Ashenzari piety gain revamp

[Bart]

A short story as introduction:
I am playing currently NaWr of Ash. I found an altar on d:2 and started worship immediately. Up to Lair: 5/6, D:12, Orc:3 I have found two scrolls of rcurse. Together with some plain cursed armour which I wore in hope of faster piety gain and future skill bonuses, I had in total a weapon and two pieces of armour cursed. No other cursed armour nor jewelry has been found. With my falchion I was barely able to kill stuff and it took me 17k turns to get three piety stars. At 40k turns I have found finally more rcurse scrolls and fixed the character, yet I still do not have 6* piety. No, I have not used scrying nor I have not spent 20k turns in a temple (actually, not even a single turn there). Such games are expected by me to happen more often with Ash.

I think that piety gain with Ashenzari is overly unreliable, which in turn severely reduces fun from certain gameplays. Had a character early (before Ash) ossuary, had a character access to more cursed items in dungeon, change in scroll drop rate would be less noticeable. What about these less lucky characters, though? Should they really avoid Ash? I believe that is not working as intended.

All other gods provide some way to gain piety. In some cases, Ash does not. Actually, Ashenzari worshippers are punished in early game by significantly reduced adaptability, gaining in place of that almost nothing until 3* piety. As much as I do not mind randomness in crawl and some early difficulties, I do not think that followers of any religion should be crippled by it so bad for so long. Ash is now as reliable as... Xom. Unfortunately, Xom is at least funny.

My proposal is targeted in this early piety gain to make it less luck reliable. Please do not mention Ashenzari late game here. It is not my point to evaluate it. Here are several ideas for piety revamp:
- Steady piety gain up to 3* without cursed equipment (and possibly no bonus from cursed items). A player will get access to clarity/sInv and also have enough time to stock several curse scrolls. (this fits thematically Ash more than TSO)
- Overflow altars generate with several (identified) curse scrolls. They are useful only to Ashenzari worshippers and encouraging to choose this particular god.
- Ash allows player to curse equipment via ability menu. This would probably require some counterbalance in terms of piety speed gain.
- Scrolls of rcurse always generate (at least) 3 scrolls of curse, weighed towards equipment type player is wearing uncursed. This would reduce generation of useless scrolls if player has no particular equipment type available.
- Ash randomly curses equipment on ground / in backpack (not worn!). If player does not have a way to curse item, it would give at least a chance that it happens passively.
I personally find the steady piety gain the best solution because it completely solves my issue without (probably) unbalancing the game. Let me know of your opinions.

[crate]

Just in case you didn't know, wearing two pieces of cursed armour on a naga of ash is exactly the same for piety gain and skill boosts as wearing zero.

[dpeg]

crate: not saying you said that, but the interface tries to make that clear.

Bart: a game really poor in Curse Foo and Remove Curse scrolls makes Ashenzari harder, but on the other hand I have played games which had to rely on a lot of unbounded exploration, followed by only a cursed weapon. I am not saying the balance is automatically alright, but getting hosed once would not really make me change the god completely. Thanks for the feedback in any case, this is something to look out for.

[Osgoodbad]

I like the idea about cursing your equipment from an ability menu. It takes a lot of the tedium and randomness out of acquiring cursed gear, and it's not as though you're able to uncurse it at will.

I also like the idea about converting each remove curse into multiple curse scrolls. I would perhaps change the idea to always giving three scrolls (one of each type) because recursing gear can be a pain in the ass, and I wouldn't want to be short of scrolls just because a cursed weapon was useful in the beginning. Weighting the scrolls towards uncursed gear sounds like it has merit, however.

I don't like the idea about your gear getting randomly passively cursed as you are walking around. Flavor-wise, it doesn't sit very well with a god that protects your gear from getting cursed from outside sources.

That being said, I think that it also sounds interesting to have ashenzari vaults with curse scrolls on the ground. Unique vaults are always interesting.

[Bart]

I know that having no armour cursed is equal to having two pieces cursed, but two pieces is closer to three than zero in case your scrolls get burned. Leaving scrolls in a safe place and running back and forth to make sure they are not accidentally destroyed is an annoying alternative.

