You ought to be able to invoke altars...

[Chicken]

In these games there are god altars all over the place in special settings, but all you do at them is shackle up to the sugar daddy of your choice. I think it would offer a lot of development options if you allowed a way to "invoke" the altar for benefits without being a believer ... though not necessarily without being judged.

For example, if you cart off a big pile of spellbooks to Trog's altar and invoke it you might get a random *Rage artifact. And if you don't have any spells memorized, Trog might even make you immune to the damage as they explode.

Alternatively the effect might be more tactical to use on the level while you're there, or even a gift, like Zin healing a mutation or Elyvion healing a level drain or something. These might have experience time-outs or be one time only (even the transactions like I suggested for Trog above). There are a lot of possibilities and they might be implemented a little at a time.

I think that making altars into strategic or tactical resources would add a lot of flavor to the game and increase the range of options if a player is thinking through "well, what can I do now"? You might have to decide whether you want to go on the pilgrimage and use the boon now or later. Or they might have a required Invocations skill to use, and you have to decide if you want to train that. Or there might be Minecraft-like recipes to uncover and apply. So many things...

If they become more tactically relevant, or also as a matter of "being worthy of the faith", altars might also become harder to get to. Those elemental clouds around Qazlal might become more than just ornamental! That way if you make it there, whether to convert or to try to buy a book with one cloud spell in it in exchange for 30 chunks of raw violence, you have accomplished something.

[PowerOfKaishin]

sounds interesting, but carting off a big pile of spellbooks falls under scumming, which is against the design philosophy.

It would be neat to have the ability to pay a gift on an altar for a floor-wide bonus, though. Would probably help a fuckton in the Abyss.

[Chicken]

I don't see how this "scumming" would be wrong or unusual -- how would you decide what to memorize other than by standing on a pile of all your spellbooks and hitting M?

The chunk "scumming" I suggested would be an amusing challenge. It's hard to get together a huge number of chunks near a fixed target, and of course if you go further away for them they might decay... I doubt the game philosophy really considered it.

As for paying to get a branch to leave you alone, that's clearly Gozag territory. And the problem is, his prices are so high for worshippers I doubt that anyone else need ask. I imagine Gozag also has cornered the taxicab market, but it's possible that Lugonu could get you an Uber out, for a price. (Hmmm, we need a new status pregnant with chaos spawn... it might clear up in a few months on its own)

[ion_frigate]

I don't see how this "scumming" would be wrong or unusual -- how would you decide what to memorize other than by standing on a pile of all your spellbooks and hitting M?

Spell memorization is bad and should be changed; it's just that no one agrees quite how. But there's certainly no reason to add anything similar.

IMO a cool option might be to let you desecrate altars for piety with your current god. The downside could either be wrath/penance from the altar's original god (presumably a lot less than desertion), or perhaps deity-appropriate durable summons.

EDIT: Incidentally, the idea of bringing items to altars to sacrifice for piety has existed in DCSS before. I think it was removed around 0.2 or 0.3.

[yesno]

I don't see how this "scumming" would be wrong or unusual -- how would you decide what to memorize other than by standing on a pile of all your spellbooks and hitting M?

The chunk "scumming" I suggested would be an amusing challenge. It's hard to get together a huge number of chunks near a fixed target, and of course if you go further away for them they might decay... I doubt the game philosophy really considered it.

the idea of small bonuses from altars is kind of cool but both these ideas are awful :\