Priest
| Priest | |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 Class | |
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| Class traits | |
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| Suggested Races | |
 Dwarf Priest,  Halfling Priest,  Orc Priest
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| Class Challenges | |
| No challenges | |
| Unlocking | |
 House Of The Holy
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Humble folk of the cloth, Priests are not especially adept at combat. However, they tend to have a remarkably high constitution due to their vegan diets and morning aerobics sessions, which comes in handy when someone has to go deal with a local undead infestation. Stupid undead.
Contents
So, what's he about?
The Priest's abilities actually mean the follwing:
GOOD HEALTH: A rather large health bonus that rewards you for leveling up. It lets you land melee hits against targets that are higher level than you. If you can kill them, you get bonus XP, which lets you level up and get more health. There are several items that boost this further, and some Priests builds lke that.
GOOD DRINK: An unreal buff to the healing potion effect. This makes them more than twice as good, and it also rewards you for leveling up. Everyone gets health per level, the Priest has extra health per level, and once you're big and fat you can get a lot of mileage out of your potions. This also means the potions are quite precious.
GOOD GOLLY: An insane buff to damage versus about 25% of enemies on almost every map. This means several things, and has several uses. If you pick your targets, you can use this to kill undead above your level and get bonus XP. If you happen to outlevel undead monsters you get first strike against them, and this can mean you can kill some pretty large undead without getting hit back. And finally, if the boss is Undead you get a ludicrously enormous melee damage bonus against the boss.
If you have found the 
Pepper the Dog item and lockered it, you can "mark" a boss as undead, gaining an enormous advantage in the endgame.
As can be plainly seen, the "Priest" is all you would expect a stereotypical old-school RPG Fighter to be - a melee guy who does a lot of melee, has a lot of health, and is good at fighting stuff in melee. If you pick your targets, you can outlevel most monsters. Then use the outleveled monsters for leveling up in the middle of the fight with the boss to refill your health and mana mid-figt. And when you're as huge as you can get - drink all your potions for even more hits on the boss. That's the general idea.
What is he NOT about
What isn't plain to see is that he is also the worst possible class in the whole game for fiddling with most gods if you're a beginner. He's a lightning rod for punishments!
If you're just startig out try figuring out what gods like and dislike with a "Fighter", or anthing at all instead of a "Priest". It's easier to appreciate them that way. Then when you've got a bit of a feel for the Gods, see what they do for your "Priest". They do a lot, as they do for all other melee-friendly characters, and they are critical to enjoying many Priest builds, but you really don't want to be learning about gods with this guy.
An exception to this is the Halfling Priest worshipping the god Taurog - that's impossible to screw up. The godess Earthmother also isn't likely to trip you up with Priest-specific deathtraps, you can do allright with Pactmaker - it's highly recommended you get familiar with the other guys using other characters. Specifically because:
| The Glowing Guardian - doesn't like you using potions. He has a few other minor rules, and most characters don't mind not using potions (or even converting potions to please him), but the Priest really, really wants to use his potions. Many folks never touch any gods because their first experience with them was trying Glowing Guardian out with a Priest, it ending horribly, and them concluding the game is way too punishing to even bother trying to figure it out. It isn't, it's just that the Priest is uniquely unsuited to worshiping that guy.
Dracul - would be the best Priest deity ever, the Priest is all about health and refills, and Dracul is all about health and refills. He even hands out damage resistance! Except Dracul doesn't like you drinking health potions and killing undead. And you're the guy who's all about drinking health potions and killing undead. Yeah. Taurog - Is pretty safe, except the problem is that 2 out of 3 Priest abilities are late game abilities, and the third is quite situational. So the priest really wants to be able to use his glyphs to level up. It's not that it won't work, depending on your race and the difficulty level, it's just that you're shooting yourself in the foot and you don't even realize it. Binlor Ironshield - would be great because he helps you with resistances and damage, except he punishes you for leveling up by taking away any resistances you might have acquired. And you really want to level up, and you really want some resistances as they make all your health and refils way more valuable. If you don't have any resistances, it's fine, sure, but you really like your resistances an would like to have them. Mystera Annur - would be a great option for the Priest because you want to use your glyphs to level up and then becaome a huge melee monster with all your potions saved for the late game. The problem is that the by far most common Undead enemies, the ones you're most eager and likely to fight, are Zombie and Wraiths. Of those two the Wight is much easier to tackle - unless you're worshipping Mystera who'll punish you for killing them AND for getting mana burned (which you will if you melee them, and you want to be able to do that). Yeah. Jehora Jeheyu - he's not particularly bad for Priests, per se, he just doesn't have that much to offer you, and he's a bit tricky to handle for a beginner. Also, he can randomly poison you, and the Priest likes blowing Healing Potions to solve that much less than any other guy out there. Tikki Tooki - likes guys who have an easy time leveling up and then rewards them with a late game. You're more of a guy with a late game looking for ways to level up. It can work spectacularly well if you pick your targets and play a more spellcastery race for your priest, and the first strike glyph is tepting, but it can also easily be a decision that you come to regret if you're not comfortable with gods yet. Also - his late game can cost you precious health potions. |
All of them can be used fine enough once you're a bit more familiar with the game, and definitely should be used - just don't go trying to figure these guys out with the "Priest" first. Any other tier 1 character is likely to serve you better.
