Nemelex mechanics questions

[Bearserker]

Hi,

I play an OpIE lvl 27 and I would like to join Nemelex because I rarely tried him, and never during the endgame.
My stash is full of magic items/artefacts I can sacrifice and I would like to not waste them.

I've read the wiki's page about Nemelex and the Nemelex guide, but I've no idea if the informations are up to date.
Furthermore, I don't understand the difference between the card timeout and the gift timeout : they seem to be two parallel timeouts which decrease the same way.

So
- What are the main differences between the two timeouts ?
- How should I sacrifice my items to maximize the number of decks I receive ?
- For example, if I pray over a place with 100+ items, will I receive more than one deck, or should I divide my stash into multiple heaps ?

[cursednobleman]

Hmm. I'm no master of Nemelex but I've won two games with him.

There are two ways to reduce timeout and gain piety, the sacrifice of items and