gonna post about Sil here

I think IT IS GUY has posted about Sil on ETI before. It’s a roguelike based on Angband but without a billion levels and much smarter enemy AI. It’s based on Tolkien’s Silmarillion and the goal is to dive 1000’ into the dungeon and pry a simlaril from Morgoth’s crown and bring it to the surface so a hot elf babe will fuck you i think

The original creator basically abanonded the project a few years ago but there’s a variant being maintained called Sil-Q which has less early game variability.
https://github.com/sil-quirk/sil-q/releases

You start by picking your race, there are two flavors of elf (tankier melee and squishier ranged), dwarf, and human. The classes are not balanced and are basically more challenging in that order. I always play as elves because the game is hard enough already

The races then have houses which are balanced within the race, they alter the stat distribution bonuses and each have different affinities which are basically free abilities. The game uses an experience pool which you can spend at any time to increase skills and purchase abilities. Skills just incrementally cost 100*(new skill level) exp, and abilities start at 500 exp and go up by 500 for each ability in that category you purchase, so an affinity lets you get the first one free and the following ones cheaper by one increment.

Once you pick your race and house you get to do a point buy on your stats and spend exp from your initial pool to level up a few skills. I’ll write more about stats/skills/abilities later.

The game starts off with a nice poem, get hyped

Finally, the game starts you off at 50 feet, with a few torches and lembas for food and a crappy sword. You don’t start with a bow or armor, which is part of what makes Sil very challening in the early game.

Noldor
Blood is on your hands
Tears unnumbered
You will shed and dwell in pain

the first few levels are pretty boring so I probably won’t post too many screenshots of them, but i’ll try to talk about notable stuff.

The game uses a very complex morale system for the enemy AI which is probably my favorite part of the game. When enemies have allies they’ll behave differently than when alone, and when injured they’ll run for their lives if possible. There are some unique named orcs which appear with orc packs and usually if you kill the unique orc, it will terrify the rest and they’ll all scatter which is usually pretty hilarious.

The morale of the monster you’re attacking appears on the side of the screen near its health. Spiders and trolls are usually aggressive which means they’ll follow you down hallways and fight to the death. Other creatures like wolves and orcs usually start as confident where they’ll use smarter tactics like hanging out at the entrance of a hallway to fight you together, or try and take a different path to surround you. Orc Archers are annoying as fuck in the early game because they’ll hang out at a safe distance and take pot shots at you and retreat if you start to get close. Once an enemy is near death they’ll become panicked and change to fleeing where they’ll run away from you and will even take the nearest staircase to escape being murdered if they can.

The rest of 50’ level was pretty boring after killing a few wolves. There was a Mewlip, which in the original version of Sil are much more dangerous, usually appearing around 200’ and causing the fear status and making you lose your memory of the map. Now they just drain some of your light source potentially causing you to have them go out sooner, and die easily.

From: TJ “Henry” Yoshi at 2019-09-15 01:01:09
Noldor
Blood is on your hands
Tears unnumbered
You will shed and dwell in pain

why is this pink

Why is what pink?

There’s a guaranteed forge on the second level. Forges let you make weapons/armor/jewelry (for free!) but you need the corresponding smithing ability first. There are advanced abilities that let you make ego weapons and artifacts and stuff but that requires a pretty heavy xp investment.

Might as well write about skills and abilities more now:
Skills are basically just like a DnD skill check, you get your base skill level + your dex/grace stat + enhancements from magic items - weapon and armor penalties
That gets rolled with a d10 for most things, or a d20 for combat rolls.

Abilities are basically unlockable mechanics you purchase with xp. They generally have a minimum skill rank investment required and can also depend on purchasing other abilities first (including abilities from other skill trees). It makes for a lot of flexibility and customization in your build, but it’s also possible to make bad choices and fuck yourself over since they become more expensive each time and xp is pretty limited in the beginning.

I want to make a better weapon than the starting sword. I’m gonna make a glaive because polearms are cool imo. The weaponsmith ability has a requirement of 2 ranks in smithing, so I’ll get 2 ranks and then buy it:

Now I’ve got a glaive, and since the forge starts with 3 charges I made a bow and some arrows too, gonna go fuck up some orcs

On the next level down I ran into Gorgol, the butcher - one of the unique orcs i mentioned before. He only came with 2 orc soldiers which is pretty small, usually he comes with a pack of 5-6. I tried to bait the down the hallway but since they’re confident right now they just waited near the entrance.

My glaive does a lot of damage so I’m not too worried about fighting 3 at once. I focused on Gorgol since uniques are obviously more dangerous.

Once Gorgol dropped, the other too immediately panicked and started to run away.

A few levels down I started running into some orc archer packs. They tend to stay as far as possible from you, a single one shooting at you usually isn’t a threat but if they catch you in the open and there are 3 or 4, they’ll kill you pretty fast. It’s good to stick to hallways, and if there’s a bend in the hall you can jam them up and kill them one at a time.

