QCF Design Community

Jehora Jeheyu is a god that hasn't been touched in some time, and suffers from a few glaring issues that I feel need to be addressed.

The biggest issue JJ has currently is the high threshold to begin worship. Getting the petition boon immediately is absolutely paramount to success, since JJ's random punishment can be crippling. However, the cost is the same regardless of whether you begin worship early or late. An early-worshipper with lots of exploration space can look forward to lots of piety gain with Jehora, whereas a late-worshipper will receive much less, but both must pay the same price. For the late-worshipper, this leaves almost no piety left over for boons and JJ's entire religion becomes pointless.

Because a large chunk of JJ's piety is obtained directly through exploration, if you encounter his altar late in exploration (or even half-way through, really) there just isn't enough potential piety left over after petition to make it worth joining that religion. This makes him a wasted altar far too often, and even converting in for a last-chance is dicey since without petition he can just as easily health drain or mana burn (total game-enders in a post-exploration scenario). This makes it incredibly rare for me to join JJ's religion unless I actually prepped him, which is another matter entirely.

When JJ is accessible early-game and can be prepared for, he's still wickedly potent. Beginning worship from the outset, the relative tax of petition is much less severe and a fortitude and burn cure potion can be prepped ahead of time to deal with his punishments. With the right preparations up your sleeve, the effective utility of this god is easily quintuple your average-case (where you're more likely to find him late in exploration rather than early).


Bottom line (tl;dr): JJ is much too weak a deity if you locate his altar late or want to convert in, despite the fact that he remains highly competitive if you find him early and stick with him.


So, with the problem stated, what of solutions? I'm going to presume that the basic structure of the deity isn't up for discussion, and all that can be suggested are tweaks and modifications. The goal should be to make JJ more appealing to a late-game worshipper without making him much stronger for an early-game worshipper, as well as making living without petition a viable option.

* Have boost health and boost mana actually provide you 40% health or mana (respectively) regeneration when used. This means you still get to use your potions, but at the time of the boon's activation. Not a huge gain for low-level characters, but a major deal for high-level ones joining late.

* Remove health drain and mana burn from the list of JJ's punishments. We can deal with weakening, corrosion, and poison (particularly as high-level characters) but post-exploration these two effects are game-enders. To add some more variety, curse, slow (one attack), and randomly swapping positions with a monster could be added in.

* JJ's random acts of boredom could also occasionally yield double-edged effects. For instance, it could grant you a free but non-convertible spoon. Or perhaps he could shroud the area around you (more resources to work with, but it could screw up your regen-fighting). These double-edged effects would still be disabled by petition.

* Another option is to make JJ's petition boon provide indulgences, and indulgence allows you to avoid a single random punishment. Petition's cost would begin small but have an increasing cost over time, thus affecting long-term worshippers the hardest.

* I've always been bothered by last chance having no effect if you lose the gamble, especially given it takes your piety either way. I'd like to see a random calamity occur on a failed gambit. That still might give some opportunities, and would at very least be less anticlimatic than the current "nothing happened".

On Last Chance, I'd rather see it heal a percentage of mana/health equal to your current piety.

It loses the randomness that characterizes JJ, but I think JJ is random enough as is. It would also make converting in late more useful.

Honestly, if we're going to tinker with last chance in a significant way I'd like it to unleash a surge of chaos that causes random effects (mostly in your favour...) to the dungeon and its inhabitants. The amount of random effects would be based on the amount of piety you have. It'll never do nothing, but exactly what happens is anyone's guess.

I think what bothers me most about JJ is how worshiping him barely affects one's playstyle, specially when compared to the other deities.

When worshiping just about any other deity, I'll often (or at least sometimes) find myself rethinking things I'd normally do, or going out of my way to do things I wouldn't normally do.
As far as JJ is concerned, though, my gameplay is barely affected. Just dash to get petition, and then make use of some boons. The only things I really have to take into consideration are overcoming any punishments he gives before petition, and then making good use of my boons. Other than that, I'm just doing the same things I'd be doing anyways, and getting some piety while I do so.

