Some Thoughts on Deities

[booooooze]

Step 1: Piety farm without leveling up (Binlor or Mysteria)
Step 2: Convert + Petition

A very good approach, but one that requires considerable luck to pull off. Earthmother also works well for this. Worshipping Jehora directly and desecrating an altar (another superb use of the Earthmother) is another approach with similar results. However, this requires a considerable amount of luck both to find a good piety farm very early and to find Jehora early enough for the conversion to still make sense.

The fact of the matter is that Jehora is only worthwhile if you get in the door very early. If you're late in exploration, you can just ignore that altar entirely; he offers no meaningful options for a prospective convert. This is in stark contrast to every other deity in the game which has at least some late-game angle.

Furthermore, the buffs I propose wouldn't actually benefit the approach you describe. Less severe punishments would be meaningless to someone altar-jumping to avoid said punishments, and would mostly help those without easy ways to survive the initial petition charge or even (in the case of a higher-level character) potentially live without it.

Sure, sure. I didn't mean to imply all of the points were less than valid. Just that JJ is plenty workable as-is. (I kind of remember a time not so long ago when JJ was said to be too generous, which I'd imagine is partly responsible for his current high petition threshold. I'm far too lazy to see who was arguing that, though.)

General thoughts: I prep extra altar 99.99% of the time. I use Pactmaster maybe 3% of the time (and always screw up whether I can take the free piety before or after another pact). I don't think I'm normal. I love TT almost as much as Lujo. I will never worship GG unless I see him very very early, and even then, I hate him. I hate him. By far my least worshiped god. My most recent playthrough made me realize just how much I had neglected Taurog. Earthmother, sadly, suffers from being so easily desecrated. The only god that you can be guaranteed that you can desecrate for basically no cost; yet, when I actually use her, she's quite good. Just not as good as TT or Dracul. Binlor is very useful, I have no complaints. Dracul is probably too useful, but you didn't hear it from me. Mysteria... meh. Piety farm while exploring. 1 free point of mana. Probably nothing more.

Largely unrelated: I think it's been commented on before, but it's interesting to me that in the Alpha, blank space was everything. Save as much as you can. But in the Beta, more often than not, I have half the map explored before I've attacked anything.

[Darvin]

For me, I use Pactmaker quite frequently. Body Pact, Warrior's Pact, Scholar's Pact, and Consensus all get fairly frequent use. Dracul I use all the time in the end-game, but I rarely use him before then. Tikki Tooki is a great deity and I use him plenty, but probably not quite as much as you guys. I love working with GG, obviously favouring him earlier if possible, but also converting in late for last-minute protections after potion use. Earthmother I mostly use as a piety farm, but her boons are priced well so I usually pick up a few levels of each. Binlor is a great early-mid game god, and at very least his free glyph lets you access subdungeons which is nice, but I don't use him quite so much anymore. Jehora is great if you can really churn out the piety, but that's iffy if you don't find him early or have a piety farm or desecration victim handy. Mystera is a fine deity, though without refreshment opportunities she's kinda barren as a late-game choice.

My least-used god is Taurog. Never been a fan of him, though I still use him for resist stacking and piety farming, and I do know when going for unstoppable fury is a viable approach to my end-game. Still my least-used god by a significant margin.

[Blovski]

(IMO the really weird quirk of Mystera is that Wizards get almost no benefit from Mystic Balance; for most of the glyphs they rely upon it's either neutral or a penalty. I suppose 7 MP CYDSTEPP could be pretty handy, but Wizards have less synergy with that glyph than anyone else. Considering that they're underpowered as is, I'm tempted to suggest that their -1 cost be calculated after the effect of the boon...)

I don't know how the current Mage Plate works with it but before that was changed wizards were one of the strongest classes.

[Lujo]

Well, here's me again.

Pactmaker - I've been over this, when it's all said and done it's probably me rather than him, now that consensus has been tweaked. Never developed a habit I guess.

EM - I always liked her, I think her clearance is outstanding atm, and the cheap stuff is worth a few shots. The big problem was, as was noted, that she is a free desecration, and getting rid of her penalty also gets you rid of MW penalty, and that's too big to pass up. If her desecration penalty was changed more people would see that she's actually a really good god.