Enemies are starting to become a lot more common on this floor.

I bought the polearm mastery ability from the melee tree. I’ll write more about the differences in melee weapons later but buying polearm mastery gives a +2 bonus on all my attacks with polearms, and also grants the great ability to ‘set’ a polearm if I wait a turn. That lets me get a free attack at any enemy who steps adjacent to me. I was able to kill the serpent pretty easily because I can just hang out around the corner and get a free hit on anything that comes down the hallway.

An archer got a critical hit on me while I was trying to retreat, which could kill me if it gets another lucky attack.

Fortunately archers wont pursue through doors if you’re next to the door, so you can shut the door between them and rest there to get health back.

There’s some kinda phantom in the room though, because it drained my torch.

Invisible monsters are annoying. Spotting them is a perception check, so I decided now would be a good time to boost that skill. I put 5 ranks in so that I can also purchase the Alchemy ability. That auto-id’s all the potions/herbs/staves you see which is basically necessary for survival.

I ended up retreating but I hit a dead end. I’ve got a pickaxe though so I can clear the rubble and use the corner to kill the archers.

From: telorast at 2019-09-15 12:13:03
Why is what pink?

this topic. it’s pink.

the maps start to get a lot more intricate after the first few. Here’s the fully explored map of that level

I’ll also talk a bit about some of the screens around the main one for a sec - the game lets you customize the layout, the ones I always have up starting from the top left in clockwise order are:

• monster list
  
  • lets you see how many monsters and of which type are visible on screen
    
• equipment
  
  • shows your current equips and total equipped weight, which is relevant for some things
    
• inventory
  
  • self explanatory
    
• combat rolls
  
  • shows your attack and damage rolls against enemy evasion and armor rolls and vice versa
    
• recall
  
  • shows memory recall for your target, which is helpful since a lot of enemies have some nasty attacks that you might not notice otherwise. You have to fight them to learn more tho
    

From: cock x ball torture at 2019-09-15 15:50:36

From: telorast at 2019-09-15 12:13:03
Why is what pink?

this topic. it’s pink.

On the topic list I think that shows if someone is reading the topic.

i died lol

i rebuilt a similar character but spent more in melee at the beginning and i purchased whirlwind attack which is an ability that lets you hit every adjacent enemy which is very good

interesting 🤔

From: Tiko at 2019-09-15 22:24:31
interesting 🤔

it’s really good.

I’m basically back to where I was on the last character around 250’ depth. There’s another forge on this level and I had spare xp so I had a choice. I could buy a third melee ability Zone of control which is a great ability. It gives you an attack of opportunity on every enemy that moves between two spaces that are adjacent to you. A lot of abilities in Sil are basically iterative attacks granted when an enemy moves near you/away from you/you move.

But with the forge nearby, I could raise my smithing skill to 5, which would leave me enough to buy the Enchantment ability and make a glaive with an ego enchantment. As a bonus the skill auto-id’s every ego brand on weapons that I encounter!!!

I decided to dump the points into forging.

I also started trying to use-id some of my staves. One of them was a staff of self knowledge which basically tells you what effects are on your character both temporary and permanent. Here’s what I’ve got right now:

I used the forge to create a short bow of marchwaerdens which gives me resistance to fear (good), and see invisible (really good).
I also created 3 different glaives:

• defender
  
  • immune to destruction and doubles the evasion value granted by wielding
    
  • this is probably my standard equip
    
• gondolin
  
  • slays orcs and trolls, and also increases my light radius if one of those monsters is nearby
    
• doriath
  
  • slays wolves and spiders, and increases my light radius if one of those is nearby
    
    

Another cool feature is that the weapons will glow in your inventory too. They don’t increase the light radius but you can basically use them as a poor man’s ESP by watching when they light up. It’s a little hard to make out but my glaive of gondolin is glowing in this screenshot (compare to doriath above which is the regular color) so i know orcs or trolls are nearby.

The next level down was pretty good, one of my staves ended up being a staff of treasures which reveals all the items on the level. That’s usually a very rare staff and finding it at a high depth is really surprising. They generally have a low number of charges so it kinda sucks that I burned one early on, but the level ended up having some good stuff.

I found a brass lantern of brightness, which improves my light level from 1 square with the torch to 3 squares in each direction (normal brass lantern is 2 squares). Lanterns also have a capacity of 6999 turns of light so you don’t need nearly as many. Light is very important in the lower levels, there are creatures that generate darkness and it can grant them a lot of buffs, so increasing your light level is generally a good move.

