evilmike wrote:dpeg wrote:But I wonder why the plant friend gets so little gameplay. Is it that players hate to part with consumables? (It is a choice to spent half a dozen of your fruit to oklob assault a level.)
That's an interesting question. I've thought about it before, I think with fedhas it's a combination of two factors.
The first (and probably lesser of the two) is that because fedhas demands you pay fruit to use some of his abilities, you might be disinclined to take fedhas on a character that doesn't find any fruit before reaching temple (or a good altar). Or, another way to look at it is that the amount of fruit you find is really up to luck, so taking fedhas is a bit of a gamble in that sense. Ashenzari has similar issues, but you can at least pray over remove curse scrolls with that god (note that ashenzari is also fairly unpopular, though not nearly to the degree of fedhas).
This can go the other way though... a character who finds lots of fruit early might be encouraged to take fedhas. I once found about 100 sultanas on an early dungeon level, and wanted to go fedhas. The only reason I didn't is because the altar was on some stupid lava island, and I couldn't reach it :/
The second (and main) reason fedhas is unpopular is just because he is complicated (arguably the most complicated of all gods). Some of his abilities pretty weird, and take some learning to really learn how to use. They also complement a playstyle which tends not to be popular (the ranged weapon user). Finally, because some of fedhas' abilities use consumables, players aren't encouraged to experiment... this means they really don't get a good grasp on how to use fedhas, and there are no good "guides" out there.
I don't say this to be critical of fedhas, though. He could possibly use some improvements here and there to make him more enticing to players (although I can't say where exactly... my only real experience with fedhas is a couple of offline games, and no wins). Overall I think it's cool to have a god that is weird + complicated.
Overall, I think the Fedhas is pretty good but I think you hit one of the two main problems (along with a few minor problems) with the god right on, and thats the random availability of fruit. Back to that in a second.
The "theme" of the god is sort of like he's a floating fortress god. In the beginning, you get a big pack of mushrooms to follow you around everywhere, and then you retreat into them whenever you see a tough enemy and pelt them from within your fortress with ranged attacks. So this is pretty good. Later on, your abilities "evolve" to using reproduction, which is sort of like corpse explosion from Diablo 2, and can lead to some really crazy times, and then later to setting up "super bases" filled with water and tons of deadly oklobs.
It is seriously such a gamble. There is no other god - and to me, Ashenzari does not even come *close* - that is so drastically dependent on the items you find in the dungeon to work. Simply finding a food shop with a few sets of sultanas is like finding the hat of the alchemist, the shield of resistance, and the fencer's gloves in a single antique armour shop, as its enough to give you an oklob base on any floor you feel queasy about. On the otherhand, not finding any of the rare the "little" fruits at all (grapes/strawberries/sultanas) can leave you really underpowered. I've won with Fedhas twice, once like maybe 3 years ago in the first situation, and the second a few weeks ago, when I was trying to streak all the "bad" gods (splatted in the abyss on my 5th one with Yred, ugh) with a MuHu that had to deal with the 2nd situation. In that game, I only had enough fruit for a base on Vault:8 and on Zot:5. Since the piety liability of mushrooms starts to become a bit much to deal with around midgame, and due to the problems with reproduction, I basically had to deal with being mostly godless after that.
The other big problem with Fedhas is Reproduction. Now, Reproduction is awesome on its own. It does good damage and can let you set up massive chain reactions when dealing with big bands of creatures. I absolutely love using it, although it is sometimes frustrating that gas spores are prevented from being created if an enemy is standing on the corpse. (Why is this? Shouldn't they just appear on the next available square, like newly created zombies, or explode immediately?). However, even though it costs no piety on its own, it uses up an absurd amount of piety. I'm not sure if this is because of a bug or what, but you take a piety hit every time a ballisto dies. Now, since the spore explosion creates a bunch of ballistos, and you might chain this together a couple of times and further create a hyperactive ballisto with evolution, you could have tons of ballistos on your hands. Furthermore, the explosions themselves also destroy ballistos as well as creating new ones. So if you use this ability a few times on one level, like say when dealing with Orc:4, you could end up dropping from ***** to ** quite easily without even clearing half the level. This is ridiculously expensive considering that reproduction is so situational (especially since my corpse launching idea from a couple years back got nixed
) and how much of a long, slow process it is to build up Fedhas piety.
Apart from that, there are some minor issues. First of all, sunshine is kinda lame. I mean, its ok, but I never bothered with it much. It would be cooler (and more useful / worth using) if it had a greater chance of creating plants. Growth is kinda dumb since it takes a ton of fruit to use (9 fruit for a full ring) when that is hardly even useful. I mean, 9 fruit for a full Tomb of Doroklohe would be expensive, much less one that bolts and beams and clouds can still hit you in. And worse, if you only want to create a partial ring the plant locations are random every time. So you have to invoke several times in a row to get the configuration you want if you'd rather use it to set up a base with oklobs located in strategic spots.
The fact that Fedhas is essentially useless in the extended end-game does not bother me much, however.
Anyways, I think that Fedhas is a cool god, I just think he needs some attention and tweaking!
Saturday, 1st October 2011, 18:51 
