Idea for a new deity - Irkzox the Smith

[nublet]

Well, these are some ideas for a god centered around gifting and using equipment - especially but not only jewellery, since that niche isn't occupied yet. I know there have been a few ideas floating around in the past, but hopefully this will be somewhat different.

Irkzox the Smith

Altar description (short):
An anvil-shaped altar to Irkzox.
Altar description (long):
An altar dedicated to Irkzox the Smith, shaped like an anvil and engraved in great detail. It is lit in a soft red glow and seems to pulsate with heat.

Appreciates:
-Sacrificing jewellery, branded weapons and armor ( Limited effect, scaling down with piety, becomes useless at ****)
-Finding new egos, brands and types of jewellery (e.g. ring of rF+, amulet of reflection,...).
-Sacrificing artefacts.
Piety gained depends on value (cost) of the sacrificed item.

Deprecates:
-Inactivity. Piety decay shouldn't be too fast, though. After all, patience is possibly the greatest virtue of a good artisan.
-Abandonment

Powers:
* Suppression: Generates an aura of suppression that negates brands and egos of any equipment - other than yours. Higher invocations results in longer duration.
Costs Hunger, 3 MP, Piety (~0-1?).
** Enhance Body Armor Ego: Temporarily increases the effect of your body armor's ego. (For example, rF+ becomes rF++, ...) Using it on an artefact with multiple egos will randomly raise only one of them. Higher invocations results in longer duration.
Costs Hunger, 5 MP, Piety (~4?).
** Enhance Shield Ego: Same as above, except it works on your shield if you have one.
Costs Hunger, 5 MP, Piety (~4?).
*** Enhance Weapon Ego: Temporarily increases the extra damage from your weapon's brand. Higher invocations results in greater duration and strength - maxed out at twice the standard amount.
Costs Hunger, 4 MP, Piety (~2-3?).

**** Weaken Defenses: Temporarily bestows rF- rC- rElec- rPois- and AC-6 on a single smite-targeted enemy. Multiple castings do not stack. Higher invocations results in greater duration.
Costs Hunger, 4 MP, Piety (~4-6?).

***** Boost Amulet: Temporarily increases the primary positive effect of your amulet. Regeneration amulets will work faster, Harm will do more damage, Rage will berserk you longer, Reflection will reflect more, Guardian spirit will have your MP absorb more damage, Gourmand will have chunks give more nourishment. Faith will be unaffected, and Inaccuracy will be partially or completely suppressed.
The ability should be unavailable if your amulet won't be affected (Faith, some unrands). Higher invocations results in greater duration and strength.
Costs Hunger, 8 MP, Piety (~4-6?).
****** Merge items: Combines the properties of up to three items (artefact or not) of the same type and merges them into one artefact.
Usable only once per game.

Wrath:
In rough order of frequency:
- Suppressing the effects of your items. Only yours, of course.
- Enemies may be temporarily mighted and/or hasted.
- Momentarily stops you from reading scrolls and using potions.

Gifts:
Artefact weapons, armor and jewellery. Of course, although gifts can be "returned", the estimated value of items gifted to you is significantly lower than the total value of items you sacrifice per-gift - in short, you get much less value than you give. The weighting that dictates the kind of item gifted depends on your available slots - for instance, Felids will only receive jewellery, octopodes will receive mostly rings, and so on. Not all slots would be equal though, some should be weighted more than others. Skills could also play a role, for instance, having UC specialists receive weapons less often.

Well this is the basic idea. This came out to be a bit too melee-centric, while personally I believe that the most interesting gods are those with the broadest range of followers. I tried to balance out the fact that species with less slots (Draconians, Felids, Trolls ...) will automatically get what they need the most with the fact that they generally have less abilities to play with. That is, getting a pile of much-needed artefact rings is all good and nice, but on the other hand you won't have those enhancement abilities.

