Taurog
| Taurog | |
|---|---|
| |
| Initial worship |
|
| Punishment |
|
| Prep penalty |
Missing info |
| Likes | |
| |
| Dislikes | |
| |
| Boons | |
| |
Taurog is a deity of warfare, battle, and savagery. He relishes combat and detests weak and spineless spellcasters. Taurog is one of the most generous deities in the game when it comes to piety, giving huge amounts of it to followers and barely punishing them at all for infractions. His simplicity and easy-going nature makes Taurog a favourite deity of beginner players.
Taurog's boons come with a trade-off, however; they permanently occupy an inventory slot and reduce your maximum mana by 1 point. Although there are ways to deal with the loss of mana, the inventory space requirement is quite onerous.
Taurog is obtained in a sub-dungeon in the west. Inside a massive arena is Taurog's altar. Stepping on the altar will summon four guardians which you must battle to prove your worth to Taurog. Ironically, you are not prohibited from using spellcasting against these guardians, and in practice it's difficult to defeat them without casting spells due to the fact that they gain death protection. Taurog's subdungeon is by far the largest unexplored subdungeon in the game, which leads to some exploits. It's entirely possible to avoid stepping on the altar and prevent yourself from unlocking Taurog, causing the subdungeon to appear again in the future. You can use this subdungeon as free exploration space whenever you find it, which is extremely valuable to certain classes (such as the assassin) which can defeat almost any foe if given enough tiles to explore.
Strategy
Taurog's boons vary in value depending on how far you are into the game. As you progress further into Desktop Dungeons, you will unlock more powerful items and encounter more dangerous dungeons... which contain more gold with which to purchase those powerful items you've unlocked! Many of these items are significantly more powerful than Taurog's items, and as a result filling your inventory with his gear will make you weaker in the long-run as you acquire the gold to properly deck out your hero with top-end equipment. For new players, however, this often isn't a big deal and Taurog works well for most combat-oriented classes.
The most common way to use Taurog is to gain piety with him to fuel a pact with the Pactmaker, or else convert to another deity to spend it. Very few deities can produce as much piety as effortlessly as Taurog does, enabling you to fuel some of the Pactmaker's most expensive boons. This will also allow you to completely sidestep Taurog's worst restrictions, and your maximum MP and inventory space will be unaffected.
Taurog has one incredibly powerful boon at his disposal: unstoppable fury. This allows you to chain multiple death protections at the end of a boss fight. Against high-damage bosses this can be extremely dangerous, but it requires you to have all of Taurog's items. This is a high opportunity cost for most characters, and keeps this boon from being used too often.
