Tikki Tooki

[booooooze]

I'll go in at 1 if I have a teleport glyph.

[fall_ark]

The only beef I have with TT is the prep penalty. Otherwise indeed he is very versatile and pays for himself.

I think there has been a version where TT's prep penalty is that all gold clumps become 1? My suggestion is again focus on the gold. Maybe prepping TT strips of your money at the start of then dungeon. Maybe prepping makes the boon gold fewer. Things like that.

Speaking of which....All preparation punishes piety gain from the god you prepares. Except Taurog. Not complaining. Just found it interesting.

[Lujo]

Hmmm, Darvins arguments seem to be the following:

1) Potions are unclear on how to exactly use them. Well, the Reflex one is, and there should not only be a better tool-tip, but deffinitely a tutorial puzzle pack with more than 3 puzzles, blowing at least 2 on the potions. they took me a long while to figure out.

Also, the fact that Reflex potion does nothing against first strikers might also need a change. It deterrs from figuring them out by trying them out, for one thing, as you get inconsistent results untill you figure that bit out. It seems really random.

2 & 3) The prep and desecration penalties are too steep. Now, I'm on the fence with this, leaning a bit to the "thank god fort that" side. Because, as I've stated numerous times - being able to prep TT on a whim would be ridiculous in my expirience. My "minimalist roflcopter" run is sort of a detailed chronicle of what happens when someone get TT guaranteed on every run (along with some other stuff that's been fixed in the meanwhile). He's not necessarily broken as too usefull by far. He's essentially the top "utility" or "macro" god in the game.

4) "He needs more early game love". Maybe. And this warrants whatever exlaining I can give, although I don't really think he should be nerfed to death, but rather buffed in a small way. Maybe. With my macro and micro styles both heavilly inclusive of TT use I can't really imagine playing the game without TT the way he is, which isn't good design tbh, but I sort of fear changing him whould lead to a necessity of changing a whole lot of things.

It might also possibly annoy and frustrate a whole bunch of decent people who are happily using him. He's not broken in an obvious way, and he makes you sort of work for his stuff, so he's not "cydstepp rogue", "JJ gnome warlord" or "remove walls wholesale Binlor" kind of stupid, he's kind of like a feature that you'd want on every run with anything and certanly beats every other option in his category for utility on various fronts. The "prep an altar" prep makes sense with more specific gods which you don't want to scum for on specific runs and for specific strats, but being able to prep TT would quickly turn into "I'm not playing DD, I'm playing TT", and I would know since I rigged the game to always get TT and destroyed everything and anything once with less effort than with the "über stupid" strats of the day.


But, I sitll got to give my testing insight, so here goes:

PIETY GAIN:

Now, I've revised my way of looking at wether TT is or isn't a piety farm. The current "true" piety farms reward you for "breathing", Mysterea rewards glyph use, Binlor rewards wall destruction (you do it while exploring), Taurog rewards killing stuff (with positive discrimination of giving more piety for killing specific stuff on a cosmetic basis) and glyph conversion (indiscriminately). Dracul, with rewards for drinking blood pools is just silly, because you can gain a lot of piety by healing up, AFTER you've allready done something you would've done anyway and possibly gained piety with other people for it. So does EM, in her own way.

In that company, TT can't be considered a piety farm, not because he doesn't let you farm up tons of piety, he does, but because we're sort of in a "Piety! Piety ewerywhere!" phase, and he compares badly with guys who give way too much piety for no effort at all. Also, since he's much better if joined with 50 or a 100 piety, and other guys make farming it a lot easier, he's not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a piety farm. This, rather than levels, is what makes his early worship sort of a "bad deal".

My old strategy with TT, where I joined him at lvl1 regularly, revolved around finding him, joining him, and sinking 30 gold to get 30 piety for Tiki's Edge, then getting it on, and making up for lost gold with his boons. If you can prep/veto out/not unlock stuff other than Gloves of midas, this used to work great, but the devs put a stop to that when they nerfed the "Tribute" boon to give 10 piety for 15 gold.

The way it works now, with preps like Slayer Wand, STR potion and Reflex Potion, you can "level ramp" rather quickly, get to level 3 or 4 and then join TT, or you can use a piety farm (I used to use old GG for this, but any one works), to ramp up piety, then join him, grab Tiki's Edge and get it on. Joining him with most of your exploration done, very late, is not actually a very good deal, but I'll get to why.

