New God: Dang, the Shadowed


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 14:19

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

The main effect of umbra is the mad crazy stealth boost, not the accuracy malus to enemies.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 14:32

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

snow wrote:I've tried the new god and I'm not really impressed.

I tend to compare all gods to Trog. Why should I pick this god over Trog?


If you think a god should be better than Trog, i.e. one of the strongest existing gods, in order to make it into the game, then you're looking at this wrong. Not every god needs to make the game easier than it was before the god was added. New gods should allow for new, interesting gameplay choices, not simply be better than the best.
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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 14:56

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Are people really giving up all the other gods just for a stealth boost...? Other than to just try out the god, which combinations would this god be the best god for? Any stabber would want a backup plan when stabbing isn't reasonable, not a second stabbing enabler. If you are holding down tab then this god is terrible until around the vaults, and elementalists simply gain more from sif or veh. Also for the random char that does a little bit of everything, why not just go kiku or ash?

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 14:57

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Also Trog comes with an extremely strong conduct.

In my opinion, better questions to assess a new god are: Is it fun to play? Is it different from other gods and a new experience in general? It's an uphill battle in this forum, but power of a god is much less relevant. If the former two questions are answered positively, then it's a matter of tweaking numbers to make the god stronger or weaker. And that comes last, and is a never-ending process. But we should only undertake that endaveour if we're dealing with a fun god which gives us something new.
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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 15:13

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Is the god unique? Yes. Is it fun? For the most part yes. Shadow step is annoying to use and jarring because your placement is hard to predict. If the piety cost was removed and the placement was more deterministic people might actually use it.
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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 15:15

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

To explain more, some people hate autoexplore because it's jarring, you have to look around: where am i? Same thing here, it's not fun.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 15:44

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

When it's a 100% stealth boost? Yes. Add that to a passive ability that's close to perma-haste and I don't see how you could regard this god as underpowered.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 16:40

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I see some of you are talking to snow for the first time.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 16:53

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

neil wrote:Demons haven't been immune to umbra since 0.11.

Oh, shouldn't trust learndb I guess. Sorry for the confusion.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 16:56

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

The range of shadowstep increases with piety, but it's hard to tell what it really is because it's not the same as the range of the umbra. When I first tried shadowstep, the lack of a range indicator was a little non-user friendly. It would be nice if the range was exactly the range of the umbra. Other than that, I think the shadowstep interface is good and it's definitely not jarring for me.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 23:37

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

A minor suggestion - as a shadow god, it would make sense to not gain piety from killing shadows (monster) (or invisible creatures). Currently shadows do give you piety when they are killed.

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Post Friday, 17th January 2014, 23:42

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

dialectric: That's a good observation! I'll mention it in ##crawl-dev.

Here's an idea of my own (back from my ancient stealth god proposal): Under D, spotting a monster gives you half its xp. That's a passive power you get immediately, i.e. at 0 piety. If you then kill the monster, only the second half is handed out, of course.

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Post Saturday, 18th January 2014, 01:22

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Suddenly sub 30k scores are possible. Thx to whoever released him!
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Post Saturday, 18th January 2014, 01:41

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Yermak wrote:I promise I'll make under 30k 15-rune speedrun when this god will be put into trunk along with his umbra aura.

Man said, man did.
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Post Saturday, 18th January 2014, 03:44

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

dpeg wrote:dialectric: That's a good observation! I'll mention it in ##crawl-dev.

Here's an idea of my own (back from my ancient stealth god proposal): Under D, spotting a monster gives you half its xp. That's a passive power you get immediately, i.e. at 0 piety. If you then kill the monster, only the second half is handed out, of course.


What happens if a summoned creature kills the monster after it has been spotted?
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Post Saturday, 18th January 2014, 04:17

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Should Dith allow holy weapons?
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Post Saturday, 18th January 2014, 05:04

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

XuaXua wrote:Should Dith allow holy weapons?


Dith used to forbid them, but that got removed, since Dith is no longer evil and their divine radiance is only flavor.

