Brainstorm permanent ally god

[Marbit]

This is just a brainstorm, hopefully not too Yuif or too general.

I'm toying with the idea of a god that provides one (replaceable) permanent ally.
Just for fun, imagine that there is one god at the temple, that would give you a free low level mercenary when you join him (replacing a lost permanent ally cost a lot of piety).

Would the permanent ally change in any way your tactics? Could any other kind of permanent ally change the way in which you play in any interesting way? Is there any ability that could make it interesting or playable? Would there be anything that would make you generate attachment to your mercenary?

[twelwe]

Would the permanent ally change in any way your tactics? Could any other kind of permanent ally change the way in which you play in any interesting way? Is there any ability that could make it interesting or playable? Would there be anything that would make you generate attachment to your mercenary?

It would be great to have one (replaceable) permanent ally. any kind or any other kind of (replaceable) permanent ally would change my tactics. It would make the game more interesting. Interesting and playable. It would generate attachment to the (replaceable) permanent ally.

[sgrunt]

Have you ever watched johnnyzero play with the Mercenary card (which he does fairly frequently)? It's a pretty intriguing illustration of what gameplay with a sole powerful ally is like.

[tasonir]

I haven't seen johnnyzero play. Could you describe that to the rest of us?

This idea is kind of similiar to the idea I had for a god: "The buy stuff from me god". Working name. Basically you could exchange fairly large amounts of piety for a weaker form of acquirement, and then he'll fedex you the item. So pay 20 piety for a book, 10 piety for random ammo, 15 piety for a melee weapon, 5 piety for food, etc. Permenant ally could be a 50 piety item, etc. Weapons/ammo would follow the usual rules for being weighted towards the skills you have trained, although they'd probably want to generate less artefacts for weapons, less branded ammo, etc. It should be weaker than acquirement, but still have some chance of being better than normal.

If there's interest in this, maybe I'll flesh it out a bit more, and incorporate the ally into it? It may suffer from being straightforward, but I don't think it's a terribly bad idea.

[1010011010]

"The buy stuff from me god". Working name. Basically you could exchange fairly large amounts of piety for a weaker form of acquirement

Sounds like this.

[Leafsnail]

Yred's Enslave Soul ability basically does this.

[duvessa]

I haven't seen johnnyzero play. Could you describe that to the rest of us?

He's basically the spiritual successor to Ragdoll.

[Hirsch I]

I think a god is a little too extreme, and "one permanent ally" is not an interesting enough concept for one. but we could achieve the same result by adding a mercenary shop, that generates frequently or always pre lair. the merc could take part of your gold, like zin does, so it will not be always optimal. this would probably be a fun possibility.

[tasonir]

I haven't seen johnnyzero play. Could you describe that to the rest of us?

He's basically the spiritual successor to Ragdoll.

This, again, is not describing the playstyle to those who don't spectate often

[Lasty]

This idea is kind of similiar to the idea I had for a god: "The buy stuff from me god".

Dimon, the God of Capitalism.

[johlstei]

An ally god where if your ally dies, you die would be pretty cool, but require a lot of thinking/coding. I think you'd have to be able to forcefeed them potions and maybe scrolls. Maybe it could grant god powers around helping save the ally you can't control. Micromanaging normal allies wouldn't be fun at all but with a single very important one there is room for it I think. (I'm somewhat inspired by meepo in dota. I'm tempted to say it'd be cool if you could switch between controlling your ally and your player character, but that's a pretty big can of worms.)

[jejorda2]

Yeah, building a heavy armour character and a spellcaster at the same time, so that more of the artefact armour you find and more of the weapons and spellbooks you find are useful, is compelling. I know "spellcaster" is really vague, but it really doesn't matter.

[and into]

An ally god where if your ally dies, you die would be pretty cool, but require a lot of thinking/coding. I think you'd have to be able to forcefeed them potions and maybe scrolls. Maybe it could grant god powers around helping save the ally you can't control. Micromanaging normal allies wouldn't be fun at all but with a single very important one there is room for it I think. (I'm somewhat inspired by meepo in dota. I'm tempted to say it'd be cool if you could switch between controlling your ally and your player character, but that's a pretty big can of worms.)

