Howto play Jiyva ?

[mopl]

It has been now 3 or 4 games I see an early (d:3-6) alter of Jiyva and let it away because I don't know how to play her...
I also fear jellies everywhere eating all loot

Is there any guide ? advice ?
Is this outdated ?

[Sandman25]

Well, just try it
Early Jiyva is annoying. Powerful but annoying. It is better suited for melee and hybrid characters who are not afraid of standing next to enemy with slimifying weapon IMHO. Also it is not good for characters in body armour with ER 15+ because she tries to increase Str instead of Dex. Str 35, Dex 9 is not what you usually want in plate armour.

[mopl]

Also it is not good for characters in body armour with ER 15+ because she tries to increase Str instead of Dex. Str 35, Dex 9 is not what you usually want in plate armour.

Don't you prefer Str 35, Dex 9 in plate rather than in robe ?

[dck]

The loot loss while worshiping jiyva is not very significant, particularly because jiyva speeds your exploration time dramatically by basically restoring you to full every time you fight anything that drops items. Also most of the things generated on the ground are just trash, so most of the things you "lose" didn't matter much in the first place.
Then there's the fact most things players use come from monsters killed, so again the "loot loss" loses impact.

I only skimmed through that Jiyva troll guide but I see it talks about creating a stash and whatnot so I can safely assume it's terrible. You do not want to create a stash with jiyva, you want to simply carry whatever you want on yourself and nothing more. Also the part about entering a level and immediately sending out a party of 12 jellies (wtf) is awful.

[Sandman25]

Also it is not good for characters in body armour with ER 15+ because she tries to increase Str instead of Dex. Str 35, Dex 9 is not what you usually want in plate armour.

Don't you prefer Str 35, Dex 9 in plate rather than in robe ?

Why are you comparing with robe? I would prefer to have something like Str 18, Dex 26.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7430&p=99674

Also viewtopic.php?f=12&t=7400&p=100053 where I had Str 18 and Dex 12 at XL 12 without Jiyva, put all bonus points into Dex and finished the game with Str 29, Dex 8 (and 24 levels in Dodging).

[DracheReborn]

Well, just try it
Early Jiyva is annoying. Powerful but annoying. It is better suited for melee and hybrid characters who are not afraid of standing next to enemy with slimifying weapon IMHO. Also it is not good for characters in body armour with ER 15+ because she tries to increase Str instead of Dex. Str 35, Dex 9 is not what you usually want in plate armour.

Actually, I think that's changed recently.

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 91c68ec1f0

More Dodging skill = greater likelihood of getting Dex, once minimum strength for armour is reached.

[Abominae]

+1 against super heavy armour on Jiyva. Jiyva's stat shuffling has been improved over time, but this is one area it is still absolutely terrible. I have ran into the same issue of Jiyva tanking dexterity in favor of ridiculous amounts of Str multiple times. Otherwise, the mechanic works quite well. Dck's comment on stashing being terrible actually reveals a lot about Jiyva--outside of the niche armour cases, Jiyva will manipulate your strength based almost solely on carrying capacity. You can pretty much carry as much or as little as you want at the expense or gain of stats.

This aspect of stat shuffling is stronger than it may sound because Jiyva gives nigh perfect item protection. This is the final reason why loot loss doesn't matter at all. A Jiyva worshiper will have more than enough consumables throughout the game. I can't comment if it is more or less consumables than the average player because that is entirely dependent on tactics (on the other hand, Jiyva worshipers don't get punished for bad item destruction handling)

In general, I have always viewed Jiyva as a strong, extremely broad god. But I think she really has a niche as a convenient god. The player no longer has to care about stashing, the occasional bad mutation, item destruction, hunger, corrosion, and carrying capacity (this really is as nice as it sounds). On top of that, she provides powers that are generally useful to any character (slimify & positive mutations).

EDIT: Ignore crappy Str/Dex stat shuffling with heavy armour because apparently that has finally been fixed!!