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Bim

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 15:01

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Just got down to late lair with a SpAs playing a traditional stealth based play through, just thought I'd give some feedback:

For one, I think this God really does fill a gap which needed filling. Not because its an easy choice or OP'd or anything, just because its a god which is tailored to a stealthy sort of play through, instead of having to bend the other gods powers to suit you.
Umbra is great, definitely a unique enough power.

Shadowstep - certainly not OP'd but does have a lot of uses. Creatures having to be within your aura means that you've already had to get pretty close to them, and the piety drain + 4 magic makes it a decent trade off.

Shadow action - I'd prefer this to be similar to a battlesphere (although perhaps always on) as at the moment it's sort of a bit confusing as to what it's doing as it sounds like it's a separate entity, but in reality you just get a few extra free attacks. Even a darker 1-tile radius around you once you get this ability might help clear up the confusion a bit.

Shadow bleed - Useful enough.

Shadow form - I haven't reached it yet, but it does sound very useful.

Really, the only problem for me is the clarity in the Shadow Action being a bit difficult to work out that it's just a few free attacks. I like the no-fire conduct, it's actually quite a big one when you can't use anything at all firey, although I feel perhaps electrocution could go into that as well without too much bending. You've then knocked out two spell schools effectively, but the gains you get with D are pretty big really, so I feel it'd be a good tradeoff.
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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 16:11

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Bim wrote:I like the no-fire conduct, it's actually quite a big one when you can't use anything at all firey, although I feel perhaps electrocution could go into that as well without too much bending.


Forbidding lightning spells was considered and rejected, because cutting out one and a half spell schools was considered Too Much. If Dith needs a nerf it'd probably be better to tweak the power level of the abilities rather than add more conducts.

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 18:20

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Please fix shadow action using sleeping needles in a way it was done to EH.
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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 18:53

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I just posted an account of two Dith wins, one with a SpEn and one with a MiGl (both at https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10612&p=146422). I'm hoping to post a HuIE soon. In the process, I've gathered some feedback I'd like to share.

Overall
* Poison can cause fog-bleeding. Because of this, there are situations where a character might profit from self-poisoning (even !poison) to more consistently generate fog. It also creates a reason to self-damage. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but I think it's worth mentioning.
* You can easily get full piety for this god in Lair. Again, not bad, just pointing it out.
* Bug? On both characters, I noticed enemies sometimes becoming distracted and taking odd actions (walking away?) while in melee with me, even when no enemies were on screen. I believe that it is because they are attempting to target my shadow-ally.

Powers
* Umbra - This seemed to do little for the MiGl, but was amazingly good for the SpEn, who probably sleep-stabbed ~48% of the monsters she killed (1594 of 3246 kills). Granted, probably about 1/3 of those were EH-sleep, but still.
* Shadow Step - On the SpEn, this combined well with the umbra to make sleep-stabs much more likely against dangerous foes. I never used it for escape on the SpEn, partly because spriggans have no trouble with escape. I never managed to use it at all on the MiGl, since sleeping or incapacitated monsters basically didn't exist.
* Bleed Fog - This was a stand-out power that both characters appreciated heavily.
* Shadow Actions - The SpEn made poor use of this, since shadow short blade-strikes and shadow hexes were too weak to do anything. On the other hand, the MiGl loved the hell out of this, because the shadow mimicking horn strikes and +13 great sword hits did amazing damage. Shadow javelin throws also seemed very strong -- maybe stronger than the non-shadow throws. I wonder if that has anything to do with the way monster throwing damage is better than player throwing damage. I'm curious to see how well this works with a conjurer-type.
* Shadow Form - I didn't use this much. The SpEn already had invis, so that aspect wasn't very helpful. The damage reduction powers seemed good, though I wasn't sure when to use them, since if you're at low health, even half damage might be too much, and if you're at high health, you don't need an escape power. Maybe I just haven't figured out the best use for it yet. The first time I wanted to use the power as a MiGl, I didn't yet have enough mp -- I needed to train some Spellcasting / Evo before I was able to try it, and by then I didn't really need it.

