Sil-Q balancing toward first official release

[Quirk]

Is it just me or is every early game enemy a little bit tougher in sil-Q?

I haven't done anything to buff them. There's the new spider, of course, but apart from that the early game should be a little easier - a bit more leeway with stealth, a few items available from orc skeletons...

[ripforareason]

Is it just me or is every early game enemy a little bit tougher in sil-Q?

[ripforareason]

Re smithing & grace items this gets annoying inventory-wise with vanyar spears & feanorian blades. I'd definitely keep artifacts like Maeglin's armour and the gloves. You could always make con the smithing stat. Most of the things you want to make cost con and if you smith con for your kit you use it.

At least spears of the vanyar or feanorian swords can have a use though. More so with the latter... but then you have to deal with the Danger thing the whole time. Questionable for one point of smithing.

Also, awkward problem(?) with putting smithing on con is that you're going to backload it like in regular Sil. Players will start putting Con<+2> on everything, and Con<+2> makes an item quite good in addition to boosting smithing in this hypothetical fork. See: Helm of Con<+2>, round shield of Con<+2>, amulet of Con<+2>, Mail Corslet of Con<+2>, etc. With just one or two less slots in the smithing kit smithing is fine, you can carry most items you need and your kit without issue.

[fph]

Sounds like you're reinventing shops...

[Infinitum]

Well, if you're going to design a new tree anyhow, how about removing smithing as a player skill alltogether? If you want to retain the smithing interface haing the Forges be staffed by enslaved Elven/Dwarfen smiths who creates bespoke items to the players specification on demand could be one solution instead.

As for new skill tree: something based on Knowledge/Wisdom/Lore Mastery would be nice and thematic. Some skills can be moved from the other Grace trees. Creating one unique artifact (using the smithing interface, and possibly a set amount of design points to prevent grace stacking) would be a nice ultimate skill.

My preference would be to also replace all current limited use items/effects with "Words of Command" (read: spells that behave as scrolls from other roguelikes) and have the same tree increase the utility (if not raw power) you gain from them.

[Quirk]

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

Done.

Dropping gloves and hammers would make some sense, but I'd have to balance smithing costs down a little bit to compensate, and that might get a little bit trickier, as reaching the higher tiers of smithing does currently require this kind of ladder of making smithing gear. More guaranteed forges might help in giving people more opportunities to choose to pour XP into Smithing. I will probably hold off for the coming release though.

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

Well, light weapons obviously don't wear Strength as well as they did, but two-handed ones can still soak it up. I did go away after you said that and played with damage sides and things, but it didn't feel terribly clean design-wise. Maybe we need some way to make Strength more useful for light weapon users though it needs to be something that doesn't make bastard swords strictly better than greatswords again.

Strength aside, Valour's ability to stun on top of the +3 Dex can shift a battle in your favour by +5 Melee/+5 Evasion, which seems like quite a lot even if you can't use the Strength. I'm actually improving its odds of stunning by making it a more standard Will/Song test. I don't know if anyone's played with it so far though; it may still not have enough punch.

Re: alchemy IMO as is it should be moved to slot 5.

Excellent. Our thinking aligns. This will be the case in the next release.

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.

I'm making this a little bit more nuanced for the next release; it should take an extra turn or two to get enemies riled up. The mechanic currently combines with Anticipate to let you call in extra trouble to hit it harder.

The betrayal curse is interesting but I wielded a betrayal bastard sword artifact for thousands of turns and never noticed it betraying me.

Okay, this is very good to know. I didn't want betrayal artifacts to be too traitorous (or nobody would ever pick them up), but it would be better to have them be a little more treacherous. Tweaking the odds to increase the chances of things going wrong.

Re smithing & grace items this gets annoying inventory-wise with vanyar spears & feanorian blades. I'd definitely keep artifacts like Maeglin's armour and the gloves. You could always make con the smithing stat. Most of the things you want to make cost con and if you smith con for your kit you use it.

This is not a bad idea. I still feel that if I remove Grace from Smithing I need a new Grace tree so as not to weaken Grace too greatly, but having Smithing itself based on Con seems thematic and unlikely to cause a smithing kit issue.

[wobbly]

Re smithing & grace items this gets annoying inventory-wise with vanyar spears & feanorian blades. I'd definitely keep artifacts like Maeglin's armour and the gloves. You could always make con the smithing stat. Most of the things you want to make cost con and if you smith con for your kit you use it.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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 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]

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]

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]

Are there still random forges throughout the game?