Any proposal centered around a single permanent ally should take into account the fact that Crawl doesn't have a very rigorous AI. (Doubly so if life is somehow shared between you and the ally, but life-link just doesn't sound very fun to me at all...) Yred and Beogh are affected by Crawl AI, but they largely sidestep it through volume. A god centered around a single permanent ally would be much more hindered, though. Also, as someone pointed out earlier, this seems very similar to Yred's Enslave Soul ability, which is cool both in theme and game play mechanics and also is not the only thing that Yred offers.

[galehar]

Any proposal centered around a single permanent ally should take into account the fact that Crawl doesn't have a very rigorous AI.

I agree, but it would also be fun to make a special AI for the ally. I think this is too narrow for a god, but I like very much the idea of a mercenary shop.

[dpeg]

Marbit: I don't think this is god material. Many gods use allies in some form (and it's too much rather than not enough, in my opinion). However, a god where everything revolves around keeping one ally alive is very narrow -- more narrow than Beogh even. As others say, the playing style might be interesting -- one trump of Nethack is the starting pet, which you can nurture and raise -- and I believe something like this could work. But the ally's source shouldn't be a god. The fact that you didn't mention piety gain or any kind of ability indicates that a lesser mechanic, like a miscellaneous item, would do. By the way, if not using a god for this, then Elyvilon could be one option to keep your ally alive.

Tasonir: Simple purchase is also not enough to carry a god, in my assessment. A god should always have some tactical relevance. A string of acquirements, no matter how you collect them, is the opposite. The gold god proposal (linked below) tries to turn gold into a piety mechanic and versatile resource, offering both tactical and strategical options.

[njvack]

Any proposal centered around a single permanent ally should take into account the fact that Crawl doesn't have a very rigorous AI.

I agree, but it would also be fun to make a special AI for the ally. I think this is too narrow for a god, but I like very much the idea of a mercenary shop.

Really, allied (intelligent) monster AI should probably be about as symmetric with hostile monster AI as other player-monster systems. In other words, not very It'd be interesting to see how "smart" you could make an AI in crawl, and whether you could do something sane with existing monsters or if you'd need something fundamentally more player-like.

[Marbit]

Thanks for the input, it might be that a permanent ally is no material for a god. Originally I wasn't trying to design a god, I was thinking what could be made to improve mercenaries and much of the stuff I came up with looked a bit like god granted abilities. After that it was just natural to think about a god that acts thorough an avatar (or perhaps a fellow worshiper) and rewards you for working with it.

[I want to believe]

Perhaps, expanding on the idea for a mercenary shop, it could scale depending on the floor and branch it generates on? Normal shops don't have to scale too much, considering, for example, a ring of fire resistance is useful all the way through the game. Early floors could have a "pet shop" (A low cost purchase would be a rat, a high cost purchase might be an ooze.), then maybe there would be a "kennel" (A low cost purchase would be a jackal, a high cost purchase might be a wolf or hound.), then perhaps a "binder's bargain bin" (A low cost purchase would be a crimson imp, a high cost purchase might be a shadow imp.). And so on and so forth, with various magic beasts and eventually humanoid mercenaries like orcs or merfolk to possibly even un-generated uniques?(Though it'd probably be a bit weird thematically if you hired Arachne and then had her help you slaughter Spider.)

[Tiber]

I had a similar idea for a mercenary shop in a portal vault way back when:
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4729&p=62421
Unfortunately I could never get the environment to compile in VS and stopped trying. Maybe I'll come back to it one day. But I digress.

In any case, I support the mercenary shop idea, and if there are concerns that it's too powerful just put in its own bazaar so that players can't come back to it. The whole "if an ally dies, you die" thing would end up with way too many deaths that at least felt unfair, because you're putting your survival in the hands of something that's not very smart (and even custom AI would only help so much).

[truemonolith]

What if there was a really rare shop that sold mercenaries?

[bryanpeddy]

The god idea is so-so but the idea of a rare shop that sells mercs is a FANTASTIC idea. It'd be pretty hard to abuse if you made it... well... rare.

[Hirsch I]

mercs are not that powerful, hard to keep alive and eat some XP. it is not something you can really abuse.

[dialectric]

Also, like jewelry shops, a mercenary shop doesn't necessarily have to change dependent on its placement - just make the few good mercenaries for sale in the shop vastly more expensive, so low level characters can't afford them.

-dialectric

[Hirsch I]

why did you sign your post?

-Hirsch I

of course, allowing Blademasters in early D is not nice, so something like 4000 gold may be a good price. but merfolk could be much cheaper.

