Tikki Tooki

[Darvin]

So it's Monday again, and after our rousing discussion about Jehora Jeheyu last week I thought I'd bring up the topic of our other alliterate deity, Tikki Tooki.

Now, TT has made some excellent strides recently. The addition of GETINDARE on worship has gone a long ways to dealing with the fact that it's pretty much always better to convert into him, and with the added dodge effect this glyph really helps low-level characters avoid piety loss with him, so worship can begin much earlier than it used to. All well and good, but there's still stuff that could use attention.

1) Reflex and Quicksilver Potions
These potions are poorly described, and it's very difficult for a beginner to figure out what the heck they actually do. Particularly egregious is the word "guaranteed" in the description of reflex potions, but the potion actually has no effect at all if the monster strikes first.

2) Preparation Penalty
The discussion in the Paladin thread was what got me thinking about Tikki Tooki this morning, and the preparation penalty is a problem for anyone who isn't an assassin. Now that prep penalties have been toned down across the board, this one is outrageous by comparison.

3) Desecration Penalty
While not a total disqualifier, this is a desecration penalty you can only afford to enact in the last moments of the dungeon. It's rather curious in that sense, since if you aren't expecting a first-strike kill and you don't hit a threshold there almost no effect in that case. However, if there's any popcorn left on the field this is a non-starter.

4) Late-Game Focus
Recent changes have moved this from top priority to bottom priority, but I still feel TIkki Tooki is too late-game focused. Unless you're going for early poison, there's really no reason to worship him before level 7.


Now, I have a devious idea for how to deal with desecration and preparation penalties: switch them. The preparation penalty would cause all lower-level monsters to gain weakening (not first strike, though). This can be avoided by 1-hitting the monster in question, something Tikki Tooki would expect from such an avid follower. The desecration penalty, on the other hand, would provide one layer of death protection to all monsters (including equal and higher-level ones). That's harder to ignore entirely, but easier handle in the long-run. It also impacts pure spellcasters, who otherwise can ignore the penalty.

As for Tikki Tooki's late game focus, I have a simple idea: have him grant a small amount of piety for picking up power-ups and gold. This lets you accrue a small amount of extra piety if you worship him before exploration is complete, but if you wait till the end-game with only your popcorn left than no bonus piety for you. Along with his other recent changes, this should be enough to make him more approachable for low-level characters.

[Blovski]

1) reflex potion especially, yes.
2) agree. Prep penalty makes him basically untakeable for non-assassins while posing no trouble whatever for assassins. Very odd.
3) desecration penalty is on my don't-touch-this list. Not bad to have a few like that, I guess.
4) I think see what happens if the prep cost gets fixed.

Proposed changes are thoroughly ingenious. I like them very much.

[gjaustin]

1) I still think that Reflex potion behaving like that is a bug.
2) Agree
3) What's really bad about it is that it effects enemies on every floor, so Naga City is the only dungeon where it doesn't completely ruin your run.
4) Interesting

[Lujo]

Ok, I seem to be playing a different game than everyone else is.

My gameplay is so focused on abusing the fact that everything changes and TT remains exploity as hell in every version. He is the first god I unlock. I've managed to beat the entire game using only TT and GG back when GG was broken (and the monk was), but I bet I could do it again.

I agree on the potion tooltip part though, but there seems to be so many strange perspectives about TT that I keep being amazed every time I see one. He is broken in ungodly ways, that fact is one of the few things that makes me look pro from time to time, and I'll elaborate tommorow.

[Darvin]

That vexing poison boon... I probably should have included that as an item for discussion, even if I'm not entirely prepared to fully elaborate or propose a solution. I think, if anyone, you're the expert on that Lujo and I'll leave it for you to discuss the issues surrounding it.

[Lujo]

Ok, so the perspective of me is, TT is so ungodly broken he deserves a difficult prep penalty, and a difficult desecration penalty, simply because he'd add 25 desecration penalty to the list of stuff he provides, and could be present in every possible run, while there is ussually little reason to prep any other god, other then MAYBE having something to swap TO from TT, or swap into TT with enough piety for a boon.

What other people are complaining about is various stuff, but whatever it is, I don't seem to notice it for some reason and happily abuse and over-abuse TT on every corner, habitually dipping into him for just Tiki's Edge and Dodging and to get 20 gold. So if I'm not having any trouble with him whatsoever, and I'm not, then it's something about my gameplay (woefully suboptimal in general judging from the "training" videos I've been making these days).

Rather than looking at "what needs to be fixed" (apart from the potions and possible unintentional bugs), what I could contribute is "what makes one rather lazy pro not ever notice that TT has downsides at all". So, here's the gist of it.

TT has very little ways to lose piety:

-2 Piety for getting hit.
-10 (maybe) piety for spending a Death Protection (cydstepp, or whatever)

If there are any other ways to lose piety with him, I don't know of them, as I never seem to trigger them. And if I'm going for a "free hit string" I either use first strike, dodges and reflex potions only or get out of TT prior to unleashing my DP goodness.

TT has many ways to get piety, making him one of the better piety farms in the game (well, it's hard to tell, since everyone's a piety farm these days, but still, he gives a lot):

+4 for killing a lower level enemy
+1 for poisoning an enemy
+3 (I think) for dodges
+1 for using WHEYTWUT
+10 for 15 gold (his own damned boon)

if there is any other ones, I don't have a clue about them, BUT:

+25 you can desecrate EM and get rid of her penalty for burn salve. If you're using Martyr wraps, you got a burn salve prepped anyway.
+50 if you have pactmaker you can use consensus which I always do (I think I've NOT used him for consensus maybe once ever. Honestly, the whole "pact" thing never worked for me, and simply can't compare to 50 effortless piety with the right god).

So in essence, he rewards you with piety for killing stuff that is easy to kill, picking up one of the few very best boons in the game (poison), using his glyph + picking up his other boon (dodge), and on top of all of that - you can buy piety off him.

And every time you take any of his rather easy to acqure boons (which make further boons easy to acquire) - you get GOLD. Which you can then buy stuff with, and stuff, as we all know, makes you powerfull.

And the only way to lose piety with him boils down to being hit, AND you lose it very slowly compared to how fast you can gain it. I've used him with MONK, people. Repeatedly, and for great retardedness.

So he is a piety and gold farm who also gives you +1 XP per popcorn, dodge chance and prediction (his boon seems to give it now all the time, not sure if intended), dodgstep potions AND poison, which also gives piety on hit. I'll do a boon by boon analysis and my thoughts on what people might be doing wrong if theyre not getting their money worth out of it. Tommorow

[booooooze]

I'm with Lujo here. In fact, I use TT the exact opposite as Darvin, it seems: Get in early, get two levels of Tiki's edge while killing everything lower in level than me, grab poison and dodge, then get out if (I must). Sacrificing the ability to level-up mid boss in exchange for dodge and poison is a (generally) no brainer for me.

[booooooze]

Also, I'm sad to see this thread, as now I fear an upcoming nerf for my preferred god. (TT assassins make some vicious look easy. Nothing like waltzing your way down the Matron's guarded hallway.)

[Darvin]

Seems I need to give early TT some more attention. I certainly see where you're coming from regarding leveraging dodge and Tikki's Edge over the long-run.

[gjaustin]

Yeah, I'll join TT as early as level 4 or 5 when experience starts to dry up a little bit. If that's what I'm doing, I'll power to Tikki's Edge and then play the rest by ear.