Spreading the Light

[Jeremiah]

This is a thread for strategies and tips for worshipping Zin.

None of my attempts at playing priests have got very far, but I'll share my thoughts about Zin and see what other tips and ideas anyone else has.

From reading about his powers, it would seem as though Zin is a god mostly useful in the late game, but he seems to be eclipsed by TSO in that area. It is also relatively hard to gain piety in the early game because you generally don't have much gold and chaotic creatures are rare.

I'm wondering if starting as a priest is actually the best way to go about it, or should I start with a background that has more combat abilities and equipment then convert at the Temple. The quarterstaff seems like a dubious starting weapon, as relatively few races have good aptitude for staves, and the only good staff type weapons are lajatangs which are rare and also don't do that much damage for a 2-handed weapon, and elemental staves which require evocations and magic skills to use.

Maybe it would be better to start as a fighter/gladiator and worship Zin when I find the altar. On the other hand, I would then have to train invocations up from zero, which can be tricky given that the recite power is somewhat dubious in usefulness especially with zero skill.

Finally, there are the restrictive codes of conduct, particularly on eating sentient creatures which is harsher than the other good gods. I'm not sure how well this is offset by the sustenance ability, as none of my priest attempts survived long enough to be short of food.

[KoboldLord]

The easiest way to play Zin is to start with Elyvilon. Zin and Elyvilon are best friends and don't mind sharing, so you might as well take advantage of this. Elyvilon will carry you through Lair with her invocations, and Orc will provide piety for training the skill. Once you've cleared Lair and Orc, there are more sources of Zin piety to work with and you should already have respectable invocations skill.

Later on, you'll probably end up converting to TSO just like everybody else, but up until you've finished Zot and are looking at the post-endgame branches Zin will demand a much less obnoxious set of conducts and some respectable active and passive abilities. If nothing else, Zin won't expect you to wake up that deep elf banisher and let it rub the sleep out of its eyes and do some morning calisthenics before you're allowed to get rid of it.

[Rapigel]

I like Zin. Like it so much I played nothing but for months and months.

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1527

I played Zin as a heavy armour melee build. So, compared to your average godless fighter/gladiator, and D:1 splats aside, the early, early game is pretty easy for a Zinnite. The quarterstaff hits often (that +6 accuracy is nice) and reasonably hard. Recite will save your life against gnoll packs and your first ogre. Vitalisation will sort out poisonings and orc wizard confusion. (In fact, after months of Zin, it took me a while to rid myself of the cure poison reflex on other builds…)

However, beyond that, those heavy-armour Zinnites fell behind the monster power curve pretty quickly and needed some good finds to make the transition from staves to shields plus a heavy hitter. I always went maces for the flavour.

Imprison I used least of all. Even with high innovations, it seemed to release my target way too quickly. I guess making it permanent would make life too easy (Tomb of D after all…), but extending the duration would help. Perhaps it could be permanent, but only be invokable on enemies to make it harder, but still possible, for people using it to seal off parts of a level or create chokepoints. Then again, if Zin basically gave you Tomb of D, then that would be a huge attractor, and people might actually worship him over other gods…

Sanctuary is pretty ace.

But it is Recite I love. In 0.8 the devs have put in a heap of work to make this interesting, flavourful, fun and effective. It used to just be a dumb thing you did to orcs, but now it is a good tool for the whole game. At decent invocations it can wipe out ugly thing packs, hordes of skeletal warriors. I love the work that went into creating the actual stuff you say when you recite and the choices you need to make (hmm… loads of things in LOS, what to take out… demons, uglies, giants…?)

Even with the current changes, Zin’s clearly not ever going to be a favourite god. There will always be better choices in the early, mid and late games. And given that you have two better choices with no penalty, I only ever see Zin as being a tool to wipe out your mutation set from somebody who is taking an Elyvilon to TSO path.

[LunarHarp]

I sometimes pick zin when I am feeling quirky and playing a spriggan. Zin can be a good choice for a SpEn (when you are bored with the obvious choices). SpEn can hold their own without zin's help for a very long time, and by the time you need him you can have the invocations and piety to cast sanctuary or imprison as a panic button. Recite trains invocations without using food unlike most god abilities, and you don't eat meat so the whole not eating intelligent creatures never is a problem.

[chowderhaus]

My first win was a 4 rune run with a SpEn of Zin (and this was before the new and improved Zin in 8.0). And for that particular game I was being overly cocky in Zot 3 and Zin protected me from a fatal instance of damage. So basically, I couln't have won without him! Surely Zin is one of the underrated gods.

[eharper256]

Yeah, as Rapigel says, training a D&D type Cleric (heavy armour hitty smacky mace dude on the side of god) out of a Zin Priest start is pretty decent. Moving onto huge armour and Maces when possible is good (I always end up with a whip though for some reason, LOL). As a bonus, the distinct lack of stealth might well help you go TSO later.

[PorkSol]

I've only tested it with Wizard mode but with 5 stars of Zin piety you can actually rest to regain HP in the hells as Zin absorbs all the hell effects. Obviously no hell effects makes the branch a bit less risky as well.

Since you can get a blessed blade from TSO and switch back to Zin, I'm wondering if Zin might not actually be better than TSO for the Hells, assuming you can get RN+++ (and the resists required for whichever hell you're in) from gear without TSO's RN bonus.

[smeej]

Playing around with that SpEn of Zin thing. Should I bother training Invocations specifically or just leave it on? I'm at 10 right now. Dunno if there's an optimal level to reach.

