Faith

[Pollen_Golem]

sounds much like Faith - either a godsend or really unwanted

(You should be able to control it with the control spell)

all sources of control teleport are gone in trunk

[duvessa]

the only circumstance where faith is ever unwanted is you are a demigod

[Chicken]

the only circumstance where faith is ever unwanted is you are a demigod

I'm no expert, but so far it seems better for my chars to have gourmand so that they can get ahead on food and not have to go diving into something too quickly.

The idea that a ring of distortion could be really good or really bad is intentional. I think items that are all good or (especially) all bad don't add much to gameplay, because there's no decision making involved. But give someone a random artifact with various strong positives and negatives combined ... then (s)he has to make decisions.

[Sprucery]

Gourmand is one of the least useful amulets. What are you doing to be so hungry that permafood and chunks don't cut it?

[Arrhythmia]

the only circumstance where faith is ever unwanted is you are a demigod

Or worshiping Gozag, though in that situation you have bigger problems to worry about.

[Chicken]

Gourmand is one of the least useful amulets. What are you doing to be so hungry that permafood and chunks don't cut it?

Spells and channel energy. Sick of constantly being at some stage near starvation while trying to get enough magic power to survive. Or trying to bash my way through walls with deconstruction...

[Sandman25]

the only circumstance where faith is ever unwanted as long as you don't have better amulets is you are a demigod

FTFY.
Or am I the only one who uses scrolls to id unknown plain amulets late game?

[duvessa]

the only circumstance where faith is ever unwanted as long as you don't have better amulets is you are a demigod

FTFY.

There are no better amulets, so...

[Sandman25]

There are no better amulets, so...

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?
Amulet of regen/guardian/gourmand is better often and I would use amulet of 4 winds, brooch of shielding, amulet of vitality, macabre finger necklace over faith even with Trog/Oka/Qazlal/Yred.

[duvessa]

Well sure, artefacts can be better, but I figured that kind of goes without saying, and randarts can also have faith on them.

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?

Faith is excellent for all of those gods except for the specific case of vehumet at already-high piety.

[Sandman25]

Well sure, artefacts can be better, but I figured that kind of goes without saying, and randarts can also have faith on them.

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?

Faith is excellent for all of those gods except for the specific case of vehumet at already-high piety.

I dislike Faith with Vehumet.
Regen/gourmand is better with Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari, regen/guardian is better with Makhleb/Dithmenos/Ashenzari IMHO.

[Sar]

Makh, really? You don't use active abilities much?

[byrel]

You must not spam shadow step as much as I do. Ash I'll give you though.

[Berder]

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?

Yes - pointless to have faith with Vehumet since you get piety quickly and it doesn't take long to get all the gifts. Faith is even bad while you're wearing it because you may get offered good gifts faster than you have the spell levels to accept them.

I don't like faith with Sif, because it just means you get a few more books. You get books anyway through Sif, through shops, and through floor drops, so it's not a large percentage increase in the total number of books available.

Faith with Ash might be ok until you're near full piety due to the initially slow piety growth, but then it's a nuisance. Scrying is very optional. You want to stay near full piety to maximize passives.

I, too, hardly use Mak active abilities due to the risk of hostile demons I can't handle, and also because you need to keep Mak piety at 200 to maximize passive healing. So faith with Mak is a problem.

Dithmenos - definitely, no faith. With Dith, it's more important to get the passives, which maximize at 200 piety. Shadow step is a completely optional thing that stabbers can use to reduce their turn count if they don't mind taking unnecessary risks. Every shadow step has the potential to put you in range of many dangerous things at once; it violates the rule to never walk towards enemies. Shadow form has little use before extended.

In addition to the ones you've listed, I usually wouldn't want faith on the following gods:

Gozag - faith does nothing with Gozag.

Kiku - I use corpse delivery with Kiku rarely enough that faith is primarily a nuisance that takes my amulet slot. Without faith I don't tend to run out of corpses to have delivered, and Kiku piety isn't good for much besides that.

Ru - faith does nothing with Ru.

Beogh - smiting is not worth training invo for.

[byrel]

Often toward the end of a 3rune game its less risky to shadow step stab than to kite a monster out of position. Especcially with dith umbra stealth its fairly unlikely they wake up and even if they do you can escape. Stabbers have trouble killing nonhexable high Ac monsters. A free stab lowers the risk of a golden dragon or tentacled monstrosity considerably.

[bel]

Eh? I think faith is great with Vehumet. You are showered with gifts, and can take it off when it reaches 15. Max piety is easily regained. There's almost no downside and plenty of upside.

Vehumet's early gifts are crappy, this overcomes this weakness and can result in an absurd power boost. Early sticky flame, cloud spells in Lair, lvl 8/9 spells in lair branches or vaults, and so on. Just train enough spellcasting to have slots open.

