How to play fedhas?

[Tiktacy]

Fedhas is currently the only god I have yet to play through at least most of a 3 rune games with, I don't really even understand how to use him tbh.

I was wondering if I could get some general(or detailed) advice on how to play him? I was planning on doing something like a TeCj or maybe a Naga something.

[cerebovssquire]

Well, first of all if you want to get through the game I recommend something other than Te

The best bit about Fedhas is the part between getting * piety and Lair. You pray over corpses, mushrooms grow, and you can turn these mushrooms into wandering mushrooms which deal a crapton of damage (for that stage in the game) and confuse monsters upon hitting them. I recommend having about 2-3 following you at all times. Lure monsters into mushrooms and kill the confused monsters (if the mushrooms didn't do it themselves).
Inside the Lair and beyond mushrooms are still going to be very useful, but you can't count on them to do all the work themselves.

Oklobs can take out the Zot:5 vault by themselves if you feel inclined to use them that way (and find enough fruit), but I don't like the strategy of saving all fruit for Zot:5. Zot:5 isn't harder than a lot of other places in the game and you shouldn't feel bad about using oklobs when appropriate. Using them is quite simple, grow plants (1 fruit -> 1 plant, rain can also grow plants), evolve plants into oklobs (1 fruit -> 1 plant turned into oklob) and let them do their Thing. Adjust number of oklobs to strength of enemies.

Sunlight isn't great or anything. It just vaporises water when you need it, which can be useful if you don't have a source of flight, and improves accuracy when you attack a glowing monster. Rain is kinda useful to prevent monsters from getting towards you (you can build a moat around you with repeated uses) and is, of course, much better on characters with a way to attack monsters stuck outside the moat. Deep water can drown some monsters.
The growth ability could, in theory, be used defensively, but you should try to save your fruits to grow oklobs and use other means of escape than growing plants and running away.

I think a lot of people overrate his usefulness for a ranged character compared to a melee character. Of course some abilities are better for devoted ranged characters, but his best abilities, mushrooms and oklobs, are great for both. So do what you want when it comes to character selection. Fedhas is definitely a god you can pick for an easy win, it's not a challenge run by any means (mostly due to early mushrooms).

[diviton]

Merfolk are the best Fedhas race, IMO. I had a relatively easy time playing a Merfolk Ice Elementalist of Fedhas.

Fedhas allows you to move behind plants which works well with Merfolk given their polearm aptitude. You can attack and even fire spells through plants while your enemies are trying to get to you. If you have no plants, you could grow them, or even better, use Fedhas Rain ability to flood hallways so that most enemies can't reach you. Merfolk can really take advantage of this. Also, Oklob Plants are surprisingly deadly throughout the whole game. I cleared Zot: 5 almost entirely with Oklob Plants. I just set up 5-8 plants in each lung and they clean up. You need a lot of fruit for this, but consider using scrolls of acquirement for fruit. Basically, Fedhas is all about modifying your terrain with Oklob Plants and Rain, while you fight from safety, or run. Creating spores is seriously useful early on for the confusion it causes. Just be sure you don't get caught in the blast.

EDIT: In response to Cerebov's comment on Sunshine. It's true that it's far from his best ability, but I found it nice for killing invisible enemies early on, like Orc Wizards and Unseen Horrors. Also, using Deep Water + Confusing from Wandering Mushrooms or Giant Spores is a great way to kill things you normally wouldn't want to go near.

[XuaXua]

Apparently Fedhas works well with characters who focus on ranged and are carnivores.

[cerebovssquire]

Apparently Fedhas works well with characters who focus on ranged and are carnivores.

There are enough chunks and non-fruit permafood in the game (both types of rations) to support any character besides exceptionally unlucky spriggans, who might need to eat an apple or two at some point. Food really isn't an issue for Fedhas. Ranged/melee is to a certain extent, but Fedhas is very good on primarily melee characters as well.

[dck]

Spores are ridiculously strong as well, and then if something happens to survive you can just evolve the resulting ballisto and finish the job.
Not to mention creating spores doesn't even cost anything but MP.

[diviton]

Spores were my favorite part of playing Fedhas. I remember finding it particularly amusing in the Orcish Mines. They're just good fun.

[Klown]

Merfolk for the water ability.
Any good polearms species for standing behind friendly plants and beating down anything.

Ranged is nice as well, but it's easy to run out of ammo without trogawaru hooking you up.

[battaile]

Zot:5 isn't harder than a lot of other places in the game

Which places are harder?

[cerebovssquire]

Zot:5 isn't harder than a lot of other places in the game

Which places are harder?

