Keeping Xom Amused

[joellercoaster]

I am playing a DSGl of Xom on the side, just for kicks. And, so far, it has been highly amusing - both for Xom, and also for me.

I love his pronouncements ("Here."). I cheer when he roars with laughter.

But I worry - always, I worry. How can I keep him happy?

I've been getting good press on the two wands of random effects I've found, so I've been spamming them at everything - he liked it when I whacked the megabat with a bolt of lightning, but I thought I would have got more laughs from accidentally hasting that ogre. It's all a bit mysterious.

Announcing that I was his beloved plaything, opening a gate and summoning the nequoxec, the midges and assorted imps and minor demons would have been fractionally more helpful *before* I fought my way through all those orcs.

But thanks for the Wand of Digging{god gift}, boss.

Seriously, this is great fun but I do wonder what exactly amuses him - is the code full of special case checks of the form "if(worshipping(XOM)) { amuse_xom() }" in various combinations of circumstances? How arbitrary/complicated are they?

[joellercoaster]

I'll definitely try again, but it turns out that a whole pile of minor demons is still < one Orc Warrior, at that stage. And when he has Javelins, your Wand of Digging {god gift} isn't much help.

Still, I'm sure this is all very amusing.

[lucy_ferre]

Here are some tips:

- Don't bother going in harm's way to please Xom, unless he's BORED.
- Don't waste your time resting. Use Regeneration.
- Use speed boosting spells and gear. The less time outside of battle, the happier Xom will be.
- Controlled blink/teleport is enough to trivialize his most dangerous tricks.

Edit:

Here are some spoilers:

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Xom

Some of the info might be outdated.

[tormodpwns]

Keep some bad scrolls handy - Xom loves cursed gear, noise, or self-damage (immolation, etc.). Or if there's shallow water nearby go splash around for a bit; Xom is mildly amused by that.

[Grimm]

Saint Roka surrenders.

Forgive me for going OT, but what happened here? Did you get to keep Roka as your faithful droog for the rest of the game?

[mad]

I've gotten Blork The Orc as a follower of my HOPr before, so you can definitely get unique orcs converted.

Add that to orcs having a chance at being converted when you deal a killing blow and that probably explains how he got Saint Roka to be his mook.

It's very, very cool though - I was shocked when I converted Blork and then very sad when he got roasted not long afterwards.

[Grimm]

Blork's a chump. Roka on the other hand brings a lot to the table - the table of war.

[gb]

you used to be able to do bad stuff on purpose (drink a potion of slowing, for example) to amuse Xom, but that's been removed from newer releases. the only advice i can give you is to find a chaos weapon, that will definitely keep Xom happy. take Crazy Yiuf's quarterstaff!

[tormodpwns]

Yep Blork is weak like an Orc Wized who can't promote into a sorcerer. Urug, te other unique, has the HP of an Orc knight but hits weakly, significantly weaker than Orc warriors. But I was lucky enough to convert Saint Roka when I killed him (I rarely convert regular knights). Saint Roka has nearly 1.5x the HP of a warlord, hits harder, and smites. unfortunately he sometimes smites instead of melee attacking, which is more powerful.

[Curio]

you used to be able to do bad stuff on purpose (drink a potion of slowing, for example) to amuse Xom, but that's been removed from newer releases. the only advice i can give you is to find a chaos weapon, that will definitely keep Xom happy. take Crazy Yiuf's quarterstaff!

Didn't help much for me.
Couple days ago I began as a Human Wanderer - clean slate with random stats. On the first level I defeated a gnoll with spear of chaos and decided to train polearms with it.
On the same 1 level I found an altar of Xom. "It's a sign!" I thought and without doubt - joined him.
Since then I ran like crazy through the dungeon occasionally hasting, healing and berserking those i struck. It was a demented ride until i encountered a big mob of monsters - barely survived, but killed them all. Backtracked to previous level with about 10 hp and start resting. When my hp risen to about 1/4 from it's maximum Xom animates my spear of chaos which kills me after a few turns. Oh, the irony...