Proposal: Xom can't be worshipped by undead

[byrel]

Flavor-wise, they bore him. In reality Xom-scumming is the worst case of scumming because it's remarkably powerful (sorry Blade), and effectively hungerless races shouldn't have access to that.

[archaeo]

I'm not sure why Xom gifts aren't just on some XP timer, or an exploration timer, or whatever.

[reaver]

Yes there are numerous ways to deal with this, for example maybe Xom should never spontaneous become Not-Bored when he is Bored.

Also I'm pretty sure it's possible to Xom-scum on normal species too. Press "5" on the last floor you cleared until you're "Very Hungry" and then explore the level you're currently exploring until a monster drops an edible corpse.

[byrel]

It's possible, but less horrifically abusable. Temple eliminates nearly all risk for a mummy. You'll eventually run out of nearby monsters on a normal race.

[duvessa]

In reality Xom-scumming is the worst case of scumming because it's remarkably powerful (sorry Blade)

xom scumming is quite powerful yes

[ion_frigate]

Proposal: add a second boredom timer to Xom. This one has no chance of spontaneously reversing, and can only be decremented by gaining XP. Furthermore, Xom can get REALLY bored with this timer - if you just sit around in Temple pressing 5, expect to start seeing durably summoned Pan lords and orbs of fire.

[bananaken]

It never struck me as something overpowered on undead, specially not now that certain changes made Xomscumming less useful (stat drain is recovered by XP, lantern of shadows no longer amusing xom, etc.).

Yes, you can get a tangible benefit from scumming Xom with undead, but that's not worth locking out Xom to undead races. You could implement "anti-scumming" measures on Xom where you specifically target scumming in the order of tens/hundreds of thousands of turns, but again, I don't think it's that big of a deal. The benefit is marginal enough and the method is tedious enough that it never struck me as something people would ever do outside of a proof of concept. Why not just focus on making undead and/or Xom more fun overall?

[Sar]

How is it powerful? Xom is as likely to kill you as to give you something useful so you can't do it to increase winrate or have better chance of winning your CK (lol), and score-wise it's obviously a bad thing to do. I got the impression people do it for fun.

[byrel]

I dunno. MuCK is easily the easiest mummy I've played. Maybe it's just me, but it feels stronger and more survivable than taking the same bad Xom actions while potentially in the middle of combat.

[reaver]

Xom scummimg is powerful if you are bad at Crawl.

A bit like how start scumming can help you get /a win/ but is bad at getting you a high winrate.

It takes much less player effort to scum Xom than actually play well.

[byrel]

I'm not going to say that MuCK with Xom scumming is actually better than any good combo. For streaking I'd way rather play HO--, Sp--, or whatever. I'm not even 100% persuaded it's better than a good mummy (say MuIE or somesuch). But I'm 100% sure it's better than MuCK without Xom scumming. You're going to get negative Xom actions either way, with nearly the same distribution (running around doing mornal things rarely actually amuses Xom, so he'll spend nearly as much time bored without scumming.) The difference is you get those actions in temple where there are no other threats, while standing on the stairs so any summons can't follow you. In other words, Xom scumming is the safest way to play Xom on a turn-by-turn basis. Of course, your game will be twice as long which will mean more Xom actions... but those will either be in an artificially safe environment (Temple on stairs) or with you artificially more powerful than you XL would indicate.

Maybe even just have Xom suppressed in the temple due to the tangible presence of the other gods... You can scum elsewhere, but at least you're incurring some risk to OoD spawns there.

[Sar]

Well MuCK definitely was not the easiest mummy I've played (or won), so here's that.

[njvack]

I don't think Xom is like the greatest thing ever but I do like having a few "stupid <foo> tricks" in a game like Crawl. MuCK feels like one of those for me.

[tabstorm]

I dunno. MuCK is easily the easiest mummy I've played. Maybe it's just me, but it feels stronger and more survivable than taking the same bad Xom actions while potentially in the middle of combat.

