Extended Gods besides Mak/TSO/Veh?

[arandomperson12]

I have never won a 15 runer with a god besides TSO/Vehumet, but Makhleb also seems fine. How do you deal with the lack of healing for melee characters/lack of MP for blasters? In extended, you are constantly harassed by waves and waves of enemies, hell effects, torment, hellfire, etc, and have a difficult time resting to full, even with regeneration. If you have ashenzari/ru/kiku/gozag, how do you manage to recover after fights? People often say Zin is good, but Zin offers no healing and prevents use of the regeneration spell. With TSO/Makh, extended is pretty safe for a melee character, and blasters blast everything before taking much damage so Vehumet is good, so I have never actually lost a game in extended, but how do you survive with other gods?

[Berder]

Most gods are just bad in extended. I would also say that most characters are just bad in extended due to the existence of the new Tomb. Ash is good in extended though, not a bad choice for mages who need to gather all the spells to handle Tomb on limited XP. Zin is also good, it gives you an excellent get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of Sanctuary, and the stat bonuses from Vit don't hurt. It may not be easy to recover HP with Zin, a regen amulet will help and you want a lot of rN. Zin still protects you from hell effects somewhat so you get tormented less there.

[duvessa]

In extended, you are constantly harassed by waves and waves of enemies, hell effects, torment, hellfire, etc

You're really not. Pan's monster generation rate is faster than what you're used to in Dungeon (rip), but it's still not that fast and most of the stuff that gets generated is harmless trash like ynoxinuls. You can rest in Pan fine even without regeneration/sublimation, and you can obviously rest in Tomb fine as well.
In Hells you don't generally want to rest, but if you lose too much hp on the way to the 7th level you can always just go back to the vestibule and retry (and it will get easier every time since you are clearing out more monsters every time). Monsters created by hell effects can't act right away, so you get some free actions against them which is sufficient to kill fiends/etc. before they do anything really bad.

I see players getting too scared of torment a lot. The thing about torment is that it literally cannot kill you. It's only a big problem when combined with smite or hellfire. So the only place where torment is really scary is Tomb since it's full of monsters that combine it with smiting. (Brimstone Fiends don't appear in huge packs, and if for some reason you have to fight a fiend and a hellion at the same time, you can just kill the hellion immediately).
But Tomb is basically just a big fixed vault, so it's a puzzle with solutions: lure things back on Tomb:1, teleport on Tomb:2, and most importantly, avoid making noise when you can - don't use melee attacks or loud spells in Tomb (especially Tomb:3) unless you have to.

Sublimation of Blood should be enough MP recovery for just about anyone. If you want to throw MP at all the random skeletons in Hells then yeah that won't work, but you should have plenty for killing the monsters you really need to.

Zin does block necromancy, and blocking necromancy is pretty bad (that's the reason I think TSO is extremely overrated). The thing is, Sanctuary is so completely insane that makes Zin the best god in the game at full piety anyway. It's effective invulnerability that lasts for a long time and can be renewed several times if needed with only a very small 1-turn gap (even DDoor requires you to spend a few turns vulnerable before you can renew it, and DDoor doesn't let you recover a bunch of HP in preparation for that gap), and it doesn't even carry a permanent cost like Borgnjor's.

[Berder]

It is a general rule of safe crawling, to treat being below 50% HP as a dire emergency to be avoided under normal circumstances. If you play this way through the whole game you will die much less frequently.

This helps to explain the danger of torment. Torment may not kill you, but it will knock off large portions of your health so that other things can kill you. Torment can very quickly bring you from full HP to 40 HP, at which point any random attack (hellfire, iron shot, even just lucky melee attacks) is capable of killing you. Torment should certainly be feared and mitigated whenever possible.

Sublimation of blood is OK if you are worshiping Makhleb and casting level 9s on groups of enemies to regain the lost HP immediately. Otherwise, HP is just too valuable to spend for MP. Vehumet provides enough MP in extended, and you can use a Staff of Energy and Amulet of Magic Regeneration to make up the difference.

[akaean]

One of my most pleasurable 15 rune Ascensions was an Ogre Warper of Dithmenos, I really like Dithmenos and found him to be fantastic throughout the entire game, and overall he felt more helpful to me in extended than games I've played with Mak/TSO/Veh. Dithmenos does three main things in endgame. 1) Big damage boost from Shadow Mimic. 2) Bleed Smoke is exceptionally powerful when dealing with big damage hits in the end game, you get hit by Torment? You'll usually fart out a large cloud of smoke and cut off line of sight, making it easier to pull back and avoid additional torments / hellfires. This special ability helps a ton in Hells, and is useful throughout the game as it often has the effect of reading a scroll of smoke automatically when you get hit. 3) Boosts stealth by a huge amount letting even not very stealthy characters not wake everything up immediately, the accuracy penalty to enemies also helps stay alive as well.

Kiku is also a very good god in extended. Kiku's delivery service is great in extended, especially with simulacrum (which can and will kill hell lords) and the protection from torment is always welcome. If you like necromutation he can guarantee the necronomicon, although I usually opt for an early pain brand when playing with him. I feel that Kiku is one of the overall stronger end game gods.