Strategy
What priests generally want to do, first and foremost, is get levels. None of them but the Halfling can afford to blow potions on leveling up without a good plan. Most of those plans involve gods, and often the sort of gods who don't like you using potions. The other option is picking targets carefully, but this may or may not work - sometimes you just can' find a juicy undead to slap around for huge XP. And you're not really good at fighting anything but the undead.
This means choosing targets, using glyphs, items and your racial bonus to your advantage, and if all else fails / you know what you're doing, gods. Different gods for different priests, ofc.
Once you've got your levels, just throw everything at the boss. There are subtleties and tricks to get more hits out of your large health pool, but in general that's that - get leveled up, throw stuff at the boss. As far as the master plan goes, it's as simple as they come.
Races
Like the stereotypical RPG Fighters of old, the DD "Priest" is rather single-minded. This ends up producing a strange outcome as every race you pair with him produces a wildly different character.
Human Priest
| This combination can suffer a bit from the "too much payoff" problem - human bonus comes into play with levels, and most of what the priest does becomes relevant with levels. On the other hand, the end-game is sure to be stable - you're likely to end up fat, with plenty of damage vs. anyone and silly huge damage vs. undead, along with a few cheat-code tier healing potions. Getting there is going to take glyphs, cherry-picking targets and, quite probably, gods.
On the helpful side, the human is not in a rush to convert glyphs, so you can and should play the glyph game - the ability to get first strike or slow enemy monsters is quite handy. Using ENDISWAL to prepare strikes, or IMAWAL to get more out of high-level undead kills can be quite proffitable. Worshiping a helpful deity, provided you know how to get around the various Priest-specific traps can do wonders for you, too. In case of humans, you would really enjoy being able to make use of Dracul's extra refills - the trick to that is to join Dracul after you've killed all of the undead and used up all your health potions allready. This can mean joining a god in the middle of the fight with the boss. |
Dwarf Priest
| This combinatio can easily suffer a bit from the "too much payoff" problem - both the priest abilities and the dwarf racial bonus really kick in later on. However, finding suitable undead to kill can let you jumpstart your dwarf career, and once you're a big fat dwarf your healing potions will restore absurd ammounts of total health. In fact, this combination has the highest amount of maximum health from amongst all race-class combinations.
Big health alone, even with 4-5 full restores, might not be enough. You don't really do much damage against non-undead, have no innate spellcasting ability, and are practically the only class who has actual trouble comfortably worshiping a number of gods. On the god front, the fact that you play fine with Earthmother is a big deal, especially since you can move into Dracul after you've killed most of the undead and spent most of your health potions. Play the glyphs and items to level up - you're not in a rush to convert them. Get the levels, and try to find things that make your end game health worth more - damage resistance and damage. Look for things that restore health, too. If you level up efficiently, you will have low level monsters around to kill in the middle of the boss fight to level you up and refill that way, too. This combination is also the best to finish the |
Elf Priest
| Somewhat unintuitively, the Elven Priest is a very smooth combination. The reason is that the Priest is so melee and late game oriented that having a race that covers spellcasting from early on suddenly makes them nicely rounded. Other races would be well advised to start their priests off as spellcasters too, except for most non-elves that takes using gods, and Priests are terrible at worshiping gods. Which makes Elves incredible priests.