[Sandman25]

My experience with Jiyva loot was different: dying in Spider Nest 3 while wearing unID-ed ring of rF+ and unID-ed ring of rC+ is very unlikely to happen with any other god. http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 000655.txt

[tasonir]

That seems odd. On one hand you were fighting a player ghost and could have just gone up the stairs, but on the other hand, why was this guy hitting for 51% of your max health? What level was that ghost? I tend to fight player ghosts way too often too, so I can't really blame you. You also seem to be somewhat low level for the middle of spider nest, but not too terribly low. I've played only a few jiyva games, but I usually don't have too much trouble with ID scrolls. You get slightly less, but enough.

I strongly recommend jiyva and wish she was guaranteed to spawn an altar somewhere reasonable, like outside the slime pits 100% of the time, for example.

[Sandman25]

That seems odd. On one hand you were fighting a player ghost and could have just gone up the stairs, but on the other hand, why was this guy hitting for 51% of your max health? What level was that ghost? I tend to fight player ghosts way too often too, so I can't really blame you. You also seem to be somewhat low level for the middle of spider nest, but not too terribly low. I've played only a few jiyva games, but I usually don't have too much trouble with ID scrolls. You get slightly less, but enough.

I strongly recommend jiyva and wish she was guaranteed to spawn an altar somewhere reasonable, like outside the slime pits 100% of the time, for example.

<offtopic>It was GSC so XL of the ghost was not that important (died in 2 hits from full HP). I died because I went upstairs, and the death triggered my changes to RC file, now I cannot die because of stupid mistakes. Going forward I will die after careful analysis of all available options </offtopic>

[crate]

If you don't spend a ton of time resting you won't really notice very much that you're missing items, except in a few places (you will obviously notice in slime, in elf, in tomb). In practice the only things I notice I'm missing in Jiyva games are occasionally you have trouble finding rF or rC rings, and you will get a slightly smaller number of spellbooks.

If your character spends a lot of time resting you'll miss noticeably more items so maybe then you don't want to worship jiyva.

[Klown]

The fun part of Jivya for me(probably a small deal for others) is playing any species/background/style I want, and having no hunger issues. You'll be stuffed all game.

[mikee]

Is this outdated ?

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10119

[duvessa]

Is this outdated ?

It's both outdated, and completely batshit crazy. There is not a single piece of advice in that article that I like, except for "do Lair before Orc."

[dpeg]

I strongly recommend jiyva...

Glad you like the slime god!

... and wish she was guaranteed to spawn an altar somewhere reasonable, like outside the slime pits 100% of the time, for example.

I could actually see that by now. We were very conservative with god access back when Jiyva was added. I once wondered about something stronger than the current situation but still weaker than your proposal: a guaranteed Jiyva altar on Slime:1. (Or any other range including 1 and excluding 6.) What do you think?

[Abominae]

I could actually see that by now. We were very conservative with god access back when Jiyva was added. I once wondered about something stronger than the current situation but still weaker than your proposal: a guaranteed Jiyva altar on Slime:1. (Or any other range including 1 and excluding 6.) What do you think?

I would love something like this. As it is, it is incredibly frustrating to have a good, but not guaranteed, chance to worship Jiyva. Being an atheist until Lair: 6-8 is already a huge punishment if you would like to worship Jiyva with no wrath. Getting to that point only to have been unlucky with Jiyva's altar generation really, really sucks.

I don't think putting it anywhere else in the Slime Pits than Slime:1 is a good idea if the intent is earlier and easier access to Jiyva. I could be wrong wrong, but if it were to be placed deeper into Slime, it would not change the current situation. The current situation of course being that Jiyva is only really taken when her early altar is spawned or the player is capable of handling god wrath. I realize those two situations aren't 100% of all Jiyva worshipers, but the only other options are to suffer wrath early or remain an atheist for way too long (both of which are great ways to kill your character).

[rchandra]

You can also worship Elyvilon or TSO and convert, though those gods want invocations and Jiyva doesn't.

[Abominae]

You can also worship Elyvilon or TSO and convert, though those gods want invocations and Jiyva doesn't.

