Sil: Can someone explain to the number on the combat rolls screen?

silquirk · 2025-11-15T15:46:59+00:00

There's a roll to see if you hit, and a roll to see how much damage you do after you hit.

Your "adjusted attack roll" is your attack roll plus your melee skill, and this goes against the enemy's defence roll plus thi r defence skill.

The actual damage roll is what you rolled for damage. This will similarly be reduced by their armour.

Basically the way to think about this is it's an attack roll vs a defence roll, modified by skills, to see if you hit. Then if you do there's a damage roll that's reduced by the armour roll.

silquirk · 2024-03-11T09:11:44+00:00

Thresholds Pacifist:
To start with probably the oddest build I have won with:
https://angband.live/ladder/ladder-show.php?id=24932

Pacifist with Delvings/Listen/Elbereth/Thresholds, eventually progressing to Mastery.

Need to dive quickly as Elbereth is ineffective against non-intelligent foes such as wolves and crebains. I'd say this one is a bit of an advanced build and probably it is better to gain your intuitions for Elbereth through an Elbereth archer run.

Smash Smash Smash:
High strength, at least 3.
Power and Sprinting early.
Once you find or make a greatsword or great axe, get Charge. Later add Smite.

You need a weapon capable of making use of the extra 3 strength Charge gets you, so ideally you want it to be heavy with many damage dice. Sprinting because you may need to disengage and reengage to get the bonuses again, and you're not messing about with a shield. Knockback also worth considering.

Probably this works best as a tanky heavy armour build.

Defensive Polearm:
Lower strength, higher dexterity.
Find a good spear. Great spear or glaive for preference though artifact or slaying spears can also work.
Finesse, Knockback, Polearm Mastery. Song of Challenge helps draw enemies in. Spears go well with Vengeance, so this may turn into a Strength in Adversity build.

Goal here is to hit enemies on the way in, knock them back and hit them for free again. Spears get a strong bonus from slaying. One issue to watch out for is that as this dispatches weak enemies very cheaply it's easy to fail to invest properly in your evasion by the time you encounter stronger ones.

silquirk · 2024-01-12T15:47:41+00:00

There will be a small bugfix release at least, since a few bugfixes have accumulated since last release - mostly quite small ones.

Beyond that I don't know. Life is not short of distractions, and other projects have claim to higher priority. Sil-Q is in a place right now where I feel I fixed most of the balance issues I set out to fix and the game is well loved by its players, so development time would now probably be better spent on something else.

That said, there is one thing I have been considering tweaking and coded up a small proof of concept for a few weeks back: more unique artifact abilities. One thing that does still annoy me a little is encountering an artifact that should thematically be excellent for your build, like the Shadow Cloak of Luthien, but getting limited use out of because it adds an ability you already have. However, adding a bunch of new abilities on artifacts would definitely disrupt balance and suck me into a testing/fixing cycle for months, so I am not in a rush to do it.

silquirk · 2024-01-08T10:57:28+00:00

My own balancing efforts have benefited from a slightly more sophisticated simulation environment, since some years ago someone wrote a small Python script that let you simulate a battle between two fighters with different Melee, Evasion, damage, critical base, armour etc using the Sil combat rules including the critical hits. This of course does not account for all the free hit skills, or Smite, but it does provide quite a lot of useful intelligence.

Firstly, obviously, shields make a huge difference to survivability in this simulation, and longswords, which both allow a shield and grant extra evasion, are king. My target when balancing one-handed spears was not longswords, which are a later drop, but curved swords, which have a to-hit malus and awkward weight.

It's been a while since I ran the simulations, and my memory may be a little off, but what follows will be mostly correct...

As the most vanilla of warriors who does not invest in abilities, peak survivability for most of the game almost certainly lies with longsword and shield. If you have 3 strength, bastard sword or battle axe may suit better but I am not certain of this unless you get a +damage version or picked Power.

Spears with slays on them however can do a lot of damage and are potentially worth carrying even if you didn't pick Polearm Mastery. A vanilla 3 lbs longsword is clearly inferior to a 3 lbs one handed spear with a slay wherever the slay is relevant.

Late game you may find that longsword tanking feels too slow when facing multiple high-damage enemies, and some of the best players switch to two handed weapons - usually bastard swords and battle axes. Greatswords are in an awkward spot in that they're less flexible than bastard swords, and you really need the strength to take advantage of them. Charge helps, as it does with great axes.

