Feedback on Gozag design

[Sar]

I won a MiMo of Gozag (after splatting some good characters out of my own idiocy, I chose something extremely straightforward), and while I do love the concept of gold god, the execution felt lacking (sorry!).

Potion Petition - I kind of liked this one. I'm not sure if it mixing in "bad potions" does much, though - at worst you lose some maxHP or waste a turn quaffing curing. Some combinations were pretty fun and useful, though. I did order a bunch of porridge despite eating my permafood, I imagine losing chunks would hit a caster much harder. Still, I used it a lot.
Call Merchant - this felt a lot of like Okawaru gifts, only with worse quality and more keypresses. Still, I bought some useful stuff from those shops so I guess it's not that bad? It was mostly disappointing, though I had some fun diving in search of my funded shops. Maybe they should be more expensive, but offer better loot?
Bribe Branch - I used it a couple of times and I still am not sure what it does. It makes some intelligent monsters "friendly" and also occasionally makes one of them a pseudo-mercenary (who breaks autoexplore by asking you for more money). And then it goes away. I imagine it being more useful for faster players.
Item Clone - first of all, I'm not sure why it can't clone artefacts. I mean, the only ones you'd want to clone are rings and you can already clone something like +9 slaying rings so I don't think cloning Robustness would be that much more broken. Maybe there's a technical limitation, I don't know. Secondly, there aren't that much items one would want to clone - good rings, yeah. I ended up cloning a wand of heal wounds (9).

I don't have much thoughts on how to improve Gozag. One thing I was thinking of is replacing Bribe Branch with just Bribe, an ability allowing you to hire any "smart" monster as a mercenary. Not sure if it should be just a one-time offer (possibly OP and conflicts with Yred?), work as it works now (but it should ask for raise much less often then) or just a gold-based Enslavement, useful to turn the tide of battle in your favour.

Oh, and BATTLESPHERES and such probably shouldn't be "distracted by gold".

Edit: morgue.

[nago]

I've currently played some early game. Overall it feels a very bad God.
First of all, you need to amount some gold to worship him during the harder stage of the game (usually you need to clear some others floors after you found altars/temple)... while you can immediately join Fedhas, Trog, Oka and so on and quickly get *... and have a sensible help in the tougher part of DCSS.
Potions shop is really unreliable and therefore quite bad: you can think to use it in a later stage of the game when curing is plenty (so you can afford to spend one to get rid of degeneration of confusion). The high probability of lignification means most of time one of the three option is automatically cut out (unless you're looking for a decent boost for a not really threatening fight). Quite bad for a "*.." power (yes, I know gozag hasn't piety, but for the cost I consider it like that).

Shop call is shitty: you need to spend money to get a shop somewhere in the dungeons but the probability you'll get something actually useful somewhere reachable in a useful time is negligible.
For example, in my current play I payed for 4 shops. The first before Lair and I got on D:12 Too bad I couldn't go reach it because the floor was to dangerous, so I preferred to skip it. The second one I paid during Lair, but the best of three I got was book, which was currently useless to my char (HoWn in plate, I hope to get some spells later) on D:15 so I had no incentive to backtrack and explore further D before clearing all Lair.
Then I paid for other two shops, which were nicely placed in Vault (please notice I still had to clear D:15 and orcs).
The experience from other games were quite similarly, only I suicided/died earlier. It's like joining Oka without using heroism or finesse and hoping he'll shower you cpa and vampiric great maces while what he actually does it's gifting a -7 gda right after you've grabbed the orb.
(I've not yet tried bribe branches.)

In shortly, I think this God may be interesting for a player who is able to get after early/mid game without a God, who like to min-max everything, grind and full explore the game including 25 zigs - pretty much everything DCSS"philosophy" s contrary, as far as I understand. For now I considered just less bad than Chei and Xom, but differently from them, absolutely out of the place!

[Laraso]

Gozag is largely uninteresting to me, and far too "gimmicky" for my tastes. Personally I think I might find the god more appealing if a few of my ideas were included, because I don't find the current "branch-bribe" and store creation mechanics to be very fun.

[nago]

Ah, I forgot item duplication: my char got a very early +5 ac ring (before temple), which I duplicated as soon as I joined gozag, which I think made him as good as any other God for a part of the game, except maybe fedhas. But this is a extremely rare and lucky game, in most cases I believe only ac/ev/slaying ring and maybe wand of healing/haste if you're incredibly low of recharging (and you don't know if and when you'll get them)

[Lacuenta]

Biggest problem i found with gozag is he doesn't provide much help early.
The only good reason i can imagine for worshipping him is if you found good shops early but don't have enough gold to buy the good items.

Call merchant: Should just put a shop on the place you stand, paying 500-2000 gold to hear "Ilsuvs weapon shop has opened in the depths" while you're on D9 is really discouraging.

Potion petition: this already costs a "finite" resource, its rather random and why would my god give me potions of poison, does he want me dead?

Bribe branch: never used it, it costs money which i might want to spend if i ever find my created shops, and i can take care of those monsters myself thank you.

