The Earthmother

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The Earthmother
The Earthmother.png
Initial worship
Punishment
  • applies 5 layers of Trait: Corrosion Corrosion to your character
Prep penalty
  • Plant creation rate from boons is doubled
Likes
  • Cast Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL on an enemy: +10 Piety
  • Cast Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL on a plant: +5 Piety
Dislikes
  • Kill a plant: -15 Piety
Boons
God boon: Plantation Plantation Multiple use
Cost: 5 Piety
Effect: Grows a plant on each visible bloodstain, and gain 5 Piety for each plant grown in this manner
God boon: Clearance Clearance Multiple use
Cost: 5 (+5) Piety
Effect: Removes 10 plants and restores 1 Mana for each removed plant.
God boon: Greenblood Greenblood Multiple use
Cost: 5 (+3) Piety
Effect: Every monster on this dungeon level is inflicted with 1 point of Trait: Corrosion Corrosion, spawns 3 random plants and removes one layer of Trait: Cursed Cursed.
God boon: Entanglement Entanglement Multiple use
Cost: 5 Piety
Effect: Every monster on this dungeon floor is Trait: Slowed Slowed, spawns 5 random plants
God boon: Vine Form Vine Form Multiple use
Cost: 5 (+3) Piety
Effect: Grants you +4 to your maximum hit points, 1 point of Trait: Damage Reduction Damage Reduction, spawns 2 plants

The Earthmother is an ancient guardian of natural order. Favoured by survivalists and druids, her boons deal with growth, decay and rebirth.

Although she cares for little beyond the safety and sanctity of her plant life, she'll favour your flesh-and-blood followers who are willing to commit plant and animal matter to the earth.

The Earthmother is uncovered in a subdungeon to the South. Her subdungeon is completely revealed, filled with plants and level 9 "Gardeners". Cut your way across the room to her altar to unlock her, or using the Glyph: WEYTWUT WEYTWUT glyph on a nearby Plant is even simpler.


Boons

God boon: Entanglement Entanglement

The Earthmother's best boon, slowing every monster on the same dungeon level. Unlike Item: Titan Guitar Titan Guitar, entanglement does not slow plants. Trait: Slowed Slowed monsters lose their Trait: First Strike First Strike benefits, and also grant 1 extra XP when killed. For a mere 5 Piety, this is a very good boon and one that you should almost always take.

It's cheap enough to be used multiple times as a finishing move against a single higher level enemy. This allows you to kill higher level monsters. Together with Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL, it's Earthmother's best help for your leveling.

This boon is very useful when you want to slow all the lower level monsters. But slowed popcorns only give you bonus exp only when you can kill them in one shot. One trick is to attack all higher health monsters first so that they are in one-hit range, purchase entanglement, then killing them. This is one of the few rare cases where simultaneously fighting with several monsters is good approach.

God boon: Vine Form Vine Form

Quite useful for low-level characters, granting extra hit points and damage reduction. Against low-damage monsters such as the Monster: Meat Man Meat Man this can allow you to fight enemies three or four levels higher than yourself. When fighting high damage enemies, God boon: Vine Form Vine Form can also be used to boost your hit points to a level where you can take one hit. However, these benefits do not scale with your level and they will be largely meaningless by the time you're level 10. Try not to invest in more than you need.

God boon: Greenblood Greenblood

This boon adds a flat amount of corrosion damage per hit and ignores resistances, and therefore works well when more attacks will be required to kill the enemy. It's strongest in the early game, but the added damage remains relevant throughout the game when combined with attacks that deal low damage, such as knockback, fireballs, and monk hits. For example, four uses of God boon: Greenblood Greenblood is equivalent to having an extra character level for the purpose of casting fireballs. The curse removal can also occasionally come in handy.

God boon: Clearance Clearance

Restores 10 mana if there are enough plants on the map to be cleared, at a very affordable piety cost. This allows Earthmother followers a massive amount of extra spellcasting during the late game. If there aren't enough plants remaining on the map, the full amount of mana won't be restored. God boon: Entanglement Entanglement can be used to spawn plants cheaply if needed.

This boon is also usable when you are stuck from a target monster via plants but do not want to kill plants, but maybe only when you are not going to mana spike with this boon.

God boon: Plantation Plantation

This boon can be used to generate large sums of piety, and is particularly useful when converting into God: The Earthmother The Earthmother during the end-game. Keep in mind that using this boon will effectively preclude a conversion into God: Dracul Dracul, since those blood pools will no longer be available for him. If you intend to make such a conversion at some point, avoid God boon: Plantation Plantation.

