, and later on, controlled retreat. This gives me insurance against monsters which notice me, or when I need to kill them in normal melee.

[Quirk]

My main point is that if I understand correctly, you wanted to nerf lighter weapons in Sil-Q to balance them relative to heavy weapons. So you took away Momentum and Damage rings, which makes sense. But at the same time, you buffed Subtlety by a huge amount. Why was that necessary? Did you get complaints that light weapons are underpowered? If so, you might consider buffing Subtlety by a smaller amount, say, a reduction of 2.5 instead of 3.

I think I need to distinguish here between light weapons in the context of mithril longswords and bastard swords vs greatswords and great axes, and light weapons in the context of daggers and shortswords. The first type of light weapon was too strong, the second type broadly weak. Daggers in original Sil are nigh unplayable with the exception of a couple of artifacts.

Complaints were similar to the following:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=126402&highlight=Subtlety#post126402

(a) A lot depends on how one builds up a character and what items the game provides. One should be looking at not just an endgame character with a deathblade, damage rings and high str etc., but also the middle game with no further items. Subtlety, in this case, works well with minimal investment, since you can take it with 8 Melee and Finesse (which you want anyway, if you're using light weapons).

Finesse also turns out to be a bit weak midgame even where it should be good - without Momentum, Power is almost always better even on longswords. See

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8857

where CrabMan wrote a combat simulator.

(b) The way I think about Sil is that light weapons can work better on low str characters, and heavy weapons on high str characters. Thus, one can look at a character with 1 str, vs a character with 3 or 4 str. For low str characters, the extra points can instead be placed in dex or grace, where they can be very useful.

While this is true, a low strength character is still better placed to win a fight with anything other than a shortsword or dagger with Subtlety unless they are reliably exceeding their opponents' evasion by a lot more than the one or two extra Dex points will give you.

In other words I think Subtlety works well for stabbers but would be really quite weak on a low strength character without stealth.

(c) The list of popular skills is useful, but one has to keep in mind the limitations. It doesn't make sense to compare Subtlety with Eye for Detail -- the cost, the skill tree and the positions in the tree are very different. The key thing to note is that Subtlety is taken with a specific playstyle in mind. For instance, you can straight away remove almost all games where a player has taken Power -- in those cases, the player will likely not take Subtlety.

This is why I compared Assassination. The number of people taking Assassination who do not take Subtlety makes it clear that Subtlety is not an autopick even in a stabbing playstyle. Eye for Detail and Knock Back are mentioned because they are very niche skills.

(d) What people like to play and what is powerful, are not identical. Not every player can appreciate the power of some feature, or the said powerful feature might involve a lot of keypresses or tedium, or careful play, or whatever.

This is where feedback from various skilled players indicating that Subtlety was considered somewhat weak in vanilla Sil and was now weakened further by removal of Momentum, deathblades and damage rings came into play.

The fundamental issue Subtlety has to overcome is that it is a win more skill. If you are hitting at +50, practically any weapon does a ton of damage. It pushes you into using weapons that are very weak when hitting at +1. For that reason it has to have a payoff that really justifies the investment when everything works.

One last note: at present nobody in the Sil-Q ladder is taking Subtlety on Edain Haleth. I think/hope that it should now be powerful enough to be a valid choice there, for if it can't find a home with natural stabbers when the XP counts, it's possibly a bit of a wasted slot on a very competitive tree.

[bel]

Subtlety

Thanks, that was very interesting to read! I understand better the idea behind the changes now. I agree with a lot of what you say, but disagree with quite a few points. I will chew over things and do a little bit more digging before I reply.

If any other player wants to weigh in on Subtlety (with or without stabbing) and light weapons in general in Sil-Q, would be nice to hear their thoughts.

[ripforareason]

I gave this version a try since I just got back into Sil again, and it seems that smithing has gotten hit pretty hard by this fork, and it was already bad to begin with. Maybe it's just the items I like to make, but I see that round shields of deflection are harder to make, rings of accuracy and evasion are much harder to make (+2 accuracy and evasion is the same cost as a ring of dexterity, except the latter also boosts stealth and archery, +4 rings used to only be 31 difficulty), obviously the nerf of light weapons hurts smithing, boots of speed de facto unmakeable without masterpiece, no song of aule. Still can't make feanorian lamps of grace without artifice, which would make the smithing kit strategy far more bearable.

Maybe I just need to change my build order, since removal of artistry is a buff and you can make good corslets/helms at 100'.

[Quirk]

I gave this version a try since I just got back into Sil again, and it seems that smithing has gotten hit pretty hard by this fork, and it was already bad to begin with. Maybe it's just the items I like to make, but I see that round shields of deflection are harder to make, rings of accuracy and evasion are much harder to make (+2 accuracy and evasion is the same cost as a ring of dexterity, except the latter also boosts stealth and archery, +4 rings used to only be 31 difficulty), obviously the nerf of light weapons hurts smithing, boots of speed de facto unmakeable without masterpiece, no song of aule. Still can't make feanorian lamps of grace without artifice, which would make the smithing kit strategy far more bearable.