The truth is that you can do extended with most gods, some are just better than others. I've done 15 rune runs with Trog and Okawaru as well. You don't need to max optimize your god unless you are planning on doing ziggurats.

[CanOfWorms]

dithmenos also gives shadow form, which notably has torment immunity and makes it convenient to steal runes from specific areas

[gameguard]

TSO is notably better than all others, but dith, gozag, oka, usk, ru, ash, kiku are about as good as Mak/veh in extended. Others are less good but still doable. Only fedhas and yred really doesnt offer anything. Your equipment/spells matter more in tryining to do extended anyways.

[Airwolf]

Zin's Recite is also amazing at high Invocations. And he keeps you from having to micro-manage malmutators.

[Berder]

These are the most popular gods among high winrate players for 15 rune games:

  Code:

<causative> !lg tenpercenters urune=15 s=god
<Sequell> 2296 games for tenpercenters (urune=15): 473x The Shining One, 265x Makhleb, 172x Vehumet, 157x Ashenzari, 127x Zin, 119x Sif Muna, 118x Okawaru, 106x Cheibriados, 103x Kikubaaqudgha, 67x Gozag, 61x Trog, 61x Lugonu, 60x Dithmenos, 59x Uskayaw, 58x Xom, 57x, 44x Ru, 35x Nemelex Xobeh, 30x Jiyva, 26x Hepliaklqana, 26x Elyvilon, 21x Qazlal, 14x Fedhas, 11x Wu Jian, 9x Beogh, 8x Pakellas, 8x
<Sequell> Yredelemnul, Wudzu


Yeah, I'd agree Dithmenos is a decent choice. More of my 15 rune games were under dith than any other.

  Code:

<causative> !lg causative urune=15 s=god
<Sequell> 19 games for causative (urune=15): 5x Dithmenos, 4x Sif Muna, 2x Makhleb, 2x Ashenzari, 2x The Shining One, Cheibriados, Ru, Vehumet, Gozag


[Plantissue]

I am wondering why Ash would be as valuable as some of the other gods for extended.

[Berder]

Because Ash is a good choice for mages, and mages are a good choice for extended because they can more easily get the tools they need, such as necromut and cblink.

[akaean]

That and the extra information Ashenzari provides is really good in the field which people don't often give it enough credit for when considering a min maxed build. Ash gives the player a lot more information about what is around the next corner than any other god. Passive mapping gives you a peak at what the map layout is, and you can sense the number of monsters and generally what threat level they are- it also gives you an idea of whether any monsters are coming around a corner mid fight- so you can know whether you need to think about exiting early.

The passives he gives out are nice as well. See invisible is good, and Clarity is exceptional. Confusion late in the game can be a game ending spell if the player is out or low on curing potions. With Ash you don't need to worry about it.

All of this is before the skill boosting and transferring (which arguably doesn't matter in extended but matters a lot in reaching extended). IMO Ashenzari and Dithmenos are chronically underrated gods.

[nago]

Passive scryinc and scrying are incredibly OP but I don't think I ever seen a char running low of !curing past mid-game

[b0rsuk]

I am wondering why Ash would be as valuable as some of the other gods for extended.

There used to be a magic school "Divinations", which was all about scrying. Most good players learned the spells by Zot or earlier. The whole reason Ash was conceived was to make it so not all characters run around casting Detect Creatures. A couple of spell levels was a very low price to have it, people would even take off armor just to cast it. Over and over.

[TheMeInTeam]

In extended, you are constantly harassed by waves and waves of enemies, hell effects, torment, hellfire, etc

You're really not. Pan's monster generation rate is faster than what you're used to in Dungeon (rip), but it's still not that fast and most of the stuff that gets generated is harmless trash like ynoxinuls. You can rest in Pan fine even without regeneration/sublimation, and you can obviously rest in Tomb fine as well.
In Hells you don't generally want to rest, but if you lose too much hp on the way to the 7th level you can always just go back to the vestibule and retry (and it will get easier every time since you are clearing out more monsters every time). Monsters created by hell effects can't act right away, so you get some free actions against them which is sufficient to kill fiends/etc. before they do anything really bad.

I see players getting too scared of torment a lot. The thing about torment is that it literally cannot kill you. It's only a big problem when combined with smite or hellfire. So the only place where torment is really scary is Tomb since it's full of monsters that combine it with smiting. (Brimstone Fiends don't appear in huge packs, and if for some reason you have to fight a fiend and a hellion at the same time, you can just kill the hellion immediately).
But Tomb is basically just a big fixed vault, so it's a puzzle with solutions: lure things back on Tomb:1, teleport on Tomb:2, and most importantly, avoid making noise when you can - don't use melee attacks or loud spells in Tomb (especially Tomb:3) unless you have to.

Sublimation of Blood should be enough MP recovery for just about anyone. If you want to throw MP at all the random skeletons in Hells then yeah that won't work, but you should have plenty for killing the monsters you really need to.

