Jiyva Rework

[sdynet]

I read this post and felt that fundamental redesign was necessary to solve these problems.

Problem # 1 is the message spam. You receive a huge quantity of messages, about sounds, and sacrifices, and stuff, and even random communications from Jiyva. You spend a lot of time handling the message log instead of playing. It also interrupts resting and makes repeatedly "5"ing tedious.
Part of the spam are the creatures looking at you suspiciously and then relaxing. That's nice the first time you read it, but it's bad when it's repeated for every slime in a slime pack.

Problem # 2 is strictly related to the first one: it's hard to keep tabs on your mutations, because they are lost amidst a sea of messages. During a recent game, I actually noticed that there was no information when you gained Jiyva mutations. So your AC can be nuked (deformed body with pseudopods), and you may realize it too late. Beside detrimental mutations, if you don't know that you have certain mutations, you cannot take decisions based on them, which makes them irrelevant to game play.

Problem #3 is bad inventory interaction. Mutations rarely do something that inventory items don't. Elemental and magic resists, AC, SH, Gourmet, regeneration, EV, flight all do something that non-artifact items do. If your mutations are stable, you can count on them and select which items to carry. So you leave your ring of rF if you have the rF mutation. However, if they aren't stable, well, you better still carry the items around, just in case the mutations disappear when you need them!
Hunger is also a subset of this. You get nutrition when your jellies eat something. However, you don't really know if you might somehow run out of nutrition because of some edge case, like hunger ghosts, so you have to carry some food around. It would be better to simply remove hunger for Jiyva followers.
These problems are exacerbated by how inventory space is much more important for Jiyva followers; otherwise, I'd have ignored the hunger issue.

Problem # 4, the worst one, is the lag. Jiyva is is very resource intensive for the computer. I never have this kind of problem with other gods; I play locally, not online. Sometimes, you are left there for some seconds, wondering what's going on. Since the game has very few animations, it's hard to understand if you simply missed or if the game froze and is still taking your commands (which is a great way to die, once it unfreezes).

In older versions, you can't directly hit shapeshifters that turned themselves into Jiyva's minions, even though they will attack you. I had to use an axe and ctrl+arrow in a direction different from their position to indirectly kill them with cleaving. Shapeshifters in certain forms (I have tested this with shining eye and eye of draining) can eat stuff like items and doors, but only if you worship Jiyva. I didn't check if this is still the case in current versions.

Stats shuffling generally receives a bad rap, but I never noticed it having any real impact.

Some solution proposals:

Reduce the number of messages, and remove all messages related to jellies. This comprises slurping noises. Add a "hit spacebar to continue" for Jiyva mutations, and have the game actually show you what they are in the message section.
Allow the player to choose which mutations to remove, from all of them. Good/bad mutations depend on build and intent: so horns can be bad if you have good headgear, and wild/subdued magic can be good or bad depending on the spells you like using. Allow the player to remove Jiyva mutations, too, since they can give you penalties.
If Jiyva offers to remove one of your mutations to substitute it with a new one, you could get a "y/n" prompt, possibly as an ability, like Ru sacrifices. This would counter the inventory strain a bit, and would make Jiyva more unique. The same system could be applied to the shuffling.

I don't know where the lag comes from. Maybe it's the jellies. If that's the case, jellies could be substituted with random item destruction across the level, without the creature generation. It would be a pity, because they give strong flavour, but it's better than the current situation.

(If you had a feeling of déjà vu, it's because this message comprises large parts of older posts.)

I designed it to improve the QoL as much as possible.

[Gain piety]
Change items in the LoS into jelly with a 25% probability and gain piety(This includes equipment of enemy. Also exclude artifacts).
- The mechanism will remove a madly ringing message saying, 'Jelly ate something.' And because this changes the enemy's equipment to jelly, the enemy's gaze at you will be partly dispersed.

[Wrath]
Same as existing

[Removal]
* If there are no slimes on the current floor, Jiyva will spawn a jelly after some time has passed.
* Slimes will now eat items they find on the floor, granting piety depending on the value of the item; regular jellies will split after consuming enough items. Only artefacts are inedible.
* Stats shuffle
* Request jelly
* When your fellow slimes consume an item, you receive a piety/200 chance of increasing your satiation by 70.
* When your fellow slimes consume an item, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some MP.
* When your fellow slimes consume an item, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some HP.
* Gain random mutations
* Cure Bad Mutations
- Stats shuffle is messy and distracting. You can change it through mutations anyway.
- The power of jelly, which is invoked only by eating something, is too passive, and the action you control this is cumbersome and exhausting. The mechanism forced the player to act strangely, carrying a large quantity of unused ammo.
- Aside from the fact that the mechanism for obtaining mutations is not controllable or predictable, message spam was too painful.