Options to make him better:
1: Lower cost of potion petition and stop giving bad potions the 50 gold discount on a batch really doesn't matter if you are getting your ass kicked by death yaks.
2: Make shops where you stand or between current floor +0-3
3: Duplicate item: should work on everything, i haven't used it but the only thing i would duplicate would probably be a scroll of acquirement.
Maybe replace that abbility by having him make a one time trove anywhere, this trove would need a requirement like all others or a huge gold cost, but since you can make many shops it shouldn't be to hard to meet. A merchant needs a warehouse right.
4: I really like the idea of bribing monsters instead of just the branch. But yred might be mad and rouse the idle dead under my house.

Edit: maybe he should instead just have an abbility with which you can hire a mercenary that is branch apropriate. He'd give you a list of 3 monsters and you may choose 1 to buy, you cannot have more mercenaries then x=1+(currentgoldamount)/1000, rounded down. he'd step less on yreds blue suede that way, and the non-living under my house can stay idle

[XuaXua]

Call merchant: Should just put a shop on the place you stand

Totally agree. Since you still have to spend gold, there is nothing overpowered about this.

Potion petition: this already costs a "finite" resource, its rather random and why would my god give me potions of poison, does he want me dead?

Potion petition shouldn't cost anything but piety to open up. Negative potions are probably available for the identification game.

I like your trove idea and your other suggestions.

[Sar]

Gozag doesn't have piety and I actually liked hunting down shops - if only they sold anything of value...

[and into]

I like the idea of Gozag, but I do think the implementation needs some more work/tweaking.

The pros:
+ No piety, all abilities available right off the bat. Unique and interesting characteristic.
+ Buying decisions with gold matter in a way that is seldom the case for non-Gozag games.
+ No corpses.

Things that could be improved:
+ I struggled to make use of Gozag for quite some time. Between cost of joining and having to use potion petition for nutrition at one point, I got off to a bit of a rocky start.
+ It takes a while before potion petition can be reliably used. Much longer than most early abilities. Granted a single use of potion petition can be much stronger than a single use of heroism, but the latter can be used earlier and much more reliably.
+ The gap between the abilities seems fairly large.
+ The "distracted by gold" mechanic didn't seem to affect much. Maybe it was having an impact but was hard to notice. At any rate it felt difficult to take advantage of it in any meaningful way; I guess I was expecting enemies to be distracted ! for a turn or two, and was thinking you could even use this for stabbing, or that it would at least affect game play more noticeably, so I was somewhat disappointed.

Of course, it is fine for a god to be generally weaker early on but stronger later (see: Ash), but I feel that with Gozag this doesn't work as well. I think it is better if you have more stuff to (potentially) spend gold on right off the bat, as this intensifies decisions of save vs. spend, which is what the god should focus on.

Anyway, some small suggestions:
+ Make the gold aura effect more noticeable. I'd prefer something that triggers somewhat less often but has a more noticeable effect. If gold aura meant that enemies sometimes became distracted ! for a few turns, it would change battlefield tactics in a more dynamic and interesting way, and open up certain strategic possibilities (like "gold-stabbing")
+ Cheap ability called "fool's gold": scatters fake gold around in LOS, with good chance to distract enemies. This fake gold cannot be picked up and disappears when its aura fades. This gives an immediate useful ability upon joining Gozag. However, you must still be judicious in your use of it, or you will have difficulty saving up the money for Gozag's other abilities. I think it could be interesting if Fool's Gold started with 50 to 100 gold as the cost, initially, but then the cost increases more quickly than potion petition upon each subsequent use.

[khalil]

I'd like if tactical scroll effects were thrown into potion buy as well. (Teleport, blink, and so on, not EW II or whatever).

[DracheReborn]

The gold "distraction" is actually enemies losing a turn rather than becoming stabbable. Probably another word should be used to avoid confusion.

I find the effect weak when there's only one pile of gold, but when there's 3 or 4 it's actually quite strong. It does mean that you have to try to kill a big bunch of enemies together or in close sequence (cf Song of Slaying) to get the most out of the effect.

Personally, I'd prefer if the effect of individual piles are stronger, but that they don't stack as strongly in multiples. I think that would make the effect much more noticeable.

I haven't gotten far with my Gozag playthrough yet, so I don't have much to say about the rest of his abilities as yet.

[Mattchew]

I also like the idea of Gozag but for me the fun was missing.

Managing piles of gold was too tedious for me, I wasn't sure what the effect was, and I ended up just fighting normally and autopicking up the gold after. Any benefit I got was incidental.

I too was disappointed by spending $$$ to place shops that turned out to be located in, say, Depths.

Potion effect is an interesting idea but the negatives seemed mighty harsh. I used a couple times, once w/ strong poison bc I could spare the curing. But lignification and paralysis, when do I want to soak one of these in exchange for some buffs? Maybe lig, early on. Anyway, didn't use much.

I wasn't very excited about duping items. You don't need two of most things. Scroll of acq sounds best, like the other guy said. Nice but not eye popping.

I got bored and switched to Qaz before I ever got enough gold to bribe a branch. I like the idea, though, it's different.

