Zot; God of the Dungeon

[bcadren]

Idea a couple people were discussing in IRC. God that's active invocations (mostly) make the game harder. God can be used to make the game actually harder (challenge use) or used to make midgame floors harder to gain more experience for extended, then left.

Gaining/Leaving: Temple god. Doesn't forbid any non-Demigods.

Wrath:

• (60%) Randomly places Zot Traps.
• (10%) Randomly triggers Zot effects without Traps.
• (30%) Summons true random band. (Durably summoned. No Experience).

Piety: Gained with XP. Not lost (No decay).

Abilities:

• Polymorph Other - 3 Piety, 5 MP - Changes the form of the target. Guaranteed to be a stronger monster.
• Enrage - (2 x (n + 1)) Piety - Adds a rage stack to the next unexplored floor you go to Piety cost increases with the number of stacks you've already put on the floor. Rage Stack effects (Where N is the number of stacks):
  • +Nd(ceil(baseHD/5)) HD.
  • +(ceil(N/2))dN AC
  • +(ceil(N/3))dN EV
  • +NdN Base Melee Damage
  • +(1d(ceil(N/3))-1) Speed
  • 50% chance per stack to improve spawning equipment. Equal chance: (Add item to empty slot; improve base type; brand unbranded; +1 Enchantment)
  • In Short +HD, +AC/EV, +Melee Damage, Stacks after 3 give +Speed, Improved enemy equipment.
• Time Lock - 10 piety - 10k auts pass. All creatures spawned by the time passing are brought into your LoS. No further random spawns for this floor.
• Lay Traps - 6 Piety - Places Teleport, Shaft and Zot traps on next floor. Gives +XP for exploring the next floor.
• Recall Monsters - 5 Piety, 3 MP - All (up to 15) remaining creatures are recalled into your LoS. Wakes up sleeping creatures.

[HANFGEIST]

I like it!

[Sandman25]

It's funny to see how devs force players create a new god just to get difficulty levels.

[dynast]

I dont know if the tavern got optimal to the point of needing a god to make the game harder or if the tavern got suboptimal to the point of worshipping a god that makes the game harder.

I think i will go with both.

[bcadren]

It's funny to see how devs force players create a new god just to get difficulty levels.

Thing is. Though you could use the god just for a challenge; each ability has a different purpose. Enraging a floor once makes that floor worth about twice as much XP as normal. 5 can be more than 10x as much. It's all about making it harder now so you get more experience earlier. Also with the chance of improving enemy equipment...few stacks of Enrage in Vaults; pretty much guarantees finding a Triple xBow (improved from Arbalest on Yaktaur). Few stacks in depths, an Executioner's Axe (improved from BattleAxe of Freezing on Frost Giant).

Recall Monsters can be used to take everything out with Shatter/Tornado in one go; also if you combine it with +Tele, you can pretty much recall things in order to avoid them instead of to face them.

Traps from Lay Traps can hurt you; but Teleport and Shaft traps can be used tactically.

Time Lock...really hard challenge once, no more random spawns. *shrug* In theory you could use it for something other than just the XP from the hard challenge. [Note: OOD timer in Zot calls Shrikes, Orbs of Fire, Killer Klowns and A.Liches; other stuff is considered correct depth.]

[mopl]

Nice idea.

Best Invoc title has to be "Dungeon Master" (former T&D one)...

[Sar]

@bcarden: this would be good if Crawl was an XP-starved game (it's not) or if it was sensible to hold onto enchanting battleaxe/arbalest until Depths or Vaults (it isn't)

[bcadren]

@bcarden: this would be good if Crawl was an XP-starved game (it's not) or if it was sensible to hold onto enchanting battleaxe/arbalest until Depths or Vaults (it isn't)

I ascended with a character that used an Arbalest in...Hell. Worked well for picking off every 1 except hell sentinels and hellions from a distance. (that was a Spriggan that couldn't upgrade) 18 dam, 10 min delay is GOOD in extended. 22 dam, 10 min delay is better; but the arb isn't bad.

Anyways; it -can- be XP starved. Mostly on races with horrid apts. Felids and Mummies especially. Mostly because the difficulty jumps from Lair to Lair Branch or Lair Branch to Vaults can be too much for the character. Unsure if this god would actually help.

Regardless though; getting more XP faster would be a good option for speedrunners.

Extended is never XP starved, but being high level (and high skill XP) earlier can create an advantage.

[mps]

I like it!

Did anyone else read this "I like it!" in the same voice as the dude who says it in that WKYK sketch about the grape drink commercial?

[byrel]

Anyways; it -can- be XP starved. Mostly on races with horrid apts. Felids and Mummies especially. Mostly because the difficulty jumps from Lair to Lair Branch or Lair Branch to Vaults can be too much for the character.

This is really exactly true. I've discovered playing the challenge combos that in spite of the fact that there's plenty of XP in the game, I sometimes don't have enough to handle getting any of it at all safely at the moment. It's what makes challenge combos challengey a lot of the time. On the other hand, a strong combo can actually fully skip the lair and get a similar level of XP-starved challenge.

Combos are crawl's difficulty levels, and while there's plenty of XP in the game, the rate you get it can be too slow at some point in the game for some combos.