The general idea is that you can convert most glyphs when you find them apart from whatever gives you first strike and your damage glyph of choice. Or any useful combination of glyphs which lets you just dump most others into easy to find mana. Then you combine your effortlessly solid spellcasting and your huge damage vs undead to level up as high as possible. Then you just throw all your health and mana at the boss. It's really very simple. An Elf Priest also has a bit of an easier time when it comes to worshipping gods simply because he's not so single-mindedly bent on melee, and his spellcasting prowess helps him fight things other than undead. It is a common PQI combination, and while it looks incredibly unsinergistic it really teaches a player to appreciate and recognize a well rounded class/race combo, as opposed to single-mindedly streamlined ones. |
Halfling Priest
| There are not many class/race combinations as single-mindedly streamlined as this one. GOOD DRINK is an unreal ability, it only makes any sense because the number of healing potions available to adventurers is somewhat firmly limited to 5, and doesn't go much above that in most circumstances. Halflings can turn any old junk into healing potions. This is in theory, and in practice, not all that far from what cheating would be like if there were such a thing in DD.
It's not god mode, though, as while you'll have enough health refills to put Dracul out of bussiness, you still need to pick your targets, use your glyphs, maybe get your resistances up to make those refills worth more and, and this is important, make sure you don't somehow screw up while worshiping gods. Because all those things you're looking for are most easily found by worshiping gods, and, as is so often the case with Priests, you're the guy most likely to randomly screw it up somehow. Otherwise, this thing does multiple badges on Vicious Dungeon runs easily, especially in experienced hands. In inexperienced hands, you can still just pick Taurog up, dump most of your glyphs (err, keep some first strike handy), charge at dudes, blow your potions to level up and still end up dropping a boss or two at lower difficulties. Or any difficulty. Also, the potion friendly items such, the Tri-Sword and the Alchemist Scroll sinergize perfectly with being Halfling Priest, just to make it even stronger. |
Gnome Priest
| The Gnome Priest makes for a curious case - the gnome is arguably a late game race, and the priest is a late game class. However, the gnome isn't in a rush to convert glyphs, and building a gnome up means getting him a larger mana pool. This is most often achieved through exploration. What happens is that you end up overexploring a bit, but you have a decent mana pool to help you level the priest up - and a rather easy time fighting undead. And since you've explored it easy for you to pick your targets, meaning undead, for big XP rewards.
What it also means is that if preparations are involved, and you know you'll be a gnome, you can easily prep up a decent spellcasting setup, which means you'll be starting out as a decent spellcasting priest and have an easy time leveling up. And if you've built up a mana pool, you can even use mana potions to help you make extra big kills while conserving your precious health potions. As with the Elven Priest, this is a frequent PQI combination, and this offers a lot of opportunity to practice it. Somewhat similar to the Elf, the Gnome Priest adds an aspect of flexibility and ease when it comes to dealing with melee-unfriendly enemies. It takes a bit more effort to play than the Elf, and is bound to be a bit more glyph oriented, but it's quite worthwhile once you get a hang of it. The flexibility and the ease of prepping up a deadly gnome lets it shine in longer Vicious scenarios where it's potency at high levels inevitably comes into play. |
Orc Priest
| Orc Priests are a nicely balanced combination. Combining the Orc's increased base damage with the Priest's GOOD HEALTH makes them decent melee fighters. The fact that it works great early on makes it especially appealing since the Priests crave a strong early game.
The Orc's increased base damage synergizes well with the When the signficance of the Orc bonus stats tapering off, all the Priestly goodness starts kicking in, and you ussually end up being pleasantly well, rounded. Damage resistance is your friend, as is crafty worship of gods which let you follow up on your limited supply of healing potions. |
Goblin Priest
| (to do) |
Gods
As for Gods, 
Glowing Guardian is a big no, because he doesn't allow you to exploit your health potions without taking a serious hit to your piety. 
Jehora Jeheyu is a great god for the Priest to worship thanks to his Boost Health boon. An investment on a single health potion for 25 max health can go a a long way. 
The Earthmother is also not a bad choice, because 
Vine Form is pretty cheap, and the Earthmother is a great source of piety. Combine this with 
Warrior's Pact for a large boost to your HP. 
Dracul could work, if you can get 
Sanguine up to significant levels. Combined with a decently leveled Sanguine and GOOD HEALTH allows you to heal quite a large amount of health. You do get penalized for drink Health Potions, but it's not as bad as the Glowing Guardian. Alternating between Sanguine and Health Potions will ensure you won't get punished big time.
Items
Obviously, items like the 
Trisword and 
Alchemist Scroll work very well with the Priest, allowing you to get great leverage out of them, thanks to the Priest's natural dependency on Health Potions. 
Naga Cauldron makes potions overheal even when you are not debuffed, giving you 100% HP every time.
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