I think Gozag needs a good go-to ability that keeps him more interesting in the middle game. The potion effect might do it, if reformed. Adding in scroll effects sounds plausible to me.

One thought I had was replacing the shop placement mechanic with a list of items for sale (Gozag has brokered a deal with Isher Merchants Inc...) which start off outrageously expensive and get cheaper over time, but which also have a chance of disappearing from the list every time they drop in price. Occasionally new ones show up at the top.

[and into]

I finally got a Gozag guy pretty deep into the game: A lvl 20 HaAs, finishing up Vaults:4 right now. Potion petition is proving very strong once you get up a nice pile of gold—just carry some extra !curing with you in case you get decay or confuse in a good set. Around the end of Lair I felt wealthy enough that I could get potion effects without worrying too much, though even then I have used the ability judiciously (19 times in total, 12 times between levels 16 and 18).

Call Merchant just doesn't seem worth it when the shop can spawn quite a ways from where you are, and you have no idea what it could give you and how expensive it will be to make use of.*

Probably should have used Bribe Branch on the Vaults, but my character was trucking. Since I got about 5 gs now, I'll test it out on Snake.

Spoiler: show

*Here would be one idea for a similar but slightly different take on Call Merchant:

"Gozag will arrange a one-time visit with a traveling merchant. You will need to pay a fee up front for the service, and the merchant will only come if you agree in advance to spending at least a certain amount."

On abilities screen it will say, Call Merchant, with cost listed as 1000+X gold. You need at least 1000+X gold to use the ability; you choose one of three shops, each of which lists two prices (cost: Y gold, minimum spend: Z gold); Y + Z is less than or equal to 1000+X. X starts at zero, but increases significantly each time you use this ability. You choose the shop you want, lose Y gold, and instantly go to that shop's screen, where you must spend at least Z. If you spend less, the difference will be subtracted from your gold anyway. Once you leave the shop screen you cannot access that shop again. You can only use this ability in branches where shops could spawn, and only once in each such branch (so once each in D, U, V, S/A, Orc and Elf). You can only use this ability if you are standing on a square where a shop could be (not flying over lava/water, on on top of a dungeon feature, etc.)

Example: You use Call Merchant for the first time in Snake. You have 2440 gold. You choose a weapon shop (cost: 230 gold, minimum spend: 600 gold). Your gold total is now 2210. You immediately go into a shop screen for the weapon shop you chose. You only see 540 gold worth of things you want. You buy them, and since that's under the minimum spend amount, 60 gold is deducted. You end up with 1610 gold. You cannot access that shop screen again—the itinerant merchant has moved on. (You get an "Are you sure you want to leave? y/n" prompt upon trying to exit the shop.)

[Roderic]

Gozag doesn't have piety and I actually liked hunting down shops - if only they sold anything of value...

What about having a range of cheap to expensive shops to choose from? The more expensive, the farther away and better items they have.

Ex: "I don't want to spend really much but I need a handy, common item right now" so I call a merchant nearby, or "I want something really good rather than expecting that RNG is gonna give me that" so I call a merchant X floors depth and I pay more for that.

[Lacuenta]

Gozag doesn't have piety and I actually liked hunting down shops - if only they sold anything of value...

What about having a range of cheap to expensive shops to choose from? The more expensive, the farther away and better items they have.

Ex: "I don't want to spend really much but I need a handy, common item right now" so I call a merchant nearby, or "I want something really good rather than expecting that RNG is gonna give me that" so I call a merchant X floors depth and I pay more for that.

I see why you made this suggestion but wouln't it be more logical the other way around?

You pay more to get immediate acces to a shop say at local or max +2 floors, and less if you want it to spawn randomly.
If you have some gold left but not in dire need for any items you could just say pay 500 gold per shop and eventually find them, when you get to them or play the shop diving minigame.
If on the other hand you do need something fast, you have to pay a premium and might pay 1500 for a shop near or at your current position. (It's like ebay, you can buy now! and pay extra or Bid and hope to eventually get a better price :p)
Since shops are rather random i'm not sure the "better items" is gonna work very well, either the shop spawns with that pda you always wanted or it will contain a bunch of randart robes which would have been awesome were you not a minotaur fighter. Unless it basically acts as a scroll of acquirement but at that point its more like playing okawaru i fear.

[Fungus]

Is Potion Petition + blood enough to sustain a vampire? Porridge is far more nutrition in comparison.

[Quazifuji]

Is Potion Petition + blood enough to sustain a vampire? Porridge is far more nutrition in comparison.

Doesn't it give 4 bloods?

[zardo]

on hunting shops - what if at some sort of interval you got

"Blurgh would like to open a wand shop on D:13 would you like to invest xxxx gold to help him make his dream come true?"

I don't know how often you would want this to happen, I just like the concept of helping a guy get his small business started in the dungeon and this would avoid wasting your gold while still preserving the need to dive/wait sometimes, which I like.

and also it would be cool if there was some indication of shop quality (and maybe a relationship with cost/depth) so that sometimes you *would* want to make a shop in Vault while you're still in Lair. Maybe it could preview a few items.