[duvessa]

I guess faith is poor with xom and gozag, but like, they're xom and gozag...

[Berder]

Xom is actually one of the gods I would use faith with. There's no penalty for removing it, and if you keep it on you get your mutations faster.

[Siegurt]

In addition to the ones you've listed, I usually wouldn't want faith on the following gods:

Gozag - faith does nothing with Gozag.

Ru - faith does nothing with Ru.

Not to argue that it's *worth* it, to wear faith over another amulet but, Faith reduces the prices on Gozag abilities, and increases the rate at which you are offered Ru sacrifices, which isn't "nothing" although it certainly isn't very interesting or really particularly good.

[Berder]

Faith doesn't actually do anything with gozag: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 1d975cc92e

I stand corrected about Ru.

[Siegurt]

Faith doesn't actually do anything with gozag: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 1d975cc92e

I stand corrected about Ru.

Well, it did the last time I used it, although that just shows how interested I am in using Gozag

[mps]

Faith is not bad... ? Faith kinda sucks for a lot of gods. I can see it for gifts and for the few gods where spamming invocations is a useful thing to do, but usually not worth the slot much past lair.

[njvack]

Kiku - I use corpse delivery with Kiku rarely enough that faith is primarily a nuisance that takes my amulet slot.

Why? Corpse delivery is pimp.

[ololoev]

Eh? I think faith is great with Vehumet. You are showered with gifts, and can take it off when it reaches 15. Max piety is easily regained. There's almost no downside and plenty of upside.

If I start with a book background then I have spells that can carry me to and through lair. It's icicle, fball, sticky, sandblast, bolt-o-lightning, bsphere. I really don't need that bolts of fire, IOODs and freezing clouds that early. What I want is to level my conj/elemental skills and get some defences if I have spare XP. I rarely spend too much XP on spellcasting (if I have negative or zero apt) until I have FS online, so spell gift shower will make me loose that IOOD or Iron Shot because I don't have ?amnesia in my bag.

[bcadren]

duvessa likes ignoring all playstyles other than his own.

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?

Faith is excellent for all of those gods except for the specific case of vehumet at already-high piety.

To talk about these intelligently:

• with some characters Faith makes Vehumet WORSE, because if you are say a HO or a Ce (-3 Spellcasting apt) the faster piety gain makes it unlikely you'll be able to accept most the gifts.
• Sif actually is good with Faith for a good while (get to 6* faster in order to get gifts and to get gifts more often); but could probably be removed once you have the book gifts you want.
• Now that Ash's skill boosts are available at **...knock yourself out; unless you are really spamming Scrying and Knowledge Transfer; you don't have a use for Faith.
• Makhleb - sure. early game faith, maybe. But the Invos become useless with the passive still good.
• Dith - I can see someone using Shadow Step often enough to want Faith.

There are no better amulets, so...

This is the more dubious claim. I'd argue that the best (common) amulet depends on the character.

• Faith is a contender with some of the Invo-heavy gods.
• Spirit Shield is better on a low HP race (IE DETm).
• Regen strikes me as fairly useless, but using it so you don't have 5 as much is cool, especially in Hell.
• Amulet of Rage suits some characters (I evoked it a lot on a Troll with Statue Form).
• Gourmand, I don't understand why so many people call it useless; to some character's sure, but if you're making heavy use of level 9's and don't want to run out of Perma-Food, you pretty much need it. It also makes it so you don't have to train Spellcasting as high to not starve yourself as a blaster-caster (very important to those with low apts).
• Clarity - Necessary for a mummy or using alistair's intoxication. Really good as a switch when a player ghost has Dazzling Spray.
• Resist Corrosion - Good switch for Slime and Depths [Caustic Shrikes and Rust Demons] (borderline necessary, actually).
• Resist Mutation - Goodish for Haste users, again good switch for Slime and Pandemonium and Abyss. (borderline necessary for wretched stars if you don't have a way of killing them quickly and bad stealth)
• Stasis - Switch for enemies that have paralysis, mostly. Good for Orc, Elf and Ancient Liches.
• Warding - Underrated. Not the best way to do Tomb; but a way to do Tomb. Also a good switch in Elf. Making summons cantrip does a lot.

I don't like committing to faith except on really high Invo gods (or searching for a specific book with Sif); since the cost for switching is -1/3 piety is really high. It does cause me to scroll ID all amulets until I see it (more than Innacc which is harmless except costing a curse scroll).

[duvessa]

duvessa likes ignoring all playstyles other than his own.

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?

Faith is excellent for all of those gods except for the specific case of vehumet at already-high piety.

