(Nearly) Forgotten History of the Gods

[Darvin]

So, given the interest in the previous "nearly forgotten" article, I thought I'd delve into another portion of Desktop Dungeon's devious history: deities! You'd be surprised to learn about the distant history of some of these gods and the way they've changed over the years... and in some cases, how they haven't.

First, a bit of background. The deities were not introduced at all once, and instead their introduction was staggered across the first six months of the beta. The initial release had Glowing Guardian, Tikki Tooki, Mystera Annur, and Taurog. Dracul followed shortly after, then Binlor, then Earthmother, and then Jehora Jeheyu and Pactmaker as the final deities. Less well-known was that each deity had six boons, rather than five, when they were first introduced. At some point, the devs decided to have fewer boons per deity and each of them lost one. The Pactmaker today is the only remnant of that six-boon standard.

As a brief aside, deity preparations were added relatively late in the beta and never had any major overhauls. So the fact that mention of them is largely omitted in the following writeups isn't an oversight; there just isn't any history to speak of.

Finally, a word of warning: this is a long writeup. As you might imagine, most of the deities have been through a lot of changes and I have quite a bit to say about them.


Glowing Guardian
This guy has changed quite a bit. I miss our old grump in some ways, but there's no question that he'd be obscenely overpowered by today's standards. Originally GG gave you piety for higher-level kills; the bigger the difference, the bigger the piety jackpot. However, he also punished lower-level kills (exception granted for undead, which he always rewarded you for killing); the bigger the difference, the bigger the piety hit. This meant that piety farming with GG was all about effective power-leveling, meaning the more aggressively you leveled the more piety you got! GG was essentially amplifying good play; the more aggressively you could power-level, the more piety he showered you with. There were no prayer beads back then, so he had no inventory restrictions.

There was a brief period where the devs inverted his preferences, and made him punish higher-level kills (but not reward low-level ones), but this just made him play like a grumpy Tikki Tooki and people would use him as conversion fodder and seldom stick with him for long. It also made evident just how broken Absolution was, with people joining his religion to pick up the boon then converting stuff like a madman to get out. The devs eventually settled on the bead system, with GG no longer caring about higher or lower-level kills. It took a while for us to get used to the lower piety output compared to classic GG, the higher piety cost of absolution, and the inventory restrictions brought by the prayer beads. The fact that he remained one of the most powerful deities in the game after taking a massive nerf speaks to just how broken he was prior to that change.

With with that said, let's talk about those boons. Protection is the only boon that remains largely unchanged from its original form, with the only change being slight tweaks to piety cost and the addition of prayer beads. Cleansing used to be horrible; it had increasing piety cost for each use and didn't have the magical attack effect so it was basically used as a one-time poison or mana burn cure. The addition of the magic damage effect and the removal of its increasing cost made it much more usable. Enlightenment has always been a varied assortment of different bonuses, but has always been regarded with caution because it's no chaos avatar and that price is kinda exorbitant if you're not getting a full restore out of it.

Humility was - briefly - repeatable. This was one of the first balance-changes in the beta, as staying close to level 1 was easy with GG and allowed ludicrous bonus experience and reaching effective levels like 16 or 17. It remained 5 piety for the longest time, which (combined with GG's higher piety gain) made it functionally free. It's still a very good boon today, but not the insanity it used to be.

Absolution used to be horrifically overpowered, although in the early beta it felt a lot more reasonable when compared against other horrifically overpowered things. It was a single-use boon rather than repeatable, and it was only +3 hit points per monster. What made it powerful was that it absolved every non-undead that was lower-level than you. This made Absolution tricky to use; activate it too early and you don't get too many hit points, but activate too late and you deprive yourself of popcorn. The sheer number of HP it granted, however, was just too much and it got nerfed.