Edit: I forgot some of the most important feedback: I loved this god. I plan to use it on most of my characters. I love that its conduct imposes actual limits (hydrae are less fun w/o flaming swords), and that it doesn't force tedious sacrificing behavior, and that it doesn't give you a potentially-ruinous conduct like speed or take away equipment-swapping. I also love that its powers potentially complement any type of character. Basically, this is my favorite current god, and I would like to salute everyone involved in creating it and getting it added.

Further edit: getting see invis was very good for worshippers of this god, since all the effects that illuminate invisible monsters are forbidden. Fog blood helps a bit with this, tho.

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 19:00

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Lasty wrote:* You can easily get full piety for this god in Lair. Again, not bad, just pointing it out.
I'd like to point out that this is also true of almost every other god in the game.

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 19:21

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

duvessa wrote:
Lasty wrote:* You can easily get full piety for this god in Lair. Again, not bad, just pointing it out.
I'd like to point out that this is also true of almost every other god in the game.


I can't recall exactly when I reached 6 stars, but I do recall feeling that it was earlier than I typically do with other gods.

Edit: The SpEn got it on Lair 4 (lair on d8), and the MiGl got it on D10 before lair.

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 20:24

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

My DrEE of Dith was deleted because experimental branch ended, but I got into Vaults with him and definitely had a sense of how Dith plays with conjurations and other spells, in addition to melee.

I hadn't found iron shot yet, but shadow mimic made stone arrow much more powerful and increased its longevity considerably. (Stone arrow is sufficient for a long time already, but this was even more the case.) LRD with mimic was also a lot of fun—two chances for a huge explosion.

Also, my experience with the pseudo-hex petrify is somewhat different from Lasty's experience with hexes; I found shadow-mimic quite useful. In several cases my petrify failed, but the shadow's petrify stuck. In some cases mine hit, and then the shadow-mimic's hit and caused very fast, and sometimes instant, full petrification. (I didn't know that you could stack petrify for this effect, that was pretty cool.)

Umbra made it hard for enemies to notice me even when I was casting loud stuff like LRD. And smoke-bleed is, I have to imagine, useful for every character. So Dith has a great deal of support to offer almost any play style, really, even if stealthy short blade users arguably benefit the most.

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 21:13

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

This god is amazing! Flavor, conduct, abilities! Finally!

My only critique is that with Shadow Action, unless you're diligently reading the text of what's going on, you dont really notice it's happening in melee, and if you blink at the wrong time you'll miss it happening with magic as well. It sort of makes it a bit boring in the visual sense, especially if you play console like I do. I like to see visual affects of what I'm doing!

I suggest adding a purple film to flash over the screen similar to corrupt. Speaking of which wasn't Chei's Slouch ability suppose to have a teal flash on the screen? They should really add that....

Bim

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Post Sunday, 19th January 2014, 21:34

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

After more play (and reading others replies), I think it might be better to make shadow action a melee only attack, which could scale in power with the player, but not precisely mimic it's attacks. This might push the god further into melee focussing, but I don't think that's particularly terrible really. I don't like the idea of screen flashes (as that might get a bit crazy in fast combat) but a dark aura or something appearing when the shadow was attacking would be good.

I still feel that Fire is not quite enough of a conduct, I'm not sure what should be in place, but avoiding fire, whilst sometimes interesting/difficult, is mostly trivial compared with the great gains you get. Other than shadow action though, I don't think much needs to be nerfed really, there just needs to be more than just ignoring a few weapons and wands.
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Post Monday, 20th January 2014, 19:20

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I don't know really know about other goda, but Lair only is enough to get full piety (VpEn). Got to Lair 2 monsters after I started whorshipping Dith.

Also, what exactly does Umbra except for Stealth?

When does the shadow ally start appearing? Mine didn't come :(
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Post Monday, 20th January 2014, 19:24

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

b4rR31_r0l1 wrote:I don't know really know about other goda, but Lair only is enough to get full piety (VpEn). Got to Lair 2 monsters after I started whorshipping Dith.

