Sil Pasta 0.2

~Sil Pasta~

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What is Sil?
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In Sil, you play a hero/heroine who must descend into the iron fortress of Angband, dive 20 floors down into Morgoth's lair, steal a Silmaril from his crown and make it out alive. You can play as an Elf (easy), a Dwarf or Grey Elf (medium), or a Human (impossibru). The game is based off of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Silmarillion", so expect to see a lot of references in the form of enemies and items.

"There are no wizards or priests, no platemail or magical scrolls. Instead, it is the Norse Saga inspired world that Tolkien imagined, with warriors clad in shining mail, singing songs of rage or sorrow as they slay. The magic of the world is subtle yet powerful: there are songs of fear and of binding, rather than spells of fireball and teleportation."


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Links
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Download:
http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/

Manual (read it):
http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/Sil-111-Manual.pdf

Video Introduction to Sil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07f3rKY2c50

Sil Forum:
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=12

Ladder (character dumps):
http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-browse.php?v=Sil

Video Playthroughs:
http://www.youtube.com/user/silstreamer/videos?view=1&flow=grid


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Skills and Abilities
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Skills: melee, archery, evasion, stealth, perception, will, smithing and song. Dexterity adds bonuses to the first four. Grace adds bonuses to the latter four.
Abilities: every skill has many of these. Some have prerequisites. Skills can be deactivated by highlighting the skill and pressing right.

In general, do not invest too heavily into abilities early on. If you're doing a generic melee fighter dude, good melee and evasion (this is what lets you hit and dodge) are more important than having melee abilities. One or two abilities can be fine. The early game is a little inflexible, as you need good combat abilities, but once you're a couple floors down, you can choose where you place your experience.


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Accuracy and Evasion
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The numbers on the left under your Health and Voice are your attack with melee, attack with bows and defense.

(+9, 3d7) means you have an accuracy of +9 and do 3d7 damage. Keep your accuracy high. Heavy weapons have accuracy penalties. [+12, 6-20] means you have an evasion of +12 and reduce damage taken by 6-20. Keep your evasion high. Heavy armor has evasion penalties. If you wear heavy armor, you still need evasion.

Every point of melee skill adds one accuracy and every point of evasion skill adds one evasion. If your accuracy is equal to the target's evasion, you will hit 50% of the time. The same applies for dodging enemy attacks. Attacks with bows are an exception and ignore half of the evasion.

A big part of the game is balancing between your accuracy and damage. Heavy weapons do decent damage (if you have enough strength) but are hard to score criticals with. Light weapons on the other hand do poor damage, but have a much better chance of scoring criticals.


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Tactics and Monster Behavior
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Enemies in Sil will fuck your shit up. They usually travel in packs and work to corner you, flank you and block you off from nearby exits. Getting surrounded is a sure way to die quickly, as enemies get attack bonuses for surrounding you.

Other enemies will run away from you while their buddies pelt you with arrows. Archers in particular are a problem for newer players, but there's an easy way to deal with them. If you get them against a wall with no doors or passages nearby, then approach them at a perpendicular angle, they'll stop running away and fight you in close quarters. It looks something like this:

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..o..|
..@..|

The idea is you want to get them into a position where they can't move without still being in attack range of you. Getting them in a corner is even better:

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....o|
...@.|

You can easily do this using 'L' bends in passageways. Simply give them five or so spaces of room, so they'll feel comfortable to move into the elbow and start shooting arrows at you. They won't run away when you move in to attack. Of course this is all easier said than done. Often enough, you'll have multiple ranged enemies attacking you at once, and they'll bring along melee support.

Some of the more troublesome monsters like spiders, dragons and wraiths will stop chasing you if they can't see you. Ducking behind a corner or even a pile of rubble is enough to get a shadow spider off your back. Dragons prefer to stick by their treasure piles and will only attack if you get too close to their shinies.


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Item Identification Strategy
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Buy Lore-Master or make a Lore-Master helm if you're a smithing character.


