Questions about Vehumet,Sif Muna and Cheibriados and items.

[gorbeh]

Hello
Sif Muna vs Vehumet
Which one is better in terms of combat,which one should I choose with which character?Sif Muna always seemed inferior to me because I have to manually channel energy.In those few turns the enemy can advance and smash me.Also,I think that sif munas book gifting isnt worth much,because there are already so many books on the floor.

Cheibriados
He makes you slower,right?Say,if I start with a centaur and kill a goblin with one piety star i wont gain any piety,but will i when i have 6 stars?Also,how do spriggans gain piety?Nothing is faster than them??

Items
For crystal ball and staff of channeling(or energy nowadays) how much should I invest in Evocations?Would 27 evocation bring a significant advantage over the number you are going to suggest>?

[Sandman25]

See http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crystal_ball_of_energy for last question

[Davion Fuxa]

In combat Vehumet is probably better - I mean he is oriented towards helping you with Conjurations with increased range and making those spells easier to cast. Out of Combat though you'll probably be happier with Sif Muna - being able to quickly buff yourself with Haste, Phase Shift, Repel Missiles, Stone Skin, etc; and then regen all that mana back to full in a few turns after can certainly pay off. After fights with Sif Muna you can also regen all your mana back in case your in a hostile environment where that might be important.

Cheibriados will make you progressively slower as your piety advances (its the trade off for the incrementally increasing stats). Note that you can gain piety on Cheibriados by making yourself slower then enemies - Wands of Slow or the Slow spell can be somewhat useful for this.

[Sar]

Note that you can gain piety on Cheibriados by making yourself slower then enemies

According to learndb:

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3. Being slow does not affect your standing with Chei whatsoever.

[jejorda2]

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3. Being slow does not affect your standing with Chei whatsoever.

I would have expected to gain piety for killing things that are faster than my slowed character, but wizmode testing makes it look like the learndb is right about that.
I cast slow on myself as a centaur with 0 stars of Chei piety and killed some rats and goblins. No piety gain messages, even though I'm taking more than one turn to move a space.

I guess the idea must be that it could be useful to cast slow on yourself all the time, and that would be annoying.

[XuaXua]

What's really bad is casting Haste to make other monsters faster than you because PENANCE.

[Davion Fuxa]

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3. Being slow does not affect your standing with Chei whatsoever.

I would have expected to gain piety for killing things that are faster than my slowed character, but wizmode testing makes it look like the learndb is right about that.
I cast slow on myself as a centaur with 0 stars of Chei piety and killed some rats and goblins. No piety gain messages, even though I'm taking more than one turn to move a space.

I guess the idea must be that it could be useful to cast slow on yourself all the time, and that would be annoying.

Devs don't like players doing actions that cause harm to themselves so most likely that would be the reason why - anyhow, my mistake.

[tasonir]

But they allow worshipping chei in the first place! I kid, I kid. In any case, it isn't too hard to build piety with centaurs early on. Bats are really, really fast. You'll be slowed immediately on signing up, and it doesn't take that much piety to go below 10 movement speed and then almost everything gives piety.

[gorbeh]

Sorry guys,you didnt understand my question about "cheibriados".Please read it more carefully.
ps:uups,tasonirs answer did answer it.so does that mean naga worshippers of cheibriados only have an advantage at the beginning?

[tasonir]

if you have 6 stars of chei piety on a centaur, killing a goblin will give you piety, yes. By that point your base movement speed would be 1.7 turns, which is slower than a goblin.

For spriggans, there are in fact many things which are faster than spriggans. Spriggans are only the fastest player race, there are monsters which make them look like nagas. Again bats are really, really fast. They move at 3 times the speed of a normal player. Executioners move at twice, and can cast haste. Also you are immediately slowed when you start with Chei so even though a spriggan would still be faster than normal* on first sign up, they're still slower than a normal spriggan.

*I'd have to double check exactly what your speed would be, but I believe it's still over normal speed.

[Lasty]

Sorry guys,you didnt understand my question about "cheibriados".Please read it more carefully.
ps:uups,tasonirs answer did answer it.so does that mean naga worshippers of cheibriados only have an advantage at the beginning?

I believe that the point was that naga worshippers of cheibriados don't have any advantages at the beginning, and the beginning is the hardest part of the game for Chei worshippers.

[tasonir]

Nagas are hard early on, and chei is hard early on. if you can get to around mid/late lair and level 13 or so, naga of chei is great. Getting there requires enough skill that if you could do it you wouldn't need my explanation of why it's so tough. In .10 it was reasonably possible to do it with melee nagas because constriction could handle just about any early game monster as long as you could get to them, but nowadays I don't recommend it to anyone. Mages would be easier than melee, but even then, other races have a much easier early game. Play a troll

I'm still a bit bitter that they nerfed the early game only for nagas, and let minotaurs and octopodes still have their special moves at level 1. Octopodes I can see because they're weak, but minotaurs were won twice as much as nagas (in .10 tournament, now it's much higher of course) and are totally easy mode. Ah well, just my sour grapes