[mrbobbyg]

I've played a few Gozag games, and while the idea is cool, I found myself abandoning my games because he bored me.

Perhaps this is too abusable, but what if the open shop ability was replaced with a acquirement like ability? As in, you pay for the acquire feature, pick an acquirement category (not gold), and then buy one of the three listed acquirement options?

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Djinn 2: This Time It's A Religion

The corpses->gold mechanic is really bad. Gold on a Gozag character is significantly and meaningfully different from gold on a normal character, and this really undermines the whole premise/flavour of a "god of wealth". I suppose the flavour could just change to "god of muggers", but I think it's a sloppy mechanic anyway. Gold rotting is confusing and weird, and I have no idea what this gold aura is doing or supposed to do. I've never perceived it doing anything. Maybe this is offbase, but it feels like the whole thing only exists to give the god a hunger conduct, and I think it is really harmful to the bigger picture of Gozag. Porridge in particular feels like a really heavy-handed band-aid on the obvious problem. Besides, we already have a god that uses gold for piety and enforces a hunger conduct.

There's absolutely no benefit to worshipping Gozag early. Hidden ability costs mean that you have to stockpile a lot of gold before using potion petition, and every time the hunger conduct forces you to get porridge, the amount you need to stockpile increases. You're not even missing out on piety early, because early game monsters don't give enough for it to matter.

Paying for shops is worse than useless right now. I'm paying an outrageously huge amount of gold for a shop that I may not ever actually reach, AND may not have anything I even want, AND even I do find it and it does have something I want, I then have to spend MORE gold to get it. Theoretically yes, it provides an advantage, but in the context of playing a real game, there is no significant difference between buying a shop and pretending to buy a shop; eventually I'll run into a shop either way. Basically a pair of unbranded boots cost me more than a powerful artefact. At least Okawaru doesn't drop his awful gifts on a randomly selected level that you haven't explored yet.

[crate]

I disagree about the corpses -> gold mechanic being terrible (I like it as a player since pressing aad periodically is less work than pressing c on lots of corpses), but I agree that effectively every single other thing Gozag does needs lots of work.

Gold giving a tactical bonus is super weird and the way it's implemented has the additional problem of incentivising not picking up gold (until it stops giving the tactical bonus). I hope I do not have to elaborate on why this is awkward at best.

Potion petition is basically Nemelex except with only a single deck and every time you use it you triple draw (apparently Nemelex has only a single deck in new_nemelex branch but I touched on why I think that's not ideal from a design standpoint in the Nemelex topic). The original way it worked where you could "save" up a specific potion set to use later had the problem that it heavily encouraged setting up precisely that, but the new way where you must choose an effect immediately is both awkward in that you cannot cancel at all (every other similar ability can be canceled until you have made the final decision asked for; you can cancel decks by using esc instead of targeting, for example, at the cost of the card) and awkward as TDA suggests because you cannot see the cost before you attempt to use the ability.

Possibly the shop buying has changed since I played Gozag but if it hasn't: the price you pay to create a shop should probably be disconnected from the value of the shop's items. My general impression was that all this accomplished was making low-sum-of-value shops even more desirable than they already were (and potion and scroll shops in particular are already the most desirable shops in general, and also the least "valuable"). Other types of shops were dramatically too expensive to be worthwhile (you could get how many potion effects for that cost?) though this is an implementation thing.

Bribing seemed a complete waste of 3k gold to me when I tried it but I'll assume that it's been tweaked since then. I don't have problems with it in theory but it has to beat out 3k worth of potions pretty handily to be worth using.

Additionally there seems to be no real theme to this god. All other gods tend to have at least some loose flavour/gameplay theme that connects their abilities together: Fedhas has various tactical abilities (plus mushrooms which are a mix of tactical and strategic) that are mostly not accessible in other ways with a "nature god" flavour; Nemelex is the "effects god" as I discussed elsewhere; Makhleb gives you offensive abilities that fit "demonic" flavour; Dith has various somewhat-defensive effects (plus shadow mimic which still doesn't make sense to me but ok); even Q has elemental damage as a theme. Gozag is just "here's a collection of things completely unrelated to gold, oh and shops except you don't want to use the shops".

[Roderic]

but the new way where you must choose an effect immediately is both awkward in that you cannot cancel at all (every other similar ability can be canceled until you have made the final decision asked for; you can cancel decks by using esc instead of targeting, for example, at the cost of the card) and awkward as TDA suggests because you cannot see the cost before you attempt to use the ability.

soo true, I lost a character just 1st time asking for a potion and I was like "wtf I cannot cancel the offers?" I hesitate if I'm going to use potion petition anymore or at least when to do it, there's a random aspect and a risk that I dislike. If I wanted to be owned I would choose Xom.

The idea has true potential but the current implementation is lackluster. I'm thinking when and why I'll need to replicate an item and just once...

I still have to see some effective use of the gold aura.

