Sil-Q 1.4.2 release

[wobbly]

From the manual: "The only sources of protection that count are special protection from special abilities, or magical rings and amulets. If it is fire or cold damage, you can also count the protection from your shield."

This one is actually a bit confusing, as there is fire breathe that works as above, and fire melee(balrogs) where it's physical damage with an extra die if you lack fire resistance.

[Quirk]

Feature request:
When you have an un-Ided weapon with a slay on it, make a message that says 'your short sword {special} glows if a suitable monster is near by, even if the weapon is 'in your pack'. The nonsense of dropping it on the floor to check is just unnecessary tedium. (Possibly have the message even if the weapon is ided.)

Looked at this today, but it's not really viable. The condition for the weapon to glow is met on an ongoing basis, and may easily toggle back and forth a lot when you're nearby enemies without closing on them, so the message would get very spammy. Not sure why you'd drop the weapon on the floor rather than wield it.

Auto-IDing from the glow isn't so hot either - surrounded by wolves and orcs, your weapon could be either Gondolin or Doriath.

Have added a colour change when you look at your inventory - glowing weapons will highlight in cyan.

[HugoVirtuoso]

So, apparently Flanking ?still works while confused. I encountered this while fighting Madthorns, but couldn't tell if it was because I was running into them or if 'flanking' took effect while going in a different confused direction around them. Let us know if this intended behavior. Thanks

[wobbly]

Hey Quirk, you mentioned changing blocking to any action other then moving? I'm going to suggest the same mechanic as controlled retreat, or maybe similar so you can flank with it as well if you stood & hit last turn.

[Quirk]

Hey Quirk, you mentioned changing blocking to any action other then moving? I'm going to suggest the same mechanic as controlled retreat, or maybe similar so you can flank with it as well if you stood & hit last turn.

Just to clarify, you mean block if you did not move on the previous turn? Or block if you are moving to a location that is not adjacent to the enemy?

I'm not sure I want it to work with Flanking - Dodging already does that, and I think thematically Flanking is mobility-based. It will still work nicely with Controlled Retreat.

[wobbly]

I meant if you didn't move last turn. It would be a different rhythm to dodge/flanking which is move every beat, this is more move on the offbeat. No real strong feeling on it, just as long as it works with controlled retreat which is pretty much the only synergy block has at the moment.

[wobbly]

Had a tanglethorn spawn on a staircase which maybe shouldn't be happening

[seraph]

Yeah, they're not throwing axes any more. I don't think there are actually any instances of axes being thrown in Tolkien (though I'm amenable to being proven wrong). Of course the same could probably be said of daggers...

i must have missed that change.

hand axes are... terrible. i found a 5d2 one and was decided my vanilla great sword was better. 5d4 vs 3d8. and this is a best case scenario.

[Quirk]

i must have missed that change.

hand axes are... terrible. i found a 5d2 one and was decided my vanilla great sword was better. 5d4 vs 3d8. and this is a best case scenario.

Not sure this is a fair comparison. Hand axes are one handed; you can use a shield. You might as well say that great swords obsolete longswords.

[Quirk]

In any case they're being changed for the next release because they were a bit on the broken side with smithing. They'll remain 1 lb but 4d2 base, so 4d3 with no bonuses, climbing to 4d5 with fine and Power.

If you compare either 4d5 or 5d4 with a 2d10 longsword, it should be fairly easy to see the axe has a better average without crits, a better worse case, and requires 1 strength against the longsword's 3.

[seraph]

I did forget about shields. lol

[ster]

i must have missed that change.

hand axes are... terrible. i found a 5d2 one and was decided my vanilla great sword was better. 5d4 vs 3d8. and this is a best case scenario.

the handaxe is also doing ~1.5d4 extra damage most of the time because of how trivial setting up whetting on them is, you get shields, it has slightly more accuracy etc. they were really strong if built around especially as a 1lb weapon.

[moosferatu]

I noticed that when I start a new character on linux that the keyboard becomes unresponsive if I select "New character" by pressing "b" rather than the down arrow.

I did a search of the forum, and it sounds like this may be a known issue with Sil that someone patched in a fork a few years ago:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8427

Any chance the fix could be incorporated into Sil-q as well?

[mibert]

i never step in traps

Hi all, I'm playing both the git version and 1.4.2 and I somehow always notice traps and never step in them. Seems really odd, any ideas? Thanks!

[Quirk]

Hi all, I'm playing both the git version and 1.4.2 and I somehow always notice traps and never step in them. Seems really odd, any ideas? Thanks!

If you have at least minimal investment in Perception you should be relatively rarely caught by traps.

At some point traps may undergo some sort of overhaul; as it stands they're not good game design and I've found making them more or less harmless to have few downsides. Making them viable would I think require either allowing enemies to be affected by them (Brogue does this very well) or giving thematic clues that let the player know they're in an area where traps could occur.