I am not saying the balance is automatically alright, but getting hosed once would not really make me change the god completely

Dpeg, this game was the worst of all speaking of scroll drop, but it already happened before that I had to run around looking for rcurse more than for anything else.

I definitely do not want to change the god completely. I just propose few alternatives which should at least make it more prospective in the beginning. Personally, even without changes this story will not stop me from worshipping Ashenzari (at least for now), although I feel that current situation is not optimal.

[siprus]

Maybe give Ashenzari once a game ability to give you 3 scrolls of curse armor, 2 scrolls of curse jewelry or (1 scroll of curse weapon and scroll of remove curse) or give Ashenzari once per game ability to curse anything on yourself (or curse all armor, hand and jewelry slots with you having ability to chose which)

I don't like tweaking much with Ashenzari piety gain. I don't think buffing curse scroll generation by any means as it makes switching equipment with Ashenzari less of an trade-off.

[jejorda2]

What if Ash cursed everything you have equipped upon joining? It would still take time to gain piety, and the wrath is strong enough not to do it lightly.

[WalkerBoh]

Part of the basic foundation of Ash is the decision of when and what to curse. Passive cursing, cursing all items, an ability that allows you to curse items... these all destroy the decision-making that is inherent when cursing is a finite resource. I.e. It destroys one of the most significant aspects of the god.

I agree with Bart that Ash initial piety gain could be made less variable. Overflow vaults that come with curse scrolls is a great and simple idea. I believe the recent changes to rcurse actually already make it give multiple curse scrolls upon sacrifice. I don't think any other changes are needed.

[siprus]

I almost forget ashenzari's ability to take remove curse scrolls as sacrifice. You should have pleanty of scrolls so sacrificing, 5 remove curse scrolls should give you ability to gain piety. (not that hard to come by.

Ashenzari giving you single curse weapon scroll at baptism though, would allow you to gain piety if you wish at any circumstances and there are way more curse weapon scrolls than you'll ever need anyway.

[Bart]

Siprus, you know that we are talking about recent trunk changes, right? There are no more random curse scrolls, also remove curse scrolls are scarcer. Have you noticed my main objection? 5 remove curse scrolls is something you might get and might not. Can you imagine Trog giving piety only for books? Sometimes you find zero of them in early game, sometimes five. How would you feel about Trog if you found no books and had zero piety?

Also I object against single curse weapon scroll, because it directly hits some builds which need to swap stuff or use hands to be effective, yet they could want to worship ash. If anything, a single scroll of player's choice would be more appropriate.

[siprus]

Siprus, you know that we are talking about recent trunk changes, right? There are no more random curse scrolls, also remove curse scrolls are scarcer. Have you noticed my main objection? 5 remove curse scrolls is something you might get and might not. Can you imagine Trog giving piety only for books? Sometimes you find zero of them in early game, sometimes five. How would you feel about Trog if you found no books and had zero piety?

Also I object against single curse weapon scroll, because it directly hits some builds which need to swap stuff or use hands to be effective, yet they could want to worship ash. If anything, a single scroll of player's choice would be more appropriate.

Excuse me ignorance :/

Giving one curse weapon scroll is change that would least effect future gameplay, while still giving options to be certain to gain piety. Also simplest to implant.

Next step would be giving any single curse scroll with an ability, so if you found curse jewelry scroll you could create another one to gain piety, or if you found shield you could make curse armor scroll. And if nothing else (or you've found weapon you probably want to use for a while, or your weapon doesn't matter much) You could curse your weapon.

Giving 3 scrolls of curse armor, 2 curse jewelry scrolls or 1 curse weapon (and maybe another curse scroll just to not make it overly weak compared to others) Could be another possibility, but i feel that that might be bit too much, haven't played newst trunk, though. Though this could be achieved with ability which curses certain slot types. Both of these could also be made random, so you couldn't plan with this, you just got option to get 100% chance for one form of piety gain.

Lastly Giving ability to curse everything you wear when you begin worshiping, would give ton of piety and would risk changing ashenzari flavor quite drastically.


I would flavor options 1 or 2. Maybe leaning bit towards option 2.