I went over the Piety gain, and it's still a fact that he has many ways to ramp up loads of piety and very little ways to lose it, or atl east lose a lot of it. However, most of his piety gain is based off killing stuff (and specific stuff at that), so the ammount of piety you can get is finite, and that needs accounting for. In the worst case, you'll be trying to avoid his punishment, at the rate of 15 gold for 5 indulgences (-2 piety hits), which is still not bad.

A consensus from Pactmaker pays for 25 indulgences, and quite literally means you can stick with TT untill the end, unless you're up against the Meatman and the Tower of Goo at the same time. But in that case it's just an effortless swap, or a quick poison and you use your "popcorn killing piety" for an effortless swap.

Playing with TT also means never, ever, taking anything BUT consensus from Pactmaker, but I never do anyway which means either that piety is always better spent elsewhere, the pacts are overpriced, consensus is overpowered, or I'm a narrow minded lazy git, and quite possibly all 4.

BOONS:


Tribute - it used to be great when it was 10 gold for 10 piety, nowdays I don't use it at all anymore, unless I'm going "all in" but in that case it's better to plan ahead and just pay some gold to get enought piety with whatever you have left over to swap to another deity. It's still a decent "safety net", but using your ill-gotten gold bonanza which comes from worshiping TT this way is a bit suboptimal. Neverhesitate to do it if you have no other choice, though, because pissing TT off takes all his boons away, which is sort of why his desecration penalty IS a bit harsh.


Potions - Look at it this way, when properly used, the potions give you 2 hits on whatever, without being hit back (which means at least one more hit from still having your health pool, as oposed to death protections and you don't suffer any status debuffs), a dodge (+3 piety), and 10 gold. You can literally worship TT just for a string of these. With a halfling and enough way to ramp up piety, it's a big string of hits, 8+ or so, which is a bit insane. I've done this with Paladins in Gaan'Telet to bypass old "-resist floors" without actually losing any resists, that's how powerfull it is. Copious use of this boon on it's own can level any boss without first strike, phys resists or a crapload of health. Yes, I've even done Frank.

It takes proper managment of your popcorn, and takes up all your Health Potions, but give me 8 to 10 free hits on anything from just one source, add 40-50 gold on top of that, and well, you can almost think of "unintuitive tooltips" as BALANCE

It certanly makes Bleaty a joke.

So it's sort of an "über damage spike" boon, and you can base your entire game around it. It's one reason why prepping TT in every run would hands-down beat any other option for me, unless facing bosses that are "immune" to it. Heavy focus doesn't let you take other TT boons, though, but the heaviest focus isn't really needed. It's also not bad on "two boss" runs, as one of the bosses drops gold, so you can probably combine that and the gold you got from taking all those potions to buy some more, provided you have healing potions.

Keep in mind, however, that it's the best "physical" damage spike boon in the game. Mystere's Refreshment probably beats it as the best damage spike boon overall.


Dodge - 25 piety for 10% dodge and 10 gold. These days it seems to give dodge prediction, which I can't tell if it's intended or bugged. I can't tell, because it makes it infinitely more usefull, and provides synergy with the reflex potion. It's... great! Every time you dodge, you get more TT piety, so taking it early can net you at least some, dodge prediction allows for easier leveling as it tells you when you get a random "free hit" on a higher level monster.

It's also super great with guys who have a lot of damage resistance of any kind and get hit a lot - once you swap from TT ofc. More hits taken = more dodge opportunities, and in endurance runs it adds up, especially if you manage to get, say, Monks damage up.

It helps ramp up the dodge counter for GETINDARE, and the prediction also gives the Rogue a whole new playstyle (as if he needed more help). It's also the only way to get any dodge at all ATM aside from GETINDARE.


Poison - Ughhh. Eeeeesh. Uffffff. Hmmmm. How do I put this... If the potions are the best "physical" damage spike boon in the game, then this is the best "regen fighting" boon in the game, period. This means a couple of things.

First thing first, what does it give? Costs 50 piety, gives +1 piety per monster hit (TT rewards poisoning, go figure) so you can get at least 10 or so back from cleaning up the map, probably. It also gives 10 more gold, as if you needed more incentive to take it.

Second, regen fighting. So, I explained in the "regen fighting" thread that to civilized people "you can't explore while fighting something" looks like it's a rule that makes the game balanced at all. Regen fighting, in general, breaks this seemingly fundamental rule. It requires a bit of math to figure out wether you can deal more damage then a monster would regenerate if you wen't to heal up enough to take a hit. It's a bit tricky, and you sort of have to build your character for it with damage resistances, or have BLOODTOPOWA to increse your mana regeneration.

