So how does one play following Ashenzari

[speciesxx]

Heya all,

been reading up on Ashenzari, and i want to give it a shot with this god. Probably a SEEE. But i'm wondering how a character should be played with following that god. Is it just a matter of saving up all the curse / uncurse scrolls and with those curse and uncurse your gear?
And when you want to swap one item, you need to uncruse your entire set? :S.

Any tips are welcome .

Also, looking at the wiki for 0.9, as a caster, it mentions enhancer staff. Staff of channeling is one, but what about staff of earth? Cause that is what i will be using for the game, once i find it ofcourse.

Cheers,

[JeffQyzt]

Caveat: I haven't played as an Ash worshipper, but I believe that

1) For Ashenzarites, ?RC just removes one item's curse (not sure if it prompts.)
2) If you're not undead and you curse your staff, which is blunt, you'll need another method to handle nutrition. Most likely this is Animate Skeleton or (much later) Necromutation, with Orb of Destruction taking honorable mention.

[speciesxx]

Cool, thanks for that info about the RC, didn't know that .

[TwilightPhoenix]

It prompts. You want to be careful about managing your remove curse scrolls so you don't sacrifice too many. They're plentiful, but they can run out.

Unless you can get Animate Skeleton or play as a Spriggan, you'll want a sharp implement as your weapon so you can continue to butcher.

Ashenzari seems to be pretty generalist and doesn't seem to favor a particular play style over others.

[absolutego]

he's fun, but be ready for some interface annoyance, specially if you're just starting with him. for instance: don't curse gloves if you plan to switch rings. it's surprisingly easy to forget that one.

the skill bonuses can be pretty significant, but they depend on what you curse and to what degree. for instance, cursing jewelry boosts magic schools, which you may not have a use for if you mostly melee (which would be rare for ash, but doable). the boost to shields and weapons is straightforward and by mid-game quite strong.

gaining piety without cursed equipment is a bitch. in my first and only win with ash i only got to two stars of piety past lair or something like that. you can get unlucky praying over remove scrolls and get curse weapon all the time, which may be no good early on (e.g. if you play an earth elementalist you'll want to wield rocks for sandblast for quite a while).

[minstrel]

My only advice to add would be if you're planning on doing the extended game. If your gear and concept permits keeping him as your god, I'd suggest doing so. If you find you need to switch to another god, keep in mind that you can't just wait his wrath out like you would Trog or Oka. You have to gain about 2 levels worth of XP for him to be mollified, and in that time, ALL of your skills will be penalized about 4 levels. I found his penalty one of the hardest to make it through. I'd suggest saving Zot 1-4 for after you've abandoned him, since they are relatively easy and have the same escape routes as the main dungeon.

[smock]

Ash has worked for me with hybrids that also want to cast real spells. I've had transmuters work well with Ash, despite never wanting hands bound.

When fully cursed, Ash boosts skills by 5 (or more?) when they are naturally trained to 5 and piety is high. This means you can get a big boost to any spell skill, dodging, armour, shields, and a weapon skill. It's a pretty amazing boost, actually. With minimal skill investment you get really high skills, if you can deal with never swapping weapon/shield/armour/jewelry. But it's hard to get there unless you get lucky with good items and scrolls pretty early on.

[dpeg]

I wonder that Ash is classified as an interface annoyance -- I'd have thought that the god is an interface boon, with all the identification going on. It is true that there is the drawback of what/when to curse (including gloves for ring change), but that's an actual gameplay conduct, having not much to do with interface, in my opinion.

[speciesxx]

Thanks all for the responses. Not sure if the interface is going to be annoying or not, guess there is only one way to find out .
I just hope he is still good in the extended endgame. Not only the + skills sound nice though, also the other stuff is really nice and usable.

I've got some additional questions about the skills:
- how is determined which spell skills are getting boosted?
- can a skill be boosted above level 27? If not, what level do i need to stop training to get to 27 with the boost?

[absolutego]

speciesxx: check the section at the end of the wiki article. galehar updated it, iirc, and i think it's still up to date. on boosts over 27, i think that was the original idea, but it doesn't seem to be implemented, as of a week ago at least (i know i hit the ceiling for stealth, which was getting boosted). you get feedback on the magnitude on the boost on the skill menu, so you'll know when to stop training.

on dpeg's:

but that usually happens later on. and if you're unlucky with scroll drops (which does happen) it may take a while to see his worth, unless you want to risk painting yourself into a corner wielding a lousy cursed dagger or somesuch. ashenzari is a pretty damn good (and fun) when he starts granting powers, but early on he doesn't help much, and forces a usually unproductive conduct (which you can ignore, at the cost of very slow piety gain, which again will delay the good stuff).

also note that the first poster's just starting out. the example on cursing gloves applies, and is something you can forget about. while it's more obvious, so does not being able to butcher with blunt weapons, or having to defer to animate skeleton, which pollutes everything with crappy allies which you may not want, and cannot be used on, say, insects (and which may just not be available). cursing rods is a no-go for all but the most experienced players. skill boosts are great but not-obvious, and unless it's changed, they are not well documented. there are many little surprises and you have to know what you're getting into. so ok, i use interface as an umbrella, but it's not just a conduct, in that things that the game makes easy for you cease to be so easy. my first games with ash were frankly a bit annoying. later on i made it to zot twice, and those were very enjoyable. that is my experience.