Maybe I just need to change my build order, since removal of artistry is a buff and you can make good corslets/helms at 100'.

Things have changed, though I think 8 out of 13 winners taking Smithing suggests it's in a good place right now.

The goal has been to flatten out the U-shaped power curve and make Smithing more useful throughout the game.

To summarise: artistry is free, there are guaranteed forges at 500' and 900', slays, fire-brand, sustains, resists, skill smithing costs are all cheaper. Drawbacks on enchanted gear now give you discounts.

End-game gear is much harder to make at 100', and sharpness and speed are a bit harder to manufacture. High-tree skills cost more XP to put on items, low-tree skills less.

In particular big boosts to Evasion and Accuracy have been made more expensive, partly because they were very good with free Artistry and partly because boosting a core skill to the build by 2 is not so far off in experience cost by boosting a number of skills by 1, and Dexterity also costs a temporary stat point. I might drop them by an offset of one; the scaling internally is a little crude and going from a seed of 5 to a seed of 6 has larger knock-on effects further up. Protection is however cheaper, as it is much better early game than late game.

Jewellery is still a little bit lacking at the ~10 Smithing point, and there are some additions in the next release coming to fix this, including protection rings becoming even cheaper. Armorsmithing is very viable with free artistry. Weaponsmithing has gained across the board with the exception of sharpness.

[ripforareason]

Are there still random forges throughout the game?

[Quirk]

Are there still random forges throughout the game?

Yes, the random forges are still there, as frequent as they ever were; but the old system of generating a forge after a certain amount of time without being on a level which had a forge is gone. Instead there are guaranteed forges on 100', 500' and 900'.

[ripforareason]

I saw in one of the earlier threads that you had wanted to get rid of the "smithing kit" strategy. I think this would be good too, since juggling items kind of sucks. Maybe gloves of the forge and war hammers of smithing could be removed entirely? Even as smithed artifacts they're sort of lame, since you're in practice just burning a forge for 3 points of smithing and Masterpiece in most cases. You would have to adjust the difficulty down a bit though, since I think most people's first item on a smither is in many cases Gloves of the Forge <+2>. Another option would be to let people put grace on generic crowns and feanorian lamps and bring back Song of Aule. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be a bit overpowered in the endgame with smithing singer types, as I have never played one. It could lead to smithers being a bit overpowered compared to what the design goal seems to be (less U-shaped power curve), but it would get rid of the item juggling problem, since most things you'd be forging to boost your smithing are items you might like to wear anyway. Plus if you are going all in on smithing you are doing so to make cool items anyway.

Honestly just having Alchemy and not having to juggle a helm and 2 crowns (Loremaster + Grace) is a vast improvement over normal Sil. Replacing Gloves of the Forge and war hammers of smithing with points of grace and song of aule would be a much nicer experience. I always post about feanorian lamps of grace when writing about smithing but it really is a hassle to carry a lesser jewel just for 1 point of smithing, drop my feanorian lamp to provide lighting in the forge room, etc.

[Quirk]

I saw in one of the earlier threads that you had wanted to get rid of the "smithing kit" strategy. I think this would be good too, since juggling items kind of sucks. Maybe gloves of the forge and war hammers of smithing could be removed entirely? Even as smithed artifacts they're sort of lame, since you're in practice just burning a forge for 3 points of smithing and Masterpiece in most cases. You would have to adjust the difficulty down a bit though, since I think most people's first item on a smither is in many cases Gloves of the Forge <+2>. Another option would be to let people put grace on generic crowns and feanorian lamps and bring back Song of Aule. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be a bit overpowered in the endgame with smithing singer types, as I have never played one. It could lead to smithers being a bit overpowered compared to what the design goal seems to be (less U-shaped power curve), but it would get rid of the item juggling problem, since most things you'd be forging to boost your smithing are items you might like to wear anyway. Plus if you are going all in on smithing you are doing so to make cool items anyway.

Honestly just having Alchemy and not having to juggle a helm and 2 crowns (Loremaster + Grace) is a vast improvement over normal Sil. Replacing Gloves of the Forge and war hammers of smithing with points of grace and song of aule would be a much nicer experience. I always post about feanorian lamps of grace when writing about smithing but it really is a hassle to carry a lesser jewel just for 1 point of smithing, drop my feanorian lamp to provide lighting in the forge room, etc.

I think there are a couple of things that need teased out here, both relating to smithing +Grace items.
1) If you're a songsmith, +Grace items are extremely valuable.
2) If you're not a songsmith, +Grace items actually probably aren't what you would wear anyway; pretty much every other stat is more useful if you're primarily melee focused.

So if I drop the +Smithing items, +Grace items become the default smithing kit; for the melee smith, they're not great - I note you weren't actually wearing any +Grace gear at the end of your run) - but for the songsmith they're highly prized. If I take away +Smithing and make +Grace items easier to craft, it gives songsmiths even more power when they're already very strong (the first Morgoth kill was a songsmith), and doesn't solve the smithing kit issue. If I take away both +Smithing and +Grace, singers suffer substantially from the inability to increase their Voice pool.

