Proposal: Ru, god of balance and sacrifice


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 Monday, 14th April 2014, 14:21

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Another replacement for the five-star ability: Whenever you take damage, you "store" up the energy from that attack, and release it on your next successful attack / targeted spell, causing an explosion that harms only enemies and deals damage proportional to the damage you received, probably on the order of 25% when you first gain it, scaling up to 40% with additional piety. The explosion damage would be resistible with AC, but not EV/SH, and would have no elemental branding. Stored damage would decay/expire quickly.

Possible tweaks:
* you need to store a certain amount of damage before you can unleash the explosion.
* the explosion is an ability accessed from the (a) menu, is smite-targeted, and does 40-60% of the damage you received.

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Post Monday, 14th April 2014, 16:26

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I don't think the ability should be smite targeted nor active at all, actually. The damage the ability does will be extremely variable, I don't think that fact works well as an active smite targeted ability.

I'd recommend making it an active ability in that you use up a bit of piety to active it, and it is applied as a passive effect for the duration. This would be good because you can have the effect trigger every attack, which would influence how you position/move in possibly interesting ways, but if it was a passive that triggered often it could get annoying, as the explosion animation would slow down melee.

(You could keep it as a passive that doesn't trigger too often, but then it is not really going to influence how you play the game and thus is not a very interesting effect. Of course though it is fine for gods to give one or two non-interesting passive boosts, like Ash's sinv and clarity. Just make sure that it doesn't slow down melee if you keep it as a passive.)

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Post Monday, 14th April 2014, 17:52

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Whatever the ***** ability is going to be, it should probably be largely passive. I'm hoping to a unique and interesting, but largely passive combat buff in that slot. Ideally one that is useful for most characters.

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Post Thursday, 22nd May 2014, 14:59

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Another update:

I've been able to actually get to coding this recently. Sacrifices for this god are about 25% complete, and the sacrifices are that are currently enabled are usable/testable. Powers for this god are 40% complete, and the powers that are currently enabled are usable/testable. Overall, this is probably about one to two weeks out from a fully playable state.

In the meantime, I've needed to reevaluate the god's powers somewhat, partly because Gozag may have stolen the * power from this god. So, I'll list the old power that Gozag is currently using, and the new replacement I'll use if Gozag keeps the old power. Here's what I'm currently thinking:

OLD *: Passive: enemies have a (piety/10)% chance to take no action on each of their turns.
NEW *: Passive: When attacking, enemies have a (piety/20)% chance to target another enemy or themselves instead of the player or the player's allies.
**: Passive: when an enemy deals damage to you, you have a one in (600/piety) chance of your aura of power striking back, inflicting a status effect. The status effect chosen is increased by your piety and the amount of damage you received, and decreased by the enemy's HD.
***: Active: You heal (piety/10) + 2d(piety/15) hp and restore (piety/30) + 2d(piety/45) mana. All your powers deactivate until you've been out of sight of enemies for 100 AUT. (alternate: until you hit "rest" 10 times)
****: Active, costs 8 MP. You "dash" to an open tile up to four tiles away, dealing 4d(piety/15) damage to anything you pass through.
*****: Active: All enemies in LOS take 5d(piety/20) damage and have a chance to be struck by status effects or haunted by friendly summons. All your powers deactivate until you've been out of sight of enemies for 100 AUT. (alternate: until you hit "rest" 10 times)

Note the new **** active power and the specific numbers added to each power. Since I'll be attempting to code these up soon, I'd love to get feedback on these now rather than later. :D

Edit: Alternate version of ****: Dash 3 tiles and also damage everything adjacent to where you land.
Last edited by Lasty on Thursday, 22nd May 2014, 15:28, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 22nd May 2014, 15:06

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Alternate * power (or even on-joining bonus): After a certain amount of time out of enemy sight, you immediately restore all health and mana. It would tie in well with the benefits on the power-removal-as-cost powers, and it would make for a unique bonus.

Edit: the amount of time could be piety-dependent.

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Post Thursday, 22nd May 2014, 19:45

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Some additional changes, after some discussion:

The Sacrifice Words/Taste sacrifices will not entirely bar those activities, but will instead give the -Potion (and a scroll equiv) status for a few turns whenever you take damage.

The *** and ***** powers will not shut down your remaining abilities. They will instead Drain and Exhaust you when used.

The **** power will not damage monsters passed through (targeting issues), and will instead do AOE damage on landing.

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Post Thursday, 22nd May 2014, 23:14

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I think it would be more interesting if it did AOE damage on landing and aoe damage on passing through (or single target). Basically the same as the rod of ignition - the code could be fairly similar? If not, just having aoe on landing certainly works.

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Post Tuesday, 27th May 2014, 14:31

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

The abilities are coded up and functional. Currently they are using these formulae:

*** Draw Out Power: (piety/20) + 5d(piety/25) hp gain, (piety/40) + 3d(piety/60) mp gain. Drains about 0.3 skill levels.
**** Power Leap: 3d(piety * 3 / 5) damage.
***** Cataclysm: 4d(piety/10) damage + mute OR 4d(piety/10) damage + paralyze OR 5d(piety/10) damage + slow OR 6d(piety/10) damage. Drains about 0.6 skill levels.
(note: all divisions are using div_rand_round)

I think those numbers may be a bit on the high side, but I'm not certain, given what you give up to use those abilities. Please let me know if you have a suggested tweak. Also, please let me know if you have a suggestion for a different/better Cataclysm status to apply.

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Post Wednesday, 28th May 2014, 09:16

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Here are my two cents regarding Iashol wrath:

I think the idea of a positive wrath has merits. I think it fits thematically. Iashol is a god of sacrifice, so he should really respect that you choose to abandon him (the source of all your benefits) while maintaining all drawbacks. Letting him go is like the ultimate sacrifice.

So as an idea for wrath, I'd say it would be cool if you lost all of your abilities (obviously) but gained in exchange a set of gifts. These could be unrandarts relating to each sacrifice you've made. For instance, If you sacrificed an eye, he could give you a crystal eye evocable that gave you sInv and magic mapping.

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Post Wednesday, 28th May 2014, 12:55

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I like evocable prosthetics
duvessa wrote:Christ, you can't remove anything without tavern complaining about it.

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Post Wednesday, 28th May 2014, 15:07

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I keep wanting to design a "sadist" deity where you gain piety by wearing equipment with negative or penalizing enhancers.
The longer you wear them, the more piety you gain, the more they eventually become effective and work "for you" and unlock other abilities.

Thought the general concept could work with a god of balance / sacrifice.
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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 19:52

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

It seems like this is mostly done/code complete? How likely/When will this be thrown on a server experimental branch? I'd be happy to playtest it and try to judge the overall power level...

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Post Thursday, 29th May 2014, 20:15

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I've got about 4 more sacrifices to code up and test before it's ready, but that probably won't be too long now. I'm hoping that I can get an experimental branch on one of the servers once it's ready. I'm pleased that you'll help playtest -- I'd love to get as much feedback as possible! I'm sure it'll need balancing.

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Post Tuesday, 10th June 2014, 12:43

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

The code for this is complete and in Mantis.

I ended up dropping the missing eye sacrifice since I wasn't confident that it added anything interesting. The potion and scroll sacrifices I switched to toggling on the -Potion/-Scroll status when injured, with frequency and duration of status increasing with larger hits. Sacrifice Sanity's blood-fearing got switched from hp damage to slaying/wizardry penalties while in sight of blood. I believe that the hand sacrifice is still not quite working as intended. Otherwise, everything follows the design listed here.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 12:50

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

The Iashol experimental branch is up on CSZO! Please check it out and leave feedback. I'm pretty confident that there's going to be some balancing to tone the god down, so give it a try now while it's extra-strong.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 13:17

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I haven't quite broken into the active abilities so far, but this god is pretty fun!

One thing that has annoyed me so far, however, is that there is a bad interaction between poison and Sacrifice Words/Taste; namely, that it will deactivate and reactivate every tick of poison, and thus stop 5 from actually resting it all off at once.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 13:22

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Oof, yeah, that'll need to be fixed. Making it ignore damage from poison completely would be best I think.

