How to follow Gozag?


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Swamp Slogger

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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 09:50

How to follow Gozag?

I mean, how does one follow this god and not starve? Obviously there are a couple notable exceptions, here, but I don't think Gozag is really just intended to be the "God of Mummies," right?

(Okay, mummies and spriggans. And anyone with Necromutation, but if you have that, you don't need Gozag anyway and probably have another god already)

It just seems like a huge problem. Admittedly, I haven't played too much as anything but a mummy while following the Greedy One, so maybe I'm off base, but the rising cost of opening food shops seems like a serious problem. The only real utilization for "normal" characters I have thought of is to just follow Gozag temporarily, buy some nice stuff, and abandon the religion when the food bill gets onerous. Is there something I am missing? Is it intended to be such a millstone?
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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 10:27

Re: How to follow Gozag?

Don't cast high hunger spells, eat permafood, by the time you run out you can call food shops. There's usually a ton of permafood.
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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 11:31

Re: How to follow Gozag?

It's a non issue for meleedude characters (who aren't Troll)

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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 12:13

Re: How to follow Gozag?

Be less greedy and fund more food shops. Its a issue with most people who start worshipping gozag(including me) to fund as much useless shops as possible to get a chance of a somewhat better gear when they already have good enough gear to win the game. The real power of the god is in the potion petition ability.
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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 16:27

Re: How to follow Gozag?

Play a melee dude so you don't have to worry about spell hunger, or pick a sprigan who can't eat chunks anyway. do not pick a vampire or troll. It is probably best to avoid picking a ghoul as well.

Don't be afraid to use petition potion when you need it, but because your "piety" has no upper cap it is better to use good tactics and not need to buff. E.g. use it to buff up when fighting a unique, but try to split up a death yak pak to save gold.

Only use call merchant if you have enough gold to still have a few uses of petition potion after you call the shop. I have found that winning a 3 rune game with gozag is doable with a normal species without calling food shops. Do call food shops if you really need the food though.
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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 22:02

Re: How to follow Gozag?

What a non-power funding a food shop is.

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archaeo

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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 22:59

Re: How to follow Gozag?

I wouldn't quite call funding a food shop a non-power, the gold did still distract mobs, so you're getting something out of it besides just the food. Still it's not the kind of shop you want to fund, even if you have to sometimes. That said, I didn't find that I really needed to call food shops that often, maybe one or two a game...there should be enough food in the dungeon for nearly everything, as long as you aren't casting high hunger spells for long.

Some sample commentary from a 15 rune Octopode of Gozag -> Cheibriados game - I was mid game and had just rushed to get statue form online, and then started training spellcasting:

  Code:
 38938 | Snake:4  | Reached skill level 14 in Spellcasting
 39670 | Shoals:1 | Entered Level 1 of the Shoals
 39788 | Shoals:1 | tasonir: I need about another 7 levels of spellcasting or this hunger will eat me alive :P
 39788 | Shoals:1 | tasonir: ok, not really ,but still it's high
 39892 | Shoals:1 | Reached skill level 15 in Spellcasting
 39919 | Shoals:1 | Reached XP level 19. HP: 84/120 MP: 38/38
 40577 | Shoals:2 | Noticed Nikola
 40594 | Shoals:2 | Killed Nikola
 41066 | Shoals:2 | Spectrina: you have 26 large rations
 41071 | Shoals:2 | Spectrina: i think you'll live


Train spellcasting a bit more than you normally would, but it's mostly the same. Trolls of Gozag have been won, although I think I killed mine off (not from hunger, just a normal stupid death). I do generally recommend switching to another god at some point but that isn't because you've run out of food, it's because you get to keep all the gear :)
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Post Tuesday, 24th November 2015, 23:32

Re: How to follow Gozag?

I've been seriously thinking about submitting a PR to have Gozag to give gold bounties on kill rather than goldifying corpses. This already happens for enemies killed over deep water.