Am I right in assuming I retain my piety when I switch between good gods?

[Rapigel]

No, you have to start over from one star.

[Jeremiah]

I've just started doing some experimentation with priests, and I'm a bit puzzled about what Recite does: the most common result is for the monster to be "dazed," but what effect does this actually have in-game? It doesn't seem to make much difference to the monsters, and certainly isn't enough to stop Sigmund turning invisible, confusing me then killing me with spells.

[Galefury]

Dazed means the monster will occasionally lose a turn ("Monster is lost in a daze"). Not especially worthwhile. Recite is generally only useful if there are many enemies around which cant attack you in the next three turns, and against the unclean. Against single enemies those three turns are usually better spent on ranged attacks. Note that you will need to train invocations to use Zin well, and recite is your only free way of training invocations. This means it is also often worth using if you simply have exp in your pool and the enemies don't pose a threat.

[smeej]

Just got my first victory with SpEn of Zin. Zin didn't really do much for me by the time I hit mid-game (I completely forgot to use most of his powers for many tens of thousands of turns, I think), and I never once used Imprison, but the shielding he provided me in + using Sanctuary 4 times let me survive and heal up long enough to grab the orb and get out.

Zin's cool in my book.

[Jeremiah]

I'm obviously not good enough at this game yet to get anywhere with a priest. I have tried a few humans, and also a few centaurs, based on the theory that they can run away when they find themselves outclassed. The downside of that was that they were always outclassed, and constantly running until eventually they got sandwiched between two things they couldn't deal with and got splatted.

I'm thinking if I wanted to go with the heavy armour idea, it would probably be better to play a MDPr or MiPr, while a human priest would be better off branching out into magic, though I guess there is potential for piety loss due to glow caused by miscast effects. What isn't clear is exactly what Zin disapproves of under the heading of causing mutation. Does he only hate actual mutations, or any form of transmutation, including, eg casting blade hands or stoneskin?

[galehar]

What isn't clear is exactly what Zin disapproves of under the heading of causing mutation. Does he only hate actual mutations, or any form of transmutation, including, eg casting blade hands or stoneskin?

He hates deliberately causing (or attempting to cause) mutation, including polymorphing monsters. The fact that he hates spells that transform the player is a recent addition. This includes blade hands, but not stoneskin.

[vintermann]

No transformations? As if Zin wasn't bad enough?

Sometimes I think the devs screw over Zin and make a joke out of him because they have issues with a certain real-world religion he's inspired by.

Going to drop in on the wiki and make some suggestion, I suppose.

[KoboldLord]

Sometimes I think the devs screw over Zin and make a joke out of him because they have issues with a certain real-world religion he's inspired by.

I'm more under the impression that Zin was based on Nethack gods. She feeds you when you pray while starving, gives you sanctuary, trades favors for cash donations, and hates cannibalism and killing pets. I'm not familiar with any real-life religion that can keep you going indefinitely without food, or give you temporary invincibility.

[dpeg]

Some interesting myths in this thread

Zin is not based on Nethack gods. The god is very old (in Crawl) and used to be a sibling of TSO: where TSO would bless a blade, Zin would bless a mace, and a number of other similarities. If you dig through the old SourceForge Feature Request lists, you can find good summaries. So in DCSS we wanted to diversify the good gods better. It worked very well for Elyvilon, if I may say so (even though there are some bits missing -- I recently compiled an Elyilon agenda: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... d:elyvilon) and TSO is a bit more interesting than he used to, in my opinion. But Zin got the short straw, at least in terms of power. The idea of using Recite is not so bad (as you can see from the current incarnation) but the original version was not useful (merely as a tool to train Invocations, not a good reason to exist). On the other hand, Zin has a whole lot more flavour than before, and this is why I hope that the god will at some point be strong and thematic.

The new Recite was not done by the devteam. It was invented and implemented by Eronarn (the man behind octopodes and a myriad of other, often controversial ideas). We happened to get a complete patch. Thanks again!

Imprison was invented by me and I think it fits Zin's flavour well. It can be made arbitrarily strong, so if I read that it is a bit lackluster at the moment, we should perhaps just increase duration? If we get specific proposals (that is, a formula and a comparison with the current formula), it might just go in. (There was the proposal to make the prison just a one cell thing, so it'd be like paralysis, but I hoped that a 3x3 tomb would create interesting tactical uses. Did this ever happen to Zinners who don't forget to actually use their powers?)

An actual issue with Zin is piety gain. It is slow and painful. We tried to make it more interesting with the gold sacrifice (also being inspired by middle age Catholic practices), but probably we failed. All the good gods should use piety for exploration (as Ashenzari does) rather than piety for time, but that is a more cosmetic issue.

As it happens, Vintermann just wrote a detailed analysis about Zin and also came up with a number of proposals: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ent_status

I am mostly in it for the gods. You can discuss the matter here or on the wiki, I'll reply (and try to get Zin into better shape, of course).

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

I like the idea of adding details to the way of Elyvilon worshippers, Dpeg. =) Thanks for continuing to improve these deities.
Expanding the "Out of my way!" messages could be a really nice flavour addition: I always thought why the neutral monsters are that peaceful when they are to fight through their former allies.
Maybe some of them will have problems speaking or behaving, because they were brought up solely for fighting, and, in example, orc warlords could shout in a very, erm, thick and hoarse voice, trying to construct "peaceful" words on the fly ("Un... Unattack me away, you!"), and some creatures, like demonic creatures or wargs, might have problems moving and behave as if they are confused ("The imp laughs uncontrollably.")...