Also, what exactly does Umbra except for Stealth?


Makes it so non-undead enemies have a harder time hitting you.

When does the shadow ally start appearing? Mine didn't come :(


Four stars. It's not actually a dude who follows you around though, you get double the actions for some thing. Try casting confuse at a guy and you should notice you cast it twice.
take it easy

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Post Monday, 20th January 2014, 19:59

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Arrhythmia wrote:
When does the shadow ally start appearing? Mine didn't come :(


Four stars. It's not actually a dude who follows you around though, you get double the actions for some thing. Try casting confuse at a guy and you should notice you cast it twice.


Though it doesn't trigger on every action, so you may need to do a few things before seeing your shadow mimic it.

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Post Monday, 20th January 2014, 20:15

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Just out of curiosity, what happens if a demonspawn gets ignite blood mutation?
And also Dithmengos didn't mind at all that I summoned several fire-breathing dragons to light up the dungeon. Quite inconsistent from our new god.
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Post Tuesday, 21st January 2014, 00:30

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

b4rR31_r0l1 wrote:
When does the shadow ally start appearing? Mine didn't come :(


More proof that Shadow Action needs a visual indicator...

Also, without fire/light there wouldn't be a shadow... I dont think this conduct is very good or makes much sense.

I got hellfire with my Ds and couldn't use it cause of Death Mangos. Hope the name changes soon too. Haha

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Post Tuesday, 21st January 2014, 15:31

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

As a side note, it seems like the extremely high throwing/sling damage I witnessed only applies to characters untrained in throwing/slings. For characters that are more trained, the damage is much closer to what the character would normally do. I'm going to have to look at the code which generates the shadow mimic actions to determine how character skill factors into shadow damage, if at all.

Also, the enemies-being-distracted-by-shadow-actions bug has been consistently happening with melee and ranged attacks, FWIW.

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Post Wednesday, 22nd January 2014, 13:42

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I just won a 3 runes game with a Merfolk Gladiator worshipping Dithmengos. It was a lot of fun. The combination of Shadow Mimic and the Umbra made a relatively stealthy character without much investment (only 8) in stealth that could pack a lot of punch.

1) I would suggest just removing the g from the name. "Dithmenos" sounds a lot more sinister than "Dithmengos".
2) Shadow Form is great! I used it sparringly but it allowed me to get the swamp rune by running through the miasma clouds, ignoring almost all the monsters, grabbing the rune and teleporting out. It also allowed me to get to the Orc shops past Saint Roka. It is a great escape button!
3) Shadow Mimic is great for a fighter. I cannot estimate how much it improved my character, but I was killing things fast, very fast with haste. It's a great ability that stays useful all the time.
4) Shadow bleed is great for avoiding smiting and hellfire. I didn't get to extended, but I think that it would be great there.

All in all, this a great addition!

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Post Friday, 24th January 2014, 09:31

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I am currently playing as a Demonspawn Assassin of Dithmengos and I got the "Ignite Blood" mutation. Dith doesn't seem to care that I am setting the dungeon on fire this way. Should this be changed?

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Post Sunday, 26th January 2014, 10:05

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

dpeg wrote:dialectric: That's a good observation! I'll mention it in ##crawl-dev.

Here's an idea of my own (back from my ancient stealth god proposal): Under D, spotting a monster gives you half its xp. That's a passive power you get immediately, i.e. at 0 piety. If you then kill the monster, only the second half is handed out, of course.


Sounds like a neat idea, but i wonder if this will spawn stealth speed runners who don't kill anything, just ninja runes, escape and so on.

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Post Sunday, 26th January 2014, 11:24

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

An idea for nerving the piety gain rate: after say **** only give piety for killing things of fire or that use fire(i.e. the things that he currently appreciates killing). there are so many of those in late game you're never going to run low on piety anyway (aside perhaps Cocytus and Tartarus and the lair sub-branches)

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Post Sunday, 26th January 2014, 20:22

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

siprus wrote:
dpeg wrote:dialectric: That's a good observation! I'll mention it in ##crawl-dev.

