Pakellas

[Shard1697]

iron giants are hell for non-pak characters to kill also, to be fair

[crate]

you can make pakellas not drop-dependent by just picking artificer since then you're guaranteed the best attack wand in the game (it's in your starting inventory)

[Sandman25]

you can make pakellas not drop-dependent by just picking artificer since then you're guaranteed the best attack wand in the game (it's in your starting inventory)

This is what I did indeed. Ok, Pakellas is OP for Artificers. Sif Muna is OP for Summoners, Okawaru is OP for Hunters etc. If some players want to nerf Pakellas, why don't they want to nerf the other gods too?

[crate]

I don't want to nerf pakellas for the sake of nerfing pakellas, I want to change pakellas because "god of infinite wand charges" is not interesting. "God of rods" is okay and seems to be what people actually want so my suggestion is to move pak in that direction.

[Lasty]

I'm really confused by a lot of the posts in this thread -- when we're talking about whether a god is strong, the only evidence that makes sense to consider is whether that god is strong when you're leaning into what that god offers in the most effective way.

I've played 4 Pak games and won 3 of them without trouble. The fourth I lost because I got cocky and let myself get paralyzed in a crowd as an octopode, causing instant death from full health. At no point prior to that did I have any meaningful danger from anything that happened. And that was before we fixed the bug that let Pak fail to gift rods sometimes, so I had no rods at all.

My experience is that if you worship Pak, train Evo, and use your evokables, the game is remarkably easy, sort of like a Trog that takes some fiddly micromanagement.

[Sandman25]

I am not sure what you mean as the most efficient way. Should I assume that Trog/Okawaru will give me the best items they can?

I checked your online games (found 2 wins).
One had

  Code:

b - a +10 iron rod (7/18) (weapon) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 4 of the Lair of Beasts)
 e - a +7 rod of clouds (14/14) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 3 of the Lair of Beasts)
 w - a +5 rod of destruction (7/13) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 2 of the Orcish Mines)
 X - a +4 rod of ignition (9/9) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 5 of the Vaults)

another had

  Code:

b - a +10 iron rod (18/18) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 9 of the Dungeon)
 e - a +9 rod of inaccuracy (17/17) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 13 of the Dungeon)
 s - a +4 rod of clouds (10/10) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 4 of the Vaults)
 w - a +6 rod of ignition (16/16) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 1 of the Orcish Mines)
 x - a +4 rod of the swarm (13/13) {!a}
   (Pakellas gifted it to you on level 5 of the Vaults)

Of course you think Pakellas is OP, I would agree if I had similar gifts in my game

[gammafunk]

You should expect Pakellas to give you a progression of gifts like it does in trunk. Then you train evocations and use Pakellas actives and the mp potions it gifts in order to use these items repeatedly. Since you instead elected to play under challenge conditions where you underutilized evocations (for reasons that are very unclear, since you purport to be testing the god's strength), your claims that the god is not very strong don't have a basis in reality.

You don't need to use your rod of lightning as if it's the bolt of electricity spell and you have the same MP limitations as e.g. a Vehumet mage. You can use potions of magic and recharge it on top of using other evocable that make summons or even the various attack and hex wands you've built up. Trying to point out how one hex wand used in isolation doesn't benefit much from training evocations doesn't further the "Pakellas is not strong" argument at all. You use the set of evocations you have available, and the thought process isn't "let me decide which evokable item I will use exclusively for this fight".

[Psieye]

This thread has mostly been a one-man show of Research Bias, which I'll give the benefit of doubt and assume was caused by Cognitive Bias. Together with other threads, it's shown what players want of Pakellas is "god of rods" as crate pointed out. Valuable feedback.

[Lasty]

Yeah, some of them were before Pak gifting got nerfed to max one rod, and one got no rods at all. All of them had a really easy time. Most of them didn't get a rod until mid-Lair, but still had an easy time. One of them was a deep elf wanderer and had an easy time. Like gammafunk said, if you make use of the resources Pak offers, the god gives you a ton of power.

[Sandman25]

I played 0.18, it explains while everyone else thinks Pakellas is OP

Edit. The reason was clear, all those 5 gifts were bad so overtraining Evo was a bad idea, lightning rod is the worst possible rod. And yes, I didn't use surge much because I hoped to get something useful because I didn't know no more gifts are expected.

Edit2. To make it clear I am not saying that Pak is bad early game for Artificer. I am claiming that 0.18 Pakellas is bad early for non-artificer because you can get bad gifts like I did. And also bad for Artificer late game when you don't have wand of tele/hasting, rod of clouds, again like I have in my current game.
I tried rod recharging during fight, it is almost useless, so saying that I underused lightning rod is completely wrong. If you spam Lightning Bolt as Air Elementalist, I have some bad news for you.

Edit3. DEWn being easy has nothing to do with Pakellas provided you didn't evoke anything until XL 7 (3 evocations in XL 7-9) range and then you almost never used wands, just rods.

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Evoke: Wand              |       |       |     3 |    83 |    31 |       |    10 |    30 |     9 ||   166
       Rod               |       |       |       |       |   221 |   265 |   259 |   223 |    98 ||  1066
       Sack of spiders   |       |       |       |       |     3 |       |     1 |     5 |     4 ||    13
       Piece from Xom's  |       |       |       |       |       |     1 |       |       |       ||     1
       Fan of gales      |       |       |       |       |       |     1 |     2 |     3 |     2 ||     8
       Lamp of fire      |       |       |       |       |       |     1 |     2 |     2 |       ||     5
       Phial of floods   |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |     3 |     2 ||     5
       Box of beasts     |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |    21 ||    21

Edit4. It looks like I need to play another character like KoAr in trunk

[Sandman25]

Ok, started HOAr in trunk. This time it's much better, Pak gave me wand of confusion, phantom mirror and wand of paralysis so far. Also I found wand of tele so it is basically a won game, it will take some huge mistake (or bad luck with banishment/paralysis) to die. I have Evo 9.5 and am about to enter Lair.

[Sandman25]

Yes, Pakellas is extremely dependent on drops. I have just entered first rune branch and I already have all 3 big wands, MR++++, cloak of invis, amulet of rage and am quite stealthy (stealth 8.6 and robe) so I cannot die. Supercharged rod of summons as gift is very cool, I would clear the whole Lair and Orc levels if I didn't care about XP penalty so I used it just vs dangerous monsters. Evocations is 14.8, only Fighting is slightly higher.

I don't see much difference between trunk and 0.18 except Pak gives less potions of magic.