Edit2: Issue should be resolved now.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 18:41

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

One of your hands has vanished, leaving only a stump!
You can no longer hold your amulet of clarity!
_You can now wreak a terrible wrath on all visible foes.

I did sacrifice a hand, but it seems to have tried to remove my amulet, instead of my ring. Also, i'm still actually wearing all 3 pieces of jewelry. I don't think this matters, but just in case, I was wearing cursed gloves. I think you can remove rings even with cursed gloves on now, though.

Also, I started as a monk and I got to start with 2* piety, which is probably overpowered. Maybe on joining a monk can be set to something like * piety, to still get some bonus, but not as much as with other gods.

Making monsters falter is also probably too good for escaping - you can kite anything that's 10 speed fairly easily. Possible fixes: make faltering only affect non-movement actions, or make the movement faltering require higher piety?


edit: Skill descriptions on the religion menu (^) doesn't fit within the space available:

Granted powers: (Cost)
You exude an aura of power that intimidates your foes.
Your aura of power can strike those that harm you.
You can use your power to heal your body and restore y(Exhaustion, Skill drain)
You can gather your power into a mighty leap. (5 MP, Exhaustion)
You can wreak a terrible wrath on all visible fo(8 MP, Exhaustion, Skill drain)

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 20:12

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

What are the interactions with iashol and the amulet of faith? I wear ID'ed one, went from 4 to 6* piety, then later on made a sacrifice, then took it off and am 5* piety. Is my piety unchanged from what it would be if I was never wearing the amulet? Faith seems like a piety boost while worn, but no permenant loss from removing it?

also, after making quite a few sacrifices, I seem to have run out/hit some other bug:

No ability

If you get this description, it is a bug.

This ability costs: nothing.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 20:14

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

  Code:
Iashol believes you are ready to make a new sacrifice.
_You can no longer be stealthy.
 You are alive. Your movement speed is average.
 Your attack speed is above average.
 You are not resistant to hostile enchantments.
_You feel extremely unstealthy.
...
 You kill the quokka!
_Your Stealth skill gained 2 levels and is now at level 2!

I wasn't training stealth to begin with - did you toggle it off without checking that it was off already?

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 20:22

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

tasonir wrote:
  Code:
Iashol believes you are ready to make a new sacrifice.
_You can no longer be stealthy.
 You are alive. Your movement speed is average.
 Your attack speed is above average.
 You are not resistant to hostile enchantments.
_You feel extremely unstealthy.
...
 You kill the quokka!
_Your Stealth skill gained 2 levels and is now at level 2!

I wasn't training stealth to begin with - did you toggle it off without checking that it was off already?


I ran into that same bug, switching skills to auto and back seemed to get rid of it.

And whenever I use Power Leap I don't actually leap and I get a message like "Something unexpected blocks you from leaping!" Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug?
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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 20:40

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Yeah, I just pressed shift + letter, which turns off all skills other than the letter you picked, and then I didn't get any more messages about stealth going up. Maybe I should have checked if I could have trained it higher, but I didn't want to waste exp.

Some more minor issues:

Sacrifice essence could use a slightly more clear description: It can do three things, but it seems that you randomly only get one of them. I wanted to give up some mana or get anti-wizardry, but seem to keep rolling -MR, which hurts more. Obviously that's the chance I took, but I think after describing the three things a short line like "Each sacrifice will only take one of these things at a time." or similiar would be more clear. I've done it twice now, and rolled -MR each time. Does it always pick the one you got previously, or could you get a different one? In my mutations list the text hasn't updated, either:

You are vulnerable to magic. (-20 MR)

This should now be -40. It does seem to be correctly applying -40, though. I had MR +.... before taking the second rank, and went back down to .....

Acquirement:

I've already sacrificed wands/evoking; so either remove wands from the acquirement menu, or at least color them red. Also, I ended up going with armor, and I got a buckler, which I theoretically can't use because I sacrificed a hand. However, the game does let me equip it still, so that's bad. Prevent getting shields with one hand, and certainly prevent them from being worn :)

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 20:58

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I finally got a combination of spell schools I didn't mind sacrificing, so I dropped: summoning, hexes, air magic. I already had a summoning and air magic spell memorized, and they remained memorized. One of those spells, summon butterflies, wasn't at 100% fail, so I tested casting it and got butterflies as normal. I'd suggest automatically removing them from the player's spell list, it feels a lot more dramatic, but at least prevent casting if you don't.

Also, since I had the spell memorized, the summoning skill should show up in my skills list, but Iashol removed it, so there was a blank line there instead. The gap went away when I manually amnesia'ed the spells.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 21:04

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I'm in the midst of playing a MiGl of Iashol. A few thoughts/bugs:

Twice I was offered "Sacrifice Essence," selected it, and nothing happened. No text, no effect.
I've received "No Ability" several times as a sacrifice option. This only occurred after I'd made several sacrifices already.
After sacrificing nimbleness, I got the following message after killing an enemy: "Your Dodging skill gained 3 levels and is now at level 3!" I wasn't training and hadn't trained Dodging.
There are typos throughout the god and ability descriptions.

Cataclysm seems OP to me. In Lair, it instakills blinkfrog packs and took out a player ghost pretty easily. I get that I'm draining myself to do it, but still, it seems too powerful for the cost.
Should Power Leap and Cataclysm really cost mp? My dim witted minotaur only had 4 mp when I got Power Leap and so couldn't use it. Granted, it was easy enough to put a couple levels in spellcasting, but it seems odd that a non-magic God would require me to train a magic school.
Should I really get the option to see what mutation I'd get before choosing to sacrifice purity? I could see it being more interesting to let the mutation lotto take me where it will.
I quite enjoy my aura, but I agree that it has potential for exploitation in its current form.

I'm really enjoying the god so far-- selecting sacrifices, deciding what I really need and can do without is a great mechanic.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 22:18

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

  Code:
 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.15-a0-1525-gf4ed397 (webtiles) character file.

tasonir the Martial Artist (Gargoyle Monk)         Turns: 36859, Time: 02:32:44

HP 100/100       AC 24     Str 18      XL: 16   Next: 23%
MP  28/28        EV 15     Int 17      God: Iashol [******]
Gold 274         SH  0     Dex 16      Spells:  6 memorised, 14 levels left

rFire  + . .     SeeInvis .       - Unarmed
rCold  . . .     Clarity  +     X - +1 leather armour {rF+}
rNeg   + . .     rCorr    .     (shield currently unavailable)
rPois  +         rRot     +     Z - +0 hat {MR+}
rElec  +         Spirit   .     N - +2 cloak {rPois}
SustAb .         Warding  .     r - +0 pair of gloves {Str+3}
rMut   .         Stasis   .     F - +0 pair of boots
Gourm  .                        f - amulet of clarity
MR     +....                    (no ring)
                                d - +3 ring of intelligence

@: flying, somewhat resistant to hostile enchantments, extremely unstealthy
A: able to fly continuously, large and strong wings, thin metallic scales 1, low
mp 1, life protection 1, electricity resistance, slow metabolism 1, unbreathing,
petrification resistance, rot immunity, cannot drink while threatened, cannot
read while threatened, missing a hand, no stealth, cannot use devices, fear
blood, cannot use Air magic, cannot use Hexes magic, cannot use Summoning magic,
magic vulnerable 2, AC +11
a: Stop Flying, Draw Out Power, Power Leap, Cataclysm, Renounce Religion


You are on level 1 of the Spider Nest.
You worship Iashol.
Iashol is exalted by your worship.
You are very hungry.

You have visited 5 branches of the dungeon, and seen 28 of its levels.

You have collected 2425 gold pieces.
You have spent 2151 gold pieces at shops.


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You are resistant to torment.
You are immune to poison.
You can fly continuously.
Your stone body is very resilient (AC +11).
Your wings are large and strong.
Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP).
You resist negative energy.
You are resistant to electric shocks.
You can survive without breathing.
You are immune to petrification.
You are immune to rotting.
You cannot drink potions while threatened.
You cannot read scrolls while threatened.
You are missing a hand.
You cannot be stealthy.
You cannot study or use magical devices.
You are terrified of blood.
You cannot study or cast Air magic.
You cannot study or cast Hexes magic.
You cannot study or cast Summoning magic.
You are vulnerable to magic. (-20 MR)
You are partially covered in thin metallic scales (AC +2).
You have a slow metabolism.