I'm kind of against anything that riskes ashenzari worshippers gaining too much options in cursing themselves. If new curse drop system hurts ashenzari too much rather buff the other abilities. Stronger trade-off for stronger abilities is something i wouldn't mind with ashenzari.

[dpeg]

Bart: Ashenzari is a strong god and will be continued to be played. If the 0.14 situation is too bad, then it will be easy to tweak (because we have a numerical parameter in the Remove Curse : Curse Foo ratio).

Ashenzari is designed to be not intrusive -- the curse minigame is the one thing that actually links you (as a player) to the god, at least for the first time. (Later on, the monster/item detection and mapping make the divine presence clear.) Since the curses are a source of decisions, I'd be loathe to cut on that.

The curse minigame only makes sense when the basic commodity is scarce enough. It was in 0.13 and may be too scarce in 0.14, we will see. However, overabundance will make the god stronger but less fun, I am convinced of that. Again, thanks for feedback!

[Tenaya]

I think that piety gain with Ashenzari is overly unreliable, which in turn severely reduces fun from certain gameplays. Had a character early (before Ash) ossuary, had a character access to more cursed items in dungeon, change in scroll drop rate would be less noticeable. What about these less lucky characters, though?

I have been playing a lot of DrTm's of Ashenzari in 0.14 Trunk lately and have noticed this annoyance also. Unfortunately having only a cursed weapon just does not bring on the piety. I find myself often wearing malus (hunger, ev-3, are recent ones that come to mind) rings just to increase piety and this seems rather silly.

Ash is now as reliable as... Xom. Unfortunately, Xom is at least funny.

Come on, seriously? Is this exaggeration? If so, you don't need to do so to make your point. If not, I would say your conclusion is errant.

My proposal is targeted in this early piety gain to make it less luck reliable. Please do not mention Ashenzari late game here. It is not my point to evaluate it. Here are several ideas for piety revamp:
- Steady piety gain up to 3* without cursed equipment (and possibly no bonus from cursed items). A player will get access to clarity/sInv and also have enough time to stock several curse scrolls. (this fits thematically Ash more than TSO)
- Overflow altars generate with several (identified) curse scrolls. They are useful only to Ashenzari worshippers and encouraging to choose this particular god.
- Ash allows player to curse equipment via ability menu. This would probably require some counterbalance in terms of piety speed gain.
- Scrolls of rcurse always generate (at least) 3 scrolls of curse, weighed towards equipment type player is wearing uncursed. This would reduce generation of useless scrolls if player has no particular equipment type available.
- Ash randomly curses equipment on ground / in backpack (not worn!). If player does not have a way to curse item, it would give at least a chance that it happens passively.

1- how about a slight modification to this: slightly increase the early piety gain from exploration _and_ provide some credit for wearing _any_ cursed gear. Leave the skill benefits as they are for the various levels of boundness, but give piety credit for every percentage increase in blindness. This would help a lot.
2-this is just adding a random chance to avoid the unlikely random chance of bad drops. Not very elegant, IMO.
3- this takes away the consumable effect of having to lose remove curse scrolls to curse equipment. It also reminds me of the early Chei ability to 'Make Ponderous'.
4- One RC = 1.64 Curse Foo?
5- No, please. That sounds awful.

[Bart]

Bart: Ashenzari is a strong god and will be continued to be played. If the 0.14 situation is too bad, then it will be easy to tweak (because we have a numerical parameter in the Remove Curse : Curse Foo ratio).

Thank you for these words, they are encouraging.

Ashenzari is designed to be not intrusive -- the curse minigame is the one thing that actually links you (as a player) to the god, at least for the first time. (Later on, the monster/item detection and mapping make the divine presence clear.) Since the curses are a source of decisions, I'd be loathe to cut on that.

The curse minigame only makes sense when the basic commodity is scarce enough. It was in 0.13 and may be too scarce in 0.14, we will see. However, overabundance will make the god stronger but less fun, I am convinced of that.

I agree completely. I would like to point out that from my experience cursing involves (especially now) making very limited decisions in early game, interesting decisions in midgame and becomes non-existent in late game (still), where rcurse scrolls tend to stack up. I doubt whether balancing could be done just by limiting/rising scroll drop. We should also bear in mind that drop rate affects not only Ash worshippers and it might backfire in other games as well.

