God Tier List/showcase of amazing MSPaint skills

[DrKe]

Personally, I am not sure if this particular format for ranking gods makes sense. But I am speaking as a poster (not mod) here, so I didn't mean to imply you should have posted it in a different forum. It is fine here.

I don't really agree with this format for ranking gods, so aside from the specific commentary about yred (and maybe some other gods later) I don't have an alternative SABCDE ranking.

i can see why you wouldn't agree, i was somewhat hesitant to post it since a good chunk of people will take that view. i'm just trying to share what i know, not encourage people to take fed on DECj's. at least I hope that's not what I'm doing

[kroki]

good troll thread i enjoy

[DrKe]

good troll thread i enjoy

flattery will get you nowhere with me, sir

[wheals]

I'd definitely rank newestnem at A for the first category, or maybe even S, but I understand that some people just don't like the gameplay.

I don't really do extended much, but I'm surprised that Veh isn't in S, at least given how popular it seems to be. Would have expected Lugonu at A there too, really.

What does S stand for, anyway?

[duvessa]

it stands for S

[Zooty]

I'd definitely rank newestnem at A for the first category, or maybe even S, but I understand that some people just don't like the gameplay.

I don't really do extended much, but I'm surprised that Veh isn't in S, at least given how popular it seems to be. Would have expected Lugonu at A there too, really.

What does S stand for, anyway?

Somewhat better than A.

[Siegurt]

It stands for "Super exellent" obviously

[DrKe]

I'd definitely rank newestnem at A for the first category, or maybe even S, but I understand that some people just don't like the gameplay.

I don't really do extended much, but I'm surprised that Veh isn't in S, at least given how popular it seems to be. Would have expected Lugonu at A there too, really.

Lucy is a quite capable extended god that you can get everything done with, but I feel that the higher tiered gods just get it done quicker and easier, it's a pretty minor distinction
same with veh really

and yeah i should move newnem up

[Greyr]

Im curious why Qaz is behind Fedhas in the Pan/Hell/Tomb Tier. He may not be great in extended, but at least he doesn't need corpses to do anything.

Not looking for a hugely detailed analysis here, obviously tiers are very hard to structure within Crawl since everything is so circumstantial.

[Sprucery]

not encourage people to take fed on DECj's.

I'd take early Fedhas on a DECj.

[Abominae]

you're welcome to attempt a contradiction to that.

if you want me to attempt a contradiction you should probably actually address the points that i made, you completely misunderstood #1, your #2 was "yred is very strong you should never lose with him", and #3 you made into a strawman

you also gave no point of reference for a god above him being weaker. in fact you've yet to even name another god

Do explain #1 to me then, because apparently my comprehension skills have become rusty. From what I understood, your point was "Yred does not scale in power as quickly as other gods, nor do his earlier acquired powers stack up against other gods above him." If this isn't what you mean by "Yred isn't fast," I really have no other interpretation. And thus my argument is very much: "Yred DOES scale in power as quickly as other gods, and his earlier acquired powers stack up against the other gods above him, although I will concede there are other gods who outclass him in this aspect." To be specific, I literally mean every god except Trog, Fedhas, and Ely if you can stand her. If you would like me to break down exactly what Yred can do for you compared to other gods, I can, but this is information I would expect you to have analyzed prior to making this tier list.

As far as #2 goes, that is basically my point, yeah.

As for #3, I'm not sure if you understand what a strawman argument is or if I'm just not understanding you at all.

[DrKe]

Kiku

[DrKe]

not encourage people to take fed on DECj's.

I'd take early Fedhas on a DECj.

tbh that's not something i would ever do, though it's not strictly bad, just desperate and boring

if you're a good enough player that you usually win after getting to champ, you do not need fedhas on that good of a combo, nor do you need a pre-temple altar

[Bloax]

Im curious why Qaz is behind Fedhas in the Pan/Hell/Tomb Tier. He may not be great in extended, but at least he doesn't need corpses to do anything.

Not looking for a hugely detailed analysis here, obviously tiers are very hard to structure within Crawl since everything is so circumstantial.

