Wiki Discussion - Dungeon Page Layout

[Lujo]

All right guys, I want to do a full rework on the Binlor page. But before I do that I need to get something off my chest, and it's probably gonna make me look like an asshole, but I pray it doesn't get anyone offended, it's one of those things I've been thinking about a lot over the years. Funny, there's a semi-insane person in Croatia who's been thinking about a god in a video game for years - it's a strange old world.

Right, so:

Binlors page current page is basicaly a testament to how silly we, as a community, have been about percieving that god, and possibly parts of the game as a whole. It's a quite a bit outdated, but the tweaks and nerfs binlor has recieved during development read to me like an epic struggle by the devs to get us to quit only using that guy for shennanigans and take him for what he is.

It might also have something to do with Darvin writing most of the wiki content. He did try to get us to write abot stuff we know more about than him, but being a lazy and long-winded bastard I never really did or dared to, which I now regret.

Binlor is, first and foremost, god of big mele damage. You use him with Halflings and Dwarves, and Orcs and Humans and Dragonkin, in the simplest possibly way - farm piety, get damage boons, spam stoneskin, beat boss. Most of the time you don't even care about being punished as far as the boss fight is concerned, because you get your resists from stoneskin spam. If the boss does magic damage, you do care, but then you use stoneskins to level and that farms your magic resists, it's still pretty simple.

But we never, ever talked about him that way. We never really talked about Halflings ("only good for the old Trisword"), never really talked about Dwarves ("Only good to patch up the rogue"), and kinda considered going out of our way to farm resists by starting with Dragonshield on orcs and humans the default way of doing things. Heck, it seemed like a total discovery to me that Binlor actually had a spike, and I only realized this when I did a huge writeup about all the spikes in the game (for science) and wrote "JJ and Binlor have no natural spike", only to realize a few posts later that Stoneskin even exists.

The most stable, powerful and straightforward "actually worshiping binlor" guy is probably the Halfling Berserker, allthough the Priest is a close second (has a bit of an easier time if Phys res is all you need because you don't care about being punished). You get your knockback, you'll get everything else easily, you have max magic resists, you have on-demand max physical resists, and you have a huge supply of potions to spike whatever. All you have to do is not get punished, but if you're knocking stuff into walls that's not a problem. Prep Bear Mace, go Warmonger (even the Gorgon can do that).

And I'm not even getting into how his big damage boost sinergizes with Orcs. It used to sinergize with the old Trisword, but even back then we never really made the connection. Possibly because all the potions were getting dumped into the Trisword early. Old Binlor Trilings would've been complete monsters if they ever got to be a thing. They're even inefficient in a sense that you have more refills than you need, so Dwarves actually tend to work even better.

What we did instead was:

- Use him as free 30 piety and 3 indulgences all the time. Or just a piety farm, or both.
- Prepped him as a Titan Guitar so that he removes walls with no work, untill that got reworked into prepping him creating impassable tiles.
- Use him to remove resists from everything via Stone Heart and all walls from a level before converting out, untill that got nerfed to get us to stop. It's still complained about not working occasionally.
- Use him to do full completion on Namtar's Lair by farming full magic resists on everything before converting out.
- Used him to add +70% damage to lvl1 bosskil Rogues.
- Use him as magnet:pissorf and free 80 piety and 3 indulgences (get pissorff, convert into whoever for 50 piety and then desecrate him for 30 and indulgences). We still do that.
- Use him to farm full magic resists on stuff in VGT untill a lot of walls got removed from it.
- Kept doing that up to this day.

Now the "asshole" part - Wald0 didn't invent the Binlor Paladin. He did clear VT VGT with it, but I've done a crapton of regular VGT Binlor guys in there before that (right before that, to be specific). He was awfuly secretive about it like it was a secret - and he might've imagined it was a secret, because noone ever talked about dedicated Binlor worship and he's like some great mistery or tricky to play god, when he's in fact laughably simple if you do the most straightforward and obvious thing with him, which isn't even listed on the wiki. But I didn't "invent" Binlor either - Avatar had cleared Namtar's Lair with Binlor-everything back when he was the first guy to do everything but VGT with everything. But HE kept quiet about it (possibly because he thought it might get nerfed), until later. I thought he was just way better at the game than me, and he probably is, but it was still just doing the same thing, prepping the guy who gives really big damage and resistances.

The reason I'm kinda worked up about it is that there's this situation where it looks like Binlor is only good for farming magic resists on endurance runs, or that you need to be a Paladin to worship Binlor, or that you have to have Phys stacked to worship Binlor, or that Binlor is a utility god of some sort, or that Stone Heart is what Binlor is about, or that Stoneskins are just there for farming magic resists - while at the same time halflings and dwarves are seen as underpowered, and damage and resists are scarce enough that you need to go Orc or Human with Dragonshield on everything because it's the only thing that could possibly work.