   Skills:
 - Level 11.2 Fighting
 - Level 9.2 Armour
 - Level 6.0 Dodging
 - Level 14.7 Unarmed Combat
 - Level 9.2 Spellcasting
 + Level 9.0 Charms
 - Level 4.0 Necromancy
 - Level 11.8 Transmutations


You have 14 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Blade Hands           Trmt           #####.....   1%          5    ####...
b - Haste                 Chrm           #####...     38%         6    ######.
c - Stoneskin             Trmt/Erth      ####......   1%          2    None
d - Regeneration          Chrm/Necr      ####......   1%          3    #......
e - Apportation           Tloc           #.........   12%         1    None
f - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          17%         2    None


Inventory:

Missiles
 s - a throwing net
 x - 3 javelins (quivered)
Armour
 e - the +3 crystal plate armour "Fyjeduw" {rElec rF+ rN+}
   (You acquired it on level 4 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   
   It protects you from fire.
   It insulates you from electricity.
   It protects you from negative energy.
 r - a +0 pair of gloves of strength (worn)
 F - a +0 pair of boots (worn)
 N - a +2 cloak of poison resistance (worn)
 P - a +0 chain mail of fire resistance
 X - a +1 leather armour of fire resistance (worn)
 Z - a +0 hat of magic resistance (worn)
Comestibles
 b - 12 bread rations
 c - 57 fruits
 g - 11 slices of pizza
 k - 3 beef jerkies
 l - 11 meat rations
 Y - 15 royal jellies
Scrolls
 n - 2 scrolls of magic mapping
 p - 3 scrolls of fog
 u - 3 scrolls of amnesia
 v - 3 scrolls of enchant weapon II
 w - 6 scrolls of blinking
 y - 9 scrolls of remove curse
 z - 3 scrolls of enchant armour
 D - a scroll of silence
 E - a scroll of summoning
 G - 6 scrolls of teleportation
 H - a scroll labeled KALEUCW NONA
 I - a scroll labeled SOS XUPNIPN
 M - 2 scrolls of fear
 R - a scroll labeled AHAESE CHAO
 T - 2 scrolls of vulnerability
 W - a scroll labeled STRIHO KLIMEZUQ
Jewellery
 d - a +3 ring of intelligence (left hand)
 f - an amulet of clarity (around neck)
 o - an uncursed ring of protection from cold
 q - an uncursed ring of stealth
 B - a +3 ring of evasion
 C - an uncursed ring of teleportation
 J - an uncursed amulet of warding
 Q - an uncursed ring of positive energy
 V - an uncursed amulet of the gourmand
Potions
 a - 8 potions of heal wounds
 h - 10 potions of curing
 j - 2 potions of agility
 m - a potion of magic
 t - a potion of brilliance
 K - 4 potions of resistance
 L - 4 potions of restore abilities
 O - 3 potions of might
Books
 U - a book of the Warp


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (15/15)            Temple (1/1) D:6             Orc (4/4) D:9
    Elf (0/3) Orc:4          Lair (8/8) D:11         Shoals (0/5) Lair:4
 Spider (1/5) Lair:4        Slime (0/6) Lair:6       Vaults (0/5) D:13
 Depths (0/5) D:15       

Altars:
Ashenzari
Cheibriados
Elyvilon
Gozag
Iashol
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Nemelex Xobeh
Okawaru
Qazlal
Sif Muna
Trog
Vehumet
Xom
Zin
Beogh
Jiyva
Lugonu

Shops:
D:10 [   D:11 !   Orc:3 ?   Orc:4 }?:=:

   ###
   ..#
###..#
#....#
 #@..#
#........#
###.......
   .......
   ...##..
   .#.#
   ####


There are no monsters in sight!

Message History

You are horrified by the sight of blood!
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
There is a staircase to the Lair here.
You fly downwards. Welcome to the Lair of Beasts!
There is a staircase back to the Dungeon here.
There is a stone staircase leading down here.
You fly downwards.
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
There is a stone staircase leading down here.
You fly downwards.
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
There is a stone staircase leading down here.
You fly downwards.
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
You are feeling very hungry.
(D) Dungeon        (T) Temple         (O) Orcish Mines   (E) Elven Halls   
(L) Lair           (A) Shoals         (N) Spider Nest    (M) Slime Pits     
(V) Vaults         (U) Depths         
Where to? (Enter - Spider:1, ? - help)
There is an escape hatch in the ceiling here.
You are horrified by the sight of blood!
There is a hole to the Spider Nest, spattered with blood here.
You fly downwards. Welcome to the Spider Nest!
There is a crawl-hole back to the Lair here.


Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Unarmed           |   111 |   163 |   476 |  1381 |  3169 |   224 ||  5524
Throw: Throwing net      |       |       |     1 |       |       |       ||     1
       Tomahawk          |       |       |       |    38 |       |       ||    38
       Javelin           |       |       |       |       |     9 |       ||     9
 Cast: Blade Hands       |       |       |       |       |    11 |     2 ||    13
       Summon Butterflie |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
       Stoneskin         |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
       Regeneration      |       |       |       |       |     6 |       ||     6
Invok: Sacrifice Arcana  |       |       |     1 |     1 |     2 |       ||     4
       Sacrifice Artific |       |       |     1 |       |       |       ||     1
       Sacrifice Drink   |       |       |       |     1 |       |       ||     1
       Power Leap        |       |       |       |     2 |     2 |       ||     4
       Cataclysm         |       |       |       |     2 |     2 |       ||     4
       Sacrifice Essence |       |       |       |     1 |     2 |       ||     3
       Sacrifice a Hand  |       |       |       |     1 |       |       ||     1
       Draw Out Power    |       |       |       |     3 |    17 |     1 ||    21
       Sacrifice Stealth |       |       |       |     1 |       |       ||     1
       Sacrifice Sanity  |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
       Sacrifice Words   |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
 Abil: Fly               |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
Evoke: Wand              |       |       |    11 |       |       |       ||    11
  Use: Scroll            |     2 |     1 |       |     7 |    26 |       ||    36
       Potion            |       |     2 |       |     5 |     3 |       ||    10
 Stab: Invisible         |       |       |       |    11 |    25 |     4 ||    40
       Paralysed         |       |       |       |       |    41 |     3 ||    44