One significant problem I see is how piety gain is managed. Checking every single item before sacrificing them doesn't exactly sound fun, and squeezing every bit of piety out of ordinary stuff until you are at **** (or whatever the break point ends up being) sounds even less fun; after all, Ely's weapon "sacrifices" were removed, and that is one of the few removed features that I don't miss. The god could automatically sacrifice some items for you, but then again losing those boots of running for a sliver of piety could be extremely infuriating.
You could also apply the usual "Kills=Piety" equation, but just about every god uses this mechanic, and I wanted to conjure up something different for a change.

A (smaller) problem is also that the Aura of Suppression ability quickly becomes obsolete and even detrimental; the idea was to have an early way of dealing with enemies with nasty branded weapons. An alternative would be to have it not affect you, but that sounded a bit too much for early-mid game.

So what do you think? Brainstorm away!

[kuniqs]

Considering that maybe 0.1% of monsters are a threat because of their equipment egos, Aura of Supression should give me piety for using it.

Ego enchancement steps on Qazlal's toes

Boost Amulet could be handy if you happen to run out of remove curse and identify scrolls in Depths and wear-ID an amulet of inaccuracy.

There's one good use for this god - for saccing a bunch of useless artefacts mid/late game and creating a custom artefact to plug any holes in your intrinsics.

TL;DR: Irkzox the Smith is not a fun god & I would not have sex with him.

[nublet]

Considering that maybe 0.1% of monsters are a threat because of their equipment egos, Aura of Supression should give me piety for using it.

That's true, I suppose - changed to only affect monsters.

Ego enchancement steps on Qazlal's toes

The main difference is that with Qaz you have to get hit first. Depending on what hits you, this can be pretty nasty. On the other hand, it works only if you already have one item of that kind, which, now that I think of it, makes it not-very-useful indeed.

Boost Amulet could be handy if you happen to run out of remove curse and identify scrolls in Depths and wear-ID an amulet of inaccuracy.

The idea behind it was mostly to have a (depending how much it is actually boosted) very high HP/MP regeneration for some time, somewhat like a smaller, customizable Trog's hand or Channel, or do ludicrous damage with Harm and therefore take the risk in becoming a glass cannon. Can't think of a way of affecting other amulets in a very appealing way, though.

There's one good use for this god - for saccing a bunch of useless artefacts mid/late game and creating a custom artefact to plug any holes in your intrinsics.

And that's indeed what I thought to be the main late-game appeal.

TL;DR: Irkzox the Smith is not a fun god & I would not have sex with him.

These are in fact some pretty half-baked ideas, but hey - it's open to improvement.

[luckless]

Well, these are some ideas for a god centered around gifting and using equipment - especially but not only jewellery, since that niche isn't occupied yet.

idk, I think Gozag is pretty good for getting jewelry.

more generally, I think there are two gods in one here:

(a) a god whose invoked abilities are weaker than other gods but vary based on your equipment and are therefore more flexible; and
(b) a god who is basically useless until 6*, at which point you get an uberitem of your choice.

I desire (b), but honestly that's mainly because I desire to be able to get a +9 triple sword/bardiche/whatever of speed every game if I so choose.* however, I suspect this is not a very healthy desire and accept the devs' refusal to satisfy it.

otoh, (a) is sort of interesting and if you were interested in developing this god further I'd suggest doubling down on it.

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[*] though assuming that by "type" you mean specific type--e.g. triple sword--rather than general type--e.g. weapon--Irkzox usually wouldn't satisfy this desire either. otoh I guess I could get a weapon with three different brands if I wanted??

[nublet]

Well, these are some ideas for a god centered around gifting and using equipment - especially but not only jewellery, since that niche isn't occupied yet.

idk, I think Gozag is pretty good for getting jewelry.

In a way it is I suppose. That's why I thought I'd differentiate and specialize on said items a bit with invoked abilities and merging.

more generally, I think there are two gods in one here:

(a) a god whose invoked abilities are weaker than other gods but vary based on your equipment and are therefore more flexible; and
(b) a god who is basically useless until 6*, at which point you get an uberitem of your choice.

I desire (b), but honestly that's mainly because I desire to be able to get a +9 triple sword/bardiche/whatever of speed every game if I so choose.* however, I suspect this is not a very healthy desire and accept the devs' refusal to satisfy it.

otoh, (a) is sort of interesting and if you were interested in developing this god further I'd suggest doubling down on it.

