Oops. *Sharp Mithril Greatsword, naturally. 22 difficulty to smith w/Danger, 23 if you want to fiddle with the weight.

So by any character you mean any character with 6 Grace?

Reaching 22 takes 8 Smithing skill, 8 Masterpiece and 6 Grace.
9 Smithing lets you do it with 4 Grace, but that's another 900 XP.

First, thank you again for taking out the gender field. That means a lot.

I haven't had a chance to try out the archery abilities yet, but they look fun. Puncture looks like a very nice "fuck serpents" skill. I wonder if you could chew through a grotesque with it in a pinch.

I also like all the new special bows. I remember you talking about how hard it is to find interesting and not-broken things to put on bows, and think you did a good job with that here. It's not clear from the description exactly what Falmari does, but I look forward to finding or making one and finding out. Bows of the Falas actually help substitute for flaming arrows in an odd way, since one of the reasons I took it on non-archers was to deal with ringraukar, Gilim, and sapphire serpents.

If ancient sapphire serpents are really giving you trouble, you can now get a whopping 5 levels of cold resistance without artefacts (quarterstaff of the helcaraxe, bow of the falas, two rings, and a cloak of warmth). Probably still better to just avoid them.

I think the different races/ houses starting with different equipment could add some nice flavor to the game, but for the question of starting with a melee or a ranged weapon I think it would be better to have it linked to the starting skill values instead, as I think they give a better indication for the individual backstory of the character and the desired playstyle of the player.

Actually, now that I think about it, why don't you just give a separate option during character creation, outside the race/house selection, that lets the player choose their starting loadout/background?
I came up with 4 different starting loadouts just now:

• Melee: Starts with a curved sword like normal right now.
• Ranged: Starts with a crappy bow, a handful arrows and maybe a dagger.
• Pacifist: Starts with no weapon at all, but with a harp or lute, if those get added to the game, and maybe a cape or robe.
• Deprived: Starts off with absolutely nothing. (Maybe with a bit of food.) This is a higher difficulty challenge run. I got the name from Dark Souls, which also had an option like this. I saw that some people really like starting off with nothing. This would make those people happy without making the game's difficulty explode for newbies.

You think Edain have it difficult? Try naked Edain.

Woah, didn't even occur to me that you can have more than 3 levels of elemental resistance.

Well, personally speaking, I often start without assigning any points at all, and decide what I need as I go, so that's not a solution that works for me.

With regard to choosing starting loadouts, there's not a lot of sense in dwarves having a bow option, and pacifists are relatively unpopular choices. Starting with nothing at all isn't very serious unless you're unlucky with weapon drops on 50' so I'm not sure how much challenge it really adds.

Which is not to say the idea is to be dismissed out of hand. Different loadouts might be appropriate. I am thinking of things like a traveller with cloak and staff, a warrior with helm, sword and broken shield... I'd have to think about it.

To be honest, I think it would probably be alright if there is a downside to that strategy. I'm still newb, but the way you can just save up your xp right until the point where you know exactly what you're gonna need and then be able to spend it all in one turn is pretty powerful, I think. Aspects of strategy games also include things like having to do preplanning, being attached to your choices, investing for the future, etc.

Sure, dwarves might have a xp malus to using archery, but that doesn't mean they are completely incapable of using it.
And I know pacifism isn't exactly popular, but maybe it would become less of an unpopular choice once there is a starting option that actually suggests it to the player as a challenge/ playstyle. Having that option start with a harp, cape or whatever bonus item would make it more appealing and probably more viable.
The "Deprived" start could also start with no torches and no food, if that makes it sound more of a challenge.

Yeah, about the weapon drops, I think if the game had this loadout/background selection in the character creation, then the equipment item drops on the first dungeon floors would/could probably be tweaked around a bit to be more rare. This sounds like a bit of a bigger change though, so I dunno.
For example, if an archer start existed, then the amount of early arrow drops could be dialed down, but this would maybe be bad for people who want to play some sort of mixed character.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant. A slight bit of backstory flavor and some basic starting gear. I think DCSS actually has a similar system, where after choosing your race, you get to choose a character class, which basically just decides your starting gear (and I think some of your starting skill values).

In my last game as archer, I started with most of my skill invested in archery and none in melee, but then it took like 3 floors or so until I actually found a bow. I guess maybe this is just something you have to learn as a new player, that you can't really just start as an archer immediately, but maaaaybe it would be better if you could just start with a (crappy) bow instead.

Well, the Dwarfes of Tolkien seems prett pragmatic compared with the axes-or-bust stereotyoe that spawned from Gimli. Maybe change the Archery penalty to a bow.. un-proficiency to keep in line with the Elf affinity changes? Having a third choice for background after choosing race/house sounds neat.

Maybe even swap the dexterity penalty for a stealth malus; Dwarfes naturally being worse fighters than Edain is a tad weird. Dislike the Sindar strength malus for the same reason. Both could lose a point of constitution to compensate perhaps?

Oh, and came across a minor display bug; known ego items pulled from skeletons still show up as (special) in the log (and then show up properly id'd in the inventory window).

So, I took Smite for the first time and it's FUN!

UX Question: Would you consider adding a command key to turn it on and off? I know that macros exist, but this ability really feels different than almost every other one in that there is very high risk to having it on.

Flaming arrows was arguably like this in vanilla Sil and the repercussion was much lower (losing arrows.)

I also think it's worth having a light on for it in the bottom bar ('Smite') just so I remember if I have it on or off.

Gameplay question: If I have whirlwind attack and I attack an enemy for the first time, will the surrounding enemies hit by my whirlwind attack also be smitten? (Smote?) The wording of Smite suggests that this is so, and I'm thinking it might be a fun gamble build (kill'em all in one swing or die trying.) Will I lose N turns if I smite N enemies with the whirlwind? :O

You only lose one turn if you Impale or Whirlwind, but you will do full damage across the entire swing.

I am open to considering a Smite toggle key, though the ability description is pretty lengthy as is so I might need to think about how that would work.

It might be easier when considering the "downside" to think of Smite as delivering the damage you'd deliver in two turns up front. It's not precisely the same, as the maximum is not quite double the average (average usually comes out ahead over two swings by the number of dice), but hitting only once means only one enemy armour roll. For a Flanking build where you want to reposition every turn it's not ideal, but it's less problematic elsewhere.

Tutorial
 

I was also going to comment on the tutorial, but others have beaten me to it :D