My final conclusion was that having Smithing rely on Grace was a large part of the problem, but decoupling it from Grace is awkward, as Grace then affects only 3 skill trees instead of 4. Adding a whole new Grace-based tree and having Smithing be its own thing might be a solution, but this would require a lot of testing and would push the first release back some way.

Alchemy might nudge up the tree one slot, since there's been a fair bit of "it's overpowered!" feedback. I confess I find it too nice not to take on pretty much every character now. I find myself wondering if it would be better to identify items based on raw Perception vs typical item depth or something instead, but this also would be a big change as I'm trying to stabilise for an official release.

How did you find Song of Challenge, Anticipate and Vengeance?

[ripforareason]

Song of Challenge is good, very useful against cat assassins. I think anticipate is good, I don't really read the combat messages so it's hard to tell when it triggers. Vengeance is okay, too. I had planned on trying Thresholds/Valor but I wasn't sure what precisely "defending a door" meant (I think it isn't really compatible with flanking?) and I didn't get around to taking Valor. If I had used it at 1000' I probably would have won out of heals and died.

Indomitable is probably my favorite new ability, though, since Fear always seemed to be an annoyance to me in normal Sil.

[Quirk]

I had planned on trying Thresholds/Valor but I wasn't sure what precisely "defending a door" meant (I think it isn't really compatible with flanking?) and I didn't get around to taking Valor. If I had used it at 1000' I probably would have won out of heals and died.

Yeah, Thresholds triggers when you're standing in a doorway i.e. on top of a '. Not sure what the clearest text to get that across is.

It is a bit difficult getting the high-end songs to do enough to compete with combat/stealth, and most people don't take them. I've actually been debating buffing them a bit further in the hope people can be tempted. It's a lot of XP to invest in finding out how strong the song is so maybe it needs to be a little unbalanced-good to ensure people actually give it a try. With +3 Str and Dex I think you maybe need some way to benefit from the Str to really rock Valour.

Glad that Indomitable is pulling its weight though; it would be good to have Hardiness less dominant a pick in the Will tree.

[ripforareason]

Yeah, Thresholds triggers when you're standing in a doorway i.e. on top of a '. Not sure what the clearest text to get that across is.

It is a bit difficult getting the high-end songs to do enough to compete with combat/stealth, and most people don't take them. I've actually been debating buffing them a bit further in the hope people can be tempted. It's a lot of XP to invest in finding out how strong the song is so maybe it needs to be a little unbalanced-good to ensure people actually give it a try. With +3 Str and Dex I think you maybe need some way to benefit from the Str to really rock Valour.

Glad that Indomitable is pulling its weight though; it would be good to have Hardiness less dominant a pick in the Will tree.

Maybe it could say 'While standing in a doorway".

Also, the reason I suggested the +Gra items isn't that you have to use them (I would use a Feanorian lamp of grace), but that it's less item juggling. Like, let's say you could make a +3 crown of grace and a +1 feanorian lamp. That makes up for a +3 warhammer of smithing or gloves of the forge, with less inventory slots. In smithing games you still make the grace items as part of your kit, you just never use them, and there are like 5 different slots (light, crown, gloves, hammer, amulet) and maybe more if you have Maeglin. Without hammers and gloves you could consolidate this down to 3 slots. You could still leave things like Maeglin's armor, gauntlets of Gamil Zirak etc. in the game as "neat" finds. fwiw I found just dropping one slot (no more loremaster crown due to having alchemy) was a HUGE decrease in hassle. I still have yet to try a song-smith though so I couldn't comment on how good they are... it feels like the sort of character that might be a win-more type in vanilla Sil but is potentially too powerful in this fork, since part of the goal was to make Morgoth much harder.

Also, I was never really that wow'ed by hardiness. I actually only ever took it to get Poison Resistance...

With the high level songs, one of the problems with things like str boosts is that you can't do as much with strength in this fork due to no Momentum, and Rapid Attack is also kind of bad outside the throne room (imo) unless you are using a shortsword (but I feel greatswords actually benefit the most from it). Thresholds works well here because it is a boost to melee/evasion, perhaps you could have Valor boost damage sides instead.

[Blinkhog]

Hi Quirk, I'm enjoying your fork. Just beat it with a regular Feanor melee+evasion, now planning to try some more difficult/nuanced builds.

Feedback as requested:
The changes to item ID is perhaps one of the best single changes you've made as it never felt right in the base game. Re: alchemy IMO as is it should be moved to slot 5. Or alternatively, alchemy could stay cheap to ID potions/herbs and the ID for staves could move to the will tree, maybe added to channeling? The equipment ID on the smithing tree is good.

Song of challenge, the balance seems good, maybe slightly too powerful, as orc archers become easy to deal with only 2 points in song and 3 grace. It also downgrades cat assassins from a terror to annoying. I like the mechanic though and the monster stances, I think this mechanic should be developed further.

The betrayal curse is interesting but I wielded a betrayal bastard sword artifact for thousands of turns and never noticed it betraying me. It did shatter prying a simaril though, don't know if that has anything to do with it.