I don't mean this in an insulting way, but your play transcends the good/bad scale when Mu^Xom gives you a higher chance to win than playing a Mummy normally due to the off chance of a good gift.

[bananaken]

I think a Mummy of Gozag is definitely easier and more consistent. Xom just happens to have moments where he can provide a very powerful Xom action that can potentially trivialize fights that would be otherwise tough with any other combo.

That said, scumming with a vampire is slightly more effective since you can pile up a nice set of mutations, and as long as you have sustain attributes you can avoid stat zero by the time you get good items + mutations.

[tabstorm]

I think a Mummy of Gozag is definitely easier and more consistent. Xom just happens to have moments where he can provide a very powerful Xom action that can potentially trivialize fights that would be otherwise tough with any other combo.

That said, scumming with a vampire is slightly more effective since you can pile up a nice set of mutations, and as long as you have sustain attributes you can avoid stat zero by the time you get good items + mutations.

When you play MuCK, Xom trivializes you. Here's how it goes:
You are confused!
You can't drink.
...
You die.

Mummies of Gozag get more marginal benefit from Gozag than other races since they can't use potions. You'll still get a better character from using better gods overall...

[prozacelf]

Xom is the great leveler. So to speak. I'm not sure there should be any impetus to exclude the fun of CK from the undead just because it is possible to abuse it with mummies. I mean, it's been around since well before I started playing, and while I know that's a shitty reason generally, I can't see what changing it now really does. Xom is a lot of fun IMO, and if you want to special case him for species, I'd argue that it should specifically be Mu that can't take him, because Gh and Vp both actually have interesting interactions with Xom.

[duvessa]

Guys, farming Xom mechanics works with other species just as well as it does with mummies. It works better in fact because literally any other species in the game is better at surviving the occasional bad Xom act. You have 160,000 turns to do it in Lair before you have to start spending appreciable amounts of permafood, and there's no way you're going to be able to set up safe Xom scumming before Lair. Everyone just uses mummies because there only reason to do it is style (in the majority of games by the time you can safely set it up, your character is strong enough to do Zot already, and even then you'd still be more likely to win by just worshipping a stronger god), and MuCK is by far the most stylish CK.

[bananaken]

I didn't realize XL12 characters could be Zot ready

[duvessa]

If you can safely deal with Xom banishment at XL12 then it's not a stretch to say you can do Zot, yeah. In fact two XL11 characters have gotten the Orb, and one XL12 character has won the game.

[headcrab0803]

I had a single successful run of xomscumming at temple from my sub-100 muck runs and it feels that while you can get extremely lucky most of the times you just die to xom

[bananaken]

I had a single successful run of xomscumming at temple from my sub-100 muck runs and it feels that while you can get extremely lucky most of the times you just die to xom

As long as you get a feel for the requirements for scumming Xom the biggest worry is Abyss. Having a special level where you can dig make killholes is useful if you get a non-popcorn enemy you can still kill since it saves other consumables. Sustain attributes will let you scum for longer and it'll make Xom "waste" a bad action on you most of the time. Faith speeds up Xom actions significantly, and this is very good since Xom will act more often at good piety levels before he gets bored. If you end up in the Abyss, teleportation and stealth will be your best friends, but in my experience the odds are very low to get banished. Basically gather as best of a "kit" as you can and make the best use out of it. You can make it work with a variety of items, but to me sustain attributes is pretty high on the list alongside the means of fighting popcorn summons and means of escaping nasty summons.

If you can safely deal with Xom banishment at XL12 then it's not a stretch to say you can do Zot, yeah. In fact two XL11 characters have gotten the Orb, and one XL12 character has won the game.

You're quoting 1 case of a successful ascension ever from XL12 or below, that sounds way harder than successfully scumming for hundreds of thousands of turns within a couple of tries (mostly trying to not die before you gather the basic items/levels because races such as Mummies suck). While we're at it, I've never heard of people xomscumming with races with a food clock, it just sounds way too slow with chunks and too inefficient burning through permafood.. I could be wrong of course, but I could try it just out of curiosity.