Notes
Turn   | Place    | Note
--------------------------------------------------------------
     0 | D:1      | tasonir, the Gargoyle Monk, began the quest for the Orb.
     0 | D:1      | Reached XP level 1. HP: 14/14 MP: 1/1
   113 | D:1      | Reached XP level 2. HP: 16/19 MP: 2/2
   658 | D:1      | Reached skill level 5 in Unarmed Combat
   658 | D:1      | Reached XP level 3. HP: 23/23 MP: 3/3
  1327 | D:2      | Reached XP level 4. HP: 28/28 MP: 4/4
  1592 | D:2      | Found an opulent altar of Gozag.
  1764 | D:2      | Found a shimmering altar of Xom.
  1764 | D:2      | You fall through a shaft for 2 floors!
  1778 | D:4      | Noticed Pikel
  1778 | D:4      | Noticed a slave
  1778 | D:4      | Noticed a slave
  1778 | D:4      | Noticed a slave
  1779 | D:4      | Noticed a slave
  1810 | D:4      | Noticed an ogre
  1811 | D:4      | Noticed Eustachio
  1831 | D:5      | Entered Level 5 of the Dungeon
  1834 | D:5      | Reached skill level 6 in Unarmed Combat
  1834 | D:5      | Reached XP level 5. HP: 9/32 MP: 5/5
  1839 | D:5      | Noticed a centaur
  1856 | D:5      | Killed a centaur
  1856 | D:5      | Reached skill level 7 in Unarmed Combat
  1856 | D:5      | Reached XP level 6. HP: 6/37 MP: 6/6
  1987 | D:5      | HP: 4/37 [hippogriff zombie (5)]
  2563 | D:5      | Noticed an ogre
  2570 | D:5      | Killed an ogre
  2618 | D:5      | Reached skill level 8 in Unarmed Combat
  2770 | D:5      | Reached XP level 7. HP: 36/41 MP: 7/7
  2798 | D:5      | Noticed a centaur
  2808 | D:5      | Killed a centaur
  2871 | D:5      | Reached skill level 9 in Unarmed Combat
  3247 | D:6      | Reached XP level 8. HP: 44/46 MP: 8/8
  3469 | D:5      | Killed a slave
  3607 | D:4      | Killed an ogre
  3786 | D:4      | Killed Pikel
  3786 | D:4      | Reached skill level 11 in Unarmed Combat
  4050 | D:4      | Killed Eustachio
  4130 | D:4      | Reached skill level 4 in Fighting
  4332 | D:6      | HP: 1/48 [orc warrior/glaive (10)]
  4746 | D:6      | Reached skill level 3 in Dodging
  4746 | D:6      | Reached XP level 9. HP: 22/52 MP: 9/9
  5022 | D:6      | Found a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple.
  5054 | Temple   | Entered the Ecumenical Temple
  5080 | Temple   | Became a worshipper of Iashol the Incorporeal
  5080 | Temple   | Acquired Iashol's first power
  5080 | Temple   | Acquired Iashol's second power
  5472 | D:7      | Found a sparkling altar of Nemelex Xobeh.
  5753 | D:7      | Found a burning altar of Makhleb.
  5792 | D:7      | Found a snail-covered altar of Cheibriados.
  5979 | D:8      | Reached skill level 5 in Fighting
  6177 | D:8      | Gained mutation: You cannot study or use magical devices. [Iashol sacrifice]
  6177 | D:8      | Acquired Iashol's third power
  6323 | D:8      | Noticed Duvessa
  6323 | D:8      | Noticed Dowan
  6332 | D:8      | Killed Duvessa
  6338 | D:8      | Killed Dowan
  6387 | D:8      | Noticed Grum
  6394 | D:8      | Reached skill level 4 in Dodging
  6660 | D:8      | Killed Grum
  6660 | D:8      | Reached skill level 6 in Fighting
  7018 | D:8      | Noticed Blork the orc
  7028 | D:8      | Killed Blork the orc
  7076 | D:8      | Found an opulent altar of Gozag.
  7330 | D:9      | Reached skill level 12 in Unarmed Combat
  7521 | D:9      | Reached skill level 1 in Armour
  7558 | D:9      | Reached skill level 2 in Armour
  7558 | D:9      | Reached XP level 10. HP: 54/61 MP: 10/10
  7651 | D:9      | Reached skill level 3 in Armour
  7696 | D:9      | Found a roughly hewn altar of Beogh.
  7710 | D:8      | Reached skill level 4 in Armour
  7715 | D:8      | Gained mutation: You cannot drink potions while threatened. [Iashol sacrifice]
  7715 | D:8      | Acquired Iashol's fourth power
  7835 | D:8      | HP: 5/61 [ogre/giant spiked club (20)]
  8140 | D:8      | Reached skill level 5 in Armour
  8580 | D:9      | Found a staircase to the Orcish Mines.
  8672 | D:8      | Reached skill level 6 in Armour
  9095 | D:9      | Noticed Maurice
  9311 | D:9      | Reached skill level 7 in Armour
  9346 | D:9      | HP: 6/61 [yak (7)]
  9352 | D:9      | HP: 7/61 [yak (9)]
  9460 | D:9      | Reached skill level 8 in Armour
  9546 | D:9      | Noticed a hill giant
 10143 | D:8      | Killed a hill giant
 10143 | D:8      | Reached skill level 9 in Armour
 10322 | D:9      | Killed Maurice
 10322 | D:9      | Reached skill level 5 in Dodging
 10409 | D:9      | Reached XP level 11. HP: 61/66 MP: 11/11
 10522 | D:9      | Found a shattered altar of Ashenzari.
 10525 | D:9      | Found an ancient bone altar of Kikubaaqudgha.
 10528 | D:9      | Found a radiant altar of Vehumet.
 10678 | D:10     | Entered Level 10 of the Dungeon
 10685 | D:10     | Noticed a hill giant
 10975 | D:9      | Killed a hill giant
 11129 | D:9      | Gained mutation: You are missing a hand. [Iashol sacrifice]
 11129 | D:9      | Acquired Iashol's fifth power
 11137 | D:9      | Learned a level 5 spell: Blade Hands
 11366 | D:10     | Reached skill level 1 in Spellcasting
 11366 | D:10     | Reached skill level 1 in Transmutations
 11374 | D:10     | Learned a level 6 spell: Haste
 11593 | D:10     | Noticed a three-headed hydra
 11599 | D:10     | Reached skill level 2 in Spellcasting
 11610 | D:10     | Killed a three-headed hydra
 11610 | D:10     | Reached skill level 2 in Transmutations
 11674 | D:10     | Reached skill level 3 in Transmutations
 11985 | D:10     | Reached skill level 4 in Transmutations
 12001 | D:10     | Found a corrupted altar of Lugonu.
 12088 | D:10     | Reached skill level 5 in Transmutations
 12187 | D:10     | Found Cuetafih's Antique Armour Shop.
 12401 | D:11     | Found Wuawk's Distillery.
 12757 | D:11     | Reached skill level 6 in Transmutations
 12772 | D:11     | Noticed a hill giant
 12781 | D:11     | Killed a hill giant
 12841 | D:11     | Gained mutation: You are slightly vulnerable to magic. (-20 MR) [Iashol sacrifice]
 12874 | D:11     | Reached XP level 12. HP: 39/71 MP: 20/20
 13232 | D:11     | Noticed a hill giant
 13245 | D:11     | Killed a hill giant
 13245 | D:11     | Reached skill level 7 in Transmutations
 13376 | D:11     | Noticed a hill giant
 13465 | D:11     | HP: 2/71 [guardian serpent/bolt of poison (15)]
 13796 | D:11     | Found a shimmering altar of Xom.
 13935 | D:11     | Reached skill level 8 in Transmutations
 14279 | D:10     | Killed a hill giant
 14508 | D:11     | Noticed a hill giant
 14737 | D:11     | Killed a hill giant
 14885 | D:11     | Found a staircase to the Lair.
 15003 | D:10     | HP: 10/71 [catoblepas zombie (7)]
 15442 | D:11     | Reached skill level 9 in Transmutations
 16162 | Lair:1   | Entered Level 1 of the Lair of Beasts
 16200 | Lair:1   | Gained mutation: You cannot be stealthy. [Iashol sacrifice]
 16220 | Lair:1   | Reached skill level 2 in Stealth
 16374 | Lair:1   | Reached skill level 10 in Transmutations
 17123 | Lair:1   | Reached XP level 13. HP: 45/75 MP: 20/20
 17157 | Lair:1   | Reached skill level 11 in Transmutations
 17370 | Lair:1   | Reached skill level 6 in Dodging
 17453 | Lair:1   | Gained mutation: You are terrified of blood. [Iashol sacrifice]
 18023 | Lair:2   | Reached skill level 3 in Spellcasting
 18534 | Lair:2   | Reached skill level 4 in Spellcasting
 18843 | Lair:2   | Noticed Gastronok
 18865 | Lair:2   | Killed Gastronok
 19261 | Lair:2   | Reached skill level 5 in Spellcasting
 19366 | Lair:3   | Gained mutation: You are vulnerable to magic. (-20 MR) [Iashol sacrifice]
 19538 | Lair:3   | Identified a scroll of acquirement
 20016 | Lair:3   | Reached skill level 6 in Spellcasting
 20387 | Lair:4   | Identified a potion of resistance
 20392 | Lair:4   | Learned a level 2 spell: Stoneskin
 20399 | Lair:4   | Learned a level 6 spell: Deflect Missiles
 20406 | Lair:4   | Learned a level 1 spell: Apportation
 20409 | Lair:4   | Learned a level 2 spell: Blink
 20411 | Lair:4   | Learned a level 1 spell: Summon Butterflies
 20555 | Lair:4   | Gained mutation: You are partially covered in thin metallic scales (AC +2). [potion of beneficial mutation]
 20558 | Lair:4   | Found a hole to the Spider Nest.
 20732 | Lair:4   | Got an ichor-stained crystal plate armour
 20751 | Lair:4   | Identified the +3 crystal plate armour "Fyjeduw" {rElec rF+ rN+} (You acquired it on level 4 of the Lair of Beasts)
 21113 | Lair:4   | Found a staircase to the Shoals.
 21142 | Lair:4   | Reached skill level 7 in Spellcasting
 21766 | Lair:5   | Gained mutation: You cannot study or cast Summoning magic. [Iashol sacrifice]
 21766 | Lair:5   | Gained mutation: You cannot study or cast Hexes magic. [Iashol sacrifice]
 21766 | Lair:5   | Gained mutation: You cannot study or cast Air magic. [Iashol sacrifice]
 21775 | Lair:5   | Reached skill level 8 in Spellcasting
 22241 | Lair:5   | Gained mutation: Your wings are large and strong. [gargoyle growth]
 22241 | Lair:5   | Reached XP level 14. HP: 75/80 MP: 30/30
 22534 | Lair:5   | HP: 11/80 [elephant (12)]
 22791 | Lair:5   | Reached skill level 9 in Spellcasting
 23077 | Lair:6   | Reached skill level 7 in Fighting
 23156 | Lair:6   | Gained mutation: You cannot read scrolls while threatened. [Iashol sacrifice]
 23931 | Lair:6   | Found a viscous altar of Jiyva.
 23932 | Lair:6   | Found a staircase to the Slime Pits.
 24388 | Lair:7   | Gained mutation: You have a slow metabolism. [potion of beneficial mutation]
 24494 | Lair:7   | Reached skill level 13 in Unarmed Combat
 24772 | Lair:7   | Reached skill level 8 in Fighting
 25039 | Lair:8   | Entered Level 8 of the Lair of Beasts
 25454 | Lair:8   | Reached skill level 9 in Fighting
 26948 | Lair:8   | Reached skill level 10 in Fighting
 26962 | Lair:8   | Reached skill level 14 in Unarmed Combat
 27750 | Orc:1    | Entered Level 1 of the Orcish Mines
 27930 | Orc:2    | Noticed Reynoldscorey's ghost (powerful MiFi)
 27953 | Orc:2    | Killed Reynoldscorey's ghost
 27953 | Orc:2    | Reached XP level 15. HP: 53/93 MP: 27/32
 27967 | Orc:2    | Gained mutation: Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP). [Iashol sacrifice]
 28096 | Orc:2    | Found a roughly hewn altar of Beogh.
 28351 | Orc:3    | Found Wicom's Magic Scroll Shop.
 28354 | Orc:3    | Bought a scroll of blinking for 105 gold pieces
 28354 | Orc:3    | Bought a scroll of identify for 28 gold pieces
 29046 | Orc:4    | Entered Level 4 of the Orcish Mines
 29144 | Orc:4    | Found a staircase to the Elven Halls.
 29153 | Orc:4    | Found Wuacs' Gadget Boutique.
 29832 | Orc:4    | Paralysed by an orc sorcerer for 7 turns
 29850 | Orc:4    | Reached skill level 11 in Fighting
 30181 | Orc:4    | HP: 6/94 [orc knight/glaive (23)]
 30665 | Orc:4    | Found Pnoest's Magic Scroll Emporium.
 30668 | Orc:4    | Found Klag's Jewellery Emporium.
 30668 | Orc:4    | Found Siur's Book Shop.
 30675 | Orc:4    | Found Thruasid's Book Shop.
 30681 | Orc:4    | Bought a scroll of fog for 28 gold pieces
 30681 | Orc:4    | Bought a scroll of identify for 28 gold pieces
 30681 | Orc:4    | Bought a scroll of teleportation for 42 gold pieces
 30689 | Orc:4    | Bought a book of the Warp for 1440 gold pieces
 30692 | Orc:4    | Bought a book of Battle for 480 gold pieces
 30702 | Orc:4    | Learned a level 3 spell: Regeneration
 30903 | D:12     | Found a white marble altar of Elyvilon.
 31009 | D:12     | Reached skill level 1 in Necromancy
 31161 | D:12     | Reached skill level 1 in Charms
 31478 | D:12     | Reached skill level 2 in Charms
 31630 | D:12     | Reached skill level 2 in Necromancy
 31805 | D:13     | Found a gate to the Vaults.
 32094 | D:12     | Reached skill level 3 in Charms
 32209 | D:12     | Reached skill level 3 in Necromancy
 32578 | D:13     | Reached skill level 4 in Charms
 33164 | D:13     | Noticed Psyche
 33175 | D:13     | Killed Psyche
 33175 | D:13     | Reached skill level 4 in Necromancy
 33475 | D:14     | Reached skill level 5 in Charms
 34186 | D:14     | Reached skill level 6 in Charms
 34878 | D:15     | Entered Level 15 of the Dungeon
 34951 | D:15     | Reached skill level 7 in Charms
 35004 | D:15     | Reached XP level 16. HP: 70/100 MP: 28/28
 35337 | D:15     | Reached skill level 8 in Charms
 36072 | D:15     | Found a bloodstained altar of Trog.
 36388 | D:15     | Found a staircase to the Depths.
 36424 | D:15     | Reached skill level 9 in Charms
 36858 | Spider:1 | Entered Level 1 of the Spider Nest

