Got some games in yesterday. First impressions:

Changes are overall awesome thematically! I got some minor nitpicks I'll get back to.

- Mechanically, pre-200' is pretty uninteresting. Sil is imo at its best when the player is chased by large groups of intelligent monsters whilst simultaneously trying to kill the force multipliers (breeders, status-inducers etc) and avoiding fighting by slow/territorial monsters. Until Orc Soldiers it's pretty much scatterings of weak melee monsters.

- Good riddance to green worm masses and purple molds.

- Pushing down Orc Scouts to where roaming monsters are an actual threat was a smart move. Also gets around the 100' forge shouting match issue somewhat. Could maybe even be pushed to 200'?

- Early Gorcrows! Nice, helps create tension with the orc hordes.

- Whispering Shadows <3

- Killing the only nearby darkness producing monster won't actually stop that adjacent Grotesque from killing you before being lit. The more you know..

And as for some nitpicks and suggestions:

- Tanglethorns are much better setting-wise than molds but.. growing underground? I agree that having high armor destructible roadblocks is good for monster diversity though. Have you considered breaking out Silent Watchers and Grotesques from [H]orrors and create a separate statuary/sentry class of stationary monsters? This could also add some "supporters" to the early game, eg sentries that scream for reinforcements and attempt to terrify/confuse the player from a distance.

- Vanilla orcs are boring, and somewhat out of line with the race/class template used for other intelligent foes. How about replacing them with orcish work gangs - a single taskmaster and several (very) weak snaga slaves patrolling the dungeon. Would create a roaming threat for the early levels and teach beginners valuable lessons about AI patterns, morale and being disarmed in the middle of a monster pack. After all..

- Not crazy about Grimhawks. Obscure book of lost tales reference? Probably shouldn't be territorial in order to stay consistent with the bird/bat dichotomy. Early screamer is good for the stealth game tho.

- Hatchling Spider would imo work better as a strong solitary monster to be consistent with M (and teaching players to not fight solitary territorial monsters; atm Sword Spider does this but its speed means it's a harsh tutor indeed).

- Whispering Shadows <3 <3. It looks like you've left an alternative wording "(voices?)" in the description though. Could be invisible to be consistent with Shadows? Reinserting "clear worm masses" in some form could help with early dungeon diversity some (and give a reason to get Keen Senses early).

- The "r" could maybe be used to replace "I" enemies mechanically? Weak raukar flying about cursing the player and whatnot.

So just had something that I'm not sure whether is a bug or not. I used a gnarled staff (3 charges) from the ground:

"The base of the staff glows an intense green.... but you cannot draw a glyph without a clean expanse of floor."

Picking it up it still has 3 charges. I'm not sure whether staves of warding are meant to use a charge on failed attempts or not. I guess it could be either way.

so when you get more than 15 criticals in one turn it doesn't show the extra !'s after the 15th.

Also sometimes the game softlocks when you kill morgoth in 1 blow and fails to drop morgoths crown. Forcing you to kill yourself

Killing morgoth in a single blow results in tension not breaking when going upstairs sometimes. And the player recives "would you like to attack y/n"
(killing morgoth in a single blow in a normal game is impossible so this isn't probably necessary to fix)
Monster diversity in sil
The more monsters get added to sil the easier it will become. due to the way sil's experience system works. Killing 10 of one monster means that the first 2 kills are worth more than the next 8 combined. So finding 2 of 1 type and 2 of another type is worth as much as finding 10 of 1 type. The more monster diversity early is making the early game MUCH easier. I don't typically encounter any issues until I skrew up and die to a vampire lord, or overdive.
On more interesting talks let's discuss abilites

For now I think taking more than 2 of an ability in any catagory is questionable unless said ability is really powerful. I used to think 4 was the line, but now I think 3 is the line. Taking say lore keeper+lore master+bane is fine, but you can't also take keen senses. In fact I would be cautious about taking bane on non finarfin characters since 1.5k exp can go to melee/evasion instead.