I forgot about TSO & Ely. Ely is pretty useless due to reliance on Invocations, but at least TSO will give you a halo for free. You would also switch from TSO to Jiyva around the time TSO's best invocation becomes available, so it definitely is plain better to worship TSO if you want to worship Jiyva. It also doesn't punish you when Jiyva's altar doesn't spawn because you have already been worshiping a god. I never thought about doing this, so thanks for pointing that out.

[duvessa]

Fedhas wrath is also mostly nullified by Jiyva, and Fedhas is overwhelmingly the best early god in the game in my opinion. You could also use any of the gods that have pathetic wrath in the first place, such as Yred.

[tasonir]

I strongly recommend jiyva...

Glad you like the slime god!

... and wish she was guaranteed to spawn an altar somewhere reasonable, like outside the slime pits 100% of the time, for example.

I could actually see that by now. We were very conservative with god access back when Jiyva was added. I once wondered about something stronger than the current situation but still weaker than your proposal: a guaranteed Jiyva altar on Slime:1. (Or any other range including 1 and excluding 6.) What do you think?

I'd personally still like it to be outside, it's safer (and you already had to do another ~10-15 total floors without a god or with TSO), plus it's a bit less spoilery. You'll see the altar there without having to know that you can do something completely insane (enter slime pits immediately) because you read that slime:1 now generates an altar. I think it will also strengthen Jiyva's association with the branch, which is admittedly already pretty well done. New players will notice that it's available, without having to be told that there's a small edge case where going to the slime pits before you're capable of actually fighting anything there might be reasonable.

[and into]

You can also worship Elyvilon or TSO and convert, though those gods want invocations and Jiyva doesn't.

I forgot about TSO & Ely. Ely is pretty useless due to reliance on Invocations, but at least TSO will give you a halo for free. You would also switch from TSO to Jiyva around the time TSO's best invocation becomes available, so it definitely is plain better to worship TSO if you want to worship Jiyva. It also doesn't punish you when Jiyva's altar doesn't spawn because you have already been worshiping a god. I never thought about doing this, so thanks for pointing that out.

It is okay if you train invocations and then end up not using them in late game though, in much the same way that it isn't a huge deal if you train up a good deal of dodging but then find an amazing heavy armor and switch to that, thus lowering your EV by a lot, at least for some non-negligible period of time. Seeing as how Ely + some invocations makes it very easy to get to Jiyva, and Jiyva is not made *less* powerful by having trained invocations, saying that Ely is useless due to reliance on invocations is really quite off track.

I'd thought of Yred --> Jiyva before but not Fedhas --> Jiyva for some reason. duvessa's point about Jiyva mostly nullifying Fedhas wrath is not something that had occurred to me and is a great suggestion. I think I'll try some Ely --> Jiyva and Fedhas --> Jiyva switches now, actually, since I haven't played Jiyva all that much, and not at all recently.

[Abominae]

Seeing as how Ely + some invocations makes it very easy to get to Jiyva, and Jiyva is not made *less* powerful by having trained invocations, saying that Ely is useless due to reliance on invocations is really quite off track.

Yeah, you're completely correct when you say that (especially given that Ely can clear Lair just by virtue of worship). I never really considered worshiping a god and switching immediately when you find a Jiyva altar; I always ran it atheist, and I stopped doing that after missing the altar a few times. I play a lot of Jiyva characters, but I usually switch pretty late into the game (probably because I overestimate pretty much every god wrath). I never really considered the possibilities of playing gods and switching to Jiyva as early as possible, so this is all really interesting information for me.

[rchandra]

I'd personally still like it to be outside, it's safer (and you already had to do another ~10-15 total floors without a god or with TSO), plus it's a bit less spoilery. You'll see the altar there without having to know that you can do something completely insane (enter slime pits immediately) because you read that slime:1 now generates an altar.

This is only "spoilery" for older players. New players won't expect jiyva to be anywhere until they find the altar in slime, which will happen through exploring. I think it's better thematically to have the altar in there, too.

[tasonir]

I suppose my primary concern is really running into an acid blob at level 12, which seems like a fairly suicidal idea. Maybe if the altar generates near the stairs down each time?