I lucked into a Jiyva altar on D:1. Sadly that comes with loot management problems.
I thought I was being clever putting a bunch of “might use later” weapons and armour, along with pots of mutation, inside a teleporter vault, but to my dismay when I returned to the level, a bunch of jellies were inside and had nommed on my precious stash.
Should I try to find a wand of digging and make a size 1 square surrounded by lava/walls or will that too be eaten by the ravenous jellies?
No, none at all. Even if you do something to prevent jellies from walking onto a tile (only way to do this I know of is to make a malign gateway portal on a tile and then leave the floor) then items will just disappear after some time
Is Jiyva really strong enough to compensate for the loss of all the items?
I’ve only played with Jiyva a couple times, but their regen and mutation stuff is insane. My only win with them was from a faded alter and it absolutely carried me through the game.
I have yet to win at all, but my most recent run with 3 runes (in fact, each of my last two with 3 runes) was with Jiyva from a faded altar. It was a huge bonus that got me to the Depths, although with the mutations you do have to be careful that you don’t lose one that’s a key part of your current strategy, which IIRC is how I died. But the combination of regen, mutation, and indirectly helping you clear levels is great for at least that part of a run.
Yes, if you are manually exploring you might not even lost that many items at all. Also you get some loot once you get to slime pit!
The game spawns so many consumables losing even 1/3 of them isn’t that big of a deal
Some races/playstyles/builds do much better with jiv. Most notably, low hp races or races that cannot use some items. Terrible with throwing and evo, and best with spellcasting overall, I think.
Do slimes eat books?
Yes except for artefact books