Probably the most useful thing Qaz offers is smiting hellions/tormentors dead, but in exchange he's also the god that makes a fuckton of noise on your position to bring everything and their grandmother to you.
Which is slightly impractical in extended.

And yes, this is a somewhat silly format to place gods in but whatever.

He's much better for early melee than for early conjuration guys if only because the latter benefit a lot more from being able to run away.

would you rather play a HOSu of Chei or a HOFi of Chei

HOFi, because I'm guaranteed to actually have a usable weapon. (oh and a potion of might also helps)

But really, Chei is S-tier for shit like Mi/Gr/VS-Fi/Mo because of how ridiculously strong you will be pre-lair and how easily said combos kill the early game.

[Siegurt]

Also pan has a significant number of corpses now. (The place is littered with demonspawn)

[cloud4ge]

This is my humble newbish opinion for someone coming here for advice.

A ranking-system for god's that will get me to the lair doesn't make much sense to me. By the time I reach the temple, I'm not really thinking about which god will get me to the lair. Also, finding a god's shrine on D:2 gives that god much more value than one that I may have to wait until D:9 to get. This is also influenced by any kind of sweet loot or shops that I happen to find early in the dungeon.

Are people commonly switching god's somewhere between finishing lair and playing the extended game?
Do undead minions and other summons pose a serious detriment to XP if the @ isn't getting the kills?

[DrKe]

This is my humble newbish opinion for someone coming here for advice.

A ranking-system for god's that will get me to the lair doesn't make much sense to me. By the time I reach the temple, I'm not really thinking about which god will get me to the lair. Also, finding a god's shrine on D:2 gives that god much more value than one that I may have to wait until D:9 to get. This is also influenced by any kind of sweet loot or shops that I happen to find early in the dungeon.

Are people commonly switching god's somewhere between finishing lair and playing the extended game?
Do undead minions and other summons pose a serious detriment to XP if the @ isn't getting the kills?
If I'm trying to run an Op stabber, should I raise Int or Dex? Start as Enchanter?

getting to lair is considered an important milestone for experienced players, but you don't really need to think about it. and if you aren't thinking about it at all i'm not sure why you (or anyone) would wait until d:9

if this info would help a new player at all, it would help them at temple

the other stuff belongs in another thread

[Sprucery]

I'd take early Fedhas on a DECj.

tbh that's not something i would ever do, though it's not strictly bad, just desperate and boring

Well, the reasoning is that the early game is the most dangerous part of the game and Fedhas is great at * piety. In addition to mushrooms, firing through plant-type allies is very powerful.

if you're a good enough player that you usually win after getting to champ, you do not need fedhas on that good of a combo, nor do you need a pre-temple altar

I can turn that around: If you're a good enough player that you usually win after getting to Lair, you only need a god that is strong in the early game and you should take advantage of an early altar.

FWIW, my only Fedhas win (also I think my only Fedhas game) so far was a HOWz.

[DrKe]

I'd take early Fedhas on a DECj.

tbh that's not something i would ever do, though it's not strictly bad, just desperate and boring

Well, the reasoning is that the early game is the most dangerous part of the game and Fedhas is great at * piety. In addition to mushrooms, firing through plant-type allies is very powerful.

if you're a good enough player that you usually win after getting to champ, you do not need fedhas on that good of a combo, nor do you need a pre-temple altar

I can turn that around: If you're a good enough player that you usually win after getting to Lair, you only need a god that is strong in the early game and you should take advantage of an early altar.

FWIW, my only Fedhas win (also I think my only Fedhas game) so far was a HOWz.

its not like there is anything wrong with it, it's just not something i would do

i dont see how picking a good god early on is turning anything around since this thread that i started is about which gods are the most effective.

"pick first god you find that works with the character" is good advice and i would do it a lot of the time, but im not doing it on a decj unless i actually want to play with fedhas

i'm pretty sure i would bypass him with howz also, but i like the sound of that a bit better

[Sprucery]

"pick first god you find that works with the character" is good advice and i would do it a lot of the time, but im not doing it on a decj unless i actually want to play with fedhas

Fair enough, and that's also a good advice: don't pick a god you don't actually want to play with.

