Trying out a DD

[DDDD]

I want to try something new and think about playing a deep dwarf with Elyvilon, but have no idea how you play that, and the strategy hints on deep dwarves in the wiki talk only about dealing with the lack of healing over time. So, I guess with limited healing resources, preventing damage in the first place is an important thing for deep dwarves. The options I'm thinking about are an earth elementalist or using a crossbow to kill from a distance. But in any case I have no clue how you practically play a deep dwarf (say, how one handles the lair and its branches), and which tactics and skills could be helpful or important. Any advice is welcome (three rune game for the beginning).

[crate]

I would not recommend DD of ely for fun, since it pushes you toward really obnoxious play (you need to spend piety to heal yourself, and the most reliable way to prevent damage is to pacify things instead of actually fighting, so this makes the annoying part of healer even more annoying). It's strong but never something I'd recommend, especially if you don't know how Ely works already.

If you want to learn how Elyvilon works, hill orc is a lot like a deep dwarf that is less annoying and much better for learning.

If you want to play a deep dwarf that isn't super annoying, probably your best bet is to worship Makhleb and then play like normally. Use the wand of heal wounds to heal if you need to, and if it runs out of charges, recharge it. Ru might be okay too, I've not tried it (I dunno how good Draw Out Power for healing would be in practice) but probably not as good. EE and Ne are the best backgrounds, probably.

DDBe is good too and there you stick with Trog.

[Sprucery]

Imo you play DD in pretty much the same way than anything else. It's just that when you lose a considerable amount of HP, you zap your healing wand instead of waiting. Ranged attacks are good. Ely is fine, of course, but if you specially don't want the pacification game, I'd suggest Makhleb.

[kroki]

ddhe^ely is very easy combo if you don't mind how annoying first 3-4 floors will turn out to be. pump your invocation high, focus on ac, heal yourself with lesser healing to conserve piety. With maxed invocation you will pacify ancient liches with lesser healing in few shots.

for smoother expierence go DDGl and pick ely.

[DDDD]

If you want to play a deep dwarf that isn't super annoying,

You mean DD + Elyvilon = more annoying evan than a Summoner?

[crate]

I think summoner isn't annoying.

But DDHe is probably the most obnoxious combo in the game. Only FeHe really competes, but at least with FeHe you might die to smite early on so you can end it. DDHe is so strong that you won't ever die, or if you do it will be a really awful slow starvation death that you see coming thousands of turns in advance but can't do anything about.

Something like DDEE of Ely isn't quite that bad but it's still not going to be fun.

[Sprucery]

Pacification should just go away, imo. There is definitely a place for a healer god, but gaining piety by pacifying monsters is bad. Praying to destroy weapons isn't very interesting either. I think the old system where you just gained piety over time would be better.

Pacification could be interesting if it could be used to neutralize very dangerous monsters, but it would _cost_ a huge amount of piety.

[dpeg]

The problem is that Elyvilon offers a unique playing style. This was my idea, and I didn't expect people to go for "almost pure pacifier" unless in challenge games. But of course, the rules that I made kind of enforce exactly that.

I still think that pacification itself is a decent idea (the old god description had a blurb about "pacifism" but nothing in the gameplay to back it up, that's where I was coming from). Pacifying an ancient lich is pretty cool! So instead of purging that, I'd rather speculate about how to cull widespread pacification on meaningless monsters. (These monsters are always problematic, but they are particularly problematic for Elyvilon.)

[Sprucery]

Pacifying an ancient lich is pretty cool! So instead of purging that, I'd rather speculate about how to cull widespread pacification on meaningless monsters.

I agree with this. That's why I think pacification should be a costly ability to be rarely used, instead of a piety-gaining mechanism to be spammed.

[DDDD]

Now after all that information I'm confused about what is special with deep dwarf healers. If they "push to obnoxious play" and are "annoying" (to play?) and overpowered(is it?), and hill orcs are "a lot like deep dwarves", then why is a hill orc healer not similarly obnoxious or annoying or overpowered?

So instead of purging that, I'd rather speculate about how to cull widespread pacification on meaningless monsters.

If it's meaningless, why does it have to be culled?

In my eyes, the one thing that is broken most with Elyvilon (or the other racist "good" gods) is that they do not accept converted undead as worshippers. I've wanted to play a mummy healer since I started playing Crawl; and a vampire of the Shining One who is not allowed to sneak, stab or drink blood should be great fun. I find Elyvilon should actively *encourage* characters to leave their necromantic or violent ways and worship her instead.

[Sandman25]

I agree with this. That's why I think pacification should be a costly ability to be rarely used, instead of a piety-gaining mechanism to be spammed.

It can be fixed by exhaustion similar to other very powerful abilities (see Ru).

[Siegurt]

If you had to use rus abilities to gain piety it would be awful.

I think Evy would be a really good god if pacifying cost piety rather than giving it to you. (It doesn't even have to be a large pretty cost)

Literally any other currently-used piety gain method would be fine ( I would favor exploration, and perhaps tso's seeing a monster)

The other thing I might do is turn pacification into a passive one shot per monster on first sighting thing (a la beogh) but I would only do that because of less keypresses, it would be slightly less interesting if you didn't get to decide what to pacify.

[Sandman25]

If you had to use rus abilities to gain piety it would be awful.

You can get piety for any attempt no matter if it's successful or not. Ely is the only god where you have to train Invocations to earn piety, that's weird.

[Sprucery]

The other thing I might do is turn pacification into a passive one shot per monster on first sighting thing (a la beogh) but I would only do that because of less keypresses, it would be slightly less interesting if you didn't get to decide what to pacify.

