Favorite combos in relation to the pantheon?

[cerealjynx]

I've been playing with a few Gods that are new to me and it got me considering how your God choice really defines your character, or at least compliments your characters playstyle. Lately I've been just grabbing the first alter I can find, which sometimes leaves me wondering if that's bad play, like I picked a really dumb combo. But it's never not interesting!

So, here's a list of what I think are optimal choices based on religion. I'm also curious what sort of ridiculous 'challenge' builds there are.

Ash: Vp/SpEn seems most viable, but I always wonder about using those skill boosts on species with low apts.
Beogh: Hill Orc FE/Fi depending on how you wanna play
Chei: MiMo! Dat headbutt. I just lost a really promising one, Chei is still new to me and running from smiters is bad.
Dith: HEAM, apts line up really nice, can start as a stabber, branch into doubleshot longbows.
Evy: No idea, not enough experience.
Fedhas: MfGl/IE Fedhas' abilities really shine with merfolk.
Gozag: Mu** I'd love to get a timeless mummy going to the point that I can just open infinite shops.
Jivya: Real playstyle change choice here, pretty much any character assuming you already have the gear you want.
Kiku: Not enough experience, I guess some sweet necromancer.
Lugo...why is she called Lucy? I haven't played enough AK's to say.
Makhleb: DD, never having to use your HW wand is awesome.
Nemlex: High evo guys, I haven't used Nem much.
Oka: Optimally, MiGl, you'll eventually get gifted some awesome lajatangs if you start with a quarterstaff.
Qaz: Very useful god, but I think the most fun I had was with a spriggan and just dancing around letting the clouds do all the work.
Sif: Any character who wants to be good at magic, but not necessarily conjurations.
TSO: FoFi Get a huge blessed weapon and a huge boost to your shield. This is just a guess, I rarely play TSO or Fo.
Trog: GrBe Pretty much the easiest combo to win with.
Veh: Anyone who wants to get really good conjurations.
Xom: Pick chaos knight, then random species, always a fun time.
Yred: Honestly, I've never given Yred a chance because everyone says it sucks?
Zin: Great for extended, especially Hell. I've never done an early Zinite.

This is in no way a definitive list, it's just what I've found myself playing and preferring!

[rockygargoyle]

I've been playing with a few Gods that are new to me and it got me considering how your God choice really defines your character, or at least compliments your characters playstyle. Lately I've been just grabbing the first alter I can find, which sometimes leaves me wondering if that's bad play, like I picked a really dumb combo. But it's never not interesting!

So, here's a list of what I think are optimal choices based on religion. I'm also curious what sort of ridiculous 'challenge' builds there are.

Ash: Vp/SpEn seems most viable, but I always wonder about using those skill boosts on species with low apts.
Beogh: Hill Orc FE/Fi depending on how you wanna play
Chei: MiMo! Dat headbutt. I just lost a really promising one, Chei is still new to me and running from smiters is bad.
Dith: HEAM, apts line up really nice, can start as a stabber, branch into doubleshot longbows.
Evy: No idea, not enough experience.
Fedhas: MfGl/IE Fedhas' abilities really shine with merfolk.
Gozag: Mu** I'd love to get a timeless mummy going to the point that I can just open infinite shops.
Jivya: Real playstyle change choice here, pretty much any character assuming you already have the gear you want.
Kiku: Not enough experience, I guess some sweet necromancer.
Lugo...why is she called Lucy? I haven't played enough AK's to say.
Makhleb: DD, never having to use your HW wand is awesome.
Nemlex: High evo guys, I haven't used Nem much.
Oka: Optimally, MiGl, you'll eventually get gifted some awesome lajatangs if you start with a quarterstaff.
Qaz: Very useful god, but I think the most fun I had was with a spriggan and just dancing around letting the clouds do all the work.
Sif: Any character who wants to be good at magic, but not necessarily conjurations.
TSO: FoFi Get a huge blessed weapon and a huge boost to your shield. This is just a guess, I rarely play TSO or Fo.
Trog: GrBe Pretty much the easiest combo to win with.
Veh: Anyone who wants to get really good conjurations.
Xom: Pick chaos knight, then random species, always a fun time.
Yred: Honestly, I've never given Yred a chance because everyone says it sucks?
Zin: Great for extended, especially Hell. I've never done an early Zinite.

This is in no way a definitive list, it's just what I've found myself playing and preferring!

Lugonu is called Lucy because that was her name, then the devs changed to lugonu to keep it gender-neutral
Elyvilon is great with Ho/DD, because they have +3 in invocations, and Ho has a greater chance to pacify other orcs

[Magipi]

Ash: Vp/SpEn seems most viable, but I always wonder about using those skill boosts on species with low apts.

