Swamp Slogger
Posts: 163
Joined: Wednesday, 29th December 2010, 22:32
Saturday, 8th January 2011, 04:32
Merfolk Ice Elementalists...which gods work best?
Merfolk Ice Elementalist is probably my favorite background, and the one I do most consistently well with (by my standards, anyway...I've never seen a rune, though I came really close once). They're good hand-to-hand fighters and their starting spellbook has a good mix of defensive spells and reliable nukes. But the fact that they're so well-rounded means that there's no one thing they specifically need in a god, which makes it hard for me to decide who to go with. I've tried a bunch, with varying success:
Sif Muna is a relatively safe choice...more magic is always more good. But it's kind of a crapshoot whether the gifts you get will be better than the stuff you'd have found lying around anyway, Amnesia is typically just a minor convenience, and I've never found channeling to be a huge deal, so I worry that worshipping Sif Muna is a waste of potential sometimes.
I've only tried Vehumet a couple of times and I've never been happy with him. I don't think even Throw Icicle gets the mana reduction and Merfolk don't have the conjuration aptitude to make great use of the books he gives. Maybe I'm missing something, though.
Okawaru is another one I've tried a few times but never really liked. I melee enough that his boosts are useful, but he's kind of boring, getting Invocations high enough to use Haste is a big experience/piety drain, and ideally I should be able to cast the actual Haste spell on my own sooner or later anyway.
Yredelemnul is a fun one that I like to play around with. Cultivating a horde of wandering zombies and being able to summon them with a snap of your fingers can be a lifesaver when it comes to extricating yourself from nasty melee situations and permanent gifted pets are neat. Losing your momentum with Yredelemnul is a real pain, though...if you lose all your carefully-guarded gifted minions in one tough battle, it can be ages before you get back on track, which sometimes makes me feel that Yredelemnul is the least helpful in the situations where you most need him (i.e. when all the battles are hard). I also have a lot of other spells competing with Drain Life for mana, and I've never once figured out how to use Enslave Soul correctly. I also always forget Pain Mirror is a thing that exists until I've already lost too much health for it to matter.
Fedhas is also fun, but he has his own kinds of sustainability issues. Wandering Mushrooms are amazing when you first get them--even better than Yredelemnul's zombies, probably--but you eventually reach a point where they die so often that you lose piety faster than you can regain it (especially since you pay twice: once to summon them, plus again as a penalty for each one you lose), which forces you to either stop using them entirely or give up on ever using the higher-level abilities. The synergy between Rain and Merfolk is obvious, but the high piety cost makes it hard to use very often. I almost never use the fruit-requiring abilities.
If I see an early altar to Silf Muna, Yredelemnul, or Fedhas, I'll usually take it, but once I have the whole Ecumenical Temple to choose from I have trouble making a decision. What kinds of religious experiences do other people have with Merfolk Ice Elementalists?
Sif Muna is a relatively safe choice...more magic is always more good. But it's kind of a crapshoot whether the gifts you get will be better than the stuff you'd have found lying around anyway, Amnesia is typically just a minor convenience, and I've never found channeling to be a huge deal, so I worry that worshipping Sif Muna is a waste of potential sometimes.
I've only tried Vehumet a couple of times and I've never been happy with him. I don't think even Throw Icicle gets the mana reduction and Merfolk don't have the conjuration aptitude to make great use of the books he gives. Maybe I'm missing something, though.
Okawaru is another one I've tried a few times but never really liked. I melee enough that his boosts are useful, but he's kind of boring, getting Invocations high enough to use Haste is a big experience/piety drain, and ideally I should be able to cast the actual Haste spell on my own sooner or later anyway.
Yredelemnul is a fun one that I like to play around with. Cultivating a horde of wandering zombies and being able to summon them with a snap of your fingers can be a lifesaver when it comes to extricating yourself from nasty melee situations and permanent gifted pets are neat. Losing your momentum with Yredelemnul is a real pain, though...if you lose all your carefully-guarded gifted minions in one tough battle, it can be ages before you get back on track, which sometimes makes me feel that Yredelemnul is the least helpful in the situations where you most need him (i.e. when all the battles are hard). I also have a lot of other spells competing with Drain Life for mana, and I've never once figured out how to use Enslave Soul correctly. I also always forget Pain Mirror is a thing that exists until I've already lost too much health for it to matter.
Fedhas is also fun, but he has his own kinds of sustainability issues. Wandering Mushrooms are amazing when you first get them--even better than Yredelemnul's zombies, probably--but you eventually reach a point where they die so often that you lose piety faster than you can regain it (especially since you pay twice: once to summon them, plus again as a penalty for each one you lose), which forces you to either stop using them entirely or give up on ever using the higher-level abilities. The synergy between Rain and Merfolk is obvious, but the high piety cost makes it hard to use very often. I almost never use the fruit-requiring abilities.
If I see an early altar to Silf Muna, Yredelemnul, or Fedhas, I'll usually take it, but once I have the whole Ecumenical Temple to choose from I have trouble making a decision. What kinds of religious experiences do other people have with Merfolk Ice Elementalists?
