How exactly does retribution work now?

[Knight9910]

The 0.14 changelog includes this little tidbit...

Divine wrath is now contingent on XP gain and cannot be waited out.

So... what does that mean, exactly?

Does this mean that I can now get infinite retributions on me if I'm not gaining XP fast enough?

What is the rate of penance loss?

I'd check the wiki but unsurprisingly the wiki page for divine retribution still talks about the old method.

[and into]

Not sure of the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure this just means that you will only suffer wrath effects—which also lowers your penance counter and gets the god closer to being mollified—while gaining XP. It is purely an anti-scumming measure that ensures you can no longer just chill in the Temple with a bunch of rations and mash 5 until your old god gets over it. Yes, you used to be able to just stay in Temple and mash 5, it was really silly. On the other hand, currently, god wrath is much more dangerous now because of this change (well, and also Okawaru and maybe some other gods had their individual wrath effects buffed).

[Thalfon]

LearnDB has the following entries on penance, which mostly covers what you're after:

1. With every god (not just yours), you have a penance number, which can be increased for long-term punishment. For every 1% of an XL you gain, there's a 10% chance of any particular god angry at you attempting divine retribution in the next 200 aut (on average); you then lose 1d3 points of penance for that god.
2. There is a chance that divine retribution will confuse or slow you in addition to the normal effects, which can be found in ??<full god name> wrath.
3. Penance also denies the use of most (active or passive) abilities.

I'm not sure if gaining XP after a retribution has triggered but before it's 'gone off' (in that 200 aut window) can get you double retribution or not. The individual entries for each god will tell you how much penance each bad act (including abandonment) gives, for example ??trog wrath says abandonment gives 50 penance, while ??okawaru wrath shows 25 for abandonment.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Penance does not go down on its own. It decreases each time the god acts. So no infinite punishments. What changed is the timer for gods attacking you (it is based on xp instead of time now).