Before:

After:

I also found a ring of +2 evasion which is pretty good. I haven’t really invested in any evasion yet so I added some levels on this floor, that will help me keep up with damage output in the levels to come. I also got a ring of +2 perception which is ok but since I found a ring of venom’s end which provides poison resistance earlier on, i’ll probably just hold onto it as a swap.

I also got a potion of constitution which recovers constitution stat drain and adds a bonus to con temporarily. That’s pretty huge since hp only increases based on your con stat in this game, so it effectively gives me 70 hp to tank with in a pinch.

I also found an herb of restoration which restores stat drain. Coincidentally I just got some stat drain from fighting a Wight. They tend to slow you and drain your dex. I’ve ony got one point drained right now so I’ll probably hold off using it, 3 dex is still ok but any lower or any other stats and I’ll use the herb 🍁

I haven’t really explained all the stats yet so maybe now is a good time.

Dex and Grace are the most straightforward. Dex gives you a +1 bonus for each point to the skills from melee through stealth, and Grace gives you bonuses on perception through song. Dex also helps you avoid needle traps which are a trap that causes stat drain, usually found at lower depths or possibly on trapped chests of items. Grace also increases your maximum voice which is basically your mana. Magic takes the form of songs because tolkien.

Constitution increases hp. It scales by like ~20% per point or something, so at higher levels it starts to pay more dividends. I usually put at least 4 points in that at the beginning becuasae you’re really squishy with low Con.

Strength is the most complicated stat and has big implications for your build. It increases carrying capacity so you can carry more heavy items without slowing, and improves your ability to bash down doors. It also helps avoid an enemy’s attempt to disarm you, and helps you tear out of spider webs. It also improves your range with bows and thrown weapons.

The real effect of strength is how it interacts with your weapon weight. Basically for each point of strength you have, your weapon gets a bonus side to the damage dice, however this is capped at the weight in lbs of the weapon. E.g. a longsword is 2 rolls of a d5, but if you have 3 strength and it weighs 3 lbs you would get 2d8 instead. But if it’s only 2 lbs then it would cap at 2d7.

That makes it seem like a heavier weapon is always better because you can utilize more strength and get more damage sides, but the weight of the weapon is added to the difficulty of getting a critical hit. So it’s much easier to crit with a .5 lb dagger than a 7 lb greatsword because you would need to roll effectively 7 higher with the greatswordr to get the crit. So it’s really a tradeoff between trying to be a heavy hitter and going for crits.

oh and the way both slays and crits work is adding more dice to the weapon, so a crit with 3 str and a 3 lb longsword of gondolin on an orc would do 4d8 which really starts to pile on. And crits get an extra die for every 6+weapon weight beyond the first so you can get insane multipliers with daggers potentially

I ran into more unique orcs, Lug and Balmeg. They appear together, Balmeg can disarm you while Lug will confuse you if he crits which he does a lot. Fortunately I encountered them in a vault and could kind of jam them up, with whirlwind attack and my glaive of gondolin I was able to do enough damage. They tend to have pretty high AC making it tough to damage them if you don’t have a strong weapon. They didn’t drop any interesting loot.

I got stat drained by another wight so i ate the herb of restoration but then i got my strength drained by another one. I hadn’t increased my will skill at all which helps resist that…I added some points after the fact but being down to 1 strength lowered my damage output. I’ll have to keep my eye out for a strength potion or another herb.

I found some mithril gauntlets of treachery on the ground. Mithril is cool because it won’t be damaged by acid/fire and treachery is interesting. It lowers your strength by 1 point but grants you the opportunist ability while equipped. That gives you a free attack on any enemy that moves away from you. That really helps finish off enemies when they’re close to death and try to retreat. I havent worn them yet due to the existing strength drain.

I ran into a Giant in a vault. They have high health and hit really hard and hurl rocks at you from ranged. I’ve lost a few characters to them before. Since my strength was low I decided to pop one of my potions of con as insurance but it went down without any trouble. I also realized I had built up 7k exp and decided that i should spend it before the fight. I boosted my melee by another 2 points, and bought Zone of control, and dumped the rest into my will skill so i’ll stop getting drained so frequently. I also bought strength in adversity from the will tree, which boosts my str/dex/grace by 1 while below 50% and by +3 while less than 25%. The real reason is that it’s a prerequisite for vengeance which gives an extra damage die on an attack after I take damage which is good for weapons with high damage sides but low damage dice - namely polearms.

I encountered another forge, since I took the vengeance ability proper, I dont need the mithril gauntlets. You can melt down mithril and use it with a forge to make mithril swords or mithril armor. You can also make a feanorian lamp, which is a light source with radius 3 that requires no fuel. That needs the jeweler ability from smithing, so I now have basically everything but the artifact ability in that tree. I used the extra forge charges to make a ring of frost which provides resistance to fire.

I also ran into Othrod, the strongest unique orc. He came with an orc pack but I was basicaly one-shotting all his guys. He dropped some greaves that were slightly better than the ones I was wearing, but I also found some boots of leaping.