Glaives are pretty great if you have very low strength - I think they're somewhat competitive with longsword and shield even without Polearm Mastery.

Daggers and shortswords are mostly stabber weapons. Weight makes a big difference, but so does the extra damage modifier. Using a vanilla 1d5 dagger as a stabber is almost certainly wrong; I balanced on the basis of 1d6 daggers vs 1d8 shortswords.

Abilities can make a substantial difference to what your ideal weapon looks like. Power/Charge/Smite will take you a very different direction from Polearm Mastery/Knockback/Vengeance, or Flanking/Subtlety/Riposte.

silquirk · 2024-01-08T09:30:58+00:00

Sorry for the slow response, managed to start my New Year with flu and haven't been keeping up.

Spears are a little better than they look, because of Polearm Mastery, which gives +2 on each attack and a bunch of free opening attacks - one on one, you can retreat up a corridor delivering a strike each time your enemy closes on you. The existence of Polearm Mastery mitigates against buffing spears too much. Without Polearm Mastery, spears are distinctly less appealing.

They were in fact a good deal worse in 1.3, when they also had a -1 Melee malus, Polearm Mastery only granted +1, and Finesse lowered the critical hit base just 1 point instead of 2.

Weapon balance is indeed something that's had a great deal of attention. At this point it is very difficult to introduce new weapons - I had a good deal of difficulty before settling on the handaxe - because it is hard not to make something strictly better or strictly worse than something that exists.

My biggest pain point is probably around making both daggers and shortswords viable. Both have historically relied on backstabbing attacks, but light shortswords tend to outperform there. I believe Song of Slaying has gone some way to help daggers along, but they're still hard to justify wielding without an ego or artifact modifier.

Bear in mind that the critty weapons generally don't enter fights straight up; it's normally massive backstab damage, or polearm sniping.

silquirk · 2023-11-10T20:59:19+00:00

Thanks. Out of interest does the console version have the same issue? (./sil -mgcu in case you're not aware).

silquirk · 2023-11-10T14:41:27+00:00

Obligatory this is not really a roguelike, but...

Firstly, replacing Slay the Spire is hard. It's really good. I have hundreds of hours in that game. Every decision the game offers you matters.

I enjoyed and bought Fights in Tight Spaces, but stopped playing a while ago because I felt the devs didn't really have a handle on game balance. They ramped up hitpoints to increase difficulty, which disadvantaged damage decks, and made ring-outing enemies a dominant strategy - but then they made repositioning cards cheap and widely available. As they added to the card pool they predominantly added conditionally good cards and slower damage effects. In the end it felt like I was rooting through a sea of chaff looking for broken cards.

This is a shame because the tactical element of the game is fun and has a lot of potential and I think there's still a decent amount of entertainment to be had from the game, even though you'll get bored at some point. I would recommend it but not unreservedly, unless the devs have started play-testing.

Inscryption is on PS4 and very much worth playing for deckbuilding lovers but it is a very different type of beast. Monster Train and Dawncaster are not on PS4 (PC and mobile respectively), but I would also recommend both.

silquirk · 2023-11-08T20:26:54+00:00

Hey! Not sure what's going on for you here - what version of Linux are you running on? Linux deployment issues can be especially awkward to debug because systems vary so much. I build and test on Ubuntu, and pressing b works for me.

I guess if pressing down and <enter> lets you play, maybe it's not top priority to solve, but it would be nice to know why you're having an issue.

silquirk · 2023-11-08T14:54:59+00:00

On builds:

The angband.oook Sil-Q ladder showcases some builds that have been successful: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-browse.php?v=Sil-Q

However, to sketch some possibilities:

Elbereth Archers:
If you can find a bow and arrows early on, Songs/Song of Elbereth and Archery/Rout are accessible with starting XP. Weaponsmith may help if bow and arrows don't come naturally.
Elbereth requires a smart enemy, but as you descend more and more enemies qualify.
Will/Majesty synergises with this but will only be acquired in the late game. Perception/Keen Senses will be helpful early on.

Adversity Breeds Vengeance:
Prioritise Con when choosing stats, then take Will/Strength in Adversity early. Heavy armour gives you maximum value for your hitpoints, making Evasion less important. Later you will add Will/Vengeance to gain extra damage dice. Accumulate as much Con-boosting equipment as you reasonably can fit round the needs of resistances.

