Sil 1.1 Builds?

[chowanec]

Hey all,

Having a hard time with Sil. Love it to death though. That said, I could use some help on builds. I don't have the kind of time I had when I was younger to purely experiment and have been looking at the various ladders for patterns in the successful builds.

Any advice for a newb?

-Chow

[HallucinationMushroom]

A feanor 2/4/5/3, or 2/5/4/3, with a lot of evasion/melee will take you pretty far. If you want something a bit more specific, I recommend the same feanor, but with artistry. For a fairly poorly, and mayhaps amusing video, I somewhat detail/showcase it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4JSpmmh_8A

At the end I say that you shouldn't do this if you want to be a master smith, but I've seen a couple of ladder posts of characters who did this kind of start who went on to be master smiths... so, I was wrong about that.

Just remember to wear the stuff you forge.

[debo]

Yeah, to give a bit of written detail, what I like to do with HM's build is:

Feanor 2/5/4/3

At 50' put 6 points into Smithing and take Armorsmith and Artistry
Split rest of points evenly between melee and evasion. (I think it ends up being 4 and 4.)

Dive to 100' as soon as you see stairs and find your first forge. If you get 500xp, buy Power from melee tree (or finesse, depending on where you want to go with things).

Make a [+0, 1d5] leather armor
Make a [+1, 1d4] leather shield
Make a [+0, 1d3] helm

Now make your way to ~250' -- don't dive, but don't spend forever exploring either. Keep splitting points between melee and evasion. Try to find a longsword for use with shield, and a heavy weapon (greatsword is ideal) for monsters with high protection / general resilience (molds, sulrauko, centipedes, easterlings). Don't be afraid to take off the shield and use a heavy weapon if you need more damage.

Keep grinding until you've spent 10 points in both melee and evasion. If you start getting roflstomped by archers (they can be hard to deal with when you first start playing), wear your shield and buy Blocking. (It doubles your shield protection against missiles, among other things.)

If you get hit by a purple mold and lose con -- deal with it, you'll find a potion of con soon enough.

Once you have spent 10/10 in melee and evasion, start buying Perception until you get to 7 points, and then buy Lore Keeper and Lore master. (By now your inventory should be getting really full of un id'ed shit. DON'T id by use in the early game until you know what things are supposed to do.)

If you find a forge before 400' (should be likely), make any of

+2 cloak
[+0, 1d3] greaves (or +1, 1d2 boots)
[+0, 1d1] gauntlets (i.e. remove the attack penalty and add 1 to evasion)
[-2, 2d4] mail corselet (remove the attack penalty, add 1 evasion)

Once you've spent 10 points in evasion, you should be able to wear the corselet without getting hit by every single swing. (You might need a way to boost your smithing to make some of this latter stuff -- usually you can find gauntlets of the forge or something else to get up to +13 instead of the +10 you had at the beginning. I wouldn't spend more points in smithing unless you know you want to go further with it.)

From here, you can take this build pretty much anywhere. If you want to play straight up thwacker style, you can start buying points in Will (along with continuing to invest in melee and evasion) to get any of Hardiness, Inner light, poison resistance, etc. But really to learn to survive past 500', you're going to have to die a lot. There's a huge variety of challenges in the greater depths.

Ask questions here as you run into things that stump you! This should get you up and running to the point where you can consistently survive the first 400' pretty easily.

[HugoVirtuoso]

debo: you should add suggestions on when and on how much to increase Smithing to make these Artistry items.

[debo]

Originally Posted by HugoTheGreat2011

debo: you should add suggestions on when and on how much to increase Smithing to make these Artistry items.

It's just the 6 points at the beginning and that's it. I never add any more than those initial 6 (unless I'm making a more smith-heavy build).

[Starhawk]

I've made it to 950' several times with a stealth/stabby build that completely ignores Smithing, Archery, and Song. (Gosh, there are lots of ways to play this game)

I start as a Noldor/Feanor with 2/5/4/3.

I start with 6 melee, 3 evasion, 4 stealth, 2 perception. I immediately (first turn) buy finesse and assassination.

After that I follow the advice given above -- climb to 10 melee/evasion/stealth ASAP. Also parcel out points into perception so you can take Loremaster (which should give you a bucket of XP in return for id'ing items).

As I get deeper, I usually focus on the Stealth tree and try to take most of the abilities on it (and try to get to the Dex bump if possible). And once I've got most of the abilities I want (and the Dex bump) I try and move melee/evasion/stealth closer to 20 ranks each. And of course, as you meet the nastier monsters you'll want to throw a few points into Will, and maybe take a few abilities there as you see fit.

This build is great fun if you find a high-quality weapon. You can one-shot a lot of monsters and if you keep your stealth high, you can avoid a lot of ugly encounters, too. Then again, the build is also a little drop-dependent. If I don't find good gear dropping by 300'-400'-ish, the character probably ends up dead.

[debo]

That's more or less exactly how I used to play, Starhawk. It can be a bit unforgiving, but I have a great time with it

The only difference is that I don't like taking assassination quite so early, because it encourages me to try to 1-shot monsters that are far too powerful

[taptap]

Do you change your build according to items you find early - say a +4 stealth artefact armor on 100ft.? (Never found this when I was trying to go stealthy though.)