[Marbit]

So, has anyone worked on some code for making a mercenary shop?
In the morning I was recycling the bottled efreet code to make a "mercenary contract" and then make shops that would sell different "brands" of a mercenary contract.
Knowing myself it will take me a loooong time to get something remotely functional.

[King_jelly]

People really need to stop bringing up Yred and Beogh... its NOT the same thing... nurturing ONE perma ally is very different from a group of mindless zombies or a group of orcs that become useless as you near the end game.

People here, especially devs and mods, are SO quick to bash peoples ideas (in VERY rude ways most of the time) - and then they wonder why people lash out negatively and maliciously and "drive the devs away". Think about how many people have been driven away from this forum and in turn this game compared to the one dev that was driven away,

Anyway I digress - back to the topic. I think it would be interesting to have a sort of god that allows you to buff your allies... like a warlord god of some sort. With abilities such as ally healing, ally frenzy etc. Perhaps they could come at a steep blood cost... or breath cost (yelling out commands). That alone makes it far different than yred and beogh. Everytime I think of joining those religions I think about the headache that is the massive cloud of followers... ugh...

[Leafsnail]

How abut Yred then, who lets you get one very powerful permanent ally?

[neil]

People here, especially devs and mods, are SO quick to bash peoples ideas (in VERY rude ways most of the time) - and then they wonder why people lash out negatively and maliciously and "drive the devs away". Think about how many people have been driven away from this forum and in turn this game compared to the one dev that was driven away,

Let me quote the devs and mods in this thread:

Have you ever watched johnnyzero play with the Mercenary card (which he does fairly frequently)? It's a pretty intriguing illustration of what gameplay with a sole powerful ally is like.

Any proposal centered around a single permanent ally should take into account the fact that Crawl doesn't have a very rigorous AI.

I agree, but it would also be fun to make a special AI for the ally. I think this is too narrow for a god, but I like very much the idea of a mercenary shop.

Marbit: I don't think this is god material. Many gods use allies in some form (and it's too much rather than not enough, in my opinion). However, a god where everything revolves around keeping one ally alive is very narrow -- more narrow than Beogh even. As others say, the playing style might be interesting -- one trump of Nethack is the starting pet, which you can nurture and raise -- and I believe something like this could work. But the ally's source shouldn't be a god. The fact that you didn't mention piety gain or any kind of ability indicates that a lesser mechanic, like a miscellaneous item, would do. By the way, if not using a god for this, then Elyvilon could be one option to keep your ally alive.

Tasonir: Simple purchase is also not enough to carry a god, in my assessment. A god should always have some tactical relevance. A string of acquirements, no matter how you collect them, is the opposite. The gold god proposal (linked below) tries to turn gold into a piety mechanic and versatile resource, offering both tactical and strategical options.

Really, allied (intelligent) monster AI should probably be about as symmetric with hostile monster AI as other player-monster systems. In other words, not very It'd be interesting to see how "smart" you could make an AI in crawl, and whether you could do something sane with existing monsters or if you'd need something fundamentally more player-like.

If you really want rude: If the above quotes seem "quick to bash peoples ideas" and "VERY rude", then you need to adjust your expectations and find somewhere else to troll.

Edit: quoted the second half of dpeg's response.

[Bim]

A mercenary shop seems like a great idea!!

I do wonder about the balance aspects of it though, I feel it would be a fiendish task as, unlike shops - most types of allies would be useful for anyone. By this, I just mean that if having an ally is desirable for everyone so set quite low level, they'd need to be sturdy enough to be worth spending on rather than buying for yourself, whilst if they were too strong they'd just steal all your xp up until their use rapidly drops off. Conversely, if the shops were later on, many chars probably wouldn't find them immensely useful/would still be better off buying usual stuff.

Yred gives you the enslave soul, but that's usually late enough on (and dependant on you being able to kill what you enslave) for it not to matter to greatly, whilst Beogh gives you just a big horde that isn't particularly effective as anything other than meat shields for the most part.

Still, a good idea and I'd like to think that it could work.

[Roderic]

A mercenary shop seems like a great idea!!

I do wonder about the balance aspects of it though, I feel it would be a fiendish task as, unlike shops - most types of allies would be useful for anyone. By this, I just mean that if having an ally is desirable for everyone so set quite low level, they'd need to be sturdy enough to be worth spending on rather than buying for yourself, whilst if they were too strong they'd just steal all your xp up until their use rapidly drops off. Conversely, if the shops were later on, many chars probably wouldn't find them immensely useful/would still be better off buying usual stuff.