As mentioned, every deity had a sixth boon originally, and GG's sixth was sanctified strike. This boon caused you to take a -75% attack bonus penalty on your next attack, but if it was a killing blow it would bypass GG's piety penalty for low-level kills and grant a piety bonus instead. This actually made Assassins of GG a viable combo, as they could repeatedly request Sanctified Strike and swifts hands a monster, allowing GG's piety gain to functionally mirror Tikki Tooki. It also gave a release-valve for high-level characters to consume popcorn. The devs experimented with giving it an increasing cost, but in the end it just got axed when the deities got knocked down to 5 boons each.


Taurog
One of the least-changed deities, if you saw Taurog from the early beta you'd be right at home. Originally he had a fifth item, a set of boots that greated attack bonus. His Skullpicker was also originally +10 base attack. He didn't give attack bonus individually on his boons, but otherwise he worked exactly like he does now. There was a brief period where unstoppable fury also gave attack bonus, but it proved to be a bit too strong for Orc Monks who go insane if you give them that much easy attack bonus and already get along smashingly well with Taurog.


Mystera Annur
Where Taurog has gone largely unchanged, the same cannot be said of Mystera Annur, who has undergone extensive revisioning and is definitely the most overhauled god in the beta. In the early beta, she disliked the conversion of glyphs which made her very difficult to play outside of hoarder runs and would usually necessitate converting out at some point. This particular quirk with Mystera only got removed with the introduction of the current Refreshment boon.

Early in the beta, her Magic boon had a much less steep piety cost increase, but increased the magic resistance of monsters. This was actually not a bad deal if you had access to CYDSTEPP or HALPMEH, and meant fireball users largely avoided Mystera. Because of this, it got swapped to increasing both resistances and was promptly deemed useless by both melee and magic users. Flames used to be 50 piety, but otherwise had the same downside as usual. It was considered useless, as fireball specialists back in the day all worshipped Dracul. Weakening was always there, you're doubtlessly familiar with it, and it's neer really been impressive.

Originally Refreshment gave you a mana restore, which sounds nice but it came with a crippling downside. The downside was that it healed the enemy monsters when you used it. I shouldn't need to explain why that made this boon functionally useless. It took me forever to actually remember what that downside was; the boon just didn't get used, and Mystera herself was a one-tricky pony.

Mystic Balance was only introduced rather late in the beta. It originally set all glyphs to cost 5 piety, but this proved obscenely overpowered for Warlords and was quickly dealt with. It replaced a predecessor called Mana Leak. This boon took all your piety (whether it was 1 or 100) and dealt that much damage to everything on the top-level of the dungeon, but wouldn't kill them (so they'd be left with at least 1 HP. This included you, by the way). This allowed everyone to be an Assassin and consume just about any lower-level monster easily, and was useful as part of a spike against glass cannon bosses. Mana Leak became problematic as the difficulty got toned down and the dungeons shifted towards two weaker bosses rather than one strong boss, making this boon into an "auto-win" on many dungeons where the combination of easy popcorn pickings and 100 damage to both bosses made spiking them a trivial matter.

Mystera's sixth boon was "Glyph Magnet". It literally just brought all the glyphs on the map to her altar. Since she punished conversion, though, and the early beta inventory system had some funky restrictions that prevented you from carrying too many glyphs it was much less helpful than it sounds. Wizards also worked differently back then so it was completely redundant for them with their glyph sense.

For much of the early beta, Mystera was used exclusively for piety farming and the Mana Leak bomb. Spellcasters vastly preferred Dracul or later Jehora Jeheyu, and non-casters just avoided her.


Tikki Tooki
The last of the original four, and like Taurog has been changed little over the years. His boons originally didn't give gold, but this was added fairly early. His desecration penalty used to only grant monsters first strike, which was deemed too soft so weakening got added. Finally, GETINDARE was added as a free glyph for joining him after it was pointed out he was the only deity left with no benefit for directly joining rather than converting in.

