Bay 12 Games Forum

You're talking about mid-game, so yeah luck is mitigated a lot by the abilities and the tactics that complement those.
But until you get those awesome abilities, stairs are player killer generator that if you're not having luck will spawn bunch of orcs when you are in need to rush to the stairs.

I was referring to everything before 500-600ft, before the awesome abilities; with a Beor that's about the point I run into Balrogs, which are hard to kill without at least one of all the buff potions. The only time orcs are a problem around 12 evasion (or maybe 10-11 and some armour) is if they corner me on more than 2 sides, and insufficient numbers come from stairs do that in all but the smallest of rooms (and so I know to be wary of those, and maybe just use a different staircase for the same result).

After you get some vanish, sprinting, listen and etc... you certainly pick your luck-based poison with a lot of ways of survivals, even better once you reach a good level of songs and can sleep your enemies (except of course a couple of sleep-immune monsters, fortunately very few).

I think I'm beginning to understand your perspective... you play a lot of stealth characters, since that's what Sil does so much better than other roguelikes, and as a result you aren't familiar with how much easier things get when you can usually kill every problem you run into. I also guess you play Haleth Edain, since they're the only choice with a stealth affinity, so you usually don't have any other options if stealth fails.

At least you get a lot of tension and suspense, with the odds of that playstyle?

I tried to get into Sil but I found it a bit complex and obtuse even by my very, very forgiving standards. Most of the complexity seemed to come down to UI design and lots of relatively niche use case skills/actions - I'll get into it one day I'm sure, just need to take it as a business trip game sometime.

You should read the manual! =D It's very well written, and the mechanics laid out are a lot more straightforward than most of the major roguelikes. I agree that the UI can be bad, but I don't think I've encountered an Angband variant with entirely good UI.

The skills/actions are a different sort of subject; Sil focuses on making even the smallest mechanics more significant, so that each thing has consequences beyond the obvious. Keen Senses, for instance, might not sound like much, but it's one of the best early perception abilities due to how it helps you keep from getting cornered or from bumping into something nasty in the dark, and for archers, it allows you to get free shots at things that think they're safe in the dark. The bonus to detect things like Sulrauko or Shadows is nothing to sneeze at, either.

Flanking is another one of those abilities that sounds poor to a lot of players— "it doesn't even let me attack more than one thing at once? It doesn't give any accuracy bonuses? Ripoff."— when it's actually one of the best abilities in the game, capable of turning unwinnable battles into slaughters. It lets you dance around and manipulate enemy positions while simultaneous killing them, and the mere 3 points of evasion the prerequisite gives you in those battles can be the difference between only losing a few hitpoints and getting worn down to nothing or taking a critical hit.

Anyway, what are the recommended *band variants these days?

PosChengband is popular nowadays, due to the sheer variety and craziness it offers, but I would like to recommend a variant of that variant; elliposchengband. It's been regularly maintained and updated as vanilla PosChengband has been, and it focuses on making the game less annoying and tedious while trying to preserve the same level of difficulty (and a few jokes the vanilla maintainer didn't get). (If you see reference to an mpa-poschengband, that's the predecessor to elliptic's version.)


P.S. Also, there's something called mpa-sil, which does the same thing for Sil as elli/mpa-poschengband do for poschengband; it tweaks things a bit to cut down on annoyances, like upgrading Lore-keeper/master and making it so you can still drink potions while engorged. Generally considered not insignificantly easier than normal Sil (although your dump file will clearly indicate the variant anyway, so it's not like putting on the ladder is cheating).

Edit: For reference, where the source code for Angband.live interface is; https://github.com/OwenGHB/angband-webclient

Hyperrogue; a roguelike game with infinite terrain that helps bend your mind as you keep track of it, what with being genuinly non-euclidian (if a relatively limited kind). Also features 1 hit point, thoughtful creature/location properties, and versions for Windows and Linux new, and Android and OSX older.

http://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper/ - v7.4h current newest free, 8.0l current newest for money.

Honestly rather surprised this wasn't on the list already; actually came here to see if the list had anything similar.

 I am currently using a proxy to reach the Bay, as all browser based attempts to even find the site from my home internet service fail. I used the recent advice from Weird in this thread to try to at least figure out what to blame, but both traceroute and ping find no problems whatsoever, even as Firefox and Elinks only provide eternal loading indicators (in place errors from normal circumstances). The other dozen or so sites I've tested are fine, so whatever it is, it's messing with my Bay 12 Forums connection specifically. Routers; three different (when they've given problems, it's been across the board and solved by power cycles). The current situation is very annoying, so help would be appreciated.

 Mildly worried it has something to do with the whole U.S.Gov. shutdown, as the two events happened at 7-hour-indistinguishable times.

Edit: Years-later information-cleanup.

Just like with the staff?

I was thinking the sides of said pedestal are slanted enough to be 'banked'.

That makes two votes for blasting the pedestal (I made edits).

(FFS is referring to the magic potions and the sheer amount of power we'd get if we bought a few with Pence.)

(Oh hey, a riddle for me to flail at uselessly until I render it unsolvable. Let's see...A bank is a legal structure set up for making loans and taking people's money with which to make loans [giving them part of the interest on the loans]. There are many ways to hurt a bank, but most of them are rather destructive and cost a great deal in various ways: there's taking out a loan [or several with other people's IDs] then spending all that money on avoiding the repercussions of defaulting on the loan[s]; there's tricking the bank into making bad loans to other people who will default; there's destroying enough bank records that other banks can leverage them out of business, or so much the bank can no longer keep track of itself; there's convincing people to withdraw their money from the bank or not use it in the first place; and there is, by the bankers' definition of hurt, simply never letting them use your money, and depositing it in a credit union.
 We could also be talking about the older, more physical banks, at which point you're reduced to simpler forms of thievery and cheating.

Edit: It occurs to me now that the question might be talking about "bank" in a more figurative sense, such as "amount of currency I have available", or a case of where we have some coin being completely useless, and we could turn it into something useful. If this refers to Oric's potions of giving us magic for a boss fight or providing us with loot for our exploration, then the probable response is most of us actually want to see Ciro get five BLOD before L5.)

(Seems you were ninja'd, Flabort. [Edit: As was I.])

Go to the previous room.
Uproot mushroom. (Check if it's a reagent.)
Chuck mushroom at key.