[Wahaha]

From the point of view of a player who wants to increase their chances of winning, Ash is one of the worst gods in the game because he doesn't help your character at all until mid-lair at best, at which point the hardest part of the game is done with. Gods like Ash and TSO might have their place in the game, as gods that aren't useful early and become useful later (usually never for TSO). Lots of people think this is good game design and I can't entirely disagree. Unfortunately this means that Ash and TSO might as well not exist for players who are trying to win and aren't making bad decisions, and aren't playing a character so strong that it can win without a god.

[ackack]

Some relevant data:

  Code:

<ackack> !lm * god.maxpiety recent s=noun x=avg(xl) o=avg(xl)
<Sequell> 41892 milestones for * (god.maxpiety recent): 1615x the Shining One [21.85], 608x Zin [17.97], 643x Jiyva [15.88], 1589x Ashenzari [14.66], 3890x Vehumet [14.18], 162x Dithmenos [14.04], 395x Fedhas [13.56], 601x Yredelemnul [13.43], 1237x Kikubaaqudgha [13.26], 561x Dithmengos [12.75], 8846x Okawaru [12.62], 985x Beogh [12.35], 489x Elyvilon [12.35], 1721x Nemelex Xobeh [12.2], 3122x Makhleb [11....

Contextualizing those, TSO and Zin are gods that people most often take for extended, inflating those averages quite a bit. Similarly, Jiyva is rarely worshipped before Lair:8. Thus, among the "normal" gods, Ashenzari was already the slowest to achieve max piety. Any substantial reduction in the amount of cursing available is obviously going to exacerbate that. I don't really agree with Wahaha's assessment about Ashenzari before these changes, but I am skeptical about the value of Ash if Ash got much slower.

Also, it doesn't make sense to get more curse scrolls at high piety, as that is when you need them least.

[siprus]

From the point of view of a player who wants to increase their chances of winning, Ash is one of the worst gods in the game because he doesn't help your character at all until mid-lair at best, at which point the hardest part of the game is done with. Gods like Ash and TSO might have their place in the game, as gods that aren't useful early and become useful later (usually never for TSO). Lots of people think this is good game design and I can't entirely disagree. Unfortunately this means that Ash and TSO might as well not exist for players who are trying to win and aren't making bad decisions, and aren't playing a character so strong that it can win without a god.

I have to disagree with TSO not being useful early game. Shield and halo can be very useful, for character which use in accurate weapons. And you can start casting devas in problematic situation relativly early. (i don't think it is unreasonable to be able to summon angels in lair).

Generally the problem is that okawaru has good early game powers to help anyone clear lair and other early and mid game problems. Usually at least 1 or 2 worth while item. Which will benefit you even as you abandon Okawaru for god which benefits are more useful for late game.

[Leafsnail]

My preferred solution (which I think someone else spelt out in a previous thread about curses) would be to remove curses outside of Ash since they are basically never relevant if you're not worshiping him. Then give Ashenzari two new abilities:
1. A free ability that curses an item
2. A very expensive ability that uncurses an item

The hard part is balancing ability 2, of course, but I think a setup like this would allow Ashenzari to create interesting decisions throughout the game, rather than just for a fairly brief period in the midgame.

Possible costs for ability 2: large piety cost, has to recharge with XP, cost increases with each use, is actually "destroy item" instead of uncurse item, makes you unable to use anything in that slot for a given XP length, you get put under penance for activating it

From the point of view of a player who wants to increase their chances of winning, Ash is one of the worst gods in the game because he doesn't help your character at all until mid-lair at best, at which point the hardest part of the game is done with. Gods like Ash and TSO might have their place in the game, as gods that aren't useful early and become useful later (usually never for TSO). Lots of people think this is good game design and I can't entirely disagree. Unfortunately this means that Ash and TSO might as well not exist for players who are trying to win and aren't making bad decisions, and aren't playing a character so strong that it can win without a god.

You can easily go Ely -> TSO for extended, though, so his poorness early-game doesn't matter all that much.