Mysterea - refreshment is one of the strongest things in the game, mystic balance so so. The weakening boon is as expensive as it is because it's in fact stupidly strong where it's applicable - now that I've tried it out, being able to take away a bosses magic resistance is huge for any spellcaster. I guess Mysterea is one of those things which are actually rather above curve, but I never feel like ranting about. I think she only pales in comparison with Drac and TT and thats no measure for anything. To reiterate - refreshment is off the charts in terms of power, unbelievably strong boon. I can't tell why noone else noticed this or voiced it publicly, but it alone makes any prep competing with "extra glyph" a loser.

JJ - no clue, never was good with him. I did use him a lot, and he never screwed me over, so I only saw 2 things about him - 1) he always felt like pure upside to me and 2) all his upside rarely contributed to much because I'm not prone to things which could exploit his boons. EDIT: also, I was arguing he was too generous about piety gain.

Binlor - I mostly avoided him, experimented a bit back when prepping him was busted, got bored. I find him a good source of Refreshment Glyphs for mysterea (as well as Refreshment piety so I can convert to whatever the 3rd guy is sooner). His piety gain method leaves his piety spike problematic, although the spike itself is well concieved. Suffice to say that I wasn't even aware he HAD a piety spike until very recently, that's how much I've only used him as a piety farm.

GG - for a very long time I hated his guts, then I let myself go and pigged out on his overpowerdness, then campaigned to make him less monstrous, and now I use him as a nice mid-range piety farm. I very rarely go dedicated or actually use any of his boons apart from Humility (-1 level). Very rarely if ever use him for an end game piety spike through heals. Except when I take and Elf Fighter and go on a manamonster rampage. I guess that he just doesn't synergize with my usual routines, as opposed to the way he used to boost anything through the roof. And I got utterly sick and tired of him during that phase.

Taurog - he always was good, but is so self contained and single minded that even if I know I can do something with him it doesn't mean anything to me. He has his own DP spike and ridiculous piety farm, and I pick him up quite a bit just for that. As was stated a couple of times he's designed to be like an "alternate mode" guy, and I guess he's where he should be ATM. Probably. No point discussing.

Drac - Broken Ole Drac, what can I say. "Bloodswell" is a theory term. For various endgames nothing comes close, anyone can do the math on it, and so on and so forth. So much brokeness and brokeness enablers in one place, but if its intended then I don't mind. When he lost spellcaster support it made his current first boon rather pointless, I wouldn't mind seeing it changed. No point discussing.

TT - guy has a boon that'd make a sweet cheat code, on top of everything else. At least you don't get handed money for taking it and can't be unlocked first thing you do in a playthrough. He's a resource management and utility overload, but it's all good. I could write a book on him, and probably allready have. I guess he's another obviously overpowered thing I consistently turn a blind eye to, except that one episode. No point discussing.

[TigerKnee]

Shrug on Refreshment. I recognize that it's pretty good but... well... glyph balance is actually good enough now that my inventory is generally locked up with all the glyphs I'm carrying around AND actually want to use. Since MB costs 60 and Refreshment costs 50 it does feel a bit straining on the piety even though she's a free piety farm.

[Lujo]

Only if you actually have a use for Mystic Balace. And you can convert the Glyphs off the ground. What use is there for Mystic balance right now? Makes CYDSTEPP cheaper? Not worthe 60 piety. Makes Burndayraz cheaper? By one point and a good Refreshment lets you cast more of them anyway, for less piety. Makes Apheelsick cheaper? There's one thing. Halpmeh stayes the same, Wheytwut's utility anyway, so is IMAWAL, Endiswall is insignificantly cheaper.

On top of all of thet it makes GETINDARE cost 5 (akin to shooting yourself in the foot) and doubles the price of BYCEPPS (even more so).

So these days I'm not taking Mystic balance anymore, especially since I don't use APHEELSICK at all most of the time (which might be a mistake on my part). Refreshment gets me a free piety pike from a deity I don't have to be worshiping while it's going on. I can swap to EM for even more ridiculous asspull mana.

[The Avatar]

I don't feel TT is that broken. Unless you're seriously saving endgame blackspace poison isn't to great. Of course, when you have loads of blackspace, GT, NC and monks in general, it's incredibly powerful.

I love Drac. The difference between a Drac game and a non-Drac game is so huge it's almost funny. My resource pool feels like a puddle without him or an ocean with him. If you start with him, you can get 2 levels of blood tithe right before the boss. If you take blood curse and have ten leftover piety that's 7 bloodpools from another blood tithe. By the time you have three you'll get so much piety it's another 2-4 (depending on dungeon and desecrations) blood swells on top of that.

