More altar interaction

[EugeneJudo]

Upon reading this quote in another thread I thought that this would actually be a great way to make the use of gods more interactive

There are ways to actually make the altars more relevant themselves, but that's another topic.

Perhaps when you follow a god you could have the ability to create an altar for this god anywhere in the dungeon. This would of course require items and a few turns to create but it could in turn award piety proportional to your invocations level (or require an invocation level to increase the chances of creating the altar correctly). Altars could also have special abilities making them desirable to build in certain places. An example of this would be to have an altar of Elyvilon have a regeneration effect when you stand on it without any hunger penalty, of course the only way to access this would be if you worshiped Elyvilon. An altar of Vehumet may make conjuration spells stronger when standing on the altar by 1 star. An altar of zin could convert the brand of your weapon to holy wrath for the duration while you are standing there. This would make switching gods even more tempting in certain parts of the game if you stumble upon an altar of another god. One other feature could be that you are immune to wrath while standing on an altar of your current god making for interesting navigation if you want to run away from something like Trogs wrath.

[and into]

A new god that revolves around creating new altars could maybe work (something like that was being experimented with by some folks but was since dropped) but we already have Fedhas, which has an item-limited ability to create powerful stationary allies that encourage you to fight within a certain area. Wrath was changed specifically in order to prevent being able to wait it out, so letting people camp out near altars for that purpose would be a step in the wrong direction, I think.

I'm not sure what dpeg had in mind exactly, but I know one thing that has been discussed in the past is having one or possibly multiple gods give you piety or maybe a gift of some type for desecrating the altars to other gods, at the expense of getting a little bit of wrath stacked up from the god whose altar you destroyed.

[Sar]

Wasn't it supposed to be a Lugonu feature?

[and into]

Wasn't it supposed to be a Lugonu feature?

Yeah, but I think I remember some people spitballing the idea for other gods (either a new one, or a new feature for an existing god).

Anyway, I could at least see it as a cool thing for a new god who, at six stars of piety, will let you pay a large chunk of piety to desecrate a competing god's altar (and suffer a bit of wrath from that god), in return for a gift, as this would neatly sidestep the "drowned in gifts" problem and would provide a bit more risk than usual for the reward. (Altars in the Temple are off limits... it is ecumenical, after all.)

But yeah, the only existing god that I could see it fitting really well with is Lugonu.

[dpeg]

This is still planned for Lugonu and, due to changes with wrath recently, closer than ever.

[Quazifuji]

I was actually thinking a different interaction with altars when I read the thread: having some reward for finding an altar to your god. Right now, only the first altar you find for each god is really meaningful at all. Late altars can make weapon brand gifts or conversions slightly more convenient, but that's it. It always feels like finding another altar to my god deep in the dungeon should be a "hey, neat" moment, but it's actually completely insignificant 99% of the time.

I wouldn't want anything game changing, but what if each altar (besides the one you used to join in the first place) could be prayed once for a small one-time piety bonus? It's flavorful and makes finding deep altars with your god fun instead of useless, without really breaking anything or complicating matters much. In the case of Ru, it could possibly accelerate your next sacrifice (or just present it instantly) instead of giving piety (since free piety for Ru worshippers is actually a big deal), while Gozag could just give a small pile of gold. Maybe other gods could give minor flavorful things like Fedhas worshippers getting fruit, but I don't think it's necessary.

[EugeneJudo]

I was actually thinking a different interaction with altars when I read the thread: having some reward for finding an altar to your god. Right now, only the first altar you find for each god is really meaningful at all. Late altars can make weapon brand gifts or conversions slightly more convenient, but that's it. It always feels like finding another altar to my god deep in the dungeon should be a "hey, neat" moment, but it's actually completely insignificant 99% of the time.

I wouldn't want anything game changing, but what if each altar (besides the one you used to join in the first place) could be prayed once for a small one-time piety bonus? It's flavorful and makes finding deep altars with your god fun instead of useless, without really breaking anything or complicating matters much. In the case of Ru, it could possibly accelerate your next sacrifice (or just present it instantly) instead of giving piety (since free piety for Ru worshippers is actually a big deal), while Gozag could just give a small pile of gold. Maybe other gods could give minor flavorful things like Fedhas worshippers getting fruit, but I don't think it's necessary.

One problematic thing would be altars of Longau which are overly abundant in the abyss, although they could just be excluded from this effect.

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

You can build a special altar to the god (Lugonu?) for piety and/or some other cost (a permanent cost such as max hp/mp or stat decrease would discourage spamming), it has a radius affect that will do something cool and gives you a new ability. The ability transports you and creatures in your LOS to the altar wherever it is (great way to escape the abyss/pan, though if using Lugonu can already just depart) and activates it, then once everything is dead maybe the altar disappears/becomes a normal altar. It might be necessary to alter dungeon layout as part of the ability (if using Lugonu this is in line with Corrupt's dungeon altering).

Just a random idea.

[neil]

One problematic thing would be altars of Longau which are overly abundant in the abyss, although they could just be excluded from this effect.

Lugonites already can't gain piety in the Abyss, so that wouldn't even be a special case.

[khalil]

I think the desecration thing could actually work with all the gods, based on the various rivalries. Good gods would approve of desecrating evil god altars, zin would approve of messing with JJs stuff, Trog and Sif would want each other's stuff smashed, and so on. Each god would have a few other gods they hate and give piety for smashing their stuff.
Lucy is special because she hates everyone.

[Lyrick]

Gozag approves of altar smashing for three gods...

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A glowing golden altar
A glowing silver altar
A white marble altar


[Quazifuji]

I was actually thinking a different interaction with altars when I read the thread: having some reward for finding an altar to your god. Right now, only the first altar you find for each god is really meaningful at all. Late altars can make weapon brand gifts or conversions slightly more convenient, but that's it. It always feels like finding another altar to my god deep in the dungeon should be a "hey, neat" moment, but it's actually completely insignificant 99% of the time.

I wouldn't want anything game changing, but what if each altar (besides the one you used to join in the first place) could be prayed once for a small one-time piety bonus? It's flavorful and makes finding deep altars with your god fun instead of useless, without really breaking anything or complicating matters much. In the case of Ru, it could possibly accelerate your next sacrifice (or just present it instantly) instead of giving piety (since free piety for Ru worshippers is actually a big deal), while Gozag could just give a small pile of gold. Maybe other gods could give minor flavorful things like Fedhas worshippers getting fruit, but I don't think it's necessary.

One problematic thing would be altars of Longau which are overly abundant in the abyss, although they could just be excluded from this effect.

Aside from what EugeneJudo mentioned, I think between the proposed altar corruption and Lugonu already having the distortion brand as a reason to find altars (especially since Lugonu worshippers actually have to search for an altar most of the time, rather than just running back to the Temple/Early Dungeon like TSO or Kiku worshippers) would make it fine if you didn't have the altar praying for Lugonu. The idea behind my proposal was to make post-Temple altars not 99% meaningless, but if altar corruption is added that's already the case for Lugonu.