[Same as existing]
* All slime and eye monsters turn neutral.
* Jiyva protects you from the effects of slime-covered walls unless you are undergoing penance.
* You are shielded from corrosive effects. This functions exactly like wearing a ring of resist corrosion.
* Slimify
* Unlock the Slime Pits vaults
* Hits that take 25% or more of your maximum HP will generate friendly, high-end jellies, similar to the effect of the royal jelly.

[Additional]
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of increasing your satiation by 70(Only jelly. It doesn't apply to other slimes).
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some MP(Only jelly. It doesn't apply to other slimes).
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some HP(Only jelly. It doesn't apply to other slimes).
* You can fire through all allied slime-type creatures without harming them.
* Absorption: Absorb all jelly in the map. It invokes the passive force shown above. At the same time, remove one bad mutation or receive 1-3 mutations from Jiyva. (10 piety)
- The new mechanism is invoked through death, not the birth of jelly. Jelly is born fast and dies fast. It can't show explosive and sustained regeneration like the conventional mechanism, but it's more stable. And if you want, 'absorption' can have a momentary high recovery effect.
- If you want to get or get rid of mutations, you should use Absorption. Mutations require a high-cost in return for descending into controllable areas. If you like the list of mutations of your, you may abandon the use of Absorption and keep the list. This is also a kind of cost.
- The limitation of not being able to kill jelly made the use of magic very annoying. At the same time as solving this problem, the wizard prevented the firestorm from destroying all the jelly and making Absorption meaningless.

To summarize this, it is as follows. The increase rate of piety will be 75% slower than usual, so the power level has been adjusted accordingly.

[Gain piety]
Change items in the LoS into jelly with a 25% probability and gain piety(This includes equipment of enemy. Also exclude artifacts).

[Wrath]
Attacking Jelly

[Power]
Piety level -:
* All slime and eye monsters turn neutral. (passive)
* Jiyva protects you from the effects of slime-covered walls unless you are undergoing penance. (passive)
* You can fire through all allied slime-type creatures without harming them. (passive)

Piety level *:
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of increasing your satiation by 70. (passive)

Piety level **:
* You are shielded from corrosive effects. This functions exactly like wearing a ring of resist corrosion. (passive)

Piety level ***:
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some MP. (passive)
* Absorption

Piety level ****:
* Slimify

Piety level *****:
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some HP. (passive)

Piety level ******:
* Unlock the Slime Pits vaults (passive)
* Hits that take 25% or more of your maximum HP will generate friendly, high-end jellies, similar to the effect of the royal jelly. (passive)



What I can promise for sure is that this will allow us to escape the frantic message attack.

[svendre]

There are two primary reasons that turn me off to Jiyva:

1) Mutations shuffling all the time, and keeping track of them, and reacting to the changes seems worse to me than dealing with mutations when I get them either from potions, malmutate, or remove them with Zin. I avoid malmutate as much as possible to begin with, so I usually mostly know where I stand with my mutations and it's easier to manage.

2) Jiyva could be a powerful choice for all of the allies, but they suck way too much XP, especially for a lower level character. When you're fighting stuff that gives more xp, the slime allies are less effective and more pointless. Then there's turning monsters into slimes, I'm pretty sure that's an XP hit as well.

I'd be much more interested in playing Jiyva if it just had an activated ability to add a good mutation (which possibly shuffled) or turn piety into effectively a usage of a potion of mutation, and allies didn't suck XP. It would also be nice if you could activate stat shifts, in a direction of your choosing, for example: you spend piety to get -1 int and +1 str, etc. etc.

[bel]

* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of increasing your satiation by 70(Only jelly. It doesn't apply to other slimes).
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some MP(Only jelly. It doesn't apply to other slimes).
* When Jelly dies, you receive a piety/200 chance of recovering some HP(Only jelly. It doesn't apply to other slimes).

This seems rather weird to me. Why should you gain anything when your Jellies die? It might also lead to degenerate gameplay.

A simpler approach would be to remove the HP/MP gain altogether, and give Jiyva passive satiation and/or passive increased healing. Or Jiyva could bequeath manna from heaven. Or remove hunger altogether from Jiyva characters.

I don't like removing the "Jellies eat items" part. That' the more unique thing about Jiyva and promotes a different play style. It does not need to be tied to a physical monster: we could just make Jiyva itself slurp items occasionally, instead of Jellies.

Rest of the proposal looks ok.