---
[*] though assuming that by "type" you mean specific type--e.g. triple sword--rather than general type--e.g. weapon--Irkzox usually wouldn't satisfy this desire either. otoh I guess I could get a weapon with three different brands if I wanted??

I'd like both (a) and (b), TBH, that's why they're rolled into one god
Admittedly I was a bit short on ideas about invoked abilities, and it's no surprise they sound more than a little redundant. In fact, when I first thought of them, I imagined them mostly as a way to balance the fact that, for example, felids only get jewellery and they really need it - so on the flip side they don't get all of the abilities.

Regarding merging, yes, by "type" I meant "triple sword" and not "long blade" or "weapon". Since the god would gift you some triple swords a bit like existing gods, yes, eventually you should be able to get a +27 triple sword with rF+++ rC++ MR+++ and so on - but, do you really want to wait for such a thing until you don't really need it anymore, or just use the ability relatively soon, getting a very good, but not insane, artefact? This was in fact somewhat inspired by Kiku's final gift - do you want something very good right now or something game-breaking later on? In my original idea, I thought this wouldn't give you three brands, only one of your choosing, but enchantments/resists/regen/etc would stack. Again, being new ideas I admit they lack some polish. In fact, now that I think of it,

Irkzox the Smith is not a fun god & I would not have sex with him.

Good thing you'd not - Irkzox is less than one day old, you perverted creeps.

[Leszczynek]

The problem here is that a huge chunk of "weaponsmith" concept is already in Okawaru with his weapon and armour gifts. Also your active abilities are really underwhelming with much too high cost for what they do. Sorry for no longer explanation, but the short story is: resistances beyond first pip don't matter, brands besides distortion and sometimes draining pretty much don't matter, the only decent use I see is for early MR+ cloaks/body armour.

The only interesting concept IMO is crafting, but it's not enough to salvage a whole god concept on its own if it's a one time ability and were it to be used more commonly, it'd likely require hauling an otherwise (probably) unnecessary gear with you and that doesn't sound very cool - just look at Nemelex.

[archaeo]

All else aside,

Appreciates:
-Sacrificing jewellery, branded weapons and armor ( Limited effect, scaling down with piety, becomes useless at ****)
-Sacrificing artefacts.
Piety gained depends on value (cost) of the sacrificed item.

The devs have (rightly, imo) been removing sacrifice conducts for several versions now; Fedhas might still do the pray-for-shrooms deal, but I'm pretty sure even that's just an ability now. This item sacrifice conduct was annoying when Ely and Nem had it, and it'd probably be annoying with Irkzox too. If exploration or killing dudes is too plain, you could do something like giving piety for discovering new brands/egos/jewelry or whatever.

That said, I don't think I'd ever want to worship this god as written. Even that capstone ability isn't something I'd be desperate to have, truth be told; the only time I even have three artefacts of the same base type, most of the time, is with jewelry, and those can just be swapped.

[Quazifuji]

I feel like the premise of making a god that gifts jewelry just doesn't have a ton of potential. It just seems overly specific, and getting free jewelry doesn't seem like it would change the game a ton. That's not to say that no god should ever gift jewelry, but it doesn't seem like a concept that's worth building around.

But also, if you want to build a god around the idea of gifting jewelry, I think you should focus on jewelry, because the current concept of also gifting weapons and armor brings it a bit too close to Okawaru and Gozag, in my opinion. Gozag is already the god of getting lots of items, and Okawaru is the god of getting lots of armor and weapons and buffing yourself. Sure, having your buffs be dependent on your equipment is novel, but I don't think it's novel enough on its own.

Overall, I suspect that as written, 90% of the time this god wold just play like a weaker but more complicated version of Okawaru. The situations where a player manages to do something really cool with merge or gets equipment that really turns one of the ego buffs into something really interesting don't seem like they'll be common enough to make the god worth adding to the game without major changes.