To maximize your piety gain, check the number of bloodstains before useing plantation. Avoid killing popcorns if your piety gain would exceed 100. This way you can use plantation again after you use some of your piety. Keep in mind that this boon requires 5 Piety to use! If you converted your Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL and no piety sparkles are left, you can accidently miss to use the expected plantation and ruin your run.

Strategy

The Earthmother is the goddess of nature and plants, and doesn't enjoy heroes cutting a safari-style path through her precious flora. The Earthmother is one of the most straightforward deities in the game to please, and in practice the one of the few which you can reliably go the entire game without ever incurring any penalty to piety. She offers strong combat boosts in the early game, good experience boosts throughout, and potentially a lot of mana refreshment for the late game. However her boons spawn plants which can cause exploration to be difficult, especially when you prepared her.

The only two acts that anger God: The Earthmother The Earthmother are destroying plant life and using the Trait: Life steal Life steal ability. The only act that pleases her is using Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL (you can also use God boon: Plantation Plantation to gain piety). This makes her fairly easy to play; petrify stuff to gain piety, and leave her plants alone. Since most dungeons don't have any plants to begin with, and the Earthmother does not create very many, it's unlikely you will ever have serious issues before the time comes to convert out.

God: The Earthmother The Earthmother grants 5 Piety for petrifying plants and other non-XP enemies, and 10 Piety for petrifying XP-yielding enemies. The best targets for this are plants, high level monsters that you are unlikely to kill such as the Monster: Animated Armour Animated Armour, and low level monsters. Petrifying plants can be used as a renewable piety generator, since the piety gained from petrifying the plants can be used to buy more boons which will spawn more plants. In this way, the penalty for preparing Earthmother's altar can sometimes actually be beneficial, although you will need to be able to cope with having your path blocked sometimes.

Sometimes you may need to chop down a plant or two as a last resort if you get blocked and take the piety hit, so in cramped levels consider maintaining a small piety buffer. An early God boon: Clearance Clearance can also be used for this purpose, particularly if the mana restoration can be put to good use to kill a high level enemy.

Earthmother's boons are strongest during the leveling up phase of the game. A dedicated Earthmother worshipper is often able to kill enemies one level higher than otherwise, and the bonus XP from these kills will be further multiplied by Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL's Trait: Experience Boost Experience Boost. This translates to more Entangled popcorn left on the field, and makes it easier to to level up twice during the boss fight.

One good strategy with God: The Earthmother The Earthmother is to use a variety of her boons at a low cost, then either use Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL or God boon: Plantation Plantation to build up to 100 Piety, activate God boon: Entanglement Entanglement, and convert to another god with 50 Piety. On the flip side, converting into God: The Earthmother The Earthmother to use God boon: Plantation Plantation and then spend your piety on God boon: Clearance Clearance to get mana for the final boss is a great "last-ditch" move for characters dependent on spellcasting. God: The Earthmother The Earthmother also makes a good "escape deity" choice if you just want to avoid taking further piety punishments. If there are no plants on the field and you don't have a Trait: Life steal Life steal ability, she will never punish you.

Advanced players with slower playstyle can write down how many plants are currently on the dungeon level.

Preperation penalty and Punishment

God: The Earthmother The Earthmother also has the least harmful desecration penalty on her altar, causing a mere 5 layers of Trait: Corrosion Corrosion. You can cure this with a Item: Burn Salve Burn Salve potion, and it's not going to be a huge deal for a higher-level character anyway. This makes her pretty much the only deity who is routinely desecrated immediately after converting out, and one of the most frequent victims of desecration of any deity.

Her preperation panelty is to double the number of plant spawning from her boons, including God boon: Plantation Plantation. This can seriously injure your mobility, and it can be critical in some narrower dungeons. However, her preperation panelty can sometimes help you; the panelty provides enough plants for you. In the early stage this will enhance the chance to find a petrifiable plant so that you can use Glyph: IMAWAL IMAWAL on them to grant piety. In the latter stages you can use God boon: Clearance Clearance without the need to generate plants from other boons.

Because her preperation panelty does nothing bad on your dungeon if you don't actively worship her or use her boons, preparing her altar just to desecrate can be a descent choice if you didn't choose what diety you will follow in your run.