[dpeg]

absolutego: sure, I base my choice on whether to take Ash often on found eqipment. Two decent jewellery items, or a good (edged) weapon are great. However, I've also resorted to cursing a ring of hunger and a ring of sustenance. I believe the curse minigame is fun, but the unsuspecting future follower should definitely know that this minigame exists. Ashenzari is designed to be a light god while playing (no sacrifices, no abilities to spam), but the god comes with a bunch of strategic decisions.

[galehar]

- how is determined which spell skills are getting boosted?

All the known ones.

on boosts over 27, i think that was the original idea, but it doesn't seem to be implemented

No, the idea has been proposed, but it never were "the original" idea, and it's not planned. I find it thematic that the god of knowledge looses some of it appeal when you reach ultimate knowledge yourself. You can also choose to max your primary skills and free yourself of some curse (or of the god) or stop training skills sooner and broaden your knowledge.
So no bonus over 27.

so ok, i use interface as an umbrella, but it's not just a conduct, in that things that the game makes easy for you cease to be so easy.

I had some doubts about that myself. But stuff like cursed gloves preventing ring swapping and cursed blunt weapon preventing butchering are what curses do. If you remove that, then Ash loses a lot of flavour and the conduct becomes very straightforward.

[KoboldLord]

I find Ashenzari to be a consistently fun goddess to follow, but it does take some time to get a character off the ground with her. She doesn't really offer much in the way of active abilities, and while she can enhance a lot of different aspects of your character at the same time, you still need to pick up the basics first. Earth elementalists are an example of a good match because their starting spellbook has two strong direct damage spells, a self-buff, and an effective escape spell, so you won't be in critical need of a new spellbook for a while. Wizards aren't such a good match, because you can really only enhance their low-level spells so far before you stop getting any payoff. I have not successfully gotten any non-casters off the ground with her, because non-casters tend to have a crippling lack of versatility in the early game and she doesn't really have many completely new options to offer.

Generally speaking, I'm satisfied with my piety gain if I can bind at least two parts. A third is nice, particularly if I can get it together early on, but I find the payoff for going beyond that isn't usually worth the trouble it causes. Weapon binding is the easiest and most convenient option, and since I usually go Ashenzari with a dedicated caster I can be satisfied with any crappy old edged weapon I find. I do like to check around for weapons of protection, though, because +5AC is nice and I'm not planning to actually stab anything until much later in the game if I can help it. Eventually I'll probably switch up to a serious combat weapon or an enhancer staff, at which point I'll either have Animate Skeleton for butchery or I'm satisfied with binding shield and armor instead of a weapon.

Shield binding is a freebie as soon as I find a buckler. Any old buckler will do; even a negatively enchanted artifact is better than nothing because it isn't like I'm going to have the spell success penalties for long. With Ashenzari's shield skill bonus for binding your shield, you can get 5 effective ranks for bucklers almost for free and 15 ranks for a regular shield substantially cheaper than anybody else. The only reason to ever unbind shields is to switch to a better shield.

Armor is the hardest binding to get. Peripheral pieces of armor and curse armour scrolls are both in annoyingly short supply in most games, and most races need to bind several slots to qualify. I'll usually bind the first set of rF+, rC+, or rPois robes or leather armour I can find, and then bind boots, cloak, and hat as they come in. Gloves are a more substantial sacrifice because they also commit you to binding your rings, so I rarely curse them. Once cursed, I only adjust my armor when I find something significantly better than my old stuff. I won't replace my +0 cursed wizard hat with a +1 wizard hat or a wizard hat of see invisible, but I'll replace it for a +0 wizard hat of magic resistance or intelligence if I find one.

Jewelry is fairly easy to bind early on, because you are unlikely to have too many rings to switch around anyway. The benefit for a caster if you do is massive. Your low-level support spells demand a fraction of the xp they normally would, leaving you with more to invest in your kill spells or your non-magic defense skills. If I find a gourmand amulet, I'll often pick out my best ring and use those two for partial binding and swap the third ring situationally, but the bonus for binding all three is much higher if you can get away with it. Later in the game, though, you simply need to swap your amulets and rings freely unless you won the randart lottery, and at that point you're simply going to have to finish training your support skills like a follower of any other deity.

As far as actual play, you'd be surprised how huge creature detection is if you haven't played with it much. You will never turn a corner and blunder into a nasty unique or a fiend or a yaktaur pack, because you see the distinctive warning symbols outside your line-of-sight and can make a fairly accurate educated guess about what's causing them. Slotless clarity and see invisible are also convenient.

[speciesxx]

1) For Ashenzarites, ?RC just removes one item's curse (not sure if it prompts.)

Maybe i'm a noob but i just have no clue how to do that? Playing webtiles atm. If i type ? the help screen comes up >>

[JeffQyzt]

By "?RC", I meant a "scroll [?] of [R]emove [C]urse", using shorthand. Just read it normally, and it should present a prompt.

If I've misunderstood, then I'm not sure why you're typing "?".

[speciesxx]

By "?RC", I meant a "scroll [?] of [R]emove [C]urse", using shorthand. Just read it normally, and it should present a prompt.

If I've misunderstood, then I'm not sure why you're typing "?".

Lol no mate i'm just being noobish and have misunderstood. Didn't realise it will let you choose only which item to decurse if you follow Ashenzari. Didn't actually try it yet while following him >>. Thought i had to make use of another command lol. Cheers again .