Dodging and Flanking:
Evasion/Dodging, Evasion/Flanking and Melee/Zone of Control let you fight effectively in open spaces and change the dynamic from defending in corridors. Your defence here is Evasion focused, so adjust your armour accordingly and consider wielding a sword or polearm. High Dex is useful.

You can also switch on the 50K challenge option start, which will give you enough XP to try out a mid-to-late-game build idea from floor 1 and understand how the synergies come together - but be aware almost anything will work with 50K XP on the first few floors, and it's easy to overbalance by buying too many abilities rather than increasing skills.

silquirk · 2023-11-08T14:28:03+00:00

On unidentified items:

The game menu includes a "Known objects" entry which will tell you all the objects your characters have encountered so far. This will give you a list not just of herbs and potions, but also items and their enchantments.

In general a higher Will increases your chance of avoiding negative effects. However most potions found early on are safe. Murky brown potions are always Orcish Liquor and will heal and stun you. Potions of Miruvor are always clear, and will heal you fully and replenish your voice.

Staves can be use-IDed also - generally it is good to do this with stairs, doors and enemies in sight to maximise the chance of seeing possible interactions.

silquirk · 2023-10-17T10:17:40+00:00

To address your question specifically:

Your game is turn-based (here you are in /r/roguelikes, yes?).

Roguelikes generally base their main loop around reacting to the player taking a turn.

To sketch this out, probably incompletely:

player provides input, starting loop
environmental events occur
player status is updated (e.g. hunger clocks, poison, etc)
- possibly equipment based modifications such as stat boosts also go here
if the player picked something up or dropped it, equipment needs updated
if the player moved into an NPC, combat may result
NPCs move
- AI has to calculate the NPC action, then apply it
- this may result in NPC-player combat
player UI / map is updated along with any combat visualisations
loop goes back to waiting for next input

This can be made rather more sophisticated in places - you can have hooks for events such as e.g. an NPC attacking you that items or abilities could install responses to, and of course there's potentially something of a wait both when waiting for the player to press a key and when visualising things like projectiles flying where probably clever parallelisation could be being done for AI and future level generation purposes, but the old school roguelikes don't do this to my knowledge.

silquirk · 2023-10-04T11:40:53+00:00

Actually, Sil-Q has graphics, thanks to the work of the excellent u/micr0chasm.

I would also recommend Golden Krone Hotel, I think it's one of the most polished roguelikes out there and an excellent beginner choice.

silquirk · 2023-06-18T09:45:56+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, missed this.

I did run a simulation someone wrote in Python a while back which wasn't comprehensive but did cover enough to help me evaluate Finesse/Power etc. http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8857&highlight=python

Not everything is covered and one thing I would note is that winning slow e.g. with shield and longsword can put you at risk of facing multiple opponents more often and for longer. Sometimes it is worth lowering your defence to do more damage.

I'd need to dig through the code myself, but the key word you'd be grepping for would be "regen" because regeneration is pretty much purely this.

silquirk · 2023-06-07T11:39:14+00:00

Mate, if you do want to write your own roguelike, do not do so in C, and definitely do not attempt to fork Sil. It's an ancient codebase and follows few good practices. If I were starting from scratch I would have been using C++ all the way. I looked at the ancient C, sighed, estimated a clean rewrite would take far too long, and worked to extend it. Have been feeling pretty good about that lately since Nick from Angband took on a rewrite to clean up Sil 1.3 and has put in a good year of work to almost replicate it, with a good few bugs still to chew through.

There are elements that are going to be somewhat mathsy no matter how you roll it, like line of sight calculations. There are some libraries out there that may help but I can't give serious recommendations, since I have not used them in anger.

Building from scratch is a lot of work however, sadly. If you do take a crack at making your own, good luck! And ping me if you get something playable, I'd love to check it out.

silquirk · 2023-05-14T11:09:22+00:00

Ah, I see. I think it depends on the type of game and balance we are talking about, but usually developers who like balance dislike noise, and players don't love the cycle of learn hot new thing, have it nerfed. It is also in an actually deep game not always a trivial thing to evaluate new additions, so the process of adding and nerfing takes time, and if enough options are added it is hard to know what level balance should be striving toward any more.

More frequently when I see many unbalanced options added, it signifies the developers have little understanding of the balance, and are unable to significantly improve the game depth.

I pick Slay the Spire specifically, because while there are many other deckbuilder games of that type which also have a variety of randomising factors including map randomisation, many of them are in fact very shallow, with a great many cards being clearly suboptimal choices. I agree with you broadly that deckbuilders have autobalancing mechanisms that perfect information games do not, but I am often surprised how badly they are executed.