Yred gives you the enslave soul, but that's usually late enough on (and dependant on you being able to kill what you enslave) for it not to matter to greatly, whilst Beogh gives you just a big horde that isn't particularly effective as anything other than meat shields for the most part.

Still, a good idea and I'd like to think that it could work.

I suggested it eons ago, not sure if anything has changed since then

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4314&p=56062&hilit=mercenary+hut#p56062

About the perma-ally god, there is a rough similar proposal with the Partner Deity Hahron although you have to take care of the wisp rather than it helping you

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:propose:proposed_gods

[Marbit]

In the morning I was recycling the bottled efreet code to make a "mercenary contract" and then make shops that would sell different "brands" of a mercenary contract.

As a small follow up, I managed to write the code for the "mercenary contract". The item now summons one friendly mercenary.
I'm not done with the brand thing, that might be tricky.

[King_jelly]

People here, especially devs and mods, are SO quick to bash peoples ideas (in VERY rude ways most of the time) - and then they wonder why people lash out negatively and maliciously and "drive the devs away". Think about how many people have been driven away from this forum and in turn this game compared to the one dev that was driven away,

Let me quote the devs and mods in this thread:

Have you ever watched johnnyzero play with the Mercenary card (which he does fairly frequently)? It's a pretty intriguing illustration of what gameplay with a sole powerful ally is like.

Any proposal centered around a single permanent ally should take into account the fact that Crawl doesn't have a very rigorous AI.

I agree, but it would also be fun to make a special AI for the ally. I think this is too narrow for a god, but I like very much the idea of a mercenary shop.

Marbit: I don't think this is god material. Many gods use allies in some form (and it's too much rather than not enough, in my opinion). However, a god where everything revolves around keeping one ally alive is very narrow -- more narrow than Beogh even. As others say, the playing style might be interesting -- one trump of Nethack is the starting pet, which you can nurture and raise -- and I believe something like this could work. But the ally's source shouldn't be a god. The fact that you didn't mention piety gain or any kind of ability indicates that a lesser mechanic, like a miscellaneous item, would do. By the way, if not using a god for this, then Elyvilon could be one option to keep your ally alive.

Tasonir: Simple purchase is also not enough to carry a god, in my assessment. A god should always have some tactical relevance. A string of acquirements, no matter how you collect them, is the opposite. The gold god proposal (linked below) tries to turn gold into a piety mechanic and versatile resource, offering both tactical and strategical options.

Really, allied (intelligent) monster AI should probably be about as symmetric with hostile monster AI as other player-monster systems. In other words, not very It'd be interesting to see how "smart" you could make an AI in crawl, and whether you could do something sane with existing monsters or if you'd need something fundamentally more player-like.

If you really want rude: If the above quotes seem "quick to bash peoples ideas" and "VERY rude", then you need to adjust your expectations and find somewhere else to troll.

Edit: quoted the second half of dpeg's response.

Im not talking specifically about this thread - it was just a response to the general attitude and things that people have been saying since that dev left. There's countless threads where someone spent days thinking of, what they thought to be, a cool idea, just to have a mod or a dev reply with cold one word answers, laughter, insults, etc. I've seen it all my friend. I lurk...

Anyway, back to the topic. A merc shop seems kinda weird I'd rather just play with the merc card.

I think a god that focuses on buffing a single ally would be a bit more interesting... the player would then take on a support role rather than the main role... seems like an interesting role reversal.

[galehar]

Im not talking specifically about this thread

This rant is completely offtopic and I've PM'd the author.

[cerebovssquire]

the player would then take on a support role rather than the main role... seems like an interesting role reversal.

Unless you want to code an extensive system for interaction with allies, which probably wouldn't be worth it given how rare they are, the options a player has to interact with his ally are limited (shouting and equipment, charms, probably some god-granted abilities in this case, but probably these would effectively be like charms) and don't hold up to the normal complexity of the game. The gameplay of this kind of god would probably become monotonous during one game, let alone after many. I'm not opposed to the idea any more than I am opposed to gameplay with allies in general, but the ally shouldn't be the main focus to let the player character remain the "protagonist" of the game.