I'm thinking into an ability to 'toss money away' to lure creatures to the place you want and using it either to stab, kite or just flee. Even better creating a pile of gold or a "golden fleece" as a diversion that disappears after some turns time. Maybe if the amount of money is high enough it can instill conflict between a group of monsters (like the golden apple of Eris)

[DracheReborn]

I have an ongoing HuFE of Gozag in Vaults, but I think I'll stop playtesting for a bit in other to test something else (plutonians!)

Feedback:
1. Potion petition is very good. I think someone mentioned that it was a bit like old Okawaru - you can expect to regularly get might or haste. IMO the optimal way to play Gozag now is to save all gold for Potion petition (aside from the usual buying good items from shops of course).
2. Gold piles are cool, but scummy. The best way to use them right now is to pile enemies in a kill zone, and keep luring nearby enemies to that spot. Yes the freshness of gold piles expire, so you can't do this indefinitely, but this seems like more of a band aid solution.
3. Call Merchant is rarely worth the gold IMO. In my game, I was lucky to have 15 shops generate, plus a bazaar. The one time I used Call Merchant therefore represents only a ~6% increase in shop availabilty. It's true that most games won't have so many shops, plus you can use Call Merchant earlier, but the reward (getting 1 more shop gamble) doesn't seem to be worth it when you know you can get useful Potion petitions instead for the same money.
4. Bribe branch. Feedback in the other thread. But in summary, this seems to require spoiler knowledge to make it work best.
5. Item duplication. It's easy to forget that this exists! Gozag probably should tell you that you can duplicate an item whenever this ability becomes available. IMO a big problem with this is that duplication only makes sense for a select few items. Maybe ring of slaying, heal wand, scroll of acquirement. Initially I had thought it works on stacks (so I saved up 3 ?acquirement for it!) but it only duplicates one.

Suggestions:

1. Potion petition is already very good. If there's anything I'd like changed, it's 1) removing negative potion effects from the cocktails since they rarely matter; and 2) change porridge/blood to a passive effect. Viz., every time you hit Starving status, Gozag automatically fills up your nutrition, charging you a "tax" in the process. Since this can have combat implications, as an alternative have Gozag drop porridge/blood into your inventory while autocharging you.

2. For gold piles, I think it would be better if the effect of individual piles are stronger, but they stack less. Currently, a single pile is almost unnoticeable (5% chance to trigger) but with 5 piles in LOS this rises to a pretty noticeable 23% = (1 - (0.95^5)). I'd suggest making a single pile 20%, but cap the stacking so that it won't ever go over 30%. It would still be somewhat scummy, but a lot less so IMO, since you don't need to stack as many to get nearly the same effect. Oh and the message needs changing, because "distracted" means something else in crawl (i.e. distracted = stabbable).

3. Call Merchant isn't too strong, so I think it might be ok to make it a passive. That is, Gozag periodically sponsors a merchant to set up shop which he'll tell you about. If you buy items from these special shops, Gozag will charge you an additional percentage of the amount you spent (only fair I suppose).

4. Suggestions for Bribe branch in other thread. But the main one is to make neutral enemies only, no allied ones.

5. Item duplication. It would be nice if this makes sense for more items. Making it work for stacks for example, would open up a whole lot of consumables that would be nice to duplicate.

[headcrab0803]

for the bribe branch part i think paying for perma allies might be better where the amount of gold you pay depends on the HD of the monster

[starless]

I don't like the current implementation of the amulet of Faith when under Gozag. At the moment, equipping it automatically reduces his prices (by 1/3?) and removing it restores the original prices.

Isn't it possible for the discount to kick in gradually similar to Gourmand? And when removed to drop down temporarily to -30%, for example?

[Kate]

Removing faith doesn't restore the original prices, it increases the prices past what they were before putting the amulet on.

[Bim]

To be honest I haven't found Gozag very helpful and is probably the least useful god to choose after Xom. This would be fine if his abilities were fun, but just hoping for a good shop is kinda not that great. However, I love the theme and I'd really like to see him built on. Without wanting to sound ungrateful or antagonistic, Laraso's god outline seems better in a lot of ways (see link above).

Potion petition: Great - the one really useful ability.

Gold distraction: Sort of strange as the only 'active' ability - I'd prefer a more direct approach, something like paying to summon help or something.

Bribe Branch: as others have said, this is kinda not that great currently. It doesn't do a lot and seems to just make things more tedious. This would be much better as 'bribe a monster' with a very high success rate. Alternatives could be to soften up branches by bribing them (reduce monster spawn, spawn lower level monsters or something - whatevers easiest to code) this would help with difficult branches that all characters face, and would be an incentive to change to him if you were stuck with two difficult Lair branches for your char.

Shop calling: As mentioned He'd be made a lot more useful with passive calling and them being of generally better quality.

Item Clone: I don't really like item clone as it has few uses and none that are really that useful. As you can't dual wield weapons and you can't wear more than one of each item (other than rings) it's largely pointless. Most people will find at least one good artifact ring and so the only real use is cloning scrolls of acquirement or possibly cure mutation. Wands aren't useful to clone (even heal wounds) as there's never a situation where you need to use more than 3-4 casts. Cloning stacks sounds a bit grindy, as optimally you'd want to scum abyss for blink/enchant scrolls and then clone 5 or so. I'd prefer this just be changed to something else, like a free item at each shop or something.