Poison used to work like it did in the alpha, lasting until you hit something else. This made his poison striking boon much more effective, and obviously single-use rather than repeatable. However, it remained a largely under-appreciated gem for much of the early beta. CYDSTEPP was also highly-prized in the early-beta, where hard difficult bosses usually had damage in excess of 100 so if you weren't a resist stacker you needed it to survive them. Dodge and Tikki's Edge have always worked as they do now.

So what of TT's 6th boon? Reflex and Quicksilver used to be two separate boons, one trading health potions and the other trading mana potions. They were regarded as horrifically underpowered at the time, partially because reflex was poorly tool-tipped and few players understood what it actually did, and quicksilver was a complete joke (temporary 10% dodge chance without dodge prediction... for the same price as TT's permanent 10% dodge boon). They got combined, reflex got its tooltip changed to better describe its effect, and quicksilver got buffed.


Dracul
The original Dracul was a terrifyingly powerful deity. You'd recognize the names of many of his boons, and Blood Swell and Blood Shield are largely the same as they've always been. Originally curse didn't exist, so Blood Swell had no additional downsides. They've had small tweaks to piety, but are functionally the same as they used to be.

Blood Curse was originally repeatable, letting you auto-promote to 10th level if you wanted. For fireball specialists this was obscenely good and they'd just live with the horrifically bad base stats of a 1st level (or whatever they were when they joined Dracul) character. Basically the same problem as the original repeatable Humility, and both were fixed early in the beta.

Blood Tithe used to be an exchange that worked like Blood Curse. It lowered your maximum hit points in exchange for piety. This seems like a fair deal, but with boss damage being obscene in the early beta many character builds were just consigned to the fact that they were getting one-shotted anyways so it wasn't nearly the tradeoff it appeared to be. It was eventually changed to its present effect of granting Sanguine, which catapulted Dracul back from the middle of the deity pack to the forefront.

Blood Hunger (and lifesteal in general) used to be a flat effect that wasn't based on your character level. It'd take quite some time before lifesteal got nailed down to its present form, and Dracul's Blood Hunger boon got tweaked every time lifesteal did. While there were some interesting uses of its early in the beta, the fact that Platemail didn't exist yet and resist stacking wasn't possible if you were repeatedly using Blood Hunger limited it to niche situations.

That brings us to Dracul's sixth boon from the early beta, and what made him so terrifying... the boon that everyone was spamming Blood Curse and Blood Tithe to fuel. That boon was Blood Power, and it granted +2 max MP every time you used it. The cost was incredibly low, and with all those ways to generate piety you could take it up to 10 times iirc. It was not uncommon for people to actually take it the maximum number of times. Dracul was the ultimate spellcaster god at the time. Jehora Jeheyu would pick up that mantle after Blood Power got removed. It would only be much later in the beta that Mystera and Earthmother became viable caster gods.


Binlor Ironshield
The most notable thing about original Binlor is that he gave a free ENDISWAL rather than a free PISORF. He also didn't give permanent magic resistance, something that we all know can be leveraged for excellent long-term benefit. His early incarnation was regarded as quite weak, most useful for declogging dungeons and piety farming for eventual conversion to a better deity. One of the most subtle differences with Binlor was how his wall destruction was changed. Originally he could target unrevealed walls when he busted them as part of a boon request. Eventually this was changed so he could only destroy revealed walls. This had a huge impact on how Binlor worshippers explored and managed their revealed walls.

Stone Soup originally petrified all lower-level monsters on the main floor, granting piety in the process. As Binlor was always an easy piety farm, this boon was not commonly used and was more useful for generating additional walls. When ENDISWAL was swapped in favor of PISORF as his free boon, this one was changed to become the free ENDISWAL boon.

Stone Skin, Stone Form, and Stone Fist are all basically unchanged; aside from granting permanent magic resistance and some small tweaks to their numbers they're the same as they always have been. In the early beta they were heavily overshadowed, but did see some use due to how nice a piety farm Binlor is.