Gh and Tr are extremely unfun (albeit not literally impossible) with Gozag, and otherwise the conduct is pretty weak like tasonir said, it seems mostly to be something that is uselessly taking up space in the player's mind.

(It would be nice to keep the hideless conduct though...)

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Post Thursday, 26th November 2015, 06:56

Re: How to follow Gozag?

Hmm... Maybe I just play really slowly normally (in terms of turn count) but I don't think so. A 15 rune game seems to take at least a hundred thousand turns if you aren't seriously rushing. For a human just walking around or resting uses 3 nutrition a turn, so 3 a rations (at 5000 nutrition each) will last 5000 turns. That's 60 rations for 100,000 turns before factoring in any hunger costs at all from evocables, etc. Fighting adds 3 nutrition cost... Honestly, I thought it would be much worse - you probably can get away with only buying a few food shops. 3 or 4 could probably suffice even for extended. And... I think now Gozag even turns corpseless enemies into gold when you kill them, so that's a serious plus in extended as well. I still find the rising price of shops a bit silly, encouraging one to eventually abandon Gozag for some god with more reliable panic buttons than potion petition. It's not a good long-term plan for the god of money. But I will try to keep an open mind about the viability of 3-runing Gozag, at least. Just a bit sad for Gozag to be almost set up to be abandoned...


Warning: rampant naval gazing and change proposals ahead. You're in CYC, so, there you go...

I still find the hassle of the food shop to be a lot of runaround for the player and extra (but uninteresting and often frustrating) resource management. I would propose something along the lines of an ability to just buy, like, a coke or something direct from Gozag for ~50gp (very open to hearing what others think a good price point would be), and it would effectively just be a chunk (but, a chunk anyone could consume, like royal jelly) that you eat on the spot, preferably with an amusing consumerist message ("You take a long sip of the Goza-Cola and pose, smiling and showing off the label as if for some unseen audience." or "As you drink the Goza-Cola, you feel an urge to buy the world one, too."). In effect a simple "trade gold for food" ability. Then we could nix the calling of food merchants altogether. This would have the added affect of making Gozag a more interesting endgame choice, since corpses aren't often found in Pan or what-have-you. And yes, you could carry a giant stack of rations... Or you could eat those first and keep the inventory slot free for more goodies that you bought at your (actually interesting) shops that you called. Again, the biggest problem is that food shops are uninteresting and a significant investment to overcome what feels like a manufactured problem. I don't know, maybe it is supposed to feel manufactured; perhaps it's flavor and this is how Gozag continues to make record profits.
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Bart

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Post Thursday, 26th November 2015, 07:06

Re: How to follow Gozag?

My last Gozag game, on a HuWn meleedude who picked up a couple of the usual low-level utility spells in the late game: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/amall ... 025818.txt. Didn't really worry about the hunger cost of anything, including regular use of berserk in the midgame and a bit of rod usage. Funded five shops, used potion petition a couple dozen times, and spent the rest on bribing vaults/zot.

Didn't have to fund any food shops, and had 15 bits of permafood left in my inventory (dunno how many were on the floor) when I ascended. Still plenty of food for a 5-rune game. Looks like I ate 70-something rations/jellies, and a few bits of smaller stuff like fruit/jerky/etc. Is that way out of line for what you'd expect to find normally? I don't think so, but I don't really know.

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Post Thursday, 26th November 2015, 08:21

Re: How to follow Gozag?

That's a good amount of food to find - and possibly you just *found* a food shop or two, to get that much (which of course Gozag lets you buy it up with impunity)... I would call it a goodly but not unreasonable amount. Impressive that you didn't have to call even one food shop - goes to show *just how much food* crawl actually generates. :p
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Post Thursday, 26th November 2015, 09:58

Re: How to follow Gozag?

How does removing all corpses by Gozag make the god interesting? Characters who rely on higher level spells and corpse dependent species are challenged by Gozag conduct, but I doubt it's a very interesting challenge. It seems to be rather a limiting and repulsive factor.