With poison applied on every strike, you flat out break this rule. You can unload your glyph based damage, spend all your health on physical hits, and then go regenerate while the monster stayes damaged. Provided you have exploration left, this boon turns every single character into an effortless regen fighter, and it turns nautral regen fighters like the monk into complete monsters.

The only "balancing" TT ever had, his -2 on getting hit more than once, was put there to prevent complete and total abuse of this boon. It's also why his punishment is so severe - there are probably no mechanics in this game more powerfull than a "poison on every strike" ability. But, seeing as regen fighting is confusing in and off itself, most people don't really know how to plan for it, and "inste über regen fighting" causes a few problems.

Here's the issue: in order to get use out of "on hit poison" in a boss fight, you need to be able to survive at least one hit from the boss, which then requires levels. You also need to have exploration available, otherwise the poison isn't doing you any good. The TT negative piety hits steer players towards damage spikes rather than regen fighting, and his piety rewards sort of have players exploring too much looking for appropriate targets. Prolonged TT worship puts a halt on your XP gain because you're killing stuff that gives less XP and you can hit a self-induced level cap before you can survive a hit from the boss.

The trick is to join TT at a later level after farming a bunch of piety off a piety farm, grabbing Poison right away, cleaning up some popcorn and getting out. The other way is to convert out with any combination of Tribute, desecration and Consensus. Or simply use the poison on higher level monsters ot level up "sacrificing" a few -2 piety hits and bits of exploration. There is also the option to use confirmed dodges to apply poison while doing most of the damage with spells.

But the main thing to note is that Poison is a REGEN FIGHTING boon, the best one out there, on a god who strogly oposes regen fighting (to prevent abuse of that boon). It also punishes you for using a piety farm before joining as most piety farms work off exploring, and in order to get use out of poison you need exploration. This makes Poison a heavy investment in more ways than one, and probably confuses the hell out of most people.

There are other ways of abusing TT which are more subtle, always work, and are braindead easy in execution, when you get down to it.


Tiki's Edge - Costs 25 Piety, gives +1 XP per kill and 10 Gold. It's one of those braindead ways.

Simply put, taking Tiki's Edge followed by Dodge and cleaning up your low level monsters providey you with +1 XP per kill, 10% dodge, dodge prediction (they might "fix" it), a GETINDARE glyph if you joined TT first and 20 gold, plus you get 25 piety with your next god if you convert out at 50. If you get to 85 before leaving, you can also grab a set of "dodgstep" potions, and 10 more gold. Then you use the gold to buy stuff.

If you used WONNAFYT before cleaning up the low level monsters, you get another +1 XP for getting TT piety, you get some more every time you dodge a low level first stirker, you get +1 XP more if you're a fighter, and all this is doable if you prep a Slayer Wand and nuke a lvl9 before you get to it. It takes a bunch of popcorn for your first boon (unless you Tribute for it), but the popcorn that's left is ussually good enough for this routine.

You end up comfortably well off, an item or two richer, with minor perks, and this alone would make TT my go to prep if the prep penalty wan't steep. 30 gold is an equivalent of 2 more potion preps uf you prep an apotechary, and is also the main reason I never ever like seeing expensive items in my pool - if my items are cheap enough, even if they are useless I get CP out of them.

So just by cleaning up popcorn at any point (lvl 2+) I get... Some extra XP, dodge, a glyph that gives me a free last hit on anything, 25 piety for my "main" god, and 30 gold which can translate into any combination of potions, items and CP. Forget the cheeze, which is supremely cheezy, the low hanging utility stuff is so easy to acquire and so thorough that I'd be prepping him on every run, and am never sorry if I find him.


EDIT: GOLD

This guy gives gold every time you take a boon. Gold can buy you items. Items can provide you with CP. Items are also the one thing besides Boons which add abilites to your characters, and can be seen as "boons which cost gold instead of piety". And he can turn gold into piety. And one of his boons (poison) also enables you to get more out of the only resource left - exploration. And one of his boons gives you XP.

Gold is also usefull AFTER you complete your run, as it's the same resource you use while unlocking stuff in your kingdom, and can be used for perks in a later run via "preps". This means TT is the only god thats usefful even AFTER you've killed all the bosses.

TT is the only "macro" god in the game, and one of the very few things in the game which influence things outside of the current dungeon run. This fact alone sets him apart from other gods into either "broken" or an entire separate category. It makes TT is the singularity of resource managment.

To paraphrase an older quote of myself: "If TT had 5 boon buttons which said nothing but "pay 25 piety gain 10 gold", he'd still kick ass".

