Sil-Q new release

[Quirk]

Been a while, so making a new thread. Have been out a while and somewhat ill so apologies if this is less polished than previously; it should be more polished since bugs have been fixed etc but please let me know if you encounter anything game-breaking.

Release is at:
https://github.com/sil-quirk/sil-q/r.../tag/v1.3.2-q2

Notes:

A few bugfixes, a few tweaks, some new toys.

Perhaps the most exciting new toy for some will be the addition of the [ and ] key bindings - these show all objects and monsters within line of sight or on screen.

Smithing has lost Song of Aule, but has gained more abilities to put on artefacts, cheaper slays, resists, damage and protection, and negative effects now act to discount standard ego items. This is a further attempt at making Smithing more viable in the mid-game and less broken in the end-game.

Coup de Grace has moved to Stealth; given the first Morgoth kill was a stealth character, it could be seen as odd that this is effectively powering up Stealth. I suspect though that the larger factors in that victory were the Smithing and the Songs and the new skill would not have made a huge difference; this may make more combat-oriented stealth more viable.

Melee characters have a couple of powerful new toys in Anticipate and Song of Valour. Morgoth has been buffed a little to compensate.

There are new artefacts, a new curse and a new effect. Also a new spider.

Bugfixes:

• Recharging staff exploit fixed.
• Morgoth angering now processes before mastery or Lorien effects.
• Whirlwind Attack works with Follow-Through (and also Rapid Attack).
• Super-tunneling gone from kemenrauko and nameless ones - they now tunnel more slowly than you walk.

Tweaks:

• Mewlip blind is weakened, Balcmeg and Lug will and perception are toned down.
• Made giants throw boulders a little more often.
• Monster perception adjustment for early levels tweaked slightly - it was +3 for the first 5 levels down to +0 for the last 5, now it runs +2 to -1. I felt after making pacifism runs in original Sil that +3 was a lot.
• Various smithing changes. Weaponsmithing has gained from cheaper damage sides and slays. The major resists have got cheaper, and many more abilities are now available in places that better match artifacts.
• Negative effects on non-artefact items now reduce smithing costs, so e.g. a Shadow Cloak of Winter's Chill is worth making.
• The prerequisites on Forewarned were removed.
• Ring of Venom's End drops earlier, and Daggers of Accompaniment now grant +EV (they're parrying daggers after all).

New toys:

• Song of Delvings drops to 6, replacing Song of Aule. It works faster, detects secret doors and traps, and reduces tunneling difficulty.
• Song of Valour comes in at 10 (I wanted to call it Song of Breathless Deeds but the name wouldn't fit). It increases Strength and Dexterity by 3, may stun enemies with Will below your Song score, and drains health as well as voice.
• Coup de Grace moved to Stealth, costing 11 points and moving the Dex point to 12. It now provides guaranteed kills on enemies with HP under your stealth score.
• New melee skill: Anticipate, requires 12 Melee - rerolls misses up to twice against aggressive opponents. Requires Power or Song of Challenge.
• New spider quite early on.
• [ and ] show lists of monsters and objects; pressed twice they toggle between viewing line-of-sight and everything on screen.
• New effect: cheat death. Saves you from a fatal blow at 1 HP, curing negative status effects and giving you the next move. Amulets of Adornment are now Amulets of Last Chances.
• New curse: betrayal. New artefacts added. Swords and shields grow heavy and lay you open to maximum damage from a blow, helms fall over your eyes and blind you, rings and amulets slip from your finger and neck and alert all your surrounding enemies. They're all primed to pick the worst moment for this, though the curse will not kill you by itself and is triggered rarely.

[Bill Peterson]

Glad you did this now, rather than a couple of days later. I'm just putting the last touches on the revised Gervais graphics files. Are the spider and the artefacts of Betrayal the only new items to be displayed?

[Infinitum]

Nice! Played a few (very short) games, some initial thoughts:

Smithing

- Still think Smithing is a lost cause and the entire tree should be replaced, but the changes seem for the better.