I thought of this too, and yes it would be better than the current system.

[XuaXua]

You can get piety for any attempt no matter if it's successful or not. Ely is the only god where you have to train Invocations to earn piety, that's weird.

True, but with Ely, you're also training your "primary attack" skill.

[crate]

If they "push to obnoxious play" and are "annoying" (to play?) and overpowered(is it?), and hill orcs are "a lot like deep dwarves", then why is a hill orc healer not similarly obnoxious or annoying or overpowered?

What's the biggest difference between DD and HO?

The fact that you can heal up from taking damage without spending both piety and food (well, a much larger amount than you would just resting) means that you are actually allowed to take damage in fights, as long as you don't die. Thus, doing things like actually hitting enemies with a melee weapon (this invariably leads to you taking some damage!) or doing other not-pacifying-everything things is reasonable.

With DD that's not really the case, and the difference ends up being pretty big over the course of the game.

You can and certainly some people would argue that HO of Ely is still annoying; I would say that's true to an extent, especially if you pick HOHe instead of taking Ely later. But it's not anything near DD of Ely annoying.

[DDDD]

Oh my, this is really a crazy style of play. After one failed attempt as a DDHe, started a DDEE. Found an altar of Elyvilon on D:2 and started training Invocations while blasting enemies with earth magic. This was a bit tedious at first, but then I found a scroll of acquirement and spent it on food, followed by an amulet of the gourmand, followed by a ring of poison resistance for 300 GP in an early shop, so now the DD can eat anything at any time. Invocations leveled quickly, and after reaching 15 the DD just waltzed through the lair and the mines without ever being threatened by anything. Almost everything succumbs to pacification easily now: hydras, orc knights, trolls, orcish high priests, catoblepas', elephants. Up to now there was only a single tight spot in the game, when I walked down to D:11, had a hill giant in sight and fled up the stairs, but accidentally climbed back down immediately and ended up next to the giant without pacify good enough yet. WIth lots of useful gear (scrolls of blinking, teleport and recharging and a pair of boots with +2, sInv, rPois and rElec), only overconfidence and stupidity can kill this character anytime soon. I guess in a normal three rune game nothing can stop him from pacifying everything even remotely dangerous that enters line of sight.

P.S.: Still don't understand why you consider DD with Elyvilon annoying, other than that it's extremely overpowered if you're lucky to find an amulet or the gourmand.

[KoboldLord]

Now after all that information I'm confused about what is special with deep dwarf healers. If they "push to obnoxious play" and are "annoying" (to play?) and overpowered(is it?), and hill orcs are "a lot like deep dwarves", then why is a hill orc healer not similarly obnoxious or annoying or overpowered?

If it's meaningless, why does it have to be culled?

The really bad bits of obnoxiousness come when you run into a monster that is dangerous to kill that you have a 5~10% chance to nail with pacification with Lesser Healing. If your healer runs into a D2 ogre, for instance, you probably don't want to melee it down because it will squish you, but getting that pacification to land is probably going to take quite a few attempts. The safe way to do this is to lure it to a stairwell up, spam Lesser Healing until it works or until the ogre is two tiles away, and then retreat upstairs. Then go down another stairwell and find the ogre again to repeat the process. This takes a really long time and is very tedious, but it will definitely take care of that ogre and get you a windfall of D2 xp. This tedious process is unfortunately optimal in too many situations if you try going all-in on invocations, which means it would be a good thing to fix Elyvilon so players can't just go all-in on invocations and expect it to work out.

Ultimately, food just doesn't work very well as the pacification cost. Draining works for Ru, and it would probably work for Ely just to make it generally more favorable to actually kill most things. It also might be good if failed pacifications prevented further attempts, since it's really the spamming process that is most horrible.

[and into]

I started a thread over in GDD to discuss reforms to Elyvilon: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14872&p=203878#p203878

[zardo]

I like playing DDHe.

[DDDD]

Ultimately, food just doesn't work very well as the pacification cost. Draining works for Ru, and it would probably work for Ely just to make it generally more favorable to actually kill most things.

Making it more favourable to kill most things will pretty much destroy the spirit and the associated unique play style. So in that case Elyvilon might just as well be removed from the game.

It also might be good if failed pacifications prevented further attempts, since it's really the spamming process that is most horrible.

It's not the spamming process that is horrible but that there is almost no risk whatsoever. Pacification is just badly balanced.

[Berder]

Why not make pacify work like other god abilities, i.e. it costs piety? Ely would then need some thematically appropriate way to gain piety, such as increased piety from weapon sacrifices.

Random idea for gaining Ely piety without pacifying everything or sacrificing weapons: when you deal a killing blow to a sentient monster, there's a chance (based on invocations and HD?) that they accept your mercy, lay down their weapon, and turn neutral instead of dying. And if that happens you gain piety, which you can later spend to pacify dangerous monsters.

[DDDD]

Status report: Escaped with the Orb of Zot and 5 runes (in an incredibly high amount of turns). As I was beginning to get bored I skipped the "demonic" branches (Abyss, Pandemonium, Hell). The only real problem in the game was piety and food management; in crypt and tomb it was difficult to keep piety up so that greater healing was available. Anyway, I made tomb much more difficult than necessary by stupidly blasing open the gauntlet on Tomb:1 and then being swarmed from all sides by greater mummies and such. That was just the second DD of Elyvilon attempt. Given that up to now my win percentage was around 1%, that's an incredible result (for me).