Again, I love the idea, I'd just prefer him to have more useful and straight forward abilities and to see his other ones buffed.

[TeshiAlair]

One word. Payday. #MeowthThatsRight

Also, what if dupe stored charges, and different items cost different amounts of charges. So acq cost 10 charges, but a cure pot cost 1 charge.

[XuaXua]

With the changes to corrosion, weapon and armour duplication is now less useful unless we're talking
1) give to an ally
2) dupe a +9/+9 and use a scroll of branding on the dupe for swapping.

[Bim]

With the changes to corrosion, weapon and armour duplication is now less useful unless we're talking
1) give to an ally
2) dupe a +9/+9 and use a scroll of branding on the dupe for swapping.

I hadn't thought of those, but both are kinda outlying cases -there's not many players who would have a permanent ally they care about enough to do something like that for, and branding for dupe swapping - while interesting, is probably not overly useful.
I just don't think it's such a great final ability. The uses of it are pretty few, especially now we don't have corrosion. Pretty much the only standard use I can think of is to dupe a ring, and without being able to dupe artefacts it's pretty useless unless you stumble upon a realllly good slaying or want to double your chances on acquirement roulette.

I'm sure a better one can be thought of, even if it was just buying a permanent ally. I know it steps on yreds toes but it'd be a lot more useful than now.

[XuaXua]

Well, there is always the fully charged wand of hasting/healing, or a powerful rod if you have high evoc investment.

Duplicating one of the wands, fully charged, is around 3 recharge scrolls. Of course, without scroll flammability now, you can just carry your recharge scrolls around with you.

[Bim]

Well, there is always the fully charged wand of hasting/healing, or a powerful rod if you have high evoc investment.

Duplicating one of the wands, fully charged, is around 3 recharge scrolls. Of course, without scroll flammability now, you can just carry your recharge scrolls around with you.

Even in long extended (zigs) I don't think I've ever used up a wand completely before being able to recharge it. Admittedly I'm sure there would be some occasions where it's useful, but it doesn't seem useful enough for a final tier god ability.

[XuaXua]

Just trying to find the best use cases if given really shitty equipment.

[Patashu]

IMO let people duplicate stacks, THEN see if people come up with crazy ways to use it. It's okay to let a new feature be overpowered for a while then tweak it back, it's better than the alternative (start underpowered - sour everyone who tries to use you blind - etc)

[archaeo]

Would it be possible to add gold vision to the minimap? It obviously already works for X, so that's console taken care of, but in tiles it'd be nice if those gold stacks were seen in the minimap.

[Sar]

There is already stuff on minimap that overwrites important features (like "allies were last seen here" can overwrite a staircase), I wouldn't want more of that.
I guess it could be nice to know where another Orc bubble is?

[starless]

How about adding shop detection for any shop on the level?

[Bim]

How about adding shop detection for any shop on the level?

That'd be a nice additional - it's not particularly useful in many cases because shops have no tactical or strategic value, but it would be nice I guess.

[Patashu]

How about adding shop detection for any shop on the level?

He'd detect Bazaars too, I guess?

[SchwaWarrior]

A lot of people are saying the shop generation is useless, because you have to spend a ton of gold for the slight chance of something you want showing up in it.

So, how about this idea: each shop you open up is generated with better and better items, using an offshoot of the Acquirement algorithm. So like, early on when you spend 1,000 on an Armour shop, you'll get things you usually see in an Armour shop, various +0s and +1s of various, ordinary armour and shield types, maybe a couple randarts or exotic pieces such as Mottled or Trollhide. But later on, if you're spending 1,800 or 2,000 on an Armour shop after you've already opened a couple other shops, the entire lineup is high enchantments in the +3 to +6 range, and several more of them have Egos or are good randarts.

Perhaps this feature could be added too: every shop you pay for using Gozag is guaranteed to have, say, 1 to 3 Acquirement items, straight up. In addition to that, while it is only an aesthetic change, the name of any Gozag-bought shop is special and different, chosen from a different list of names than normal shops are. This would give Gozag more of a feel of exclusiveness.

I like people's idea of being able to purchase mercenaries too, instead of bribing the whole branch to be non-hostile. I think the Bribe Branch idea makes you miss out on a LOT of XP, which is not good. Somehow that ability does need to be changed into something else.

Really, for all his abilities, I like the idea of all of Gozag's powers gradually getting more and more powerful as you play. How do you like this idea: all Gozag's powers should become gradually stronger based on a combination of gold you pick up, as well as gold you spend on Gozag powers. Thing is the system needs to be such that it dissuades players from "spending potions on nothing" just to rev up his future potions, but it also has to be such that players can't just expect to not use hardly any potion powers and wait until the potion powers are automatically more powerful before purchasing any. Maybe, as Gozag is the god of greed, he would look most favorably on adventurers who not only amass lots of gold, but spend it on Gozag instead of hoard it for themselves. I'm just spitballing here though.

