Kingdom Renovators

[q 3]

Mystic Balance nullifies the Piercing Wand's penalty. That and the -3 cost reduction for WEYTWUT make it if anything even more overpowered for fireball strategies (although Wizards are feeling rather put off by Mystera's current revision, which is unfortunate because Wizards don't have a lot of great deity options). For those who aren't making full use of the new and improved CYDSTEPP.

And for what it's worth, I'll lend my vote to the "GG was fine as he was" camp. I don't really get the rationale for the change; if you'd asked me, the issue was more that most of the other deities needed to be buffed a bit and/or made less overspecialized. GG's boons have all been weakened substantially since his initial beta form, based on his rate of piety accumulation and penalties. If he's going to become stingier with piety (and stingier in a rather incomprehensible way, IMO) then his boons should go back to being all-powerful, because right now they're just not worth it (I'm not even sure how it's possible to get Enlightenment anymore without doing the Binlor/BLUDTOPOWA/desecration trick or something similar). But I think it would be better just to revert him to the prior update. If that's still not cranky enough for you, my suggestion would be removing the +5 piety on level up and increasing piety from potion conversion back to +5 (that was he doles out less piety in the normal course of play and rewards players who make an early commitment to his ways).

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

My thoughts on GG

1) I don't think he's gonna stay this way.
2) There were many things wrong with him from an overall game perspective, so to speak. He rewarded fighting higher lvl monsters and made it significantly easier/more proffitable. Since fighting higher lvl monsters is generally what mostly everyone ever did, this made him incomparably good - you were geting piety for doing something you would've done anyway, and you were getting bonuses good enough to make rogues playable without Cydstep in VICIOUS. In thruth, since I "discovered" GG, I haven't used JJ - who is a go to god for most people, simply because the convoluted but strong strats that only he allowed could not in my eyes compare with the "ease of use" of GG's boons and HIS strats.

I also think that JJ (and TT) work or worked so well for reasons simmilar to why GG was so powerfull - they are piety farms with great boons. JJ rewards you for doing almost anything at all, and TT rewards you a lot for doing something that at some point in a playthorugh becomes almost anything at all (and with old poison he basicaly had no drawback). GG was a PIETY FARM, which was also good enough to be taken with any non-spellcaster on almost any run as a solo deity. If used as a piety farm (which I did often), you could still convert out with humility and absolution at least, and if you had to convert items to squeeze a post-Enlightment conversion, you'd still be rewarded for doing something that was very good for you a lot of the time.

Having said all that, I'm not sure not having any way to gain piety with GG except from conversions and levels is the way to go.

[dislekcia]

There is a new way to gain piety with GG. It's just that nobody's found it yet

[Lujo]

[The Avatar]

Could be related to HALPMEH too. I also got some sort of burnt offering for killing low level guys with the firesword.

[TigerKnee]

If no one found it yet I got a feeling your deity design is a bit too counter intuitive.

[Lujo]

Ok, i've tried some more stuff, I guess it's not HALPMEH related.

I did start getting "burnt offering" but I can't decide on what grounds and I can't decide what's it related to, or if you can get more than +2 Piety.

I've got it by killing a low level meatman, and I think I got it off a snake once, and I've got it of a higher lvl goat once. Using Fireball may or may not be related to it, because I think I've got it off of something that I didn't touch with a fireball. Anyone test this properly?

[q 3]

Having something die because of the burning effect consistently gets the +2 piety (but seemingly not when your final attack would kill it even without burning). On a higher level monster, you'll get both +2 piety for burning and -?? piety for the high level kill.

I'm not impressed. Unless there's some other super secret way of pleasing him, he's still just about worthless for anything other than converting in, taking Humility/Absolution, and then immediately converting out. Burning kills are too niche and the amount of piety you get is too trivial for this to be much more than a cute but relatively useless gimmick. If GG had some fireball or burning boons and was all about becoming the burning god, maybe, but please let's not do that when he was mostly fine as he was.

[Sidestepper]

I think you get it when the creature dies from the burning damage . You can consistently trigger it if you carefully stack burning on a monster and then 'ignite' it by attacking something else. It's a very tedious mechanic, not sure how I feel about it yet. It also feels off-theme for GG, which is why it's taken so long for any one to notice it.

I used to love how GG's boons played into his strictures. Using Humility made it possible to follow his rules, and Absolution was a reward you got at the end for staying on the straight and narrow. Now Humility works against his wishes, and Absolution is almost impossible to use.

I also can't state enough how much I hate the new theme (sorry guys, but it's true). GG was a god who valued heroism and detested violence for its own sake. He is now actively opposed to courageous combat and demands that his followers prey upon the weak and helpless. He's like Tikki Tokki, except that he punishes courage instead of rewarding brigandry.

EDIT: ninja'ed by q 3

As long as I'm here, I can't say I like the avarice penalty either, for several reasons:

1) Since you have to pick up gold piles when you enter a tile, it's not something that you can control.
2) Bank preparations make it largely irrelevant
3) It encourages weird 'grab-all-the-gold-you-can' behavior before converting. Mystera used to have this problem with glyph conversion until she got changed
4) It is yet another new trait of his that pulls against his interests. GG demands constant sacrifices of material goods. You need gold to do that. This exacerbates 3)