Zin does block necromancy, and blocking necromancy is pretty bad (that's the reason I think TSO is extremely overrated). The thing is, Sanctuary is so completely insane that makes Zin the best god in the game at full piety anyway. It's effective invulnerability that lasts for a long time and can be renewed several times if needed with only a very small 1-turn gap (even DDoor requires you to spend a few turns vulnerable before you can renew it, and DDoor doesn't let you recover a bunch of HP in preparation for that gap), and it doesn't even carry a permanent cost like Borgnjor's.

Doing hell w/o gods suited for it is more like a chore than it is a serious spike in difficulty. You can clear it by repeatedly going to vestibule to heal as a Trog worshipper just fine, but in IRL time it's probably more than 3x longer than just wading through everything with TSO healing + cleansing flames.

I consider the top extended gods to be Zin/TSO/Makhleb/Kiku, Gozag, Dithmenos for different reasons. I probably value the first 4 of these a bit more. These all help make it less painful in the sense of grinding through, and are also strong enough in their own right. Nemelex, Ashenzari, Lugonu, Ru, Vehumet, Sif Muna, and Uskayaw all still have some decent stuff to offer too.

[snow]

zin is best for farming abyss/pan, mak for zigs. trog is actually fine for extended.

[tasonir]

Chei's boosts all scale well into the extended game, since it's generally just more damage, more defenses, more spellcasting. All of which are needed in extended. Having a full LOS ability that nukes swarms of monsters as well as an escape ability that can often just remove most of the crowd of monsters attacking you is also pretty swell (results not guaranteed). You're still slow of course, but if you made it to extended while dealing with that, you probably already understand how to handle it.

Chei is 8th on berder's list and nearly twice Dith's number of wins.

[Nebukadnezar]

I have never won a 15 runer with a god besides TSO/Vehumet,

Both are loud gods.
TSO by being shiny and Vehumet by helping you cast big loud spells

but Makhleb also seems fine. How do you deal with the lack of healing for melee characters/lack of MP for blasters? In extended, you are constantly harassed by waves and waves of enemies, hell effects, torment, hellfire, etc, and have a difficult time resting to full, even with regeneration. If you have ashenzari/ru/kiku/gozag, how do you manage to recover after fights? People often say Zin is good, but Zin offers no healing and prevents use of the regeneration spell. With TSO/Makh, extended is pretty safe for a melee character, and blasters blast everything before taking much damage so Vehumet is good, so I have never actually lost a game in extended, but how do you survive with other gods?

This is how f.e. Okawaru helps in Extended (besides finesse which means you'll most likely have a lot of might/haste stacked for boss fights):
Okawaru gives +5 to every martial skill.
let's say you skilled UC.
Normally you would skill to UC=27.
Heroism means you can stop at UC=22.
The high skill lvls are expensive, so Oka allows you to invest that XP into something else.
Let's say into Necro.
With medium armour you can get infestation ready for tomb/Pan.
He'll also give+5 to stealth which I use a lot for...walking
You are very likely to have a source of Inv (item/spell) available for extended. Unlike a follower of TSO you don't have to fight Hellions, Tormentors or Neqoxecs. They can't sinv.
Okawaru is the god of ammo, heroism and thus stealth+spells=hybrid.

Stealth, Inv., Summons, Translocations are tools available to everyone (in Extended).
TSO allows you to treat Extended more or less like the first 3 runes: the loudest walking thing complaining about torment/hellfire/malmutation
You don't need a god for 15 runes.

[TheMeInTeam]

Did a 15 rune with Dg recently, even though I went the brainlet route and invested points into strength: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Th ... 024000.txt

With low spellpower and access to the good tloc spells I went for those, since they are very useful and most don't depend on spell power. I thought I might get shatter before the end of the game, but didn't make it. Should have just put more points into throwing.

Any time you get shoals you get so many throwing implements, those kept being useful in extended. Hellions/tormentors aren't too sturdy, even boomerangs have a decent chance to kill in 1-2 hits. Malmuters get face full of silver, usually through other enemies. Throwing even helps a lot in Tomb, where I threw a lot of javelins as a tree standing on upstairs. You can also net mummies and they waste a lot of turns struggling to break free. I probably could have killed more hell/pan lords by blowing consumables, but didn't see any need for that. They don't give THAT much xp, and jacking the runes seemed safer. I did full clear Tomb though.

I would not try to do zigs with a str gouge like this, however.

[tasonir]

Interesting DG build, although it may be a bit off topic here. Getting level 9 spells going with 16 int is technically possible, but yeah, I wouldn't recommend it. You'd probably want at least 10 more int to make it feasible.

[TheMeInTeam]

"No god" is usually accepted as a god choice, and the intention was to demonstrate means to clear extended (almost) regardless of god choice. Magic oriented builds will fare better in many cases.

Obviously w/o heal on kill it's more tedious, but you can still rest in hell in small rooms. Having something, anything to kill hellions/fiends quickly is a big plus, cuts down on damage you take in the first place.