As it is now though, Gozag's potions and shops getting more and more expensive but staying the same in effectiveness as the game goes on, makes it so that there's zero reason why I WOULDN'T switch gods in the later game, once I felt the powers stopped being useful enough. And sure this isn't the first god to be like that-- Okawaru is a good example, as many players switch from him to TSO late-game for an advantage in the Hells and in Pan for a 15-rune win-- but Okawaru wasn't "designed to be abandoned", it just so happened that that's a legitimate strategy for some melee-specialist players. And right now I couldn't say the same for Gozag.

Maybe Gozag should get a piety system after all, that never decays, and instead just slowly rises as gold is amassed (and also spent on powers? maybe? kinda like how using up Nemelex decks generates piety?), and even though you have all your Gozag powers from the get-go, having higher piety results in more expensive, but more powerful, potions and shops and mercenaries. So a *..... potion effect might be "Heal Wounds and Agility" at best, whereas a *****. might be "Heal Wounds x 3, Magic, Might, Agility, Haste and Resistance" all at once. People's ideas of petitioning scrolls is a good idea too; Scrolls of Silence or Vulnerability or Summoning are somewhat uncommon for example, and also, it would be a sweet advantage to allow Scroll petitions to work while Silenced, as one of Gozag's special features that is unique to this god.

Those are all my ideas on this god for now! Gozag is too unique and special a god idea for me to want to admit that he's underpowered, so anything that can be done to put him up there on the "god tier list" for players would make me really happy.

[starless]

How about adding shop detection for any shop on the level?

He'd detect Bazaars too, I guess?

Since the bazaar is a portal, I don't think he should. He would detect the shops once inside the bazaar, though.

[Bim]

A lot of people are saying the shop generation is useless, because you have to spend a ton of gold for the slight chance of something you want showing up in it.
-snip-

I think you've hit the proverbial nail on the head! Being able to petition potions and scrolls (with better effects with piety) would make him more generally useful, as would having better shops.

The central problem however is that by late game you've normally got good equipment and tons of consumables (especially with item destruction/corrosion getting axed). Gozag giving you a few more of these isn't helpful, especially if you find a very good weapon/armor early on. Shops are also relatively plentiful with at least 4 guaranteed in orc.

He needs some sort of 'useful' ability out side of just giving you stuff, as crawl already gives you tons. I know all gods aren't supposed to be equal and whatever, but as SchwaWarrior says, he's basically begging to be abandoned.

Bribing monsters would be useful (and could be throughout) how about if you could pay for a portal out of any level back to a random level of the early dungeon? This could take a few turns and cost a lot so it wasn't an immediate portal (and it'd spawn somewhere in your LOS) but it'd be mean any trips to Abyss/pan/wherever could be cut short by paying for them.

[Roderic]

Does the fact that Gozag won't be present at 0.15 mean that the design needs some tuning?

[dck]

Well he has big "intended flavor"-gameplay coherence problems, what flavor he has contradicts itself, his abilities don't convey their cost nor what they actually do very well, his most important ability is like a xom buff button and overall his impact on a character that worships him is remarkably similar to that okawaru has with a bit of odd map detection.

Also his piety gain is completely nuts and based on honestly ridiculous factors. Clearing the ENTIRE spider nest is likely to give the player literally less piety than ONE pack of ogres, which is sort of awful; it is also remarkably disappointing to witness this first hand because the piety gain is announced great fanfare (I believe this is mostly the point of having to collect piety by hand and using the gold counter for it, as well as the aura gold generates) and you continue to collect 1/2 gold pieces for the whole branch.
This last bit is less troublesome since it is simple enough to fix, I did expect this would've been rectified with the removal of weight but development of the god itself seems to have come to a halt for a while now.

[snow]

So you give up the ability to join a god so that you can starve and pay to drink potions...?

The potion effect sucks because you can get the same effect for free by using the potions on your inventory.
The shop effect sucks because it sucks.
The bribe branch effect sort of sucks compared to the destroy branch effect that every other god ever has (except for maybe Xom).

This god wants to be a "corpses -> gold -> consumables" god but fails at that in every way by making us gamble with our gold instead of buy things with it.

[XuaXua]

So you give up the ability to join a god so that you can starve and pay to drink potions...?

The potion effect sucks because you can get the same effect for free by using the potions on your inventory.
The shop effect sucks because it sucks.
The bribe branch effect sort of sucks compared to the destroy branch effect that every other god ever has (except for maybe Xom).

This god wants to be a "corpses -> gold -> consumables" god but fails at that in every way by making us gamble with our gold instead of buy things with it.

Well, I think that having the corpses become gold (a resource), he's trying to get us to use that gold (resource) in beneficial ways. Unfortunately, I think one of the major problems is that the costs of spending said gold are not properly aligned.

[dck]

One thing I believe doesn't work with his flavor is that when tied to a god these gold drops are indistinguishable from piety, but then gold as a resource isn't a very well defined thing to begin with.

[dolphin]

You cast Thread Resurrection! The Thread comes to life!

Of the current deities, Gozag seems to be the least fun, so let's spruce up the God of Opulence.