[DrKe]

"pick first god you find that works with the character" is good advice and i would do it a lot of the time, but im not doing it on a decj unless i actually want to play with fedhas

Fair enough, and that's also a good advice: don't pick a god you don't actually want to play with.

yeah, but i can't go too far down that road or i'm just picking ash every game.

i can appreciate fedhas a lot more if i needed him to survive on a weak character, as opposed to just getting to lair more easily on a character where i would have gotten there as an atheist. and if thats the case i would rather have something that transitions more powerfully into mid-late than fedhas does, to streamline winning the game/having fun

that's why i bothered writing up the 2nd list despite early game having the most importance. unfortunately it's more subjective than i wanted it to be tho

[daggaz]

This ranking system doesn't take into account players who play The Blob, and thus can't take a God. This choice is clearly superior in terms of fun.

[comebackshane]

Gozag is rated M for Money. Katching!

[WingedEspeon]

Imo Chei should be higher in post champion, but maybe even lower in early game. Nemlex should be higher in post champion. Xom is ranked too high.

[DrKe]

Imo Chei should be higher in post champion, but maybe even lower in early game. Nemlex should be higher in post champion. Xom is ranked too high.

i've updated this a lot since then, i'll probably make another thread for 0.17 when i'm done

[GlassGo]

Looks like I didn't comment this load of bullshit.
When I see Chei ranked like this - you make me laugh, really.

[tasonir]

How do you reconcile Cheibriados being the most successful species high score speed run god (ie, 15 rune extended games) with placing chei in the D tier for extended? I can't for the life of me find the thread where I tallied the gods of species high score runs, but if anyone else can, let me know. But Chei has 10 species high score games, and was taken early and used for the entire games.

Chei gives tremendous power. It's true that it requires somewhat better threat assignment/planning, because you can't walk away, so it helps to have the experience to know ahead of time what you're about to get into, but I don't think that's a terribly high hurdle to get over. Should be at least A/B in extended

Also, you now have 11 tiers to categorize 22 gods. Not necessarily a bad thing, but seems a bit much. When I was sorting races by difficulty, I went with an easy/medium/hard because when you get down to small increments it's too hard to settle on a specific one. What's really the difference between a C+ god and B god? And could you really get most players to agree on such a small difference?

[Sandman25]

Chei/Xom requires more luck than other gods, it is fine for speedruns but awful for CSDC games. I believe the chart is more related to CSDC than to speedrunning. Imagine you have only 1 attempt, is Chei still good?

[and into]

How do you reconcile Cheibriados being the most successful species high score speed run god (ie, 15 rune extended games) with placing chei in the D tier for extended?

Probably turncount and high scores were not metrics the OP gave much weight in ranking the gods.

[tasonir]

You're asking someone with 7 streaks who, not counting the first character on the streak, took chei 7/13 winning games. Granted I'm probably crazy, but yes, I'd take chei when I only have one attempt. Of the 7 streak breakers who died, I have one ashenzari, one evilyon, one Yred (DK start), one trog (Be start). I've never lost a streak due to dying after picking up chei.

Winning with 15 runes in <40k turns takes luck, winning with Chei doesn't take much luck at all

[tasonir]

How do you reconcile Cheibriados being the most successful species high score speed run god (ie, 15 rune extended games) with placing chei in the D tier for extended?

Probably turncount and high scores were not metrics the OP gave much weight in ranking the gods.

Getting a fast turn count is HIGHLY correlated to having high power, both in terms of being able to kill quickly, and dive down deeper into the dungeon sooner. And power is the metric by which the ranking is determined by. A fast turn count is basically high power + luck, and when you look at species high scores, those have all been attempted so many times that you can basically average the luck out.

[Sandman25]

Well, it proves that you know Chei better than other gods, I don't see how Yred can be worse than Chei, it is better both early and late.

[tabstorm]

How do you reconcile Cheibriados being the most successful species high score speed run god (ie, 15 rune extended games) with placing chei in the D tier for extended? I can't for the life of me find the thread where I tallied the gods of species high score runs, but if anyone else can, let me know. But Chei has 10 species high score games, and was taken early and used for the entire games.