Ogres really shine here. You can find your endgame weapon (a GSC) pre-Temple, pick up Ash, bind the GSC and there you go. Ash helps a lot with magic.

Kiku: Not enough experience, I guess some sweet necromancer.

In fact, necromancer is redundant with Kiku, as he gifts necro spellbooks. Pick any magic background, choose a good, fast weapon (my fav is a qstaff), and pain brand it.

TSO: FoFi Get a huge blessed weapon and a huge boost to your shield. This is just a guess, I rarely play TSO or Fo.

Fo is pretty weak. Pair it with a god who does practically nothing early on (TSO) and the result won't be happy.

Trog: GrBe Pretty much the easiest combo to win with.

I never understood why do people pair Gr with Trog. Gargoyles have awesome apts to be a blaster mage, and havinbg 40+ AC and 40+ EV in a robe is cool.

[Sar]

Kiku doesn't give you guaranteed Animate Skeleton nowadays, and Necros get Animate Dead in starting book. Combined with Kiku's delivery AD will destroy almost anything in the game, and you get it at *.

[Lasty]

My rule of thumb is this: each time you come across an altar, ask yourself these two questions: is this god intolerable for me to play? Is there another god that's so much better for this character that it's worth slowing down your piety gain by (9 - current floor) floors in order to worship that other god? Unless you answer yes to one of those questions, you should worship that god.

Most gods offer significant benefits to most characters. Generally speaking Trog, Makhleb, Fedhas, Yred, Lugonu, Kiku, and maybe now Qazlol are very strong gods that will make the game significantly easier for anyone who worships them, though with Trog you have to be willing to give up magic. Most of the gods have a lot to offer to a variety of backgrounds, though.

Of course, I pretty much only worship Fedhas, Lugonu, Vehumet, Makhleb, Okawaru, Zin, Kiku, and Dith, because the other gods irritate me and/or may kill me and/or force me into narrow playstyles to a greater degree than I like.

Let me single out Yred in particular, since you describe it as weak. Yred is very powerful; it's one of the gods I pick when I'm doing a tournament or whatever and I want to win enough that I'm willing to put up with the irritation of shepherding around allies. My favored way to play Yred is to park every ally you get on a cleared level, and then use the Recall power as an emergency power, since recalling a giant lump of nasty undead will resolve pretty much any problem you have. For ordinary, non-emergency circumstances your armies of zombies and other powers are more than adequate. Done right, you should not only be very hard to kill for most of the game, but also be able to drop in giant armies of ghouls, bone dragons, and profane servitors by the time you get to Zot:5, such that retrieving and escaping with the orb are significantly easier.

[XuaXua]

Is there a caveat that you might not want to use Yred beyond a typical 3-runer?

[Sar]

Well Yred's wrath is a joke for a character with 3 runes so you can just switch to TSO or Zin if you really want to do postend, your Invo will come in handy.

[and into]

As I said in another thread, I don't think Ash goes particularly well with Enchanters. Kiku and Makhleb are "classic" choices and very strong gods for En. Dith is not as good IMO but still solid choice. Now that invisibility is no longer in the starting book (which was a very sensible change) Sif looks even more appealing than usual, as well. Similarly I think people overestimate the "synergy" of stuff like mf and Fedhas. Fedhas is a really strong god choice for almost everyone, and that has very little to do with the rain ability. As for polearms reaching over summons, other gods (Yred most notably) would let you take advantage of that way better than FM, but again it isn't as big of an advantage as people tend to portray it.

For Ely, DD or HO work very well but for slightly different reasons. Pacify does better against stuff that's the same species as you, so there is one example of a (somewhat obscure but true) synergy between god and some specific species. Another (albeit less significant) one would be the fact that Lugonu's Bend Space bypasses stasis, including Fo's permastasis. I wouldn't recommend playing FoAK simply based on that, unless you specifically want to play Fo, in which case FoAK is not a bad idea.

Overall Lucy is good for any species tbh.

[tasonir]

I'll only list gods with which I have significant experience:

Beogh: Hill orc, obviously! Fighter is plain and simple and plays to your strengths.
Chei: Everything. No wait, really. Nagas are of course classic, but these days I'll turn just about everything into a snail happily. Yes it's true that 2.8 move speed is worse than 2.0 move speed but don't worry, you'll get halfway through lair and not care anymore. Be prepared to splat a hundred times to get there <3 chei!
Evy: People have mentioned hill orc, and they aren't wrong, but my vote is definitely with DD on this one. DD anything, to be specific - they all work. Healer gets you ely faster, which is an obvious perk.
Jivya: Trolls work well, but that's mostly because they have the best chance of going godless until lair and trying to find an altar. Other than that, I'd take nearly anything. I've dived down to lair:8 godless on a merfolk trying to find an altar, only to come up empty
Lugonu: Another god which goes with just about anything, although I'd probably do it more on a melee character, but that's probably just my overall melee preference.
Makhleb: DD's another winner here. Honestly I find mak's abilities underwhelming and only really care about his healing.
Oka: With my preference for unarmed, I'd say monks here. MiMo, GrMo, any troll, etc. Any good martial race. Also worth mentioning is any hunter, CeHu in particular, because they're just the best hunters. Easy to skip haste when you already have fast movement and finesse, which saves exp.
Qaz: Anything with good invocations, which is a lot. Qaz is definitely on the high end of the power scale.
Sif: I honestly have trouble figuring out what character would want sif over Vehemut. Sif's channel is amazing, but that one benefit vs all of veh seems underwhelming to me. Of course, the classic build here is MuSu. I had a semi-decent troll of sif who could do things like cast 40% fail haste without mutating himself, so that was kind of nice.
TSO: Whoever you want to bless a demon weapon with. Switch to for extended, mostly.
Trog: FeBe, of course. But basically anything Be is powerful. I wouldn't do a MuBe, but if you had to be a mummy, brothers in arms isn't the worst thing you can get.
Veh: See the sif section above: All casters get lumped in here
Yred: Anyone who you want to have giant meatshields around you all game long. Can be somewhat underpowered for the final push through Zot, but otherwise carries you through a 3 rune game quite well. I (ab)used Yred trying to get a mummy win mostly, although he died right at the end in the abyss, stupidly. Mummy regen problems
Zin: Another switch god for people who have too many mutations or hate hell effects, I've been meaning to try him for all game long, but never have. Sanctuary is powerful.

I guess I somewhat strayed from listing exact combos, but I think the descriptions are specific enough to be useful

[Lasty]

Zin all game long is a good choice. Recite is a free opener that can disable/kill most enemies outright, and Sanctuary and Imprison both are exceptionally effective ways to prevent death. Additionally, Vitalize is a strong, cheap buff that also prevents a large number of negative statuses. I'm a big fan of starting Zin. In a lot of ways, Zin is like Chei that doesn't slow you.

[headcrab0803]

lugonu works good with any race with decent weapon apt and good invo(Ds or Ho) since you can banish banish banish everything starting from *** if you put some skill levels

[ackack]

I think choosing combos as "optimal" doesn't really work for this, and if it did there would probably be more overlap (some combos will just be silly good regardless of god.) I might change some of your choices:

Ash: Vp/SpEn seems most viable, but I always wonder about using those skill boosts on species with low apts.

Ash is a fine general purpose god that just makes everybody better. With some of the changes in .15 the convenience factor might be reduced, not sure. Anyway, I particularly like Ash for helping characters with crappy Int and apts to cast spells better.

Chei: MiMo! Dat headbutt. I just lost a really promising one, Chei is still new to me and running from smiters is bad.

CeAM is a better example of a good Chei combo. The huge stat boosts help a lot with early game Ce defense; you have ranged combat; you have spells, so you'll get spellpower benefits from the Int; and because you're a Ce, you're not quite as slow at full piety.

Dith: HEAM, apts line up really nice, can start as a stabber, branch into doubleshot longbows.

HEAM starting as a stabber? Hmm. Among other things you don't start with Dith. I think En of Dith is probably very good, although again, when I tried Dith it seems like he just makes everybody better.

Ely: no idea, not enough experience

DDHe.

Fedhas: MfGl/IE Fedhas' abilities really shine with merfolk.

You do get a little more utility out of things like rain, but really mushrooms and oklobs are what Fedhas is about. Characters that are weak early (crate likes to mention **Tm here) are good Fedhas candidates.

Lugo...why is she called Lucy? I haven't played enough AK's to say.

As others have said, Lugonu is a strong god. Bend Space can occasionally save you early on, and then once you get banishment you're in very good shape. In the long run, Lugonu becomes exceedingly powerful, since Corrupt is one of the best god abilities in the game, and swappable distortion is a very nice bonus. Basically any race that you're comfortable starting with a melee background works well here. DsAK makes sense with the high Invo apt to help get banishment to full power quickly (you have maximum strength banish at something like 10.5 Invocations).

Sif: Any character who wants to be good at magic, but not necessarily conjurations.

My one Sif game was MuWz, it was actually quite fun. You can of course channel on species that care about hunger, but when there's a cost like that I probably have a tendency to underuse the ability.

TSO: FoFi Get a huge blessed weapon and a huge boost to your shield. This is just a guess, I rarely play TSO or Fo.