For instance I will never take both controlled retreat and sprinting in the same run, the points are just to expensive. Both abilities are so powerful but they cost so much to get together. Instead I prefer to take either/or AND dexterity.

I also find there are generally a few types of combat situations in sil so abilities have to be good at one of them

Fighting hand to hand : common is when you are in a corridor and it's you vs the orc warrior/cat assasin/whatever, in this situation you have to be nearly completely invulnerable, after all you may encounter multiple duels in one area and you need to never take much damage from any of them. (especially since resting takes so much time).

Pursuit : This is really common with intelligent monsters, and is really important as well. One of the reasons archery is so powerful is that you can pursue monsters with it for free.

Running away : uncommon but sometimes you need to run to the staircase to run away from the pack of wargs. The only skills that help are sprinting, leaping, exchange places and getting lucky.


Enemy archers are super hard to deal with for characters that aren't stealthy or archer's. Characters with say Sprinting and opportunist still run into many issues.

So for now I look for
House=finarfin
20+ points of melee Sublty finesse Rapid attack
20 points of evasion dexterity and one of Controlled retreat+flanking OR Sprinting+leaping
10 points of archery Flaming arrow dexterity
7 Points of Perception Lore keeper lore master and Rakou bane
7 points of will Hardiness and Poison resistance
10 points of song, Song of the trees(if needed) song of Slaying and song of sharpness

I can feel you :D

Well, since xp rewards are a direct function of native depth expressed as dungeon level (2 x ((nd x 10) x 1/instance) if one counts both seen/slain xp iirc) early monsters really give a pittance of xp in comparison with later ones. I see no poblems with early game diversity as opposed to the midgame glut that used to be. If need be it would (..probably) be simple enough to use a formula that approaches 0 quicker instead, eg (2 x (nd x 10) x 1/(2^(instance -1)).

Then again I rather enjoy the less is more approach of Sil so if anything tactically superflous monsters should continue being cut before expanding the beastiary.

Re: races, I feel that new races aren't really needed. I wouldn't mind tweaking existing ones to be more diverse though, eg removing the archery proficiency of the Noldor and the blade profiency of the Sindar - iirc Tolkien frames the kinslaying as Swords vs Bows, and the Sindar and Teleri have common ancestry so there's that.
Also would like to see Sindar and dwarfes being 0111 and 0021 races respectively, as it doesn't make sense for elves to be weaker than humans and dwarfes to be worse fighters (some house changes might be needed). Dwarfes could have a stealth deficiency to compensate (dwarfes being lousy sneaks is a plot-point of the hobbit as well iirc). It would be cool if the different races had different song names as well, at least for the culture-specific ones (The Trees etc).

Also out of curiosity: is it theorethically possible to one-shot morgoth given a character with close to max experience and perfect build/equipment/circumstances/rolls? Also given a dagger (or even unarmed?) is it even possible to beat defense by the 70 or so required in order to score more than 15 criticals (I suppose yes due to sleeping bonuses, concentration and slaying, but still)? Has anyone ever achieved this?

With a 2 pound deathblade momentum Subtlety and finesse with 2 +3 rings of damage you deal 1D19 damage or average of 10 per hit. Add in 6 points of melee per critical and we need roughly 55 critcals to kill morgoth in a single blow.

this would require beating morgoth's evasion by over 400

so no it isn't possible feasibly.


IT MIGHT be possible to critical kill an unaware monster with a stealth assasin and get more than 15 criticals.

Pretty sure in the old version amulets of regen ided if you crossed the hunger mark. This failed to work for my comp character. Also tried wearing it a lot while damaged, still no id. Has something changed here?

A small note on the AI. Pack monsters are currently moving to make room for immobile monsters like thorns.

Wobbly--
Looking at your Sil character, but am unfamiliar with the game details.
Just curious, what is the point of carrying gloves but not wearing them? And what do they do for you?

I strongly recommend looking at the game, at least to the point of playing the tutorial. It's not Angband, but IMHO Angband has much to learn from it (without slavishly copying).