[1010011010]

An idea based from some recent music themed posts and a scene from a famous film.
A permanent (neutral) ally that buffs you or hinders enemies, makes noise, is part of a god conduct and can't be ditched.

[Roderic]

An idea based from some recent music themed posts and a scene from a famous film.
A permanent (neutral) ally that buffs you or hinders enemies, makes noise, is part of a god conduct and can't be ditched.

It could be a side-kick bard/minstrel and it would fit very well with some ideas from that god https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:propose:god_of_drama

[and into]

the player would then take on a support role rather than the main role... seems like an interesting role reversal.

Unless you want to code an extensive system for interaction with allies, which probably wouldn't be worth it given how rare they are, the options a player has to interact with his ally are limited (shouting and equipment, charms, probably some god-granted abilities in this case, but probably these would effectively be like charms) and don't hold up to the normal complexity of the game. The gameplay of this kind of god would probably become monotonous during one game, let alone after many. I'm not opposed to the idea any more than I am opposed to gameplay with allies in general, but the ally shouldn't be the main focus to let the player character remain the "protagonist" of the game.

Quite possibly. But I think what can be annoying about Yred and Beogh is the combination of 1.) volume and 2.) the fact that you have "pseudo-control" over your allies. Having one ally could make actual control possible.

The advantage of a god based around this would be that the god could specifically grant abilities that support the play style. For instance:

1.) You can fully equip your one perma-ally through ^ screen.

2.) Your allies' speed will slow down or speed up to match your own (passive).

3.) Your ally automatically follows you when you teleport, and is itself immune to teleportation (passive).

4.) A couple of piety-using buffs. — A fairly high-piety ability to heal your ally a lot, at the cost of Y life of your own, with an additional cool-down timer (Exhaustion) would be nifty.

5.) Auto-resurrect of ally after a certain number of turns have passed. (During which the god isn't doing very much for you—so allowing your ally to die is pretty punishing as it means that your god is doing almost nothing for you for a period of time.)

6.) Maybe a high-piety ability that lets you be "covered" by your ally—your character disappears, and you assume control of your ally for X turns (your ally gets all consumables you had). After X turns, or if your ally is killed, your character reappears. (This could be used for offensive and defensive purposes.)

7.) Possibly a high-piety ability that lets you switch from one "type" of ally to another—having maybe three different types, along lines of "high HP melee-focused," "lower HP conjuration-focused," "mid-HP buff/debuff-focused."

Strength of your ally scales with piety—I think that is better than having it "level up" as it gains experience, as otherwise taking on the god late game would be annoying. No piety loss when ally dies, for same reason. (So if you take god in mid- or late game, your ally is going to keep getting flattened, but as you gain piety it will eventually catch up with the power level of the dungeon.)

Those are just some ideas off the top of my head. I think there are potentially some interesting things to consider here.

[Sar]

2.) Your allies' speed will slow down or speed up to match your own (passive).

Sorry if you already know that, but you can already pace your speed to match that of your slowest ally by pressing Ctrl+e. It was recently even fixed to actually work!

[and into]

2.) Your allies' speed will slow down or speed up to match your own (passive).

Sorry if you already know that, but you can already pace your speed to match that of your slowest ally by pressing Ctrl+e. It was recently even fixed to actually work!

Nice! I did not know that.

However I assume that doesn't mean your allies get a free haste or boots of running effect—in other words, you slow down to match your allies' speed. What I had in mind was a passive god ability that, anytime you are faster than your single perma-ally, the god would divinely raise the ally's speed to match yours.

Actually just extend that so that, in addition, any buffs you target on yourself will automatically affect the perma-ally. No more fighting against haste or wand of hasting auto-target for this dude.

Good conduct might be to disable all summons and allies except your permanent ally. (I wouldn't use penance, the god just automatically blocks all friendly-summon effects.)

The god could also disable friendly fire between you and the permanent ally he bestows you with.

In other words, the main advantage of having this be a god is that you can have the god counteract or remove all the stuff that is annoying about having a perma-ally, and since it is only one ally you can balance everything else about the god around that fact pretty easily to make it powerful (like other religions), but not overpowered.

Mercenary shops can still go in, sure, but they'd feel very different I think compared to the god I'm describing.

[galehar]

2.) Your allies' speed will slow down or speed up to match your own (passive).

Sorry if you already know that, but you can already pace your speed to match that of your slowest ally by pressing Ctrl+e. It was recently even fixed to actually work!