Stone Heart worked very differently. It gave a flat amount of healing! Not percentage based, but a set number of hit points restored. This made it most useful at low-levels for power-leveling, but given that the early beta tended to make leveling up easy and the big challenge was tackling the boss this wasn't quite as useful as it appears. It got swapped for the current effect eventually.

Binlor's sixth boon was "Wall Wipe". Literally just the wall removal effect that all his boons have at a smaller price. Basically useless, and it was not missed.


Earthmother
There was a time when I joked that Earthmother was the Queen of Consolation prizes. She had a number of useful boons at low prices that were easily fueled by her high piety gain and set you up nicely for an eventual conversion to a better god. That made her useful to just about everyone, but was nowhere near the power of the truly great deities of the time.

You'd recognize Greenblood, Plantation, and Vine Form. Curse originally didn't exist, so Greenblood didn't have its curse wipe effect back then. Otherwise, these three boons are mostly the same as they've always been. Acid Casters didn't exist as a well-respected build back then for a variety of reasons, and corrosion remained underrated for some time. Clearance originally just removed plants and had no secondary effect, so it wasn't particularly useful. The devs experimented with a few secondary effects before settling on mana recovery. This was when acid casters actually took off as a popular rather than niche build, as they now had some decent stuff to work with on Earthmother.

Entanglement used to inflict slow on plants, allowing you to effortlessly garden them all away after converting out of EM. This was originally left in place becasue the devs acknowledged that Earthmother was underpowered in those earlier builds, but was removed after the Clearance buff brought her into line with the rest of the pantheon.

Earthmother's sixth boon was Power of Earth, which was a low-cost repeatable boon similar to Vine Form and Greenblood. It granted CP, and was largely regarded as an Orc-only boon (orcs worked differently back then...). It disappeared before the introduction of the transmutation seal, the transmuter, or the spirit pact buff. As a result, it never really went insane like some of the later CP-stacking combos.


Jehora Jeheyu
This god was nuts when he first appeared. Petition was 25 piety, his piety gain was significantly faster than it is now, and one of the church preps was to begin with 25 piety. Needless to say, this made him extraordinarily easy to work with. Originally boost health was only +10 hit points, but it got bumped fairly early. Boost Mana, however, was originally +4 max MP per hit.

This was the era of the Gnome Warlord. With 13+12 mana (three hits of boost mana) you hit the 25 MP threshold, where each mana potion you drink grants you +10 mana. The ease with which you reach that threshold was phenomenal, and with the heightened piety gain it wasn't too hard to get high-probability roll on a Last Chance. Chaos Avatar was originally 100 piety, but with that higher piety gain it wasn't a big issue grabbing it.

Jehora Jeheyu would be hit by a succession of nerfs. Boost Mana got toned back, his piety gain got toned back, and the cost of petition was increased dramatically. He's just a shadow of his former self now, but his raw reliability and versatility have been emphasized by the dailies where he's rocking out as arguably the premier deity. It's hard to imagine the sheer power of what used to exist.

Despite his nerfs, JJ has received one invisible buff; the nastier status ailments he inflicts as punishments (poison, mana burn, and health drain) have all been made much less common due to a change his punishment algorithm. While this wasn't relevant in the past since people were just prepping the free 25 piety for instant petition, it is very relevant today and is part of what makes JJ so reliable.

Jehora's sixth boon was a "dodge" boon, identical to Tikki Tooki's minus the gold. It was always implicitly filler, and when the deities got stripped back to five boons it got removed entirely. For a time, though, it was just another great boon on a great deity.

JJ is one of the few deities to have had a substantial change to his altar desecration effect. Instead of a 50% chance of being afflicated by a bunch of stat reductions, it was a 50% chance of death. It was so bad that the devs actually put an "are you sure?" prompt on JJ's altar desecration, and you know how badly they hate those kinds of prompts.


