Nemelex Sacrificing

[Arcares]

I've looked at the wiki here and here and I'm still confused with the deck weighting (which I assume to be the value used in determining deck gifts). In particular, it mentioned something about decaying deck weights. How does that happen?

Also, I notice that sometimes my sacrifices disappear without a glow. What does that mean? Does it mean the items sacrifice weren't worth piety and/or did not increase a deck weight?

[tormodpwns]

I don't know the answer to your first question, but for the second question, I think if an item disappears without a glow it means you got no piety for it but it still does affect which deck you will be gifted next. That's why at low piety levels most sacrifices disappear WITH a glow but as your piety increases, it becomes harder and harder to gain piety so things start disappearing WITHOUT a glow. And also that's why valuable items such as randarts will always disappear with a glow.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Using a particular deck, and perhaps being gifted it too, will cause that deck type to have less weight when Nemelex decides to throw you a new deck. For example, if you don't want him to keep spamming you with Decks of Destruction, use em up as soon as you get em.

[Arcares]

I suppose that makes sense. Hmm...

I forgot to ask. Sometimes, after a prayer, I get the message that a symbol of Summoning coalesces before me. What does that mean?

[Zicher]

I suppose that makes sense. Hmm...

I forgot to ask. Sometimes, after a prayer, I get the message that a symbol of Summoning coalesces before me. What does that mean?

This means that your sacrifice counts towards the deck of summonings as your next gift. The same goes for other coalescing symbols.

[Arcares]

I suppose that makes sense. Hmm...

I forgot to ask. Sometimes, after a prayer, I get the message that a symbol of Summoning coalesces before me. What does that mean?

This means that your sacrifice counts towards the deck of summonings as your next gift. The same goes for other coalescing symbols.

So... you're saying that only items I sacrifice that get this message actually get counted in the weights? That's weird. Because I rarely get that message at all. Although items disappear with a glow often enough.

I realize that there are two types of disappearing with a glow. One, it says that the item disappears with a glow (the text itself is purple). Two, it says the item disappears in a rainbow of weird colors (the text itself is white). Is there any difference then?

[Zicher]

I suppose that makes sense. Hmm...

I forgot to ask. Sometimes, after a prayer, I get the message that a symbol of Summoning coalesces before me. What does that mean?

This means that your sacrifice counts towards the deck of summonings as your next gift. The same goes for other coalescing symbols.

So... you're saying that only items I sacrifice that get this message actually get counted in the weights? That's weird. Because I rarely get that message at all. Although items disappear with a glow often enough.

Nope, that's not what I'm saying. The symbols are more of a hint about what you may receive as next gift.

I realize that there are two types of disappearing with a glow. One, it says that the item disappears with a glow (the text itself is purple). Two, it says the item disappears in a rainbow of weird colors (the text itself is white). Is there any difference then?

Similar effects happen with other gods. Totally IMHO, the coloured text means you gained piety from the sacrifice, white text then means you did not receive piety.

[Sprinter]

Arcares wrote:I realize that there are two types of disappearing with a glow. One, it says that the item disappears with a glow (the text itself is purple). Two, it says the item disappears in a rainbow of weird colors (the text itself is white). Is there any difference then?



Similar effects happen with other gods. Totally IMHO, the coloured text means you gained piety from the sacrifice, white text then means you did not receive piety.

I noticed white text is pretty rare usualy when i sacrifice artifact or very high value item so i think it means +2 piety. maybe it changed but this is what wiki says abt sacrifices " chance depending on the item's value of +1 piety (+2 for artifacts) "

[DivineHammer]

Using a particular deck, and perhaps being gifted it too, will cause that deck type to have less weight when Nemelex decides to throw you a new deck. For example, if you don't want him to keep spamming you with Decks of Destruction, use em up as soon as you get em.

Is this still the case? Was it ever the case? I've been doing some source digging because I'm really curious about the inner workings of Nemelex, and it seems like being gifted a deck does affect the weightings, but using a deck does not.

Specifically, if you want to get really spoily: it seems like the game keeps track of the total value of sacrificed items in each category with an array called sacrifice_value, which is an attribute of the player. I can only see that array being touched in two places: _sacrifice_one_item_noncount in godprayer.cc (where the value of a sacrificed item is added to the relevant total) and, more interestingly, in _update_sacrifice_weights in religion.cc, where the total value of your existing sacrifices are reduced to 4/5 for the categories associated with the deck that Nemelex just gifted you.

It seems like a lot of Nemelex guides and tips are a bit off. For example, one guide (I think the one on the wiki), suggested that if you don't want decks of summoning, you should butcher corpses and sacrifice the chunks rather than sacrificing the corpse itself, thus increasing your Wonders weighting. Having looked in the source, I can see that sacrificing chunks still increases your Summoning weighting. Again, I'm not sure if it's because these guides get outdated as the code changes, or if they've always been wrong. It does make things difficult for would-be Nemelex munchkins like me though!

Edit: Since there was some discussion of the "a symbol of %s coalesces" message, which wasn't really satisfactorily answered, I'll chime in with what I found in the source: if you get this message, it means that your most highly weighted category (among Summoning, Wonders, Destruction, etc.) has just changed to the type mentioned in the message. It can also happen by chance (a 2% chance on every sacrifice).

[TwilightPhoenix]

It might have changed. I was referring to E. Grassland's spoiler on Nemelex and it seemed to coincide with my own experience. I'd get tons of Decks of Destruction if I never used them. Changing weights on being gifted was just a guess that I wasn't sure about.

[LunarHarp]

There really isn't a good spoiler for nemelex at the moment since most of them were written for 0.5.2. In particular the wiki and E. Grassland are back from 0.5.2. 0.5 was around for quite a long time compared to the recent releases so much of the info on the wiki was from that time.

They changed the chunks to go to summoning a while back to make wonders more rare. You also can't sacrifice gold now to weight for dungeons.