I often recall how the devs say that DD is supposed to be a game where one makes meaningful decisions, and I think that as far as JJ is concerned, the only meaningful decisions I ever really have to take are "Do I want to worship him?" and "Do I want to boost my health, boost my mana, or save up for chaos avatar?"

I personally, am not a fan of his current piety gain system. DD has always been more of a puzzle game to me, and the random piety gain throws it for a loop. I don't mind most random stuff (RNG, etc.), but the fact that if I get unlucky at level 1 (Once I got poison (repoisoned after tonic), health drain, 8 weakening (used potion after 5, ended with 3), and 7 corrosion (used potion after 5 again, so I ended with 2) it could throw a serious wrench in my run, is what I dislike.

Random piety gain isn't a huge issue, since in the long-term it will average out. However, since you grab petition very quickly there's a short window of randomness that can provide a lot of variance in terms of what punishments you receive.

A fundamental look at how punishment and petition works with JJ is necessary, and that also does touch his piety gain.

Bunch of things bother me about JJ, and have sort of always bothered me - I was never a fan. I used him quite a bit on my latest playthrough, but every time I used him it was - grab petition, go for Chaos Avatar for the -res and heal.

The issues:

I never minded the punishments - sometimes I didn't even bother with petition because all the permanent ones were solved with burn salve and fortitude potion which I prepped/bought on every run anyway, or had the multi-alchemist prep, because I was using the Martyr Wraps. But after you take Chaos Avatar, or Petition + Chaos Avatar, you can sort of only swap out, or you can't because all that costs 100 or 145 piety and youre left stranded. And if you reach 100 piety before the boss fight (which is easy even if you took Petition), you're sitting there untill the best time to use the damned thing, which is 75% boss-fight heal, 15% boss fight -res, 5% everything else, and 100% frustrating.

As Avatar said, if you find him mid/late, he's not a grat choice unless swapping from a piety farm, and then I'd be glad to find almost any other deity. Hell, most piety farms apart from Binlor have more game affecting boons for 50 to 100 piety. This might be a case of really strong gods also being piety farms (Drac, TT, Taurog).

Third, and most important, is that while he is useless late game, his desecration penalty is a total gamble. He is literally worse than GG in this matter. I can desecrate an early GG on a purist run, no prob's, but I can't dare touch JJ. This is the biggest problem - he's either a stick-to deity or suboptimal and thus useless, which he is every time you don't find him early, but you can't desecrate him.

I really like the changes darvin suggested, apart from the one including indulgence.

The current Chaos avatar needs some kind of boost/change as well as it isn't quite what it used to be. Healing is easier with dracul and lowering resists is easier with binlor with less involvement. I used chaos avatar alot when i worshipped him but nowadays i mostly skip his altar.
I also think that the boon does not what I except it do when i imagine an avatar of chaos. There is also the thing lujo mentioned:
Most of the time, you keep 100 piety until the boss fight as you're not sure wether you manage to get enough piety again if you take another boon.
How about giving it a powerful, but random perk instead of the resist down:
I'm thinking about giving the character a 4th class-ability, selected at random from all possible class-abilities besides the one the character already has?
Potentially, you could get lucky and score something really good, but then again, you could get something that's really screwing you over or is of no use to you, making it a gamble and kind of balanced as you can't controll it (and seriously, people who are willing to scum for a specific ability out of 51 are batshit insane and shall have their abuse).
I think it fits the theme and resembles more becoming an avatar of chaos as your transformation gives you a new power.
You would also need to decide wether to be conservative and go for the heal at the boss fight, diminishing the effect of a bad 4th ability or to gamble by getting the 4th ability as soon as possible, either being much more powerful or pretty screwed for the rest of the run.
Do you think there would be some potential in this or would you think that people just dropped out as soon as they got a bad ability? I dunno what to think of this myself, just thought I'd share it as it sounds interesting.

That's an... Interesting idea. It seems a bit too random. You could get screwed over if you got the monk's Hand to Hand ability, or crush if you got 50% of the type of resists necessary for your boss.