To talk about these intelligently:

• with some characters Faith makes Vehumet WORSE, because if you are say a HO or a Ce (-3 Spellcasting apt) the faster piety gain makes it unlikely you'll be able to accept most the gifts.
• Sif actually is good with Faith for a good while (get to 6* faster in order to get gifts and to get gifts more often); but could probably be removed once you have the book gifts you want.
• Now that Ash's skill boosts are available at **...knock yourself out; unless you are really spamming Scrying and Knowledge Transfer; you don't have a use for Faith.
• Makhleb - sure. early game faith, maybe. But the Invos become useless with the passive still good.
• Dith - I can see someone using Shadow Step often enough to want Faith.

well when I say faith is good I assume that you picked a god that you actually wanted to use, rather than picking a god and then not using any of their abilities. if picking a god and then not using it is your playstyle, sure, knock yourself out

[bcadren]

well when I say faith is good I assume that you picked a god that you actually wanted to use, rather than picking a god and then not using any of their abilities. if picking a god and then not using it is your playstyle, sure, knock yourself out

That's actually really common for Makhleb in late game...It's also high cost, you can't switch to rMut when you need it, etc. Also geez it's piety +1/3 not piety x2; It's not such a huge boost to make it a no-brainer. Closest it gets to being a no-brainer is with Qazlal; but even then nuking your piety when you need rMut and rCorr might not be worth it...

[Sar]

if you are a HO or a Ce and you took Vehumet I assume you actually want to cast spells and, as such, want his boosts to come as early as possible

[WingedEspeon]

the only circumstance where faith is ever unwanted as long as you don't have better amulets is you are a demigod

FTFY.

There are no better amulets, so...

Says the person that said crown of eternal torment was bad (Guardian spirit essentially turns your MP into HP meaning that on a near pure/pure melee character GS is essentially like +20% HP some of the time. If torment immunity in extended wasn't worth -20% HP, I don't see how little extra piety is. This is assuming no other sources of GS have dropped, but still... Some of the time GS will be much better than faith.)

[yesno]

Are we ignoring Vehumet/Sif Muna/Ashenzari/Makhleb/Dithmenos etc. here?

Dithmenos - definitely, no faith. With Dith, it's more important to get the passives, which maximize at 200 piety. Shadow step is a completely optional thing that stabbers can use to reduce their turn count if they don't mind taking unnecessary risks. Every shadow step has the potential to put you in range of many dangerous things at once; it violates the rule to never walk towards enemies.

shadow step is really handy... it is fun to warp into the middle of a sleeping group and stab them all, but it is useful in more conservative play also. i like to scout the area around sleeping enemies, then use shadow step to pick off the most dangerous at the start of the fight. also allows you to avoid risk of waking enemies whose los intercepts your path of travel but does not extend to your target. you don't have to just teleport blind into groups of enemies every time a sleeping monster appears. just a few uses will diminish the umbra so faith is really nice to have... though true dithmenos passives alone are enough reason to worship.

[ajon]

You think regen is useless? I think its pretty nice especially if you can get a few sources of it at once. The healing rate feels like it becomes exceptionally fast. My one KoBe felt like I wasn't taking damage but when I switched out my Regen gear, it became apparent that I was just healing extraordinarily fast. Granted, there might be better choices if I were playing more extended now, and I will often switch out regen for rMut late game too.

[bcadren]

if you are a HO or a Ce and you took Vehumet I assume you actually want to cast spells and, as such, want his boosts to come as early as possible

True; I'm conflicted though. If you take Vehu as a non --Cj or ---E start, you'll need to take a lot of the gifts to get started with Conjurations and trying to focus only spellcasting so you can keep up with the gifts gimps the character badly enough to be fatal. (It's good long term; but hurting yourself short term in early game is...pretty bad).

[ajon]

You don't have to take them all though. Most of the low level ones are ok, but not necessary if you aren't one of the backgrounds you mentioned. Just wait for the good ones. The passives are nice and the end ones are also a nice guarantee.

[dowan]

When wearing faith with Veh, you can just take off the amulet if there's a spell that you really want.

[bcadren]

When wearing faith with Veh, you can just take off the amulet if there's a spell that you really want.

that's actually Genius; the -1/3 immediate effect will greatly slow down the next gift.

[ajon]

yeah ive done that on my current DEFE

[Sandman25]

Makh, really? You don't use active abilities much?

It depends on character. As Gh I don't care about mutations/executioners/green death so I still spam servants even at low Invo (had Invo 12 with 15 runes).
As DD I tried Invo 27 but I liked Invo 0 and ignoring all abilities much more

[Sandman25]

Gozag - faith does nothing with Gozag.

Kiku - I use corpse delivery with Kiku rarely enough that faith is primarily a nuisance that takes my amulet slot. Without faith I don't tend to run out of corpses to have delivered, and Kiku piety isn't good for much besides that.

Ru - faith does nothing with Ru.

Beogh - smiting is not worth training invo for.