Chei gives tremendous power. It's true that it requires somewhat better threat assignment/planning, because you can't walk away, so it helps to have the experience to know ahead of time what you're about to get into, but I don't think that's a terribly high hurdle to get over. Should be at least A/B in extended

Also, you now have 11 tiers to categorize 22 gods. Not necessarily a bad thing, but seems a bit much. When I was sorting races by difficulty, I went with an easy/medium/hard because when you get down to small increments it's too hard to settle on a specific one. What's really the difference between a C+ god and B god? And could you really get most players to agree on such a small difference?

Edit: Misread. For extended the main draw is statue form. Unless you're using that or necromutation he's sort of hurting you, because you may get double tormented in one move, for instance. This is bad for hypothetical optimal play because said play would normally not include getting statue form at all.

[and into]

Getting a fast turn count is HIGHLY correlated to having high power, both in terms of being able to kill quickly, and dive down deeper into the dungeon sooner. And power is the metric by which the ranking is determined by. A fast turn count is basically high power + luck, and when you look at species high scores, those have all been attempted so many times that you can basically average the luck out.

Not really?

I'm not an expert speedrunner by any means but the times I have tried it, it felt like an entirely different game that you play quite differently, and with different priorities, than a "normal" game of Crawl.

I think other considerations, such as "if I worship this god, will it make instant deaths from auto-explore possible?" or "how much does this god help in the most dangerous part of the game (pre-Lair)?" or "how often is this god going to get me into trouble in ways that wouldn't be the case if I were worshiping a different god, or even just an atheist?" are very reasonable ways to assess the overall strength and usefulness of a god. At least, that makes more sense to me than, "how powerful can one ultimately become while worshiping the god?"

Yeah sure Chei dudes can end up with extremely high defensive stats, with high-level spells castable in heavy armor. That can make Chei very fun. But he substantially weakens you during the period when you are already most vulnerable. As for Chei in extended.... Yeah, by that point your character has fully leveraged the bonus stats, so you have crazy EV and AC with full spell support, and that's fun. But things can go south really fast in extended, and doing extended with Chei I still always feel substantially weakened by the fact that I cannot get fast (the vast majority of characters who make it to extended will have access to a good number of applications of fast status) and also by the fact that movement is so heavily punished.

All that being said, I really don't think the ranking is extremely rigorous or anything, and is at least partly influenced by how fun it is to make full use of a god (this is how I'd rationalize Yred getting a B ranking in early and post-Lair). Mostly I just take it as food for thought.

[tasonir]

There are certainly times in extended where a chei character will get double/triple hellfired, but I don't really find that terribly frightening. Maybe I'm just very used to it. I did lose a gargoyle in extended in .16 to it, so certainly on low hp races, it can be an issue.

I guess I see extended as optional, so even though I run it often, it's always contingent on me having the proper extended setup; this usually revolves around healing. extended kits:

Healing:
Take either TSO or Makhleb. Other less common options with trog, ely.
regeneration
Heal wounds wands

Damage avoidance:
Necromutation
haste
high level spells (firestorms, etc)
Statue form

Assemble a kit: take at least one of each category, preferably more, and combine with high defenses, good attacks. Good attacks is very general and vague, but I did specifically separate out high level aoe's for their tendency to kill things before they even get a chance to act against you.

I personally like to go for statue form + regen + heal wounds wand, and chei makes it somewhat easier to get the wand, although I'll happily run extended with just statue + regen. I likely won't do it without regen. Some people swear by necromutation, others detest it. Both transmutations are less common than simply using haste + high offense (either spells or melee).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that when you have a proper healing/damage avoidance setup, getting the occasional triple hellfire isn't really that scary. I probably took 100+ damage turns on my super powerful octopode at least 3 or 4 times, and never really felt scared, because I had 300 hp, could kill things easily, and had plenty of escape options if I really wanted to get out. I used step from time twice, once I remember specifically in tomb with 4-5 greater mummies who happened to torment me while out of statue form, and the other I don't recall. It's really quite easy to reset any sort of bad engagement with Chei in 95% of circumstances, which is a degree of safety you don't really see outside of Zin.