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Tested Builds
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Noldor Artisan:
 -House of Feanor: 3, 4, 4, 3
 -at chargen: 4 melee, 4 evasion, 6 smithing, Armorsmith, Artistry
 -at 100ft, there's a guaranteed three-use forge; make leather armor, a helm, and a shield, raising their evasion and protection
 -at the next forge, make a cloak, boots, gloves and/or a dwarf mask (for fire resistance)
 -this gear will usually be better than anything you'll find normally
 -you can put off putting more points into smithing until later when there is something specific you want to make
 -you could also go the Enchantment route instead (for Boots of Speed, Helm of Brilliance, etc.)
 -later on you can get Artifice and make customized artifacts

Noldor Brawler:
 -House of Fingolfin: 3, 3, 5, 3
 -at chargen: 6 melee, 6 evasion (and Song of Slaying if you want it)
 -necessary abilities: Hardiness, Critical Resistance, Constitution
 -recommended abilities: Power, Opportunist, Song of Sharpness, Unwavering Voice
 -generally an easy character since you have high HP and defense
 -pick a weapon that makes use of your strength bonus
 -high will means lower chance of certain status effects and attribute drains


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Protips
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1. Read the fucking manual and play the fucking tutorial.
2. Murky brown potions are always potions of orcish liquor. Clear potions are always potions of miruvor.
3. Swapping any piece of equipment only takes one turn.
4. Use a shortbow or thrown weapons to kill fleeing enemies. You don't need any skill to do this. To use thrown weapons more easily, press '{' to inscribe, select your spears or axes, and inscribe them with '@t1'. Now you can press 't' to throw and '1' to select them, instead of looking for their letter.
5. Orc archers and esterling archers are annoying. A good way to reduce their damage to almost nothing is to carry a shield and maybe a heavy armor, and put them on when fighting these enemies. If you learn how they move, you can pin them against a wall and bash their heads in.
6. Some enemies have very high evasion and low protection, use an accurate weapon against them. In particular, flying insects ('I' glyph) have high evasion and no hp. Shortbows are great at killing them because bows ignore half of their evasion. You don't need skill in archery to kill them with bows, but expect to miss a lot anyway.
7. Some enemies have high protection, use a big damage weapon against them. Centipedes (probably not worth swapping for these), esterling warriors, serpents.
8. If a door on your map is closed, you can see when a monster opens it even if it's not in vision. Strategically close doors behind you, so monsters don't get the drop on you.
9. Enemies in groups like to wait at the exit of a hallway to gang up on you. If you take enough damage to make the color of your @ change from yellow to orange, they'll chase you into the hallway. A fun way to mess with them is to take Charge and grab a heavy weapon. They won't chase you into the hallway, so you can freely step back and forth, busting heads like a champ.
10. A few points in stealth help every character.
11. Seriously read the manual it has a lot of important info on mechanics not covered here. It has pretty pictures too.
12. Food should never really be an issue unless you're wearing an item that boosts metabolism. In a pinch, you can eat herbs and drink potions to satiate yourself.
13. Some items like herbs can be hard to see on the floor, especially if you're using a smaller font. Do a brief scan of the floor every now and then to make sure you didn't miss anything.
14. Easterlings and giants require light to see; if you have a source of shadows, you can unequip your light source and attack them from the dark. Sneaky!
15. Keep lesser jewels or shining items if you find them; you can drop them on the ground to add to your light radius and see pesky enemies that are usually shrouded in darkness, like shadow spiders.
16. Keeping a single save file has a few fun benefits. You can see how many times you've been killed and by whom. You also keep your monster memory which you can check by pressing 'Esc'.
17. Killing enemies has decreasing returns in XP. Check the enemy with (r)ecall to see if you'll get any items or experience for killing it.
18. Weapons of Gondolin are excellent until around the midgame. Exchange it for a weapon of Doriath and Nargothrond later.
19. If you're having trouble with rauko and balrogs, you can take Rauko-bane in the perception skill tree.
20. You can refuel your equipped lantern with ones in your inventory or on the ground with the 'u'se command.
21. Don't open chests if there isn't enough room for the loot to drop; pick up the chest with 'g' and open it in a more convenient location. Chests can have up to four items in them.
22. Make sure that if you kill a unique their loot has room to drop; items can only drop up to one space away from where the unique died, and they can only drop on open floor tiles. If an item doesn't have room to drop, it will disappear.
23. You can turn abilities on and off by highlighting the ability and pressing the right arrow key.
24. Don't eat until you are gorged, as you won't be able to drink potions or eat herbs in emergencies.
25. Staves of freedom can be used to clear rubble.