[dpeg]

  Code:

author   Chris Campbell <chriscampbell89@gmail.com>   
   Tue, 4 Mar 2014 22:20:52 +0000 (22:20 +0000)
commit   322860f2f20b3118185380fcf1176df1e1113128
Let Ashenzari give multiple curse scrolls earlier

Give 1-3 curse scrolls, not based on piety.

This addressed the original problem.

Regarding curses, I think much more interesting things could be done with them, if we look beyond sticky-cursed. Now, such ideas a high-flying at the moment, although some ideas exist. However, even when curses are not the most polished mechanic of Crawl, they're not broken, and I don't think immediate action is required. (For example, re-cursing artefacts can be interesting.)

[TeshiAlair]

Huh, didn't realize stuff had changed, I thought I was just having nightmarish luck. Ash is probably my favorite god, and 4 of my last 5 or so games failed to get off the ground.

The most frustrating thing I find is praying over rCurse and getting a metric ton of curseWeapon.

[Osgoodbad]

Alternatively, what if you could pray over any piece of gear for a one-time (per piece of gear) cursing ability? Remove and curse scrolls could continue to function as normal. After all, acquired gear is cursed when worshipping ashenzari. Would it really be so bad to allow the initial curse for free on other gear?

[Maynot]

I think another potential problem is piety decay rate that Ashenzari has. Piety decay should at least be slowed/stopped the more cursed you become. When you start taking more damage, you will either have to find some regen items, spend more time resting/lose piety, or keep running around at low health. This make it either you get lucky, Ashenzari becomes much less useful, or you die in fewer hits.

[Mattchew]

> Siprus, you know that we are talking about recent trunk changes, right? There are no more random curse scrolls, also remove curse scrolls are scarcer.

Ohhhh, I didn't realize this and it's very sad. I love most of the stuff that is happening in trunk, but not this.

Ash is also one of my favorite gods. Turning ?curse into some floppy vestigial organ having no regular significance in the game makes Ash much less cool. Part of the point of Ash was the inversion of this common bad event.

I'm glad the piety management question is fixed, or at least being attended to, but I think his theme is much less interesting with ?curses gone.

I hope dpeg can get some uptake on his new curse ideas and make curse scrolls important again. If not, I'd agree with revamping Ash piety altogether.

[twelwe]

Instead of preventing curses, Ash should "absorb" mummy death curses and hold up to one at a time that can be activated on any piece of gear.

[Bloax]

Some relevant data:

  Code:

<ackack> !lm * god.maxpiety recent s=noun x=avg(xl) o=avg(xl)
<Sequell> 41892 milestones for * (god.maxpiety recent): 1615x the Shining One [21.85], 608x Zin [17.97], 643x Jiyva [15.88], 1589x Ashenzari [14.66], 3890x Vehumet [14.18], 162x Dithmenos [14.04], 395x Fedhas [13.56], 601x Yredelemnul [13.43], 1237x Kikubaaqudgha [13.26], 561x Dithmengos [12.75], 8846x Okawaru [12.62], 985x Beogh [12.35], 489x Elyvilon [12.35], 1721x Nemelex Xobeh [12.2], 3122x Makhleb [11....

Contextualizing those, TSO and Zin are gods that people most often take for extended, inflating those averages quite a bit.

You forgot to exclude the higher levels, who are most certainly out of the demographic for the statistic;

  Code:

<Bloax> !lm * god.maxpiety recent xl<=20 s=noun x=avg(xl) o=avg(xl)
<Sequell> 40341 milestones for * (god.maxpiety recent xl<=20): 593x the Shining One [15.59], 1552x Ashenzari [14.38], 3893x Vehumet [14.11], 175x Dithmenos [13.66], 393x Fedhas [13.48], 394x Zin [13.42], 601x Yredelemnul [13.35], 478x Jiyva [12.78], 1193x Kikubaaqudgha [12.73], 559x Dithmengos [12.65], 8842x Okawaru [12.53], 989x Beogh [12.35], 487x Elyvilon [12.3], 1706x Nemelex Xobeh [12.01], 8390x Trog [11.71], 3038x Makhleb [11.47], 3515x Sif Muna [11.12], 1276x Lugonu [10.96], 2267x Cheibriados [10.95]

TSO is still quite high, but that's not surprising considering that piety is so scarce compared to every other god.