Sil-Q

steal a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, then run

Date of birth2012 Sil 1.0, 3 Jan 2012; Sil-Q 1.5.0 in 2022

CreatorHalf Sick of Shadows Sil; Sil-Q continued by “Quirk”

LanguageC ~142,000 lines

PlatformWindows, macOS, Linux X11, curses

Lineage

Angband → Sil (2012, last update 1.3 in 2016) → Sil-Q. Sil kept Angband’s engine and threw out most of its rules. Sil-Q “continues the development of Sil which hasn’t been updated for a while”. See the family tree.

Played here: Sil-Q 1.5.0 from sil-quirk/sil-q.

Credits

Half Sick of Shadows	Sil: design and code
Quirk and contributors	Sil-Q
The Angband team	The engine underneath

Trivia

Sil drops “many generic fantasy tropes”: no wizards, no priests, no plate mail, no magic scrolls. (RogueBasin)
You gain experience by seeing new monsters and items and by first kills, not by grinding.
Magic is song: the Song of Elbereth, the Song of Staunching, the Song of the Trees. (ability.txt)
You don’t have to kill Morgoth. Most winners take a Silmaril while he sleeps and flee to the surface.
Sil-Q aims to be friendlier to newcomers and harder for veterans, and adds tiles. (RogueBasin)

What's unique

No classes, no spells lists: 84 abilities in 8 skills: Melee, Archery, Evasion, Stealth, Perception, Will, Smithing, Song.
Stealth matters: most monsters are asleep; the game rewards sneaking past them.
Only 20 levels (1,000 ft), and you cannot go back up to rest.
Smithing: forge your own weapons, armour and artefacts.
First Age Tolkien: Noldor, Sindar, Naugrim (Dwarves) and Edain; houses of Fëanor, Fingolfin, Hador, Bëor.

Code dive

C, about 142,000 lines in 53 files, on Angband’s engine. Data files in lib/edit (old Mac line endings).
Numbers are small and exact: attacks are rolled as d20 plus score against evasion, damage as dice against protection dice.
This port: WebAssembly with a canvas frontend, tiles, sound and music, plus auto-explore (P) and stair walking.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Races	4	Noldor, Sindar, Naugrim, Edain
Houses	11	Fëanor, Fingolfin, Finarfin, Doriath, Nogrod, Belegost, Bëor, Haleth, Hador, the Falas, or houseless
Abilities	84	Songs of Elbereth, Challenge, Silence, Slaying; smithing and archery abilities
Monsters	152	60 uniques: Morgoth, Gothmog, Ungoliant, Glaurung, Gorthaur, Carcharoth
Object kinds	196	plus 122 artefacts
Vaults	160
Levels	20	1,000 feet

Manual

The Sil-Q 1.5.0 manual (PDF): read it here. The in-game help is also on the site: help.

Getting started

Open the game. A Naugrim (Dwarf) or Edain character with Melee is a good first pick.
Spend experience on skills on the character sheet (@) and on abilities (Tab).
Move quietly, keep going down, avoid fights you don’t need.
At 1,000 ft, take a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown and escape upward.

Help

No walkthrough exists. The manual covers strategy. Tips:

Fight in corridors; being surrounded is deadly.
Don’t fight everything: experience comes from seeing and discovering.
Songs cost voice; Elbereth scares most enemies.

Cheats

Debug commands: Ctrl+A, confirm. The character is marked. (dungeon.c; not tried here)