What is the goal behind prices increasing over time? The value of shops actually decreases somewhat over time, because a character already has a very good equipment and the chance of finding anything even better is small.

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Post Thursday, 26th November 2015, 12:31

Re: How to follow Gozag?

@amalloy how good is bribing? I never used or saw someone use it.
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Post Thursday, 26th November 2015, 14:43

Re: How to follow Gozag?

IMO the corpse destroying conduct isn't very interesting (like most things regarding food) but if it sticks around it should at least warn you before learning corpse using spells and the like. Letting the player learn useless spells is a subtle interface screw.

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Post Friday, 27th November 2015, 08:14

Re: How to follow Gozag?

dynast wrote:@amalloy how good is bribing? I never used or saw someone use it.


Depends. Do you want allied orbs of fire, draconians, and ancient liches? Bribing Zot can make that happen!

It's reasonably powerful. I bribed Zot once and didn't do much fighting on my own from Z:2 until they all died midway thruogh Z:5 - my ragtag army just steamrolled everything.

Bring along a source of targetable healing to support the ones you want to keep.

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Post Friday, 27th November 2015, 14:13

Re: How to follow Gozag?

I just played a Gozag game and one bribe pretty much trivialized Zot:5. Two allied orb guardians helped me into a lung. Then an OOF turned friendly. I backed out for a minute to heal and when I went back in everything from the orb chamber to the other lung was empty and covered in blood. It was a little silly.
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Post Wednesday, 2nd December 2015, 04:59

Re: How to follow Gozag?

I think Gozag is awesome but situatiuonal. You obviously do not want to pick Gozag for species with Fast Metabolism. And, obviously, playing caster becomes pain because of spell hunger.
That being said...

dynast wrote:@amalloy how good is bribing? I never used or saw someone use it.

The orb of fire stares, then turns away, jangling a coin purse. x3
Orb of fire said "Run! I'll cover you!"

Oy gevalt!
Sometimes you have to bribe mutliple times. Encounters like Zot:5 will waste this 3000 gold at a moments notice.

"Gold distraction" thingy is pretty awesome too and makes him really good for stabbing and escaping sticky situation.

Lom Lobon is distracted by the nearby gold.

Also, keep in mind that his abandon punishment is bearable and you can always switch god.
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Swamp Slogger

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Post Thursday, 3rd December 2015, 19:11

Re: How to follow Gozag?

Bart wrote:How does removing all corpses by Gozag make the god interesting? Characters who rely on higher level spells and corpse dependent species are challenged by Gozag conduct, but I doubt it's a very interesting challenge. It seems to be rather a limiting and repulsive factor.

What is the goal behind prices increasing over time? The value of shops actually decreases somewhat over time, because a character already has a very good equipment and the chance of finding anything even better is small.


The lack of corpses has interesting trade-offs. You can't create derived undead, you can't guarantee yourself troll or dragon armour, etc. A bounty system would be more convenient, but significantly stronger as well. It's also much less interesting flavor, I feel. The 'midas touch' concept and not being able to use enemies because they turn to gold is fun.

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Post Sunday, 6th December 2015, 09:31

Re: How to follow Gozag?

Still doesn't answer the goal of having shop prices go up, which is my central problem, really. I would rather have the initial cost be higher than have it inflating until the ability becomes functionally useless. It makes no sense from a gameplay perspective (as was mentioned, each shop is, if anything, less likely to be useful than the last), and I see no real "fluff" justification for the price hike, either.

No other god punishes you in such a permanent way (price hike) for using it's abilities (No, Ru punishes you for obtaining them), and no other god's abilities are so generally unpredictable in terms of usefulness (only Bribe Branch has a remotely predictable result. Yes, an armor shop will contain armor, but often it will have nothing of actual use). Xom does not count.
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Post Sunday, 6th December 2015, 19:49

Re: How to follow Gozag?

It's a mystery, why shops keep increasing in price. Increasing prices were introduced with this commit:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 98990d2b05

Then this was removed for potion petition but not call shop:

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... a6f10010a3

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