Vanquished Creatures
  Gastronok (Lair:2)
  8 vault guards
  5 hydras
  The ghost of Reynoldscorey the Basher, a powerful MiFi of Iashol (Orc:2)
  A rakshasa (D:15)
  A ravenous item mimic (Lair:8)
  3 orc high priests (Orc:4)
  A tengu warrior (D:15)
  2 centaur warriors
  A giant orange brain (D:15)
  2 unseen horrors
  Pikel (D:4)
  12 hill giants
  5 orc knights
  3 orc sorcerers (Orc:4)
  2 griffons (Lair:6)
  A mana viper (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  2 cyclopes
  A draconian (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  A salamander (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  11 elephants
  2 manticores
  Maurice (D:9)
  2 gargoyles
  A guardian serpent (D:11)
  A smoke demon (Orc:4)
  3 black mambas
  Psyche (D:13)
  34 spiny frogs
  2 fire drakes
  5 komodo dragons
  An iron devil (Orc:4)
  An efreet (D:15)
  4 kobold demonologists
  A blue devil (D:10)
  A queen bee (Lair:1)
  A tengu conjurer (D:15)
  4 trolls
  An elf (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  3 freezing wraiths
  A catoblepas zombie (D:10)
  A merfolk (Lair:4)
  A red devil (D:10)
  5 polar bears
  6 deep elf magi
  A two-headed ogre (D:15)
  A baby alligator (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  A queen bee (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  5 slime creatures (D:15)
  14 blink frogs
  4 giant leeches
  3 ravens (D:15)
  2 basilisks
  A snapping turtle (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  A shadow (D:14)
  A trapdoor spider (D:14)
  A steam dragon (D:11)
  8 sharks
  78 yaks
  Eustachio (D:4)
  A neqoxec (Orc:4)
  12 vampire mosquitoes
  3 wyverns
  A hungry ghost (D:11)
  17 ugly things
  9 hippogriffs
  Grum (D:8)
  A golden eye (shapeshifter) (D:15)
  A wolf (shapeshifter) (D:13)
  9 wolves
  3 wraiths
  A warg (Orc:2)
  A tengu zombie (D:14)
  2 soldier ants
  2 sky beasts
  2 mottled dragons
  15 water moccasins
  4 ice beasts
  8 porcupines
  27 orc warriors
  2 yellow wasps
  A phantom (D:9)
  2 black bears
  A slave (D:5)
  3 boring beetles
  9 centaurs
  2 necrophages
  17 ogres
  14 crocodiles
  A manticore skeleton (D:15)
  Duvessa (D:8)
  5 big kobolds
  31 giant frogs
  Blork the orc (D:8)
  A gnoll sergeant (D:11)
  A yaktaur skeleton (D:14)
  A hippogriff zombie (D:5)
  31 killer bees
  4 scorpions
  A manticore simulacrum (D:14)
  12 electric eels
  2 eyes of draining
  A troll zombie (D:8)
  A yak zombie (D:10)
  2 yak skeletons (Orc:4)
  3 quasits
  A troll skeleton (D:8)
  Dowan (D:8)
  5 crimson imps
  A goliath beetle (D:7)
  A hippogriff skeleton (D:8)
  12 big fish
  5 jellies
  A kobold zombie (D:11)
  A lava snake (Lair:3)
  16 wights
  A giant frog skeleton (D:9)
  A gnoll shaman (D:9)
  14 orc priests
  11 hounds
  24 orc wizards
  A two-headed ogre skeleton (D:12)
  A yak simulacrum (D:9)
  5 iguanas
  24 sheep
  8 worker ants
  2 mummies
  A hound skeleton (D:7)
  22 gnolls
  30 green rats
  28 adders
  2 giant mites
  An inept feature mimic (Lair:1)
  5 shadow imps
  An inept item mimic (D:2)
  2 white imps (D:10)
  An ufetubus (D:10)
  An adder skeleton (D:6)
  154 orcs
  An orc simulacrum (D:9)
  15 bats
  A bat zombie (D:5)
  5 giant cockroaches
  13 goblins
  28 hobgoblins
  11 quokkas
  4 giant geckos
  2 giant newts (D:1)
  A giant spore (D:9)
  A goblin skeleton (Orc:4)
  A hobgoblin skeleton (D:7)
  7 jackals
  18 kobolds
  7 orc zombies
  13 rats
  6 rat skeletons (Orc:4)
  3 ballistomycetes (D:10)
  3 plants
1064 creatures vanquished.