I didn't mention 3 of those 4 gods because it was obvious for everyone IMHO. As about Kiku I agree with you, I don't spam corpse delivery unless I really need it because it takes away 50% XP. The more often you use corpse delivery, the weaker you become and the more often you need corpse delivery. Being both weak and piety-dependent is a very bad idea as is easy to see with Fedhas/Yred/Beogh/Kiku.

[Sar]

well XP penalty doesn't really matter because you still have Kiku...

[Sandman25]

well XP penalty doesn't really matter because you still have Kiku...

Yes, it is hard to run out of piety with Kiku (it's really OP in late game and requires low piety) yet I like to be strong and clear most levels alone, less key strokes and less real time.

[KoboldLord]

I didn't mention 3 of those 4 gods because it was obvious for everyone IMHO. As about Kiku I agree with you, I don't spam corpse delivery unless I really need it because it takes away 50% XP. The more often you use corpse delivery, the weaker you become and the more often you need corpse delivery. Being both weak and piety-dependent is a very bad idea as is easy to see with Fedhas/Yred/Beogh/Kiku.

I don't understand. Dropping a bunch of corpses in a corridor to Corpse Rot doesn't cost any xp in any sense, and neither does chain-Tormenting large monsters that I can then one-shot with ranged attacks.

Even if I'm making zombies, it isn't like they're going to be outdamaging me with my pain weapon. Since they are usually slow, they're probably all trailing behind me in the first place, so I can swap with them if something dangerous comes up, and if they're behind me they aren't going to be stealing any of my kills. Technically there's probably a tiny bit of xp leak when they kill off river rats or something, but I'm not even sure it's possible to approach 50% xp loss if the only pets you're using are distraction zombies.

[ololoev]

if you are a HO or a Ce and you took Vehumet I assume you actually want to cast spells and, as such, want his boosts to come as early as possible

But Veh piety is easy to get. Even with a very late altar I usually get wizardry boost in L1-2. Ce can train enough conj&fire to have sticky for all early threats.

[Sar]

Well with !faith you can get it earlier, every bit helps.

[Igxfl]

I didn't mention 3 of those 4 gods because it was obvious for everyone IMHO. As about Kiku I agree with you, I don't spam corpse delivery unless I really need it because it takes away 50% XP. The more often you use corpse delivery, the weaker you become and the more often you need corpse delivery. Being both weak and piety-dependent is a very bad idea as is easy to see with Fedhas/Yred/Beogh/Kiku.

I don't understand. Dropping a bunch of corpses in a corridor to Corpse Rot doesn't cost any xp in any sense, and neither does chain-Tormenting large monsters that I can then one-shot with ranged attacks.

Even if I'm making zombies, it isn't like they're going to be outdamaging me with my pain weapon. Since they are usually slow, they're probably all trailing behind me in the first place, so I can swap with them if something dangerous comes up, and if they're behind me they aren't going to be stealing any of my kills. Technically there's probably a tiny bit of xp leak when they kill off river rats or something, but I'm not even sure it's possible to approach 50% xp loss if the only pets you're using are distraction zombies.

You might run into significant losses if you relied on Delivery+Animate to mob kill most difficult enemies, who of course give a disproportionate share of XP.
I think that would only be a problem if you had an otherwise weak start, went Kiku very early and didn't get gifted Corpse Rot.

[Sar]

50% sounds scary on paper, but as both XP levels and skills become more expensive with each level and monster XP increases significantly, this really means lagging behind a couple of XP/skill levels at most, which isn't really a big deal since you are using Kiku/Summonings and those kill things just fine.

[Igxfl]

Oh, right, I guess it's actually the non-degenerate version of "-1 skill while wielded". That's kind of cool.

[Sandman25]

I don't understand. Dropping a bunch of corpses in a corridor to Corpse Rot doesn't cost any xp in any sense, and neither does chain-Tormenting large monsters that I can then one-shot with ranged attacks.

I don't need any help in corridors usually. I am a bad player with regard to torment, I literally never use it unless I have rTorm.

Even if I'm making zombies, it isn't like they're going to be outdamaging me with my pain weapon.

Right, this is why I don't need them in corridors. I do use them in open terrain when I have to fight there, it's great when you are surrounded with allies instead of with enemies.

Since they are usually slow, they're probably all trailing behind me in the first place, so I can swap with them if something dangerous comes up, and if they're behind me they aren't going to be stealing any of my kills. Technically there's probably a tiny bit of xp leak when they kill off river rats or something, but I'm not even sure it's possible to approach 50% xp loss if the only pets you're using are distraction zombies.

Yes, I liked to use zombies shield this way when zombies were permanent. I still use them in trunk but not that often. Sometimes I leave corpses of killed monsters on ground and lure alive monsters to them before casting Animate Dead.