To be precise, it set your travel/explore speed to your slowest ally so it can keep up when autoexploring or travelling. It's not perfect but it helps. When moving manually, you do it at normal speed. It would be a pain to have to toggle ^e to avoid being slowed during a fight.

I came up with the idea and coded it

[Sar]

I stumbled upon it by accident, pressed wrong buttons and got the message. Use it on all characters who have Animate Skeleton/Dead now.

[Marbit]

...you can already pace your speed to match that of your slowest ally by pressing Ctrl+e. It was recently even fixed to actually work!

¿Can we get a message reminding us that this option exist the first time we get an ally slower than us?
I had no idea that this option existed.

  Code:

The <monster> slowly follows you. (Ctrl+e to move at the same pace as your minion).


[DracheReborn]

Since no one has come up with an actual permanent ally god proposal yet, here's my (off the wall) attempt at one.

Hebe, the would-be god.

Flavor: Hebe is a Demigod with potentially great powers. These great powers are undeveloped though, and only through the power of the Orb of Zot can Hebe gain full access to her* divine ancestry and abilities. Hebe can be found near her altar, a simple, home-made affair that only occasionally pops up in the dungeon. Upon encountering a potential worshipper, Hebe offers a bargain. In exchange for worship, the adventurer gets Hebe's services as an ally. Of course, demigod adventurers are treated as competitors and would not receive this offer.

* Yes, crawl gods don't have gender, but Hebe isn't a god yet

Hebe is an ally with a randomly selected background (based on the backgrounds available to players). This background determines the choice of gear that Hebe will prefer. Hebe will have access to your stash and will simply pick the best available items according to the background preference. Hebe may gain some spells (if any) as manifestation of godly abilities. In addition, Hebe can learn (some) spells from your stash/inventory, again depending on background. An active command (Apply Consumable) becomes available through the god screen; the target could either be a potion or scroll from inventory that Hebe will then use.

Piety: As Hebe is in no position to demand extravagant conducts, piety simply accumulates over time. Piety gain is higher the deeper the adventurer goes into the dungeon.

God Abilities: Not much to speak of, but at 5*, the player gets the ability to banish Hebe to her home plane. This however uses up half of the piety built up with Hebe. The player then gets the ability to recall Hebe, but this uses up all remaining piety. This process will completely heal Hebe, however.

Final god gift: Upon obtaining the Orb of Zot, Hebe becomes a god and uses divine powers to wipe away all enemies on screen. Hebe will then be busy with new god duties, leaving you to do the orb run alone.

God Wrath: If the player abandons Hebe or lets Hebe die, the player will start at negative piety with any new god. This is because all the gods of the crawl pantheon (including the outcast Lugonu) consider Hebe to be of divine blood, and don't like the shabby way you've treated her.

-------------

It's something of a fantasy adventure trope I guess, but I hope some of you like it!

Generally, I expect Hebe to be weaker than the player, so keeping her alive would be part of the game. I would say that it's not a particularly strong god, even with the very good tactical final gift. Definitely a niche sort of god, so I wouldn't expect Hebe's altar to appear every game.

[KennySheep]

An idea based from some recent music themed posts and a scene from a famous film.
A permanent (neutral) ally that buffs you or hinders enemies, makes noise, is part of a god conduct and can't be ditched.

It could be a side-kick bard/minstrel and it would fit very well with some ideas from that god https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:propose:god_of_drama

I'd love to see this idea tacked on to Okawaru, replacing heroism with spawning a bard who provides the same buff (in a noisier fashion) while alive and inducing penance upon the player if allowed to die.

[tompliss]

Piety: As Hebe is in no position to demand extravagant conducts, piety simply accumulates over time. Piety gain is higher the deeper the adventurer goes into the dungeon.

Just a little comment to say that gaining piety by doing extraordinary actions could fit this idea. I think gettings runes should be a good way of increasing your piety with a similar concept.

[and into]

I took a whack at a god based around permanent allies over here, building off of some of the ideas I posted above:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10701&p=147584#p147584

[Marbit]

As a follow up of the mercenary shops, the code for the mercenary contract is complete (but has a small bug).
I'll now need to implement the code for a new shop that sells these items. Is anyone aware of a patch where a new kind of shop was implemented? Re-using existing code always make things easier.

[wheals]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 1cd5c8588e