Here's an idea of my own (back from my ancient stealth god proposal): Under D, spotting a monster gives you half its xp. That's a passive power you get immediately, i.e. at 0 piety. If you then kill the monster, only the second half is handed out, of course.


Sounds like a neat idea, but i wonder if this will spawn stealth speed runners who don't kill anything, just ninja runes, escape and so on.

That....sounds like a feature and not a bug.
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Post Monday, 27th January 2014, 02:43

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Dith is crazy fun and thanks count don't mean sh*t. (The original proposal by mikee in this thread has been thanked only once so far, lol.)

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Post Monday, 27th January 2014, 19:05

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I'm running a HEIE with Dith, and he's a great general purpose god. The shadow actions are great, except for one problem. When I cast OOD, and my shadow mimics it, it usually ends up with both OODs blowing up right in front of me. For some reason, this doesn't damage me, but it does waste 7 MP and a turn.

If the shadow actions only mimicked melee, Dith wouldn't be as strong for this character, but honestly, he may be a little too strong right now anyway.

I haven't used shadow form once yet. I should have used it 4 or 5 times, it would have been a huge help in the lair branch endings.

If Dith stays as is, I don't know if I'd ever use any other god.

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Post Monday, 27th January 2014, 19:09

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

damiac wrote:If Dith stays as is, I don't know if I'd ever use any other god.


I think that's a definite indicator that he's too strong at the moment. Making shadow action melee only would nerf him considerably, but only blasters would really suffer (who aren't really aligned with him much anyway). If this was felt as too far, possibly it could only be magic that wasn't shadowed.
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Post Monday, 27th January 2014, 22:54

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Grandiloquent Gentleman wrote:An idea for nerving the piety gain rate: after say **** only give piety for killing things of fire or that use fire(i.e. the things that he currently appreciates killing). there are so many of those in late game you're never going to run low on piety anyway (aside perhaps Cocytus and Tartarus and the lair sub-branches)


Dithmengos isn't an unusual god as far as piety gain goes. Plenty of other gods, like Trog or Makhleb, gain piety as fast or faster.

As far as Dith being overpowered goes: is he really stronger than Makhleb? Would a Deep Elf Conjurer really want to use him over Vehumet? Would a MiGl really want him over Okawaru, or a Mummy Summoner over Sif Muna? Specialization is important in Crawl.

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Post Monday, 27th January 2014, 23:43

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Azrael wrote:Would a MiGl really want him over Okawaru
Probably, yeah.

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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 00:27

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Azrael wrote:As far as Dith being overpowered goes: is he really stronger than Makhleb? Would a Deep Elf Conjurer really want to use him over Vehumet? Would a MiGl really want him over Okawaru, or a Mummy Summoner over Sif Muna? Specialization is important in Crawl.


You've picked very strong and specialised examples. Other than blasters and summoners, I think most other play-styles benefit too strongly from him in a way that many other gods don't. This is because all his powers are extremely desirable and there's no meaningful trade off for his abilities. You can get targeted blink without hardly any investment, a reasonable amount of stealth and a damage boost with an extremely easy conduct to stick too. Granted, Makhleb is very powerful, but demons have a chance of being hostile and his abilities use up a lot of MP, Oka doesn't have any direct abilities and all the other gods have more strict conducts and less straight forward methods.

I'm not saying that he should be nerfed into oblivion, just that a bit of downgrade on shadow action and possibly a stricter conduct would make him a more interesting choice, rather than a multi-purpose god for any situation.
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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 04:18

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Bim wrote:
Azrael wrote:As far as Dith being overpowered goes: is he really stronger than Makhleb? Would a Deep Elf Conjurer really want to use him over Vehumet? Would a MiGl really want him over Okawaru, or a Mummy Summoner over Sif Muna? Specialization is important in Crawl.