Vanquished Creatures (others)
  A wizard (D:15)
  A water moccasin (Lair:6)
  A crimson imp (D:10)
  An orc (D:14)
  A goblin (D:4)
  A giant spore (D:10)
  A rat (D:4)
  5 rat skeletons (Orc:4)
  A bush (Lair:8)
  3 fungi
  8 plants
24 creatures vanquished.

Grand Total: 1088 creatures vanquished


I don't know if cataclysm is that overpowered, the skill drain is pretty immense, but I suppose it could be toned down a bit. You might want to scale it off character level, because it's going to kill anything in the early game pretty easily due to them having lower health than late game monsters. Haven't gone far enough to see how it compares to vaults/depths/zot packs. It wipes out dungeon/orc/lair packs pretty easily.

The thing that is more abusable imho is draw out power, which doesn't really have much skill drain at all. I usually worked it completely off in the next 5-10 monsters; I'd consider doubling or even tripling the drain on that. Having such a powerful healing ability is incredibly life saving.

Sacrifice Sanity (the fear of blood conduct) is a lot cooler and meaningful than I thought it would be, at least in terms of spell success. But it doesn't seem to have much impact on melee - I thought it was supposed to hurt melee as well? If it does, the penalties are currently too small to notice.

Giving up wands, potions, and scrolls isn't that big of a sacrifice because they are primarily used for healing, hasting, and teleporting. Healing is covered by draw out power, and haste can still be learned as a spell. It's also a lot easier to run from 10 speed monsters without haste due to faltering, as I mentioned above, you might want to make movement never falter. Not having teleport wands hurts, but you can use the scrolls as long as you haven't taken a big enough hit to disable them. Consider making the -scroll/-potion effect always trigger on less than X health? Say around 30-50%? In addition to the current on big hit effect, which lets it show up randomly even if you're high on health.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 23:16

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Quick idea for a monk: Upon joining you get to make one sacrifice immediately, and will get a second opportunity to sacrifice relatively soon thereafter, as opposed to getting free piety without sacrificing.

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Post Sunday, 15th June 2014, 23:59

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Thanks for all the feedback, folks! I'm still working on fixing up the biggest issues. I've resolved the following:

* Everything related to being one-handed
* Missing Essence sacrifices
* Some variables getting lost on saves
* some typos, including the MR mutation one.

Here's a truncated list of what needs to be done:
Cataclysm
* cataclysm drain proportional to damage?
* Make big noise
* Damage proportional to level or invo or both?
* Focus more on status and lessen damage?

Power Leap:
* cut damage by about 60%

Overall
* more clarity around what you get for each sacrifice?
* Faith/Monks
* Mark useless items properly
* Acquirement needs work
* Summoning sacrifice should be less valuable after sac love and vice versa
* can offer NO ABILITY sacrifices
*edit: Skill descriptions on the religion menu (^) doesn't fit within the space available:
* readjust skillpoint scaling

I'll be working on these as fast as I can. I like and_into's idea for how to handle Monks, and I'll implement it soon.
Edit: fixed the skill sacrifices issue.
Edit2: fixed the arcane sacrifices issues.
Last edited by Lasty on Monday, 16th June 2014, 01:57, edited 2 times in total.

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 00:05

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

tasonir wrote:Sacrifice Sanity (the fear of blood conduct) is a lot cooler and meaningful than I thought it would be, at least in terms of spell success. But it doesn't seem to have much impact on melee - I thought it was supposed to hurt melee as well? If it does, the penalties are currently too small to notice.

The "Horror" status gives a small penalty to cast rates and -1 slaying for each bloody tile in LOS. If it's too small, it could be 2/tile, but that might be a bit much. The status has yellow/red/dark red levels, and at even red levels you should see some difference in melee.

scorpionwarrior wrote:And whenever I use Power Leap I don't actually leap and I get a message like "Something unexpected blocks you from leaping!" Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug?"

This message should only come up if you leap onto an occupied space, generally one where there's an invisible monster. If you're getting it under other circumstances, that's a bug. :D

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 00:42

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Ah, ok. Thanks, I assumed it worked like shadow step for some dumb reason
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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 01:58

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I have a TrMo going with Iashol on CSZO (under the name Superterranean) and I have sacrificed an arm. I don't think the code that removes the ring is working - at least, my inventory still shows that I'm wearing the ring on my stumped hand. Then, I got a ?acq and spent it immediately - and got a shield. picked it up, noticed it went in K, hit shift-W shift-K, and now I'm wearing a shield. and attacking things. Throwing large rocks, too.

correction: after I took off my shield, I can't put on another one.

another late edit: amulets of faith probably shouldn't cause Iashol worshippers to lose piety. Or they should do something else, maybe?

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 05:52

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

As soon as I logged back in my stealth skill was sent back to 0. Slight problem that only affects previously bugged characters: My ring happened to be in the second ring slot, and so now I can't remove it :) But that should mean it's fixed for all characters created from this point forward, so I guess I just get +3 int. For now I'm keeping my other ring slot empty, but I might cave in and equip something since being stuck on +3 int forever would be terrible when I really need a rF ring or similar.

Power jump was very useful for orb spiders, shame I only remembered I had it around spider:4, but I used it 3-4 times to great effect.

Didn't see any new issues, and really appreciate the fast bug fixes. In case I haven't mentioned it before, Iashol is really awesome and is easy a top 3 god for me ;) I had high expectations and you've met them. Really hope she can be official in .15, not sure how much time there is for still adding a major feature like a god. Still a fair amount of balance work to be done I'm sure, but that'll take more than one overpowered gargoyle to sort out!

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 11:19

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

superterranean wrote:I have a TrMo going with Iashol on CSZO (under the name Superterranean) and I have sacrificed an arm. I don't think the code that removes the ring is working - at least, my inventory still shows that I'm wearing the ring on my stumped hand. Then, I got a ?acq and spent it immediately - and got a shield. picked it up, noticed it went in K, hit shift-W shift-K, and now I'm wearing a shield. and attacking things. Throwing large rocks, too.

correction: after I took off my shield, I can't put on another one.

another late edit: amulets of faith probably shouldn't cause Iashol worshippers to lose piety. Or they should do something else, maybe?

It sounds like the patch that fixes the hand sacrifice was loaded after you already sacrificed your hand. It should be working now.

For amulets of faith, I'm toying with three options: 1) making them useless, or 2) making them speed up the process by which Iashol offers sacrifices, or 3) ensure that removing the amulet removes all the piety that you gained under the amulet. I don't think I like 3), either in terms of effect or how I would have to implement it, and the balance for 2) might be bad, so I'm leaning toward 1).

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 11:25

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

tasonir wrote:As soon as I logged back in my stealth skill was sent back to 0. Slight problem that only affects previously bugged characters: My ring happened to be in the second ring slot, and so now I can't remove it :)

Oops, unforeseen consequence of the patch! My vote would be to let you use a second ring immediately, since Int+3 is barely a ring anyway.