Of course, in the end, the most insightful post in this thread is Kroki's: good troll thread i enjoy

[agentgt]

It's really quite easy to reset any sort of bad engagement with Chei in 95% of circumstances, which is a degree of safety you don't really see outside of Zin.

Actually Dith is probably the best escape god by far exceeding both Chei and Zin.

I guess I see extended as optional, so even though I run it often, it's always contingent on me having the proper extended setup; this usually revolves around healing. extended kits:

Healing:
Take either TSO or Makhleb. Other less common options with trog, ely.
regeneration
Heal wounds wands

Damage avoidance:
Necromutation
haste
high level spells (firestorms, etc)
Statue form

Speaking of Dith, I agree with DrKe's chart (given its rough heuristics) except that Dith should probably be raised to S tier for extended. Shadow Form is basically moving sanctuary but better because you can even attack (pro tip: disto weapons are your friend). It is absolutely unbelievable how easy dith extended is.
All that health crap you mentioned above is nice to have but not needed if you have ctele, tele and apport with dith.

As for Chei...
I have a theory about Chei and Xom. I call it the great Chei and Xom filter. The characters that survive early Xom and Chei do so because they get a really good combination of things happening very early (e.g. awesome xom mutations, chei statue form and do not die) and thus they end up being absolute bad ass characters by the end game. What you don't hear about are the plethora of characters that die from early chei.

[Sandman25]

Statue Form is not early game even with Chei.

[Sandman25]

I have a theory about Chei and Xom. I call it the great Chei and Xom filter. The characters that survive early Xom and Chei do so because they get a really good combination of things happening very early (e.g. awesome xom mutations, chei statue form and do not die) and thus they end up being absolute bad ass characters by the end game. What you don't hear about are the plethora of characters that die from early chei.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/cheimu

Also note that all those characters played according to background: Wz remained Wz, Su remained Su, Ar remained Ar etc.

[agentgt]

I have a theory about Chei and Xom. I call it the great Chei and Xom filter. The characters that survive early Xom and Chei do so because they get a really good combination of things happening very early (e.g. awesome xom mutations, chei statue form and do not die) and thus they end up being absolute bad ass characters by the end game. What you don't hear about are the plethora of characters that die from early chei.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/cheimu

Also note that all those characters played according to background: Wz remained Wz, Su remained Su, Ar remained Ar etc.

You just proved my point of selection bias. This happens with all kinds of disciplines including academics where you only hear about the great successes.
That Mu pseudo streak of chei was probably played by a very talented player with a shit ton of patience... notice the massive turn count for just 3-4 runes.
You could show the same thing with probably far fewer turn counts with Gozag with that same talented player.. that must mean gozag is a really strong god (I'm not arguing that he isn't but...)?

Now to play hypocrite the impressive chei awesomeness I have seen (just a few.. again small sample size) to have statue form live some where end lair or beginning vaults.. I consider that early especially since its like turn 10k (scored turn). Even then I have seen many players have it around XL 16 which is still rather early. Statue form is just one example though. One could be they find a reliable source of tele and a stealth ring or just not getting really nasty vaults and/or not getting nasty ghosts. Many of my chei attempts have died to ghosts that I just could not get away from.

[Sandman25]

You just proved my point of selection bias. This happens with all kinds of disciplines including academics where you only hear about the great successes.
That Mu pseudo streak of chei was probably played by a very talented player with a shit ton of patience... notice the massive turn count for just 3-4 runes.
You could show the same thing with probably far fewer turn counts with Gozag with that same talented player.. that must mean gozag is a really strong god (I'm not arguing that he isn't but...)?

Now to play hypocrite the impressive chei awesomeness I have seen (just a few.. again small sample size) to have statue form live some where end lair or beginning vaults.. I consider that early especially since its like turn 10k (scored turn). Even then I have seen many players have it around XL 16 which is still rather early. Statue form is just one example though. One could be they find a reliable source of tele and a stealth ring or just not getting really nasty vaults and/or not getting nasty ghosts. Many of my chei attempts have died to ghosts that I just could not get away from.