You've picked very strong and specialised examples. Other than blasters and summoners, I think most other play-styles benefit too strongly from him in a way that many other gods don't. This is because all his powers are extremely desirable and there's no meaningful trade off for his abilities. You can get targeted blink without hardly any investment, a reasonable amount of stealth and a damage boost with an extremely easy conduct to stick too. Granted, Makhleb is very powerful, but demons have a chance of being hostile and his abilities use up a lot of MP, Oka doesn't have any direct abilities and all the other gods have more strict conducts and less straight forward methods.

I'm not saying that he should be nerfed into oblivion, just that a bit of downgrade on shadow action and possibly a stricter conduct would make him a more interesting choice, rather than a multi-purpose god for any situation.


(Quick pedantic note: Makhleb's abilities use HP as of... 0.11 or 0.12, I think?)

Blasters benefit a good deal from Dith as well, actually. Gods are allowed to be strong, because the opportunity cost alone is extremely significant in every case, because god choice is a major factor in DCSS. I don't think Dith as currently implemented is more overwhelming than, say, Ash (or several other gods), in terms of general usefulness and power.

There are different ways for a god to be interesting. For Makhleb, both his most useful activated ability, as well as his strongest one, comes with a certain risk built in. However, the situations in which a friendly demon is helpful are extremely broad. And so there is a certain balance to that. For Dith, shadow form and shadow step always give the exact same effect—there isn't an inbuilt chance for things to go "awry" in the way that Makhleb's lesser / greater servant does—but shadow form / step are much more situational in terms of, "is it a good idea for me to use this?"

For example, if you shadow step foolishly, you end up blinking toward too many dudes at once, which carries a risk with it. Shadow form gives a lot of benefits but you also get half melee damage. The tactical factors that go into, "Is shadow form a good idea to use right now?" are already substantial and don't need some other balancing factor in there to make the decision interesting. It is already interesting. And interesting decisions are what it is all about, at the end of the day.

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 05:54

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

God choice matters the most for the part of the game before the Lair and in the start of the Lair. This god's abilities are good but other god's 1 * abilities like heroism, berserk, mushrooms, spell gifts are better or at least equal for most characters. That's why I don't think this god is too good. But it would be nice if shadow step and shadow form used invocations for success rate. Many gods use invocations for their active abilities and I don't think this one should be an exception.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 06:55

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Yeah, please don't make any significant changes to Dith. He's a fun god already.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 14:53

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Dithmengos is wicked fun for Formicids!! I am enjoying the new Shadow King immensely. :)

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 19:20

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

As an update, I feel Dith's usefulness to my HeIe has fallen off a bit as I've gone to the depths. The stealth bonus still helps out quite a bit, but I need to actually make some investment into stealth myself if I want to stab guys.

The potential for double spells is just awesome. I'd hazard a guess that it makes my conjurations 30% more effective on average, except OOD, which it makes unreliable as hell, which sucks, as I haven't found any better ice spells than throw icicle, or ice storm, which I have a 99% failure rate on.

Still, I think it'd make sense if invocations was required in some way for the gods abilities. I don't really know how, aside from failure rate, as the abilities themselves seem pretty binary.

As a reminder, the shadow mimic actions cause a huge problem with orb of destruction, because most of the time the two orbs are on the same square, so they explode, doing 0 damage and waking up everything in a large radius. On the rare occasion the second orb spawns on a different square, it still never seems to actually hit the target, though I suppose it could work out if I fired into a crowd.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Tuesday, 28th January 2014, 20:07

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Dith is insanely useful for Sprint: Fedhas' Mad Dash.
It's wonderful to Shadow Step past the sleeping Oklobs to stab the Burning Bush.
Or to one-hit sleeping Agnes!

Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 29th January 2014, 22:23

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I have to admit, it's strange that Dith doesn't dislike Dazzling Spray, which unquestionably generates light even though it blinds. This is not actually OP or anything, just ironic that I'm getting piety through liberal use of DS. Sort of like how most Healer characters do spend a reasonable portion of the game actually slaughtering stuff, not pacifying it or anything.
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