I think that the dev's might want to return Glitterfinger back, now that the game has the "kingdom management" system. TT seems to be doing a job for two gods, both of which seem to need to be in the game.


CONCLUSION:

The buff I'm talking about would be the following - make the potions his "main" boon, reduce the posion to a "one time per monster only" the way the poison dagger works now, but lower it's price. And possibly make Tiki's Edge non-scaling. Yes, it would turn anyone into a TT fighter, make a TT fighter insane, and make a TT goblin fighter uncureably insane, but if all TT's boons were "low hanging", people would be joining him earlier just for the awesome utility.

Alternatively to simply making the current Tiki's Edge non-scaling, you could make it "upgradable" allowing you to get piety for equal level monster kills on your second time you take it, and piety on killing higher level monsters on hte third time. Non-scaling price ofc, people would still be taking it for the gold.

I think making his boons less powerfull and more acessible could also warrant a lowering of his "gold per boon" to 5, with a possible Tribute rework to adjust.

Again, as long as he has at least 2 boons for 25 piety and gives gold for his boons, he has to have a steep prep penalty or at least I'd be prepping him on every run. Nerfing poison into the ground might account for lessening his desecration penalty though.

EDIT: Though simply having his prep remove the gold gain from his boons might remove quite a bit of utility that comes with prepping him and have people only prep him when they in fact need his boons, rather than the insane resource advantage. Yes, that would probably do it, hmmm?

[Lujo]

There, an essay. Proably worth a read, with a bunch of mangled english towards the end.

[Lujo]

Edited for a very important part I missed, and at least some grammar.

[Nandrew]

I hate to bring such a simple response to such a lovingly-crafted discussion, but: I don't really think Tikki has any major problems and we're probably not going to change him. The suggestion of removing gold from his boons as a new prep penalty, however, is very elegant and would arguably fix up the god's sorest point of contention.

[Lujo]

Yep

(all the chars agree)

[Nandrew]

Oh, but that said, the dodge prediction on the vanilla Dodge boon is, I believe, a bug. Will look at that.

[Lujo]

While you're at it, do consider looking at 2 other things as well:

1) At least one of your insane veterans has never used Pactmaker for anything except Consensus, and he loves to see Pactmaker. There's something really wrong about that.

2) TT is doing a 2 god job, and both of those are good. Removing his "Glitterfinger" aspect as a prep means I'm "only" prepping the guy with Poison and the "dodgestep" potions, who is on his own still probably the most powerfull overall god, at least with the current consensus/EM desecration penalty.

And considering people are having trouble with his TT aspect (the potions and poison), and considering the fact that I worship him for his Glitterfinger aspect as often as not, or even more often, there might be room for a proper utility god in the game. Since I unlock TT for his Glitterfinger aspect in every case, there deffinitely is a NEED for a "starts unlocked" utility god of some sort.

He'd also be a good way to introduce goods with the rest of the tutorial stuff so people can ease into other goods as they find them. Keep in mind that this isn't exactly asking for "more stuff added" apart from coding, seeing as Glitterfinger is allready in there, only you get him as a 2 for 1 when you worship TT.

[Lujo]

Oh, and another thing, if there turns out to be enough room for a proper, newbie friendly utility god (to meet the obvious demand), I have a couple of suggestions:

1) Let him spawn a 0CP gloves of midas equivalent that takes up an inventory slot and punish you if you convert it. It would be a harmless way of teaching people about gods having stuff they like, and stuff they dislike. And also account for piety based gold gain. Random thought there, but the early game without gold farming TT and having Midas Gloves is sort of unimaginable to me.

Alternatively, have a 5 or 10 gold tacked on to otherwise minor or utility boons.

It would also build up nicely with the new macroless TT.

2) Let him have a boon that spawns goblin miner bombs. So players can have a way to acess walled off subdungeons without endiswall or pisorf shennanigans all the time. Or just squeezing exploration out of map corners or moving around, without having to find all the manouvering gadgets and LEMISI.

Either that or te Transmutation scroll.

Both would have fine synergy with Binlor.

3) He can also have a boon which spawns a compression scroll, those are sorely lacking in availability in my game, and players can really look forward to unlocking the alchemist and being able to prep them.

4) As a massive boon, he could spawn a Sensation Stone, another thing that could use a proper introduction. just spawning it and working your way towards a conversion to GG would be something they'd have to learn

He could reward spending gold (for sure), leveling (maybe), and whatever newbies need to be incentivsed to use.

I really, really, really think we need a god like that.