How could I prove your point? You said "What you don't hear about are the plethora of characters that die from early chei." and I proved that it is relatively easy to win with Chei even as Mu. That player is patient indeed but still almost all those deaths were caused by player mistake, the player becomes impatient when in danger sometimes.
"Pseudo streak"? There were 2 streaks, one of them could be 5 instead of 4 if I didn't miss that distortion weapon on D1.

Edit. Also yes, Mu of Gozag is million times easier than Mu of Chei.

Edit2. Mu cannot even cast Statue Form, Chei is not about statue form really.

[agentgt]

You just proved my point of selection bias. This happens with all kinds of disciplines including academics where you only hear about the great successes.
That Mu pseudo streak of chei was probably played by a very talented player with a shit ton of patience... notice the massive turn count for just 3-4 runes.
You could show the same thing with probably far fewer turn counts with Gozag with that same talented player.. that must mean gozag is a really strong god (I'm not arguing that he isn't but...)?

Now to play hypocrite the impressive chei awesomeness I have seen (just a few.. again small sample size) to have statue form live some where end lair or beginning vaults.. I consider that early especially since its like turn 10k (scored turn). Even then I have seen many players have it around XL 16 which is still rather early. Statue form is just one example though. One could be they find a reliable source of tele and a stealth ring or just not getting really nasty vaults and/or not getting nasty ghosts. Many of my chei attempts have died to ghosts that I just could not get away from.

How could I prove your point? You said "What you don't hear about are the plethora of characters that die from early chei." and I proved that it is relatively easy to win with Chei even as Mu. That player is patient indeed but still almost all those deaths were caused by player mistake, the player becomes impatient when in danger sometimes
"Pseudo streak"? There were 2 streaks, one of them could be 6 instead of 4 if I didn't miss that distortion weapon on D1

Edit. Also yes, Mu of Gozag is million times easier than Mu of Chei.

Well you could easily run some !lg stats on it for sure. I'm not on irc right now so I can't check. Oh and I didn't mean it wasn't composed of impressive streaks.. I meant the whole player is almost one entire Mu chei streak .. Its very impressive.

Hopefully not to sound annoying but you certainly did not prove it was easy as you even conflicted your answer by saying "Gozag is a million time easier".

I also found a statue form example:

8948 | Lair:8 | Learned a level 6 spell: Statue Form

Roughly a 1000-1300 turns later they were casting statue form. I guess its debatable whats early though.

[Sandman25]

Well you could easily run some !lg stats on it for sure. I'm not on irc right now so I can't check. Oh and I didn't mean it wasn't composed of impressive streaks.. I meant the whole player is almost one entire Mu chei streak .. Its very impressive.

Hopefully not to sound annoying but you certainly did not prove it was easy as you even conflicted your answer by saying "Gozag is a million time easier".

I also found a statue form example:

8948 | Lair:8 | Learned a level 6 spell: Statue Form

Roughly a 1000-1300 turns later they were casting statue form. I guess its debatable whats early though.

Don't get me wrong, Chei is second worst god, right after Xom. But there is no "Chei filter" unlike "Xom filter" which exists indeed.
Look at games played for the character, it has
" 1 1 8 1 1 2 1 3 6 1 " for Mu
MuEn is extremely hard, being unable to run away when you fail to stab is awful.
MuSu is just hard, for similar reasons.
With luring and without self-imposed challenge like "En should stay En" and "Su should stay Su" there would not be so many losses.
I got bored with Mu of Chei, it was too easy after I got some experience with the combo.
So I switched to Imp of Chei. And you know what? I won Imp of Chei with 15 runes from first attempt.
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/experim ... man25.html
With careful luring there is no any Chei filter, there is "I am lazy to play carefully so I use autoexplore and don't lure as often as I can" filter, which can be seen easier with Chei indeed. That's why I created a thread complaining about luring, it makes crawl trivial with most characters.