- Changing/replacing all curses to work from the inventory (like Danger) could open up some interesting avenues (maybe in conjunction with some curse-effect-suppressing shenanigans from the will tree).

- I've mentioned this before, but reworking statgaining through items and forbidding +smithing items to remove smithing kit strategies still seem prudent.

Songs

- Love your song concepts, but is still apprehensive to actually test them out ingame. I believe the song tree would be much more interesting if songs were learned automatically from leveling up the skill alone, with abilities providing extra perks. At the moment having a large repertoire is actively penalized by the rule system which is a bit counterintuitive imo.

- Alternatively, have each race come with their own repertoire of songs which they learn as they level up song, with access to the other races songs (including enemy ones) gated behind abilites. Some songs could be shared between races but named differently - eg Song of the Trees/Song of the Sun/Song of the Hearth for Elves/Humans/Dwarfs respectively. The races could do with some extra differentiation imo.

- Song of Delvings could allow the PC to tunnel without a mattock at a high enough song level (unless it already does)?

Abilities/items

- Not crazy about Coup the Grace since it bypasses other game systems (Sil systems being simple and interlocking is what attracts me to them). Also a bit weird in that it's not as much a backstab/stealth ability as much as a flat (and large) amount of damage to each and every enemy encountered.

- How does cheat death work? Does the item shatter as it activates or is there a hidden cooldown?

- Anticipate. Eh. Wasn't it you that mentioned once that rerolls make a mess of calculating odds? Maybe as a flat bonus to hit coupled with lowering the enemy critical defense number? Could probably be folded into song of challenge somehow since that's the main gimmick unless you luck into/smith wrath artifacts.

- Love the new curse. Very tolkien-ish. In fact, I think this should replace the generic sticky curse for vanilla cursed items and give them +(),[] instead of maluses. Ruin should come with the promise of power.

Monsters

- Really liked the new spider; especially how it works around being kited as a slow monster.

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by Bill Peterson

Glad you did this now, rather than a couple of days later. I'm just putting the last touches on the revised Gervais graphics files. Are the spider and the artefacts of Betrayal the only new items to be displayed?

Yes, I think those are the only changes; Amulets of Adornment are Amulets of Last Chances now but it won't make any difference to the icon.

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Still think Smithing is a lost cause and the entire tree should be replaced, but the changes seem for the better.

I suspect you're probably right, but it's a bigger overhaul than I think I've energy for at this stage.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Changing/replacing all curses to work from the inventory (like Danger) could open up some interesting avenues (maybe in conjunction with some curse-effect-suppressing shenanigans from the will tree).

This would be especially good with regard to bringing back smithing negative effects onto items, but it does restrict the possible curse effects quite a bit.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- I've mentioned this before, but reworking statgaining through items and forbidding +smithing items to remove smithing kit strategies still seem prudent.

I'd actually been considering taking Smithing away from its Grace dependence altogether, but this would require a substantial rebalancing.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Love your song concepts, but is still apprehensive to actually test them out ingame. I believe the song tree would be much more interesting if songs were learned automatically from leveling up the skill alone, with abilities providing extra perks. At the moment having a large repertoire is actively penalized by the rule system which is a bit counterintuitive imo.

Yeah, this potentially would resolve many issues with Songs, but I think the existing songs would need extensively reworked to balance this. There's also the issue with some stats/skills working differently from others - this makes a steeper learning curve for new players.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Alternatively, have each race come with their own repertoire of songs which they learn as they level up song, with access to the other races songs (including enemy ones) gated behind abilites. Some songs could be shared between races but named differently - eg Song of the Trees/Song of the Sun/Song of the Hearth for Elves/Humans/Dwarfs respectively. The races could do with some extra differentiation imo.

I like the idea, but again it would require a great deal of balancing and the stat/skill screens would need a huge overhaul to ensure things were kept simple.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Song of Delvings could allow the PC to tunnel without a mattock at a high enough song level (unless it already does)?

You'll need a shovel at minimum, but Song of Delvings can make it into a Mattock of Belegost (better, because the strength requirements also drop).