[nublet]

Sorry for no longer explanation, but the short story is: resistances beyond first pip don't matter, brands besides distortion and sometimes draining pretty much don't matter, the only decent use I see is for early MR+ cloaks/body armour.

That would depend on how much the brand is boosted; let's pick holy wrath for instance. Do you really mean that you'd give away a doubled effect on demons?
If you mean the aura of suppression, yes, once you're past the first levels it isn't much use. Whether it's worth it to have something to neuter that pesky elec/distortion/venom/whatever wielder, I guess, depends on how early you find the altar. Which is not great, I admit.
You're right on the resistance pips though, they were more of an afterthought, but I imagined an AC boost or something would be too uninteresting.

The devs have (rightly, imo) been removing sacrifice conducts for several versions now; Fedhas might still do the pray-for-shrooms deal, but I'm pretty sure even that's just an ability now. This item sacrifice conduct was annoying when Ely and Nem had it, and it'd probably be annoying with Irkzox too.

True it is. Saccing could still be tolerable for artefacts though, wouldn't it? I generally pay at least some attention to artefacts anyway, even when there's plenty.

If exploration or killing dudes is too plain, you could do something like giving piety for discovering new brands/egos/jewelry or whatever.

That's an idea, but you eventually run out of stuff to discover. Still can be useful for the early part of the game where artefacts are scarce.
In fact, it's better than saccing plain items enough that I'll change it, together with a few other things.

I feel like the premise of making a god that gifts jewelry just doesn't have a ton of potential. It just seems overly specific, and getting free jewelry doesn't seem like it would change the game a ton. That's not to say that no god should ever gift jewelry, but it doesn't seem like a concept that's worth building around.

But also, if you want to build a god around the idea of gifting jewelry, I think you should focus on jewelry, because the current concept of also gifting weapons and armor brings it a bit too close to Okawaru and Gozag, in my opinion.

You mean, gifts focused on jewellery, or abilities focused on jewellery?

Gozag is already the god of getting lots of items, and Okawaru is the god of getting lots of armor and weapons and buffing yourself. Sure, having your buffs be dependent on your equipment is novel, but I don't think it's novel enough on its own.

Overall, I suspect that as written, 90% of the time this god wold just play like a weaker but more complicated version of Okawaru. The situations where a player manages to do something really cool with merge or gets equipment that really turns one of the ego buffs into something really interesting don't seem like they'll be common enough to make the god worth adding to the game without major changes.

Introducing changes (big or small) is the purpose of this thread; Criticism is welcome, but ideas would be even more so

I also changed a couple things on the OP; changed sacrificing plain items with discovery; removed armor buffs (not too interesting, and not one bit useful), and added a weakening ability, which, ideally, should either work in tandem with the brand boost or be of some use to spellslingers, and is supposed to be used on lone hard enemies and not spammed shamelessly. With the aforementioned piety-gaining change, the costs of all invocable abilities was cut down to size.

[DracheReborn]

Introducing changes (big or small) is the purpose of this thread; Criticism is welcome, but ideas would be even more so

Once there was a proposal for a god that gives brand "upgrades", e.g. flaming weapon inflicts immolation, venom -> curare, draining -> reaping and so on. It was a pretty cool concept but sadly it never got anywhere but maybe you can find a use for it. It's documented here https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :equipment , look for brands.

[nublet]

Introducing changes (big or small) is the purpose of this thread; Criticism is welcome, but ideas would be even more so

Once there was a proposal for a god that gives brand "upgrades", e.g. flaming weapon inflicts immolation, venom -> curare, draining -> reaping and so on. It was a pretty cool concept but sadly it never got anywhere but maybe you can find a use for it. It's documented here https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :equipment , look for brands.

Thanks. Well, there' so much stuff there, so much more than my search engine skim turned up, that i kind of feel both sorry and embarassed for opening the thread.

[archaeo]

Thanks. Well, there' so much stuff there, so much more than my search engine skim turned up, that i kind of feel both sorry and embarassed for opening the thread.

If everyone was sorry and embarrassed about repeating some bits of previous posts on the Tavern, we wouldn't have any more posters. No worries, nublet.