Didn't see any new issues, and really appreciate the fast bug fixes.

Huge thanks on this also to |amethyst, who has been giving me a ton of C++ and crawl code info and also has been applying these bug fixes as fast as I make them! Not to mention that he set up the experimental branch in the first place.

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 13:16

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

This looks fantastic - I love the idea of meaningful sacrifices (just sacrificing a hand before finding a fantastic two handed weapon or shield- eep).

As added flavor/conduct, how about making all summons/allies hostile? this would fit in with the 'IASHOL THE TERRIBLE AND POWERFUL!' theme quite well.
I know it's one of the sacrifices, but it could be an enforced first one which would effect non summoners equally as they wouldn't be able to use scrolls/some evokables. Its quite a heft price to pay, but the abilities in return are awesome.
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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 18:09

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I've completed an Iashol game. Overall I really like the concept and enjoyed the game, I hope this god makes it into a release version.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/lessens/mor ... 025841.txt

Anyway a few bugs to report.

-Frequently got a sacrifice called "No Ability", people have already mentioned this. I assume it's sacrifices I've already taken coming up again and breaking?
-Spell sacrificing doesn't work. I ended this game with transloc blocked but blink memorized, pretty sure it wasn't grayed out when I memorized, but I never cast it so I could be mistaken, (it certain looks castable, 38% failure rate, I regret forgetting to test this). However Air Magic was definitely blocked and I was able to memorize Flight and cast it several times, this might work for other useful Air/Charms spells but I'm not sure. In any case this may not even be that horrible of a thing, letting players simply not train those spell schools but letting them cast some of the lower-level spells in those schools by training up other schools on multiple-school spells (or just by int+spellcasting), but that definitely weakens the importance of the sacrifice since many of the most useful spells are multi-school, low-level or both. Perhaps I am mistaken and multi-school spells are supposed to be castable?
-I am not sure sacrifice love appeared in my game at all. It certainly did not appear while I was still taking on additional sacrifices. Has anyone gotten this?

And some suggestions.

-Sacrificing potions is too weak at the moment. I almost never saw it come up, and never did it occur at a time when I wanted to use a potion in an entire 3-rune game. I assume scroll sacrifice works the same way. Unless these are meant to be sort of "freebie" sacrifices that everyone takes and they rarely do anything, it should occur more often. If so the description should be adjusted because it the current one makes it sound devastating whereas in practice it basically doesn't exist.
-As much as I hate to admit it, Cataclysm is too strong at the moment. I like the idea of scaling draining to damage done and scaling damage to level (scaling it to invoc and outright reducing damage less so), as long as both are kept within bounds. Maybe a lvl 14 Cataclysm could deal 1/2-2/3 of the damage of a lvl 27 Cataclysm and drain up to a max of 2.0 draining if it damages a large number of enemies. I do think it should remain quite strong because the player has made some very significant sacrifices to get to a full-power Cataclysm and should get something very impressive in return, I mean the aura effects are certainly great but they're also in the background whereas a strong Cataclysm really demonstrates that you're getting something quite powerful in return for what you've lost.
-The idea of giving the player an idea of how much piety they'll gain from a given sacrifice is very good. I would have chosen different had I known this and the current system encourages the player to look up spoilers rather than play.
-This may already exist given how many sacrifices I had to take to get from 5 to 6 pips, but there shouldn't be any 'hidden piety' within the 6th pip between 160-200 piety. The player should know when their sacrifices are no longer benefiting them, otherwise they're encouraged to do metagame math to determine exactly what their piety is and when they can stop.
-Right now I think the god tends to be most beneficial for heavy armour melee-type characters with little or no spellcasting abilities, less useful for more hybridized characters and almost useless for characters that use conjurations as their primary means of damage. I guess this is intentional but it would be nice if there were some sacrifice options that favor the latter two more, not sure how well this would work?

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 19:57

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

lessens wrote:-Right now I think the god tends to be most beneficial for heavy armour melee-type characters with little or no spellcasting abilities, less useful for more hybridized characters and almost useless for characters that use conjurations as their primary means of damage. I guess this is intentional but it would be nice if there were some sacrifice options that favor the latter two more, not sure how well this would work?

I agree it's probably simpler to set up a pure melee character with this god because you know you can easily sacrifice magic abilities, but it isn't too terribly difficult to set up a hybrid with some limited spellcasting ability as well. You tend to sac things like a hand, potions/scrolls/wands, some essence, sanity, etc. My hybrid monk with blade hands/haste is posted about 10 or so posts above this. He isn't nearly a primary caster, though. I thought blade hands was a good way to get around the 1h limitation and still do high damage with only one hand. And you can't use a shield with blade hands anyways. Seemed like good synergy.

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 19:59

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Current piety gains for different sacrifices. Let me know if you think some values need change or nuance:

  Code:
Sac drink/words: 35 + 0-4
Sac Health/Essence: 30 + 0-4
Sac Purity: 10 + 0-4 for the stat penalties, 25 + 0-4 for the others.
Sac Stealth:  30 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into stealth
Sac Artifice: 40 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into Evo
Sac Nimbleness: 30 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into Dodging
Sac Durability: 30 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into Armour
Sac Sanity: 25 + 0-4
Sac Love: 25 + 0-4 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into Summonings
Sac Arcane: 25 + 0-4 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into the skill (PER SKILL) (Currently bugged to give too much piety)
Sac Hand: 80 + a variable amount depending on how much you already invested into Shields

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 21:26

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Does that mean that I could train stealth for a while before saccing it for somewhat large amounts of piety? How much does the variable amount scale up to? If you do this, the skills are just lost and there's no compensation (aside from the piety)? Does future skill training still count the exp you once had, or do you earn skill levels based on your now lower total skill level?

Seems like it could be a decent strategy to try to set up future sacrifices with decently leveled skills so that you need to make fewer sacrifices in total.

Also I had no idea hand was 80, I probably didn't need to make as many sacrifices as I did :)

To me, saccing armor/dodging should probably be worth more than 30. They also mention that there's an increase if you sac both, which you didn't mention. What is the bonus for both?

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Post Monday, 16th June 2014, 23:42

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

The first turn after you land a teleport your Horror status doesn't update immediately. Ie, after sacrificing sanity, fight in area with several blood stains, get in trouble, teleport out, where you land you will have X blood stains counted against you, even though the new area you landed in has 0 blood stains. It correctly updates after a turn, but your first turn is penalized.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 01:09

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 005849.txt

Well, I didn't quite make it, dying in depths:4. I had some trouble dealing with sac sanity and blade hands, but without blade hands it still generated a decent amount of blood, and lower damage output hurt even more than the horror penalties. Some adjustment to horror is probably warranted, but exactly what I don't know. Having it go off corpses would be good except for animate dead...Is there some way to tell the age of a blood stain? Can the blood dry up after 30-40 turns and no longer count? Not sure. It's still an overall good sacrifice.

Another option is it doesn't apply if there are no visible monsters in LOS. It was annoying having to move to a different area to cast regeneration to heal up after fights. Combined with blade hands, I had a ton of things trying to get me to accidentally miscast something at an unexpectedly high failure rate :) My resistances were also completely terrible, as I had to wear a lot of MR items to counterbalance the -40 MR sacrifice. Never found anything with multiple resists (other than a CPA that was too heavy, and it was only rF/rN). Rare to be lacking resists on a gargoyle who already takes care of rpois/relec/rN for free :)

RIP getting to cheat with 2 rings and one hand. Also, we need a 1 bladed blade hands tile. Or just general 1 handed tiles for unfortunate adventurers.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 02:31

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Today I pushed out patches for the following issues, though it may be a little bit before the experimental branch is updated with them:

* Fixed the No Ability sacrifice
* Turned off amulet of faith for Iashol
* Made cataclysm as loud as shatter
* scaled damage on power jump/cataclysm by level, starting from 2/3rds damage at XL1 to full damage at XL 27. Let's see how that goes.
* Marking useless items as useless.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 04:12

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Lasty wrote:* Turned off amulet of faith for Iashol.
Everything else is great, but Gozag and Xom show special casing is superior to disabling with "faith. It seems reasonable for "faith to give more Iashol piety per sacrifice, but take away some of the carefully earned piety on removal.
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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 04:24

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

25-29 Piety for what amounts to song of anti-slaying (sanity) seems kind of low, especially when something like stealth gives more than it.
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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 11:48

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I will give the changes a try today or tomorrow and use the opportunity to test the sacrifices I opted to avoid last time. Are there specific features and areas of balance that Lasty and the dev team would like to be tested?