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Not crazy about Coup the Grace since it bypasses other game systems (Sil systems being simple and interlocking is what attracts me to them). Also a bit weird in that it's not as much a backstab/stealth ability as much as a flat (and large) amount of damage to each and every enemy encountered.

We'll see how it beds in. There's a distinct difficulty for stabbers at present in that backstab damage is quite unreliable, and finishing off enemies if the backstab fails is hard. This hopefully should make the non-singing stabber more viable.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- How does cheat death work? Does the item shatter as it activates or is there a hidden cooldown?

Item shatters.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Anticipate. Eh. Wasn't it you that mentioned once that rerolls make a mess of calculating odds? Maybe as a flat bonus to hit coupled with lowering the enemy critical defense number? Could probably be folded into song of challenge somehow since that's the main gimmick unless you luck into/smith wrath artifacts.

It specifically makes weapons that need to connect rather than score a critical better, but the main reason it's not a flat bonus to hit is because there are a lot of them in other places, and rerolling seems thematic here. It does make actual calculation more of a pain; sorry. It should be possible to get a feel from how often it triggers how good it is. I think it's quite strong.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Love the new curse. Very tolkien-ish. In fact, I think this should replace the generic sticky curse for vanilla cursed items and give them +(),[] instead of maluses. Ruin should come with the promise of power.

Glad you like it. I did actually debate starting the player with a betrayal weapon, as this makes any non-betrayal weapon potentially worth having, even a dagger. I think it won't be to everyone's taste though so am keeping it on artefacts.

Originally Posted by Infinitum

- Really liked the new spider; especially how it works around being kited as a slow monster.

Thanks! It was fun trying to make something a little different.

[seraph]

it doesn't make sense to me that taking enchantment lets you id enchanted gear but jeweler doesn't let you id jewelry. also i think the dex point could have stayed where it was and coup de grace take the 10 slot. i don't think many people took it before; no reason to make it less accessible. overall though, i really like the changes you've put into the game.

also i really like infinitum's idea of learning all songs automatically,with abilities buffing them in some way. e.g. you could bring back unwavering voice, or roll silence and lorien into one song but you need the ability to put enemies to sleep.

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by seraph

it doesn't make sense to me that taking enchantment lets you id enchanted gear but jeweler doesn't let you id jewelry.

This is a very reasonable suggestion. Will try to add it to the next release.

[seraph]

staves of self-knowledge reveal no information about amulets of last chances, as if they are still adornment.

it quickly becomes cheaper to make a ring of protection than a ring of evasion of the same tier. a ring of evasion [+2] has a difficulty of 16, while protection [1d2] has one of 14.

i noticed in an earlier version (release 6?) that perception checks became easier. but in this release they reverted to the same difficulty. but perhaps i imagined this.

[Quirk]

Originally Posted by seraph

staves of self-knowledge reveal no information about amulets of last chances, as if they are still adornment.

Thanks for reporting this. Will fix.

Originally Posted by seraph

it quickly becomes cheaper to make a ring of protection than a ring of evasion of the same tier. a ring of evasion [+2] has a difficulty of 16, while protection [1d2] has one of 14.

This is intentional - as far as I can see Evasion gets more broken as it scales than protection does. To pick convenient numbers, increasing your Evasion from +6 vs your opponents attack to +8 reduces your chance of being hit by 25%. Increasing from +10 to +12 reduces it by 30%. The more Evasion you have, the more good having more does you until you're effectively unhittable. Reducing average damage taken by raising protection requires substantially larger increases to affect the big hitting enemies you care about in the late game. Protection is of course much more competitive earlier on, but the price is geared to the endgame. Happy to debate this point if someone else wants to crunch the maths and offer another perspective.

Originally Posted by seraph

i noticed in an earlier version (release 6?) that perception checks became easier. but in this release they reverted to the same difficulty. but perhaps i imagined this.

Perception checks haven't changed since the earlier version - they should still be easier than before.

[Infinitum]

Oooof yeah this effectively makes my favourite (+2,2d5)[+2] Mithril Longsword with sharpness/danger unmakeable. Guess my smithing builds are back to 4 points + jeweler and no investments past that.