-pre-Lair, where you should have some fruit
-situations which could arise pretty much anywhere in the game, which can involve groups of dangerous monsters or uniques, can be harder - can't really say anything categorial about this but a lot of places, being less predictable than Zot:5, can put you into dangerous situations that could be avoided in Zot:5 if you know how the level works
-if you are planning to do extended on your character, I would consider using fruit to wipe out a hell lord or maybe the sphinxes and some mummies on tomb:1 a viable strategy

Even if Zot:5 was the hardest level in the game for a given character, that still doesn't mean that you should save all your fruit for Zot:5 IMO. You can have 20+ oklobs in Zot if you save your fruit, many more if you get lucky with floor drops or acquire fruit, and taking away say 2-4 of these oklobs will barely affect your chance of surviving Zot:5. However, these 2-4 oklobs could greatly improve your chance of survival elsewhere (e.g. on earlier branch ends or against a certain strong unique).

[crate]

how to fedhas:

make mushrooms, let the mushrooms get your character past the stage where it is really awful and can't survive without mushrooms, win the game
use other abilities when they seem fun
oklob dangerous things

Not to mention creating spores doesn't even cost anything but MP.

This isn't exactly true: you lose the piety you otherwise would have gained for sacrificing the corpses, and then you lose more piety when enemies kill the resulting ballistomycetes (and at least some of them will die). The combined piety cost here is noticeable.

However with Fedhas not using piety is exactly the same situation as not having piety at all, so using piety to use abilities is fine. You should use piety when you think doing so is a good idea.

[dck]

Well it's noticeable if you continue evolving ballistomycetes and creating spores in the same spot forever or you make hyperactive ballistomycetes that happen to catch a shroom or some other ally in its blast radius and kill it, else it's not really that large a hit. And a single spore and hyperballisto can do a lot of good.

[battaile]

e: never mind, I clearly don't understand the point being made, but don't feel like arguing about it

[Sar]

I think his point is that a lot of characters die before Zot:5. If a situation seems threatening, pop a couple of oklobs, don't hoard them for some specific floors you have in mind.

[Lasty]

Agreed. When I went Fedhas, I appreciated being able to use oklobs to help with dangerous uniques and ancient liches in Crypt. I did use them on Zot:5 as well, but only because even after using them to clear out all the dangerous things up to that point, I still had a ton of fruit.

[Baldu3]

Probably the safest way to kill the royal jelly is to rain yourself a nice little corridor surrounded by water, invite the jelly to your corridor, and drown him in more rain.

[njvack]

Probably the safest way to kill the royal jelly is to rain yourself a nice little corridor surrounded by water, invite the jelly to your corridor, and drown him in more rain.

That would work except for his drowning resistance:

http://crawl.develz.org/info/index.php? ... oyal+jelly

[archaeo]

Was that changed recently? I've drowned TRJ myself in 0.13 as a Nemelexite. Water cards=/=rain, but drowning is drowning, no?

[Arrhythmia]

Was that changed recently? I've drowned TRJ myself in 0.13 as a Nemelexite. Water cards=/=rain, but drowning is drowning, no?

It's a long-standing bug. When water-cards try and drown a dude, they only check the size of the creature, not if it's rDrown. Since TRJ isn't giant or whatever, he's a goner.

[battaile]

Probably the safest way to kill the royal jelly is to rain yourself a nice little corridor surrounded by water, invite the jelly to your corridor, and drown him in more rain.

That would work except for his drowning resistance:

http://crawl.develz.org/info/index.php? ... oyal+jelly

He can definitely be drowned. I did it on this MfAs of Nemelex with a water card from a stacked deck of dungeons...

78873 | Slime:6 | Noticed the royal jelly
78874 | Slime:6 | Killed the royal jelly

[njvack]

Huh! Now I have learned; good to know!

[crate]

What's going on is that there are (at least) two different kinds of rDrown and Chei only shows one of them.

[Weeksy]

Do note that (at least per my wizmode testing) rain won't ever put monsters in deep water, even if they're rDrown and/or Large.

[crate]

Do note that (at least per my wizmode testing) rain won't ever put monsters in deep water, even if they're rDrown and/or Large.

This is true, but it also makes rain clouds and those can drown monsters by turning shallow water into deep water.

(unless this has changed recently, I never actually use rain to drown things but it definitely worked this way in the past)

[1010011010]

I've never used rain to drown, IIRC it doesn't spawn that many rain clouds, but it will make a nifty moat to protect your oklobs. Easiest method to start V5 that I've found.

[Weeksy]

This is true, but it also makes rain clouds and those can drown monsters by turning shallow water into deep water.

(unless this has changed recently, I never actually use rain to drown things but it definitely worked this way in the past)

With Wizmode testing in both 0.13 and 0.14, I was unable to drown anything at all, either by invoking rain when they were standing in shallow water, or waiting while the rain clouds produced by the invocation sat on top of the monster's shallow water tile.