Gozag Tweaks

[bcadren]

I have on Gozag win on record and there were a few things I noticed that are odd...

• Bribed allies become berserk and hostile on contact with Moths of Wrath. Killing one of these berserked 'allies' makes all allies hostile since you 'betrayed' them. Makes bribe fairly useless in Zot.
  • Make so allies made hostile again (moth of wrath; enslavement wand etc.) are no longer punished for being killed.
• Dancing Weapons leave gold and the weapon. From a mechanics perspective this is negligible, from a flavour one "what turned into gold?"
  • Either no change; or remove the gold drop. the weapon is more valuable.
• Very minor flavour note; Gozag should suppress messages like "Form twists and changes as it dies." since the lack of any corpse makes this pretty irrelevant.
• "That felt strangely unrewarding." monsters still give gold.
  • This (minor) incentivizes killing all the 'friendly' creatures left by Pikel and Kirke.
  • And (major) means The Royal Jelly can be semi-safely farmed for gold.
• Lastly (more opinion than actual PROBLEM); shops costing more to summon should have better odds at good items, last shop summoned by my win (costing 2200 gold) had a bunch of +0 common weapons I'd already seen before. Some shops had great stuff, yes; but the really expensive ones being crap is a slap in the face.

[CanOfWorms]

Dancing Weapons leave gold and the weapon. From a mechanics perspective this is negligible, from a flavour one "what turned into gold?"

• Either no change; or remove the gold drop. the weapon is more valuable.

Gozag doesn't leave corpses for hides so it's probably more thematic to have them become gold.

[chequers]

And (major) means The Royal Jelly can be semi-safely farmed for gold.

I hope someone does this before it is fixed.

[mps]

I never played as Gozag long enough to run into the no dragon hides thing (because lol, gozag) but that's really broken. Dragon armor is, like, kinda important.

[Arrhythmia]

Seriously the fact that shops only spawn on a weird, uncommunicated subset of levels you haven't visited is incredibly stupid, rewards dumb gameplay, and it is fucking astounding it has stayed in this long.

[le_nerd]

I am pretty sure TRJ has been fixed. Lack of Dragon Armour might be a problem early game (steam+mottled dragon) but with gozaq by the time you do S branches you have artifact plate. Thats kinda the whole point of him/her, semi-guaranteed equipment via a different mechanism than Okawaru.

[Quazifuji]

Seriously the fact that shops only spawn on a weird, uncommunicated subset of levels you haven't visited is incredibly stupid, rewards dumb gameplay, and it is fucking astounding it has stayed in this long.

Playing a SpAM of Gozag now, I have to agree. The idea of requesting a shop and then seeing what floor it appeared on is cool. It's fun encountering the shop I requested and seeing what it contains.

What isn't cool is sitting there on D12, having spawned requested shops on V1, V2, and D15 but no shops on D13 or D14, wondering if I should hold off on finishing D (like I normally would) and go do some Lair branches so I have a chance of getting more accessible shops in late D if if I decide I want more shops.

If shops are going to continue spawning on unexplored, I think at least Lair and Lair branches should be added to the pool of places where they can spawn. That would create a much smoother progression by removing the gap in typical character progression between late Dungeon and Vaults where no new shops are immediately accessible, and mostly remove the behavior of "saving" floors for shops. Or shops could just be able to spawn somewhere you've been before you've finished Vaults and Depths. It removes the fun of getting to a floor with a shop you requested and seeing what you got (although as has already pointed out, this can often be more disappoitnment than fun), but I think removing the bizarre metagaming that can currently occur where it feels like you're encouraged to manage your unexplored floors in order to ensure you get shops in accessible locations is worth it. Whether it's ever actually worth saving Dungeon floors for shops, it feels like something you're pressured to do and that's bad.

[duvessa]

Seriously the fact that shops only spawn on a weird, uncommunicated subset of levels you haven't visited is incredibly stupid, rewards dumb gameplay, and it is fucking astounding it has stayed in this long.

fits in perfectly with the rest of gozag then

[mps]

Good endgame dragon armor (storm or shadow da, fda) is better than almost any plate armor. I guess the idea is to buy it in shops, but the shops thing is also broken, so idk. At least in the endgame, the shops spawn where you're standing, which is what they actually should do.

[starless]

I have on Gozag win on record and there were a few things I noticed that are odd...
Killing one of these berserked 'allies' makes all allies hostile since you 'betrayed' them.

From my what I remember if you kill a bribed ally, only bribed monsters in LOS turn hostile.

[advil]

I didn't really feel a shortage of dragon armour on my one gozag win (a MuFi); yes, it is true that it is hard to find dragon armour, but there's still lots of stuff to wear. I had pretty good luck overall with the shops (especially gadgets) and that char was extremely OP, the stuff I did get from shops balanced out the lack of hides. I did end the game wearing faerie, so not from a shop, but I didn't call a lot of armour shops (and got great armour from them when I did). Yes, I would've worn heavier DA if I found it (actually I think I was hoping for GDA on that character) but it wasn't critical at all.

I also personally liked the mechanic of shops appearing on unexplored levels, but I think the locations need to be tweaked to allow for lair (definitely not rune-locked so quickly!) Shops appearing at your feet was in practice, weird and hacky feeling IMO. Bribe branch just sucks. (FYI there's an older GDD thread with a lot of this discussion already, not sure whether the devs are paying much attention here.)

[tasonir]

Hides turning to gold is fine, you have plenty of opportunities to buy armor, and you may find them on the ground/worn by monsters/acquired with scrolls.

Agree with final opinion that 2000+ gold shops are often disappointing, but I think the solution here is to reduce or remove the scaling gold cost each time you summon a shop. The shop doesn't get any better the more you call, don't increase the price for it. I don't mind that shops appear below you rather than at your feet, but I do think they should appear somewhat closer to you (1-2 floors away, instead of 1-5 floors away), and agree that going from d:15 to V:1 is a large jump. Lair and its subbranches should be valid.

Bribed and then berserked mobs sounds pretty clearly like a bug and you could submit it to mantis. Same with the flavor note about forms twisting - less critical of a bug of course, but still a bug.

I'd handle the dancing weapons differently - Convert them to gold and no item! Similiar to hides, make it a sacrifice for going Gozag! But, I wouldn't be terribly bothered if they were left alone or gave the item and no gold. I guess we can allow filthy weapon users to get weapons (but really after 1-2 weapon shops, who doesn't have a good weapon?).

[CanOfWorms]

After doing a test to confirm a suspicion, I am now inclined to believe letting weapons not turn into gold might be a better option because weapons under Tukima's Dance will drop gold if they're defeated(!)

Edit: Submitted a mantis report about this particular behavior.

[jejorda2]

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/a ... a04125b5f6

[Piginabag]

I found it rather strange that I was able to petition potion and wind up with Berserk in every slot and then be forced to drink it. Of course this rarely happens, but it can kick your ass when it does.

[le_nerd]

Or the other way around, wanting a !HW /!Curing and not getting any.