Pactmaker
[EDIT - thanks to Sidestepper for reminding me of this] Originally, the Pactmaker behavior was inverted. His pacts gave you piety in exchange for permanent debuffs. For instance, Scholar's Pact gave you 10 piety when you leveled up, but reduced your max mana by 1 (hello Taurog worshippers...) and Warrior's Pact was exactly what existed now but in reverse. This proved incredibly unpopular, especially as during this early point in the beta most gods were regarded as piety farms who didn't needs this. It was flipped around, resulting in a Pactmaker that is almost identical to the one we know today. From that point onwards there were only two significant changes: Spirit Pact got a significant buff, and Consensus got changed up a bit.

Consensus used to be +50 piety but only reduced your maximum piety to 75. This meant it was only really restrictive with a small subset of gods. However, Consensus was also mutually exclusive with the other pacts so if you picked it you would be barred from picking another pact. To encourage more diverse pact usage, the devs allowed you to combine consensus with other pacts and clamped down on it by doubling its penalty, which made its downsides more relevant with the rest of the pantheon.

[Sidestepper]

Thanks Darvin! I've been looking forward to this! I couldn't remember what the sixth boon was for everyone anymore, and it was driving me nuts.

I'd like to add that Pactmaker had one major revision. His original incarnation was some sort of Bizarro World version of the Pactmaker that we all know today. The pacts gave you permanent debuffs in exchange for piety. No one liked the trade, and you had to be in a very specific position with a very specific plan to make it work. This version lasted for only a single week, and then the devs reversed his polarity.

[Tinker]

Wow, great read from the pen of our resident historian...

I can only imagine how the power level looked before, because some of the deities that underwent "massive nerf" are still top notch! i.e. GG is still one of the best deities out there, he can generate tons of piety even when prepped, etc... And wow, (up to) +20 Mana from Dracul, would make you think twice before using any other altar... Even today's JJ is brutal with the up to +12 you can pick up from him, worth a consideration for a lot of pure caster builds.

But from all the read-up, I do think that the deities changed for the better, and not just in terms of power level, but also in terms of finding their place within the parthenon. None are one-trick-ponies, but all have their distinct builds and uses (and because many have at least 1-2 boons that are useful for each build, games without prepped altars are still fun).

[berpdreyfuss]

Yes, great read! Thank you very much for this, Darvin!

[Darvin]

[chandl34]

[Tinker]

[Darvin]

[Blovski]

Eh, Mystera and Taurog are both one trick ponies of sorts. I honestly like Taurog more of the two. Also solid piety farms, which compensates for that, I think.

Personally I'm really happy with where the gods ended up and the balancing work done with them was really phenomenal. Two late beta double-fixes to early game god overuse kind of led to a couple of boons being in an odd place, namely:

- Stone Heart used to have no visible wall requirements and affect unseen monsters, it was far too easy to just spam the topside for the resistance crushing, wall deletion and MR boost then convert out. Personally I think the visibility requirement on one or the other would've been enough; right now it's kind of a last piety burst thing rather than ever very strategically useful.

- the once super-over-cheap Absolution (a lot of players would just go GG early-game for a ton of health boost, a humility and switch out; I think I was the one exploiting the Enlightenment you could get from this) had a stacking price put on it, which massively cut the number of beads non-Paladins could get; the change to how Absolution works was great but it had a really big knock-on effect on the viability of Enlightenment and the interaction between Enlightenment and the beads (frankly most people these days take Enlightenment (if they take it at all) for the 5 MP or the Curse wipe... it's rare that the bead benefits stack up to very much, which is bizarre given that's kind of set up as the core mechanic of the god but has been overshadowed by Cleansing/Protection/Humility). I think I lobbied for an Enlightenment cost reduction - it doesn't match up to Chaos Avatar in its current form imo.

That said, I think they did an incredible amount of work (and blindsided us with a lot of ingenious solutions to balance things) before sensibly drawing a line under it. It's just interesting seeing where the oddities still in the game come from.

[Naoya]