Sil-Q balancing toward first official release

[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]

Originally Posted by 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'.

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]

Originally Posted by ripforareason

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by ripforareason

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]

Originally Posted by Quirk

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.