I'd also like to see Faith remain but ideally it would be handled differently for Iashol. One thing I really enjoyed about the god was the lack of piety loss, and although it is not a big deal for the special case of Faith to violate that it would be thematic and potentially interesting to see an alternative cost. The best way to do that I can think of would be to force random sacrifices on Faith removal but make those sacrifices less than the piety value the player has gained through wearing Faith. Essentially, the player gets to make less sacrifices overall, but also gets less control over which sacrifices are made. The biggest problem here of course would be alerting the player that this is going to happen - you can mitigate this somewhat by increasing the 'severity' of the prompt so that players have the type in 'yes', as is the case for walking into Zot traps, giving a fairly detailed description of what will happen in the prompt (a long text entry in the message box would catch the player's attention), and giving that same prompt when wearing and removing the amulet, but there will still inevitably be mishaps. Players are very inattentive. There have been multiple deaths due to channeling over water in Cocytus alone. There is also a potential problem in communicating what happens when a player use-IDs an amulet of Faith while already worshiping Iashol (the strong prompt should be given to players who are wearing it while choosing to worship) and I am less sure about how to do this short of allowing the player the option of not using the amulet - which may be okay as a special case for Iashol.

Alternately, removing Faith could remove sacrifices to a greater degree than the piety lost, but I think this is a worse option because it's harder to advise players of potential benefits than to warn them of potential risks, at least in this circumstance.

I am less sure about options that simply affect piety. If piety is reduced to a greater degree than what's gained by wearing Faith, then it's simply a trap to players who wear it. If piety is reduced by the same value, then the main effect of Faith is that you get to delay the last few sacrifices for some time in exchange for the benefits of high/full piety. If piety is reduced by a lesser value than the cost of the sacrifices, it's a no-brainer to wear Faith early (though perhaps this is the case with many gods). Probably the middle option, followed by the last, are the best choices.

A final option would be to give penance, a penance-like effect, or a penance-like racial mutation for removing Faith. Iashol would inflict Iashol-style effects on the player while they were afflicted with this, perhaps permanently. To me this seems like an interesting idea but it comes with a number of thematic and gameplay problems that I won't bother to enumerate unless developers are seriously interested in this idea. Hopefully they should be obvious on both fronts.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 12:49

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

The fixes I mentioned before are all in the experimental branch now. A few new fixes went out this morning, but aren't yet in the experimental branch, AFAIK:

* Fixed the excessive piety gain on Sac Arcana (now 25 + 0-4 + prorated bonus for skill points)
* Under Sacrifice Artifice, staves and rod of striking no longer proc their special damage, and scroll of recharging is properly marked as useless
* Sac Drink / Sac Scrolls will apply their statuses with a much better formula. The new formula scales up the odds of applying the status based on health percentage after damage, with 15% or lower being a guarantee of applying the status.

Edit: these updates are now on the experimental branch
Last edited by Lasty on Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 15:15, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 12:57

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Bloax wrote:25-29 Piety for what amounts to song of anti-slaying (sanity) seems kind of low, especially when something like stealth gives more than it.

I would agree if it was constant or unavoidable, but as it is, you can usually avoid having it impact you too badly by going somewhere else, so I made it a lower piety sacrifice. I'm open to the idea that it might need another 5 or so piety, if people find that it's particularly harmful.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 13:32

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

tasonir wrote:The first turn after you land a teleport your Horror status doesn't update immediately. Ie, after sacrificing sanity, fight in area with several blood stains, get in trouble, teleport out, where you land you will have X blood stains counted against you, even though the new area you landed in has 0 blood stains. It correctly updates after a turn, but your first turn is penalized.

Oh, good find. I guess the teleport kicks in after we check the amount of blood. I'll see what I can do about that.

tasonir wrote:I had some trouble dealing with sac sanity and blade hands, but without blade hands it still generated a decent amount of blood, and lower damage output hurt even more than the horror penalties. Some adjustment to horror is probably warranted, but exactly what I don't know. Having it go off corpses would be good except for animate dead...Is there some way to tell the age of a blood stain? Can the blood dry up after 30-40 turns and no longer count? Not sure. It's still an overall good sacrifice.

Another option is it doesn't apply if there are no visible monsters in LOS.

Age of a bloodstain seems reasonable to me -- dried blood should be less frightening than fresh blood. I'll look into it. Thematically, I'd hate to make it dependent on monsters in LOS.

tasonir wrote:Does that mean that I could train stealth for a while before saccing it for somewhat large amounts of piety? How much does the variable amount scale up to? If you do this, the skills are just lost and there's no compensation (aside from the piety)? Does future skill training still count the exp you once had, or do you earn skill levels based on your now lower total skill level?

Yes and no -- if you train a skill heavily before sacrificing it, the sacrifice definitely counts for more, because those skill points are lost to you forever with no other compensation. Currently I think you may get a disproportionately large piety gain from this, but making it more reasonable is on my list. I'm not certain whether those points are counted for future skill training.

tasonir wrote:To me, saccing armor/dodging should probably be worth more than 30. They also mention that there's an increase if you sac both, which you didn't mention. What is the bonus for both?

Well, the difficulty is that for some characters, sacrificing Dodging is almost no penalty; for others, sacrificing Armour is almost no penalty; for others sacrificing either is a significant penalty. That makes it hard to determine the correct piety value. I'm open to suggestions. Currently there's not an extra piety bonus for sacrificing both, but that's just because I neglected to actually code that part -- I'd probably give at least an extra 20-30 piety for sacrificing both, since that's likely to be a significant problem for any character.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 13:37

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

lessens wrote:I will give the changes a try today or tomorrow and use the opportunity to test the sacrifices I opted to avoid last time. Are there specific features and areas of balance that Lasty and the dev team would like to be tested?

It sounds like the majority of the testers have focused on a heavy-armour build. Trying something other than that would provide some good data.

lessens wrote:I'd also like to see Faith remain but ideally it would be handled differently for Iashol.
. . .
Alternately, removing Faith could remove sacrifices to a greater degree than the piety lost, but I think this is a worse option because it's harder to advise players of potential benefits than to warn them of potential risks, at least in this circumstance.

I am less sure about options that simply affect piety. If piety is reduced to a greater degree than what's gained by wearing Faith, then it's simply a trap to players who wear it. If piety is reduced by the same value, then the main effect of Faith is that you get to delay the last few sacrifices for some time in exchange for the benefits of high/full piety. If piety is reduced by a lesser value than the cost of the sacrifices, it's a no-brainer to wear Faith early (though perhaps this is the case with many gods). Probably the middle option, followed by the last, are the best choices.

I think you've identified the challenges with "faith for Iashol. It can't give you more than you pay for, and it can't take more than you gave, or else it doesn't work thematically. Having it speed up the rate of sacrifices would be okay, but then it's hard to apply a meaningful penalty when you remove it. Whatever benefits/penalties are associated with it need to be visible to the player, and should not be random, since this god is about making informed choices and suffering the inevitable consequences. I'm open to the idea of reenabling "faith as soon as we come up with a good mechanic for it that addresses those issues.

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 18:15

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

I actually think it would be ok for this particular god if wearing =faith simply meant that you are called upon to make sacrifices more often, and removing the amulet prevents further sacrifices from being made for a while. Yes you can just wear faith until you get to max piety and take it off, but doing that would require making all of your sacrifices earlier and faster than usual, which has its own cost and benefit already.

Another idea would be that wearing faith gives you more options each time you are asked to sacrifice, however when you take it off you'll either lose some piety (not as much as usual but some amount) and/or you'll get fewer opportunities to make sacrifices and fewer options, for the next X number of sacrifices.

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Arrhythmia, Lasty

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Post Tuesday, 17th June 2014, 19:24

Re: Proposal: Iashol, God of balance and sacrifice

Fair point -- I suppose that's no more OP than what Faith gives other worshippers. When I get a chance I'll try implementing the faster sacrifices version.

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