If you're talking about worshipping TSO throughout the game, combos that benefit most will be those that stand to get the most from the halo. This means things like summoners (big buff to your summons accuracy) or GSC Og.

Veh: Anyone who wants to get really good conjurations.

I think Vehumet gives the most benefit to characters who will already be training Conjurations but need to diversify their schools. Thus, classes like VM (since much is poison resistant) and AE (since a lot of AE's starting conjurations kinda blow) particularly benefit.

Xom: Pick chaos knight, then random species, always a fun time.

Basically you just want a strong species here, if you're trying to make your life easy. DD and Sp are less useful than usual here --- DD without switching will be very tough, and CK seems like a bad start for Sp --- but Ce, Dr, Mi, HO, etc. will all be fine.

Yred: Honestly, I've never given Yred a chance because everyone says it sucks?

Yred is quite good. I think much of the complaining comes from not liking the style of play that you end up with (similarly many people don't like Beogh.) You get Animate Skeleton basically right away, and Animate Dead not too long after that. I find Pain Mirror to be maybe the most overpriced god ability in the game, but Drain Life has its uses. And the undead gifts are very strong. I find the best use of them to be stashing them somewhere and then recalling when you actually need them. DsDK is the most popular DK, I think, and it's reasonably good. Again, any good species will do just fine as a DK.

[Hurkyl]

Sif: I honestly have trouble figuring out what character would want sif over Vehemut. Sif's channel is amazing, but that one benefit vs all of veh seems underwhelming to me. Of course, the classic build here is MuSu. I had a semi-decent troll of sif who could do things like cast 40% fail haste without mutating himself, so that was kind of nice.

Sif's book gifts are very useful if you can play the generalist. My first build was SpEn of Sif, which I stuck with until I got my first win.

EH/Confuse + Stabbing makes for a good base for killing things, and fast movement speed + EV makes for a good base for staying alive. Rather than deciding that's all I need and focus on doing them very well, I settled for merely doing them well enough and going for spells to cover the situations that it didn't (also, my desire was to play a spell-centric build anyways). There's a pretty long lineup of spells that are really good in various situations:

• Mephitic Cloud enables stabbing in many situations that EH/Confuse don't, and has an area of effect too
• Dazzling Spray is another stabbing enabler
• Haste makes you good all around, and extremely advisable when dealing with orbs of fire
• Silence trivializes a number of otherwise dangerous fights, so long as you have decent defenses and a good weapon. Ancient Lich, for example.
• Deflect Missiles greatly diminishes the greatest source of threats to a spriggan's HP pool
• Freezing Cloud is a brutal damage dealer in a number of situations -- with patience it makes Elf:3 nearly trivial, and is the only real answer I found to Titans (aside from "stay away").
• Conjure Flame / Sticky Flame are other good damage dealers, and are often more convenient for taking out high HD undead than Confuse spam. Also, my only real answer to Shadow Dragons.
• Controlled Blink is an excellent way to not die.

The big necromancy spells could be on that list, but I didn't go that route in my build. As AndInto noted, invisibility goes on the list once it's removed from the starting spellbook.

There a number of of other things that are still pretty useful:

• Flight is convenient to get around obstacles, and for dealing with Swamp/Shoals
• Ozocubu's Armour is nice
• Metabolic Englaciation is good if you're focusing more on melee damage
• Airstrike is decent for picking off some irritating monsters like various eyes or neqoxecs. I usually memorize for Slime, even if I don't use it elsewhere.
• Regeneration for regaining life quickly
• Freezing Aura lets me make a quick blade of freezing. (I started in 0.12)

and I'm surely missing things, and others would have their favorite spells too.

The point is that Sif will ensure that I can get all of the spells I'm looking for, and in a semi-reasonable time frame too. And until then, plenty of other spells that one can make use of (with no fear of running out of books/amnesia scrolls to unmemorize them).

[mattlistener]

Since no-one has mentioned it: Chei is nice for Transmuters since they can get best use of +15 to all stats via their combat forms.

My successful NaTm of Chei was a glorious wrecking ball with Blade Hands -> Statue Form. Piety gain as a slow race was fast enough that I could use Chei's abilities anytime I had worry about about upcoming problems, like being mobbed (Step From Time to disperse) or things that will kill me from long range with no cover handy (Temporal Distortion to put them next to me).

[radinms]

I love Arcane Marksman of Cheibriados that wears plate armour.
Chei boosts ranged combat and spellpower of Enslavement and Cause Fear.

People say Hex is useless for non-stabbers, but I love Enslavement.

[partial]

a god who does practically nothing early on (TSO)

Free SInv, an accuracy bonus and a decent SH boost (the potency of which is based on shields rather than invo) is pretty handy in the early game.