Remove Zin's "no intelligent corpse desecration" conduct

[Arrhythmia]

The only way it ever affects your game is forcing you to eat rations in Elf/Orcish mines, which doesn't strike me as an actually good conduct.

Extending it to "No corpse eating" would be fine too, though I don't favour this option as much because it may make people think that food matters.

[and into]

Extending it to "No corpse eating" would be fine too, though I don't favour this option as much because it may make people think that food matters.

And would also edge in on Gozag's "no corpses" shtick.

[PleasingFungus]

sounds like Flavor to me, OP. if it doesn't affect the game in significant ways, why's it a problem?

[Arrhythmia]

sounds like Flavor to me, OP. if it doesn't affect the game in significant ways, why's it a problem?

it's not fun to change the keystrokes i use to eat because i'm in a branch with a different monster set than usual. the second option i gave still wouldn't affect the game in a significant way and it would keep The Flavour, but it would remove the source of my frustration.

[PleasingFungus]

i think that'd change the flavor a lot, actually!

the whole point of the conduct is that it's making a distinction between sentient beings and non-sentient beings; you can see a similar effect in e.g. Recite's affected creatures. making it a vegetarianism conduct would be completely different, and would also weaken the god significantly for a character types that actually need food. (they do exist.)

[Shard1697]

I don't think there's a big difference between "don't eat intelligent things" and "don't eat gross dungeon corpses". Honestly I think the second makes a bit more sense with Zin being a god of order, dudes not eating grimy worm meat and shit like that makes sense as a conduct.

kosher meat only. Man ist was man isst!

[Arrhythmia]

i think that'd change the flavor a lot, actually!

well, i don't.

e: well shit i see you changed your post to actually have other shit in it while i was writing it. anyways i think it would make the flavour better, as zin is all about mutated v. not mutated, and you shouldn't touched not-mutated things because they are Sacred and deserve Respect. the intelligence comes into play w/ recite because they could worship zin, but don't. it seems kind of bizzarre that "ire towards intelligent" becomes "respect towards intelligent" as soon as they become a corpse.

e2: even then, i think this flavour discussion is a red herring. it does affect gameplay, by forcing me to change the buttons i press, but it doesn't affect gameplay in a "good way", by changing the decisions i make.

[crate]

The flavour is that you can't be a "good god" without being really obnoxious, obviously.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

The flavour is that you can't be a "good god" without being really obnoxious, obviously.

Salvation should obviously not be free.

[goodcoolguy]

Maybe flavor is actually bad.

[Psieye]

Maybe flavor is actually bad.

Dangerously too few words. I suspect you mean "the flavour justifying this annoying constraint for Zin worship is bad" and not "all flavour ever in crawl is bad".

Anyway, this conduct has no actual strategic effect so it all boils down to flavour imposing an inconvenience. I think it's fine and really the annoyance is over the food UI, i.e. not Zin's personality. Just one more reason for wanting food removal later down the line.

[goodcoolguy]

There's a good case to be made that flavor should strictly inform gameplay and that gameplay should never serve flavor purposes.

[dowan]

It is annoying, to say the least. It's tipped the scaled more than once for me to not take Zin due to this annoying mechanic.

[Shtopit]

Add an "edible corpse autosearch" function to make the mechanic less annoying while keeping it meaningful from a food availability perspective, with a countdown to automatically exclude already rotten corpses?

[goodcoolguy]

Add an "edible corpse autosearch" function to make the mechanic less annoying while keeping it meaningful from a food availability perspective, with a countdown to automatically exclude already rotten corpses?

It's not meaningful from a food availability perspective. That's why it's bad.

[tabstorm]

What if Zin instead fed you automatically so you never had to eat or butcher corpses? This would solve the problem and be flavorful.

[Psieye]

Add an "edible corpse autosearch" function to make the mechanic less annoying while keeping it meaningful from a food availability perspective, with a countdown to automatically exclude already rotten corpses?

That wouldn't solve the problem: "this is annoying to play around". There are a couple branches where you can't reliably expect Zin-approved food corpses. The workaround of "just eat permafood" doesn't affect strategy due to permafood abundance. But having to press a different key than 'just eat a chunk' is considered significant nuisance. Having to pull up an autosearch function just emphasises that annoyance.

What if Zin instead fed you automatically so you never had to eat or butcher corpses? This would solve the problem and be flavorful.

He used to. I can't remember why it got removed. But this is just a lesser solution to "just remove food entirely".