[Pollen_Golem]

I understand Ash as a great early god when you really need skills and he helps avoid dangerous trouble.
Why is he also among the best PANHELLTOMB gods?
What does he do for you there, if you don't need major reskilling?
Finding portals with Ash in Pan is unreliable and not that necessary, it's just convenience.

[mps]

It's a little hard to get into the heads of people who think Ash is good, but I'll try to walk you through it. First, imagine that spells are good and that having a lot of skill in a lot of different spell schools made your character a lot better. This takes some imagination because in reality there are only a few good spells and it doesn't take so much of an investment that you need a skill god to get them, especially by the time you're in extended, but bear with me. The thing about Ash is that if you're skilling a lot of different skills to moderate levels, the boosts make it as if you had skilled a lot of different skills to a high level instead. This means you can cast lots and lots of spells. What's so great about that? Well, remember, we're imagining that having a lot of spells is really good.

On the other hand, if you play Ash the way you played it in your last game, Ash is basically a bad version of Okawaru without the early game usefulness and oscillating fans.

[Sandman25]

Right, Ashenzari allows to save 50+% skill points in all magic schools, it's huge advantage. When I use Ash I have many support spells at low failure chance without investing much. For example:

  Code:

   Skills:
 + Level 22.3(25.7) Dodging
 - Level 2.6(6.3) Stealth
   Level 1.0 Shields
 - Level 10.5(13.3) Conjurations
 - Level 3.0(5.6) Hexes
 - Level 5.5(8.5) Charms
 - Level 5.7(8.7) Summonings
 + Level 21.6(23.7) Necromancy
 - Level 7.5(10.6) Translocations
 - Level 3.5(6.2) Transmutations
 - Level 12.2(14.9) Fire Magic
 - Level 7.1(10.2) Ice Magic
 - Level 2.0(4.2) Air Magic
 - Level 2.8(5.3) Earth Magic
 - Level 13.1(15.7) Evocations

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
b - Apportation           Tloc           ######....   1%          1    None
c - Spectral Weapon       Hex/Chrm       ######..     1%          3    None
e - Phase Shift           Tloc           ######....   1%          5    None
f - Warp Weapon           Chrm/Tloc      ######....   1%          5    None
g - Regeneration          Chrm/Necr      #######...   0%          3    None
h - Simulacrum            Ice/Necr       #######...   1%          6    ###....
i - Shadow Creatures      Summ           N/A          2%          5    None
l - Bolt of Fire          Conj/Fire      #######...   1%          6    ###....
p - Recall                Summ/Tloc      N/A          1%          3    None
r - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ######       1%          2    None
s - Stoneskin             Trmt/Erth      ######..     1%          2    None
u - Animate Skeleton      Necr           N/A          0%          1    None
w - Control Teleport      Chrm/Tloc      ######....   1%          4    None
K - Borgnjor's Revivific  Necr           #######...   1%          8    ######.
M - Swiftness             Chrm/Air       ######..     1%          2    None
P - Summon Butterflies    Summ           ######..     1%          1    None
U - Animate Dead          Necr           N/A          0%          4    None


http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 192550.txt

[duvessa]

turns out knowing where monsters and portals are is good

[Sprucery]

Yeah I guess there was a reason why Detect Creatures was removed.

[Zwobot]

Ash makes the extended game much less of a pain. And yeah, if you enjoy magic you get a huge skill boost - plus clarity - which works for those CBoE users. Plus if you're not a goddamn ghoul in CPA some monsters are actually dangerous

[advil]

I understand Ash as a great early god when you really need skills and he helps avoid dangerous trouble.
Why is he also among the best PANHELLTOMB gods?
What does he do for you there, if you don't need major reskilling?
Finding portals with Ash in Pan is unreliable and not that necessary, it's just convenience.

For those missing out on the backstory and replying seriously to this, in pollen_golem's last game, he converted from nemelex to ash for extended and played a spelless uncursed ash for the rest of the runes. And then apparently converted to xom for the ascension. I personally think pollen_golem is most likely an experienced player doing some performance art / trolling, rather than the initial front he presented (extremely earnest and somewhat nutty person who'd exhaustively read about crawl before playing any at all).

[nago]

Wtf