Which gods, if any, do you think need changed most?

The Tavern Crazy Yiuf's Corner
1

Personally, I think Beogh probably needs a slight buff to his apostles; they just become too weak later on.

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2

I agree on Beogh. The allies are still way too micromanagy for me and have an antisynergy with too much of the caster side for anything but melee brutes to benefit. I don’t have any ideas to make it better, but even when I’m presented with an early orc priest that wants me to convert or die I may as well just risk the early L instead of sinking a couple more hours into a god that is going to fall off by S-Branch.

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3

I still miss the flexibility of the old Ash; all-round skill buffs and the ability to respec skill training made for awesome hyper-flexible runs.

Beyond that, Ely feels off flavour-wise. I think it’d with Ely you should get xp without killing, the way you get piety with TSO.

Also Sif Muna should give exploration piety, again for flabour reasons.

4

Every time Sif thanks me for my kill it weirds me out.

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5

Agreed re Elyvilon; I liked the idea of old-Ely (piety from pacification), though the implementation was annoying. But unsure how to do it better.

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6

bcrawl has a mechanism that could be appropriate. Whenever you see a monster, you get 50% of its xp value instantly. You get nothing when it dies.
I would implement this as both a 0* Ely ‘gift’ and as ‘wrath’.

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7

Whenever you see a monster, you get 50% of its xp value instantly.

This is quite exploitable with Stealth and even without, considering how much of an XP pinata OOD and unique monsters are. And if earlier versions are anything to go by, then 50% XP penalty is not that meaningful, cause of the XP reward/cost curve.

Personally, I don’t think Ely needs a rework that much. It’s a god with strong abilities and consistent theme of healing and protection. The Most Chill of the good gods. Players on average are just not very good at picking/using Ely, but that’s a separate problem (which Fedhas also has for instance).

8

Outside of early D, I can’t imagine a situation in normal gameplay where this XP mechanism actually increases the total XP a character has.
Yes you can “exploit” it, that’s a point in its favour. It changes the risk/reward consideration of certain types of actions, and might result in players sneaking around some areas without killing everything. I don’t see how this is in any way a problem.
If you play around XP-on-sight, you can have fun gameplay where you try not to kill everything, but you won’t be any stronger than you would be with another strat and the normal XP mechanism.
It’s not OP. It’s a nerf that allows (and nudges towards) alternative play styles.

You completely missed the points me, Sobieck and andrew were making? It’s not about strength. It’s about flavour. (Also known as roleplay.)

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9

If you gonna quote me, maybe don’t cut out the relevant part, eh?

Right in the paragraph that you edited I said: “It’s a god with strong abilities and consistent theme of healing and protection. The Most Chill of the good gods.”

I think Ely’s flavour is fine, if generic. You disagree, it’s ok, but misqouting someone in the way that you did is impolite, imo.

10

In that case I misunderstood what you wrote. If the following had been an entire paragraph

Personally, I don’t think Ely needs a rework that much. It’s a god with a consistent theme of healing and protection. The Most Chill of the good gods.

I would not have replied as I did.

Look I’m sorry if I upset you because I didn’t get your point, but I don’t think that communication mishap is entirely my fault. In a paragraph, the most important points are usually at the beginning at the end. The beginning and end of your paragraph were concerned with balance considerations. Therefore I got the impression that was what the paragraph was (primarily) about.

11

I’ll admit I only pick Ely as an early altar if I’m planning to swap to a non-evil god. Any advice on how to use them better? I generally enjoy my Fedhas runs.

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It’s ok. It’s just weird for me when people reply to stuff without reading it, something something high paced communication in the modern world, whatever. In retrospect it’s funny how precisely you’ve cut the relevant part out :).

13

Purification is reactive and so it’s easy to forget that you can clear confusion, poison, draining, petrification, slow and even stat drain for almost no cost.

Heal Self gets much better with Invo investment, and so does Divine Vigour, which gives a lot of HP/MP for a long duration and is a great defensive buff. Like other power-multiplier buffs (might/brilliance) Divine Vigour suffers from not being used early enough in the fight, the old “why would I spend resources if I haven’t taken any damage yet” conundrum.

The standout ability is Heal Other. It’s a smite targeted “instakill” that’s extra effective against anything of animal intelligence and is “resisted” by max HP, rather than by Will or HD. Most scary stuff in early D and in Lair is very susceptible: hydras, death yaks, steam dragons, basilisks, hornets, black mambas etc. etc. In later portions of the game low HP casters/rangers (elves, boggarts etc.) make for good targets as well. It works well on all dragons (including quicksilver, golden and shadow). Scales with Invo, doesn’t cost much piety.

Ely is an Invo god like Fed and Nem, just more defence oriented. It’s the only god in the game that doesn’t give powers that harm stuff (technically :)), so maybe less intuitive to use. I guess it’s not as bombastic as other gods, but I like the quiet power that Ely provides.

There are also cute synergies, like spamming evocable Invisibility and removing drain for free, or berserking and removing slow for free.

There’s also an almost guaranteed life saving (at higher piety), which is nice against random 100+ damage OODs or LCSs.

For all that you just gotta not use the obviously evil stuff and not harm allies. Be careful with immolation around pacified monsters/summons (I wonder if Ely cares about Forgecraft constructs).

With all the healing Djinni like Elyvilon as much as Makhleb, maybe more, honestly, though you do run a risk of randomly getting evil spells, but then, like you already know, it’s the most swappable god as well.

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14

Catoblepases too, I think. They’re terrifying. And always come at the wrong time with lots of other monsters nearby.

Also I appreciate that many monsters in Spider Nest (for example) are quite susceptible as well, it’s nice that it can work well in later stages of the game.

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