Gold distribution and Monster Gold-slurping
- Spikify the gold from monsters so that 4/5 killed monsters give a few pieces of gold, and the remaining monsters make up the difference with large piles.
- These large piles of gold are slurpable by any monster over the course of 2-3 turns (which districts the monster slurping the gold).

The point of this is to incentivise the player to fight for gold, and create little moments of tension ("Kill the Orc Sorceror, or kill the Orc Warrior eating 75 pieces of gold?").

Bribe Monster
- Single Monster ability. Could either turn the monster neutral or Enslave it. Cost determined by HD (resistible by MR or flat fail percent?). Multiple attempts scale by something like: Cost + (Attempts * Percent * Cost). When the duration ends, you are offered the chance to Bribe again, for a higher price.

You don't want bribe the whole branch/you don't have enough gold/you need a panic button. *edit*

Heirloom
- Improve Randart. Increase a good stat, or decrease a bad one. Offered with every randart (so you can see what would change), but can only be used once per game. The Heirloom is passed on to another game when you die, but disappears after that (like player ghosts?), and has your name on it. Bring on the phallically inscribed artefacts.

This one could be trickier. I don't know how pliable randarts are. But it seems thematic, especially since you're a little Ozymandias and would like to memorialise your power and opulence.

Compound Interest
- While under the effects of Compound Interest, you store up the damage you take (or attacks against you, even if they don't connect), and then release it in one fell swoop, as a beam like Fireball. Damage is proportional to how much damage you have taken, and to how much gold you have. Costs a percentage of your current wealth, like 25-50%.

Take that PayDay.


Thoughts?

[and into]

I do think re-rolling a randart to improve it would be a more interesting one-time use ability than duplicate item, and I like your idea for changing how the gold distraction works.

I don't think the "pass on to another game" aspect of heirloom will be acceptable; bones files that you can get items from (like in nethack) and things like it have been proposed before, and summarily shot down. Regarding compound interest... I don't think it would fit on Gozag, and Yred already has injury mirror (which is similar to what you proposed), but I don't feel too strongly one way or the other about it.

"Bribe monster" is essentially just enslavement with a price tag, which doesn't strike me as unique or differentiated enough to justify adding.

Really I don't see Gozag working until his current abilities are tweaked. If some other neat ability is added to the mix, that would be nice, but improving what is already there seems more important.

[mps]

I'd say buff Gozag abilities as follows:

First, rename "potion petition" to "potion negotiation." At the beginning of the negotiation, you're offered a set of five or six potions. You may buy their effects in any combination you choose, but not like in a shop. Gozag wants to sell all of the potions, especially the bad ones, so he'll offer you deals for taking bad effects and charge you high prices for taking only good ones. So if you ask for a heal, a haste, and a might, he'll charge you a high price, but he'll also offer a better price if you take confusion too. It would probably be necessary to bring in removed potion effects to have a sufficiently interesting set of negative effects to work with. You can then make counter offers, etc. This could be streamlined by making a toggle selection with a "Gozag's price" line to tell you the price of the selected combination. Obviously, the pricing would not be additive, since drinking several potions of your choice in a turn is a powerful effect.

Second, more obviously, make the shops generated by his shop spawning ability spawn on the player as suggested upthread or if the hide and seek aspect is so important, on the next new floor the player visits.

One thing that baffles me about this god is that you're buying things, yet the effects you buy are heavily randomized. It's like bad Nemelex. One of the key advantages of money IRL is that when you have enough of it, you get what you want, even if what you want is crazy. Gozag should operate on that principle. Characters who have a huge amount of money to burn should be able to get commensurately powerful effects out of Gozag reliably.

A more radical redesign might put Gozag in more of an endgame role where having a lot of money allows you to buy protection from the wrath of other gods on conversion, buy your way into troves, etc. to put a character with bad luck on loot into better standing.

[nicolae]

First, rename "potion petition" to "potion negotiation." At the beginning of the negotiation, you're offered a set of five or six potions. You may buy their effects in any combination you choose, but not like in a shop. Gozag wants to sell all of the potions, especially the bad ones, so he'll offer you deals for taking bad effects and charge you high prices for taking only good ones. So if you ask for a heal, a haste, and a might, he'll charge you a high price, but he'll also offer a better price if you take confusion too. It would probably be necessary to bring in removed potion effects to have a sufficiently interesting set of negative effects to work with. You can then make counter offers, etc. This could be streamlined by making a toggle selection with a "Gozag's price" line to tell you the price of the selected combination. Obviously, the pricing would not be additive, since drinking several potions of your choice in a turn is a powerful effect.

This seems like a complex interface hassle for an effect that could be mostly replicated by just giving Gozag's Potion Petition a few high-priced drink orders that have no bad potions (if that's not already what happens).

One thing that baffles me about this god is that you're buying things, yet the effects you buy are heavily randomized. It's like bad Nemelex. One of the key advantages of money IRL is that when you have enough of it, you get what you want, even if what you want is crazy.

On the other hand, "get exactly what you want all the time" is not a design goal of Crawl. It's why there's no wands of wishing.