how to succeed with jiyva

[Sojiro]

Almost made that mistake today...

[Capslocke]

To preface: I haven't seen Jivya altars often enough or recently enough to comment accurately. I almost won once with MfCr of Jivya (I think I died in Zot 5?), when Jivya was new, but I haven't seen jivya altars at many reasonable times since so I haven't seen the new changes.

A few brainstormy suggestions that may or may not be useful:
-What about an interface similar to Nemelex's, where you could select one type of item for slimes not to eat? If it was only one type, it wouldn't be gamebreaking, but for example, having octopodes able to exclude rings would create interesting usefulness. Additionally, this would make early Jivya altars more reasonable, as you could keep SOME items. I love the idea of Jivya, but always feel reluctant to switch horses midstream in the lategame.
-What about a warning when praying on Jivya altars? If properly couched in flavor text, the warning could tell new players that Jivya is not for the faint of heart, and is generally best for stronger adventurers. The flavor text would give the important information without spoiling, similar to the "Are you sure you want to change gods and risk wrath" prompt.
-What if Jivya-followers got partial xp for enemies killed by slimes? That would make taking Jivya early less 'game-ending', but wouldn't change too much later.
-It might be interesting to come up with a way to reduce god wrath when switching to Jivya. As one almost never sees Jivya altars before the Temple, there is a lot of reason to never experiment with Jivya as things stand.

This said, I'm going to go out of my way to try Jivya more, so I can better see what she's like post-changes. I don't have the experience with Jivya to comment seriously, I just love the idea of Jivya, so I'm brainstorming.

[dpeg]

I believe that new players will value the presence of a completely unexpected god more than the demise of yet another character. Also, it is not as if you couldn't inform yourself about Jiyva in-game. Have a look at ?/GJ -- the first paragraph explains the conduct realistically.

Different people tick differently, but I know that I would have been immensely intrigued by a never-seen-before, seemingly out of place altar back in 4b26. I realise that some will disagree but I am confident that I'm not alone in that sentiment.

Summary: neither presence nor rarity of early Jiyva altars are accidental.

[njvack]

I believe that new players will value the presence of a completely unexpected god more than the demise of yet another character. Also, it is not as if you couldn't inform yourself about Jiyva in-game. Have a look at ?/GJ -- the first paragraph explains the conduct realistically.

Since you get that text when you pray at Jiyva's altar, you're very very likely to be informed about those conducts. You might not realize how important gear is, but, y'know, you'll learn that in your non-Jiyva games.

[Eji1700]

"jellies eating all your shit" is exactly what the god is about.
Jiyva will not become a mainline god and there is no need to balance Jiyva around the temple gods.

Unless they're on temple stairs and you don't move off them. Or if on a teleport trap. Or next to a puddle where a virgin has been sacrificed on a tuesday preceding a blue moon, but not during the hours of 7 or 3.

Jiyva doesn't feel right. At best jiyva feels like something you choose just because you've done everything else, and even then it's not exactly fun. Maybe jiyva doesn't have to compete with the pantheon, but the idea that people are looking for stupid exploits like this is just meh. Just let slimes eat everything and allow yourself so many items per level you can mark as "Do NOT EAT" or something.

[jeanjacques]

Jellies eating loot is a big problem on certain hard branch end levels with loot rooms that tend to require a lot of time spend there to reach them. Even then you retain all the randart things though.

Off level eating is so rare that it can safely be ignored. Stashing stuff on stairs is not very risky either as long as you have adjacent up/down stairs and do not spend hundreds of turns on that level.

As for Jiyvas god powers, Slimify is an insanely powerful ability early on. It works like a buff after you use it and you "only" have to connect with a melee hit on something to take them out (turn them into a type of J). Remove bad mutations allows for excessive use of mutation potions/mutagenic chunks, though the limits of the mutation system and Jiyvas tendency to remove mutations tend to make that part rather mediocre and random. Same thing for most of Jiyvas special Mutations.

The big draw is the perfect conservation at full piety and the stat shuffling. The later allows for big shifts in armour choice and spellcasting ability and has the added benefit of distributing any +stat on your equipment towards the "target" stat range. For example finding some randart with +5 str or +5 dex you can treat it like one with +4int/+1dex or +3int/+2dex (because the stat shift does not distinguish between base stats and equipment bonus).

A current problem is the very small influence of invocations. You are allowed to train it but it is almost useless, only the slimify buff duration benefits from it. Either Invocations should be given some meaningful effect for the abilities, spawn jelly (more/higher hd jellies), cure bad mutations (chance to cure more bad mutations/remove neutral ones if used with no bad muts), slimify (higher base failure / a high to-hit bonus). Removing Invocations for Jiyva would be the other acceptable solution.

[evilmike]

Cure bad mutations used to depend on invocations for success, but it was utterly pointless - power wasn't affected, so you could just spam it until it kicked in, with no penalty other than time.

[Night2o1]

Succeed by using builds that benefit from ur 100% conservation or from a freed up neckslot

also, spam ozucubo's refrigeration (followed by freezing cloud later on) and destroy through dungeon 27. just destroy.

jiyva is cool imo, wish I could pick him at the temple or at least reliably outside slime.

[tormodpwns]

Right, Jiyva isn't COMPLETELY useless in the early game. You get * piety almost instantly, and with that you can "summon" Jellies. Great in corridors when you're fighting orc packs that are stronger than you. Just summon one, swap places, and watch 'em die.