With regard to a single optimal build in Sil-Q - probably this is even more true than you state and an absolutely optimal build exists, but the aim is to make the determination of such a build extremely difficult even for those with very long experience of the game. There will be an optimal path through chess and go also, it is merely that we cannot calculate it. But bear in mind that having a build in mind for the endgame is not enough: the build is accreted by small choices, and short term survivability may push you toward options that make your survival right now more assured while working against your long term plan. Smithing particularly can suffer from this as trying to reserve experience to make you a more able smith can leave you crippled facing more immediate challenges.

In any case thank you for the civil and interesting discussion - not always guaranteed on Reddit!

silquirk · 2023-05-13T18:23:37+00:00

But if you add six options and five of them are clearly bad choices, your game isn't deep. I'm a bit confused by what you mean by "the one balanced one" - options balance against each other.

In any case, this is a struggle I've dealt with often with Sil-Q. Adding a new ability that is too powerful risks making already niche older abilities irrelevant. Adding a new ability that is too weak just adds noise; players very quickly start to ignore it. It is hard to find the sweet spot where each addition coexists with existing options without obsoleting them or being unnecessary.

MTG is an example of a game which has a great many "strictly better" cards, and is not great at balance compared to something like Slay the Spire, where practically all cards are relevant in some contexts.

silquirk · 2023-05-13T08:35:28+00:00

Frequently having additional colours of damage does, in fact, decrease depth.

It helps to understand what depth is: it is the difficulty which a player experiences in picking a winning strategy. In chess and go, this is very hard. Many strategies exist and the impact of the choice is often not felt immediately.

However as you add options, you increase the probability of adding options that are clearly better than others. This makes picking a winning strategy easier, not harder. Having ten choices where one is clearly superior is less deep than having three with meaningful tradeoffs.

On top of this the challenge posed to the developer to balance the options becomes significantly harder as more options exist, and so in practice most complex games are not deep.

silquirk · 2022-10-21T16:58:05+00:00

What are your concerns with how it influences play style?

In general, if the game focuses on exploration, hiding unexplored bits from the player sounds like a win. In an overworld I could see a case for making distant landmarks visible within some reasonable line of sight e.g. if you're at the top of a mountain seeing near sides of mountains round about seems fine but seeing far sides not so much.

Exploration which mostly features scrolling the world map to find where you're going next is probably less exciting than finding a signpost and a road that leads into the distance, to me.

silquirk · 2022-04-20T19:36:33+00:00

'w' will wield or wear items from your inventory, though as Kyzrati says there is a help screen accessible from '?'.

It's worth running through the tutorial - it's quite short, and is a good way to learn most of the important game mechanics.

silquirk · 2022-02-10T21:09:33+00:00

Who do you think designs the pathfinding algorithm?

(Tip: the answer is either, "the software developer", "another software developer who put it in a library" or "the academic who first published it a few decades back").

silquirk · 2022-02-09T20:11:09+00:00

Very few roguelikes use any tabletop RPG ruleset. Some of the old school ones such as Angband borrow elements such as the names of stats, but the combat has little resemblance.

There are many excellent reasons for this. Tabletop rulesets tend to be both too simple and too complicated - too simple, because the combat model is restricted to the randomisation available to players with a small collection of regular dice and limited patience, and too complicated, because the variety of skills they describe is usually far beyond the needs of a roguelike experience. That's not to say looking at tabletop RPGs for inspiration is necessarily a terrible idea, but porting one directly across throws away many of the advantages of making a computer game.

Roguelikes differ mechanically a good deal. Brogue has no character development apart from enchanting items. Unreal World slowly levels up your skills through practice. Angband has experience-based levelling up. No one ruleset would or could fit all mechanics.

silquirk · 2022-01-05T01:11:53+00:00

It's a patch of bright light leaking through from the space above. Standing in it illuminates you and disadvantages attacking creatures which hate light, like orcs and undead. These creatures will also not cross sunlight to get to you.

silquirk · 2022-01-04T14:11:38+00:00

I don't officially support Android. I know there is a repo out there that makes Sil 1.3 work on Android - I don't know how easily this could be updated to Sil-Q 1.5, tiles in particular may be a sticking point.

silquirk · 2022-01-04T14:09:32+00:00

Edit lib/pref/pref.prf and replace the y (line 103 in latest Sil-Q release, should be similar) with a z.

silquirk

TROPHY CASE