Binlor Paladin isn't so much a strat, as it's the only thing the average player in this community would pick that made them "stuck" in Binlor. And it still isn't how or why you play Binlor anywhere outside of VGT (even Naga City) because one of your class abilities (and very likely your prepped Dragonshield) means you don't get as much out of Stoneskin as your typical Binlor worshiper (who either never gets played or never gets talked about). And you're still using Binlor in the same way you'd use him on anyone not really looking to worship him - just pick whatever for the resists, get the damage and knocback - except you don't convert out simply because you can't. And since people so rarely play Binlor through at all, it looks terribly special and awesome - while in fact you just win while being in Binlor so you can't pin the win on anything else.

Right. So, with all this in mind, I'm off to rewrite the Binlor page. Stone Heart got changed since it was written, if you're just in it for the resists you're better off spamming stoneskin. There's at least 5 distinct ways to play him, not 2. He works well, but in different ways, with Orcs, Halflings, Dwarves, Humans and Half-Dragons. He's also probably the most versatile god after Earthmother in terms of shennanigans, and the most versatile after JJ in terms of simple raw stats (different ones than JJ though). He's also the god of huge damage and melee stupidity, except I won't write that like that. He's also not that hot of a maze map prep ever since the "unpassable walls" thing which intefears with easy pissorff piety farming. I'll try to keep it short.

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

Oh, I actually hugely appreciate you writing all that stuff, it's just that I need to be a bit irreverent if something needs a bit of a big rewrite because while say me and you know it was you who wrote it all, most people don't... Sorry if it sounds like dissing you, never meant to do it.

As for paladins - the damage boost, halpmeh and patching up both sides of resists, as well as the punishment avoidance and piety discounts, it's not hard to see why it's so good, but he's not really your typical Binlor guy or Binlor experience rather. Has to get mentioned as a high-end strat, ofc, but presenting a god via the Paladin paints a strange picture of it. That's why I feel like "bashing" the Binlor Paladin, it works like mad, it's just not really representative. Dwarf Paladins of Binlor are really really fun, though, and Orc ones are obv. monsters.

Also, spaming stoneskin isn't the most efficient with piety, but it's really good for leveling if you want to stick around in Binlor until late. Get (or have) knockback, and it works quite fine.

[Darvin]

[Tinker]

If you're relying on Stoneskin spam you're probably not much better off with health refills (halfling) but rather with big damage (orc) to make each 10 piety count for more (and even more if you can use your knockback).

But I guess it's inevitable, if Lujo goes wild on the Wiki, we're probably gonna see Halflings and Goblins become the recommended race for everything (like Crusader).

[Darvin]

[Tinker]

Just wait, when I work up the confidence to touch anything other than the map pages, It'll be Gnomes all over the place!

[Darvin]

Saw your update, Lujo. Made a few edits of my own (mostly style changes).

This is as good a place as any to go over the wiki style standards for referencing glyphs. Glyphs are always written in all caps (ie, BURNDAYRAZ). The first time a glyph is referenced in the article, you should use the {{s|GLYPHNAME}} template to link to its own article. Subsequent uses do not need to be linked. I notice that glyphs are frequently misspelled. Please note the correct spelling of the thirteen glyphs:

BURNDAYRAZ
PISORF
ENDISWAL
BYSSEPS
IMAWAL
LEMMISI
WEYTWUT
WONAFYT
GETINDARE
HALPMEH
APHEELSIK
CYDSTEPP
BLUDTUPOWA

[Darvin]

Okay, wiki policy/style discussion:

Should the names of boons be capitalized
I'm not picking on Lujo here, because I probably am just as guilty, but it seems that boons are capitalized inconsistently. We should be consistent in style and prose. So, here's the question:

Should it be:
A) [capitalize boons] "Spamming Stone Heart for this purpose costs less piety, but costs more walls, and doesn't help you level. "
or
B) [do not capitalize boons] "Spamming stone heart for this purpose costs less piety, but costs more walls, and doesn't help you level. "


What should be the plural form of boons?
I noticed this when reading Lujo's article that he often refers to "Stone Skins" when talking about repeated uses of the Stone Skin boon. I think the singular form flows better here as there is only one Stone Skin boon, and that boon is used repeatedly. I was partway through editing these out of the article, but have decided to put it up for discussion.

Should it be:
A) [use plural form] spamming Stone Skins costs fewer walls and can help you fight things and level up if you're not afraid of the punishment.
or
B) [do not use plural form] spamming Stone Skin costs fewer walls and can help you fight things and level up if you're not afraid of the punishment.


(my personal vote is to capitalize boons and do not use plural forms)

[Astral]

I'm for capitalized boon names, and against the plural form. So my votes are 1A and 2B.

Oh and thanks for telling the glyph linking policy. Last time I had no idea how many times to do it.