mollymolluskus wrote:Is it ever advisable to change religions? If so, under what circumstances?
Yes, but the second half of the question is too vague. There are too many conditions to list why and when it may make sense. For 15 rune games, I tend to like to start with either Gozag or Okawaru for the initial gains to gear and spells, then mid-game to Zin for abyss/slimes/zot, then finally close with TSO for tomb, hells and Pandemonium. Alternately end with Mahkleb (instead of Zin+TSO) if you want to use necromancy (primarily for sublimate and/or necromutate) or you have an excellent weapon which requires neutrality. The jist is that the best end-game gods don't give you as much benefit when your skills are low, and the gods that boost your gear early on help you decide which way to develop your character, then become less helpful once you have a good set of gear already. This is by no means a comprehensive guide though, as I said initially.. the details of the game matter quite a bit.
Opening:
Trog - will give weapons.. it's pretty good but not my favorite.
Oka - gifts ammo, weapons and armour.. pretty darn good choice for almost everything
Gozag - pretty darn good. Buy all the good gear and spells you can find in shops first. Open shops with the remaining gold until they become too expensive. At least one free set of potions. Eventually you're left with levels with no chance of finding a shops, and the cost of opening merchants goes up very high. Finally you could just obtain all the gear/spells you want to feel confident you can finish the game. This when gozag becomes less attractive. Food could also become an issue, but this is probably one of the lesser reasons because there is quite a bit of food in the game currently and some spellcasting and basic management should suffice even for spellcasters.
Now there are lots of other gods to choose from but very few others will make you stronger above and beyond what you'll find laying in the dungeon already, they will just help you progress further until one of the end-game gods become more relevant. Kiku will pain brand or give necronomicon, TSO will holy brand, Vehumet "maybe" a spell or two you want, Lugonu corrupt level...and brand weapon (meh), but that's about all the persistent benefits I can recall. What I mean by persistent benefit is that you gain something you can keep, even after you aren't with that god anymore.
Abyss is a good place to ditch god wrath. Be sure to train blink and a little bit of translocations.
Ending:
With Mahkleb, you gain life from kills and mana from sublimation when alive, and channeling when lichform. Protected from muts and torment in lichform.
With Zin, gain mana from divine vigor + crystal ball, you're protected from muts. You have poor life gain, torment sucks but you have sanctuary as an oh-sht button.
With TSO, you gain life and mana on kills, and that's practically everything late game. Torment isn't great but manageable by using AOE tactics when your life gets low. The biggest downside is that you have to watch mutations but you can holy blast stuff out of LOS and use angels as malmutate blockers. Mostly it's one pan level with the rune to worry about muts, but by the time you're getting that rune, you don't have much left in the game anyhow. If you went with Zin mid-game, then you have a stack of mutation potions saved up to counter stuff while with TSO, so it's mostly just annoyance rather than real threatening. Also, TSO is so extremely strong for extended so you can probably deal with a poor set of muts anyhow.
Kiku, worth noting for his mummy curse protection and taking the edge off torment while still being able to sublimate.
I'd probably like using more variety of gods, especially for end-game, but:
* Torment
* Taking damage from mummy curses (super annoying mechanic)
* Mutations
* Other misc. damage you can't easily avoid (hellfire, smite targeted damage, etc. etc.)