I love refreshment and Mystic Balance for gnome warlords. If you prep the boots, get refreshment and balance you have (with less glyphs) 4-5 more CYDSTEPPs, plus 7-8 potions which means another 5-6 CYDSTEPPs. Add in your starting 3 (precast and 16 mana) That's a total of 12-14 CYDSTEPPs. Easily enough for hard AND some Vicious. It would probably also be good for a mana monster spike, but I've never tried it.

[Lujo]

True on all counts. (TTs natural bustyness comes from flexibility. It's not just poison he provides ^^ But he's fine I guess).

Mystic balance actually only really works for Warlords and Assasins, which is probably a source of "Assassins are the best spellcasting class" meme that I totaly missed out on seeing how I don't have a habit of using APHEELSICK at all. Assassins aren't necessarily the best spellcasters (well they do DING! easily) but one of the very few guys who get anything out of Mystic Balance reliably.

It messes up PISSORF and doesn't give enough to BURNDAYRAZ without APHEELSICK.

Refreshment on the other hand is universally really really good.

[q 3]

Not to derail a thread about deities with whining about Wizards, but here's some whining about Wizards...

I don't know how the current Mage Plate works with it but before that was changed wizards were one of the strongest classes.

I don't think I've ever actually used the Mage Plate, but right now it looks like it gives +1 max MP and -5% bonus damage every two levels - which would be, I gather, +5 MP and -25% damage at level 10. That equates to +2 MP per mana potion, +2.5 MP per Refreshment, or +5 MP per Crystal Ball use (provided you have the gold). Certainly a decent item if you're a pure spellcaster, but pretty meh for hybrids and terrible for anyone else. Unless I'm missing something, or it used to be much stronger, it certainly doesn't seem game-breaking.

Mystic balance actually only really works for Warlords and Assasins, which is probably a source of "Assassins are the best spellcasting class" meme that I totaly missed out on seeing how I don't have a habit of using APHEELSICK at all. Assassins aren't necessarily the best spellcasters (well they do DING! easily) but one of the very few guys who get anything out of Mystic Balance reliably.

Well it's the "ding" thing in a way, but more precisely it's Swift Hands - which renders the penalties from the aforementioned Mage Plate and Mystera's Flames boon almost completely irrelevant and means that the Assassin can totally ignore his attack in favor of magical boosts. The Wizard can't do that - if he nerfs his attack power, even at level 10 he'll find himself struggling to kill level 3 Meat Men. Add Mystic Balance, which literally makes the Assassin just as MP-efficient as a Wizard, the Blue Bead, which provides him with a source of free extra MP that the Wizard can't access nearly as well, and his free starting glyph that he can convert for an extra Refreshment (a pure spell-slinging Wizard can't convert his starting glyph, naturally) and literally the only advantage that a fireball-slinging Wizard has over a fireball-slinging Assassin is the Wizard's small item glyphs, which is handy in the vicious dungeons where you're cut off from the overworld and need to maximize inventory efficiency, but isn't all that great elsewhere since you can just leave glyphs on the ground until you need to convert them. (Also the starting BURNDAYRAZ glyph but the Assassin can use physical attacks and poison to start out, so it's not much of a relative advantage.)

I'm left struggling to come up with a niche for the Wizard. For the above reasons, he's no longer the top BURNDAYRAZ caster - the Assassin can replicate nearly every one of his advantages and then some. He's lost his immense synergy with HALPMEH due to its increased cost - he used to get 1.5 HP/lv per 1 MP, now he's 1:1 just like the Paladin and (level 10) Sorcerer, but with an attack penalty and no other advantages. Cheap CYDSTEPP is basically irrelevant since he it's not repeatable and he's by far the worst class to use it due to his attack penalty.

The only repeatable combat glyph that he still excels at is PISORF, and while I'm sure that can be a devastating combo - a Wizard with PISORF, BLUDTOPOWA, and the Rock Heart can effectively hit a monster for 60% base damage for 0.5 HP/lv as long as he has black space and walls to spare, and an Orc Wizard could probably take out most bosses at level 1 with that setup - it's also a very narrow niche.

[TigerKnee]

Unless I'm missing something, or it used to be much stronger, it certainly doesn't seem game-breaking.

I think people are saying that it sucks now. It used to trigger EVERY level so you got a lot of MP.

Wizard niche stuff

Yup. The ironic thing was that the Wizard's most efficent battle strategy in Alpha was Halpmeh/Bysseps and now one part of that combo was crippled. I don't know, when I play Wizards I just like to be ironic and play Humans and load them up with tons of items but I know inside that it's not really optimal. It's a "Johnny" class really.