Leaping is an ability I don’t usually take, there are chasms on the ground sometimes which if you move into or get knocked into will drop you to a lower level and take some damage. Leaping lets you move over the chasms if you moved in the direction on the previous turn. Probably not worth taking the ability by itself so it’s nice to have a swap for when I need to jump.

I ran into a unique Rauko. I had to use a couple healing potions and a potion of con to survive, it hit like a truck. Rauko are basically the family of monsters that the Balrog was from. I took the skill bane from the perception tree, and sprinting from evasion. Bane lets you pick one class of monsters which you’ve killed at least 4 of, and it gives you a bonus of +2 to attacks against that monster type. It also scales as you kill more, giving +x for every 2^x monsters you kill. Rauko are pretty common later on and have tough uniques so it seemed like a good choice. I also made a glaive of Nargothrond which slays Rauko and dragons so that should prove helpful.

Sprinting lets you move fast after moving 4 steps in generally the same direction, which lets you flee encounters or chase down fleeing enemies. I also picked up flanking at some point in the past which gives a free attack when I move between 2 spaces next to an enemy. I also have dodging which gives a +3 if I moved on the previous turn, so basically I can just step diagonally between two squares near a monster back and forth, getting attacks and getting better evasion rolls.

I came pretty close to death here lol

I ran into Ulfang, The Black on the same level. He’s the leader of the Easterlings who were humans corrupted by Morgoth iirc. He wasn’t tough. He made it to the stairs but I killed him before he could leave and he spilled his treasure all over the floor.

Found a spiked pit, finally a use for my boots of leaping.

I’m around 700’ now, running into stuff that’s starting to hit much harder. i’ve had to retreat much more often. I have a lot of weapon options to get max damage against most things but I haven’t found much in the way of armor lately, and I had negleted to boost my evasion very much. I’ll need to fix that asap if I want to survive

Well I died so I’m gonna write the rest of this fast.
I traveled down another level and boosted my melee and evasion some more. I found a unique rauko and unique cat lord and killed them both. Didnt get any great loot. There was a forge so I bought the armor skill and made some armor with better resists.

The level below that I was doing ok, but I ran into a unique dragon. The fight was going ok but I probalby should have preemptively used a con potion and a potion of str but didn’t think of it.

It rolled 5d21 against me and did 2x my total health in damage ggnore

damn this game looks really cool

so right off the bat one major thing i see that’s different from other *bands is that there’s no starting town? are there any towns or shops at all?

Nope, no towns or shops. The forges let you create items,effectively for the cost of xp, so it’s not really necessary.

that’s an interesting dynamic, it means there’s literally no use for junk or even for items you don’t absolutely need for your build, plus you can’t go buy food, which would encourage you to stay light and keep moving

Yeah. There’s actually a mechanic I didn’t mention called minimum depth, basically every so many turns (not sure exactly whether it’s turn count or xp) the minimum depth lowers by a level, so if you take an up staircase it will spit you out at the same depth and force you to descend to progress. There’s also still the food clock but honestly I’ve never seen it as being as much of a problem.

The original Sil does have junk but sil-q removed them entirely.

damn that’s pretty cool

I’m going to pretend this is a roguelike thread instead of a game-specific one.

My favourite roguelike is Shiren the Wanderer. I just play the DS game but the original is on SNES, so you can also play it on your TV.

On the computer, I play Brogue casually with some regularity. I like a bunch of others, but rarely play them. UnReal World, Desktop Dungeons, 868-HACK, and Tales of Maje-eyal. I’d say I’m skilled at 868-HACK.

Lately I’ve been playing a cheap 3DS eShop game called Adventure Labyrinth Story, a sequel to a shop simulation/RPG. It has kind of gross anime 2D sprite art and character portraits. It seems really generous with letting you keep your shield&weapon after dying. Something interesting is you can combine and upgrade items, like adding Sleep Guard or ¹⁄₂ Hunger to the 3 slots which Weapons, Shields, and Rings have. It seems like it even has a story, updating when I progress further and get back to town.

shiren owns

have you ever played izuna or izuna 2

From: Applebaps at 2019-11-04 17:43:11
shiren owns

have you ever played izuna or izuna 2

I own them both, but haven’t started them. I’m intimidated by them. Some day though, for sure.

izuna 1 in particular is super easy to get into fwiw. super simple straight up dungeon crawler
2 is basically the same game, but just adds a partner mechanic and more dungeons and towns

they’re very similar to shiren, mechanically, with the biggest New Thing being equipment customization through “sticking” talismans with various effects to equipment. you’ve even got a persistent character level that boosts your HP and stays between runs even if you lose everything, so eventually you’ll be able to brute force your way through

This has been super interesting to read so far; looking forward to more.