[DracheReborn]

Thanks. Well, there' so much stuff there, so much more than my search engine skim turned up, that i kind of feel both sorry and embarassed for opening the thread.

As archaeo said, don't worry about it. Happens to everyone.

Anyway, think of it as raw material for your shinier, more exciting god idea. I feel that if someone can come up with a non-grindy, non-boring form of crafting, all these concepts are going to come together very quickly.

[Badjas]

May I propose the following mechanic for the next version of this god idea:

Fling jewelry - Active ability
Throw jewelry at your enemy, super charged with its special properties. Any negative properties reduce its effectivity, any positive property increases it.
+rF = fire damage
+rC = cold damage
etc.
Mana regeneration ego = mana draining
+5 str = extra physical damage

You'll have to map every property to an effect, with a generic catch all effect of "more damage". Inducing status effects of confusion, paralysis etc. are also possible.

What does this bring to the table? It is a viable alternative to sacrificing jewelry to your god. It provides a decision point for a player to keep or use up an item in limited supply.
Even more so, the better jewelry, the stronger the effect which makes the decision more meaningful and difficult.
Combine this with an ability to be granted jewelry, or crafting better jewelry and you can build up a limited supply of possible life savers.

And I always wanted to have a god to make use of my wonderful randarts that I could not put to use. Because sometimes it sucks to only have one neck and two (in gneral) ring slots.

The limit in inventory space is a bugger, though. Maybe this god would provide "divine storage" for them, or players have to manage more limited space.

[Quazifuji]

I gave some thoughts on jewelry gifting before, now I'll give more thoughts on the specific activated abilities.

I feel like most brands and egos simply don't do enough interesting things for "enhance or suppress brands and egos" to be a particularly interesting god concept. More specifically:

Suppression: Since the game doesn't auto-ID resist gear on enemies as far as I know, this would mostly be used to suppress weapon brands, I imagine. Which means t's basically just a very situational damage debuff that also makes you immune to enemy distortion brands. So it ranges between useless to fairly handy depending on the situation, but would pretty much never be interesting.

Enhance Weapon Ego: A damage buff that scales with your weapon brand. Doesn't seem particularly interesting, especially with Okawaru already existing and having damage buffs. Making the damage buff depend on your brand doesn't add a whole lot, in my opinion.

Weaken Defenses: Strong, but once again, it doesn't feel very interesting. It makes an enemy take more damage, especially if you're using elemental damage. So you use it on powerful enemies and it makes them a lot easier to kill... and that's it.

Boost Amulet: More interesting, since it actually does make you think about what amulet you're using and that affects when you use the ability. I don't know if buffing your amulet's effect will actually produce a particularly exciting result most of the time, but I do like the fact that when you want to use this ability will depend heavily on what amulet you have (as opposed to enhance weapon ego, which is just "use this to do more damage if you have a branded weapon").

Merge Items: Getting a triple-branded weapon seems like it could be really powerful. This seems like it could be neat, but there might be some logistical and balance issues to sort out.

Overall: I think "God whose benefits depend heavily on what gear you're using" is a potentially interesting concept, and is a natural fit for a god that can gift any type of equipment. Ideally, the god changes how you consider your equipment, and your choice of equipment changes how you use the god powers.

Right now you've gone the straightforward route of having the god just buff your equipment, but I think it's turned out pretty boring. Weaken Defenses and Suppress Ego are extremely uninteresting, and Enhance Weapon Ego's just a damage buff. Boost Amulet is the only active ability that really makes you consider the interaction between the god and your equipment - the times when you'd want to boost a rage amulet are different from the times you'd want to boot reflection, for example - but I'm not sure if any of the effects are actually very interesting in the end.

The tricky thing is making the interactions more interesting without making them too complicated. For example, if you gave "Enhance Weapon Ego" a unique effect for each brand, it would become way more interesting and ideally make the player think about their weapon brands differently, but it would also require the player to keep track of a big list of unique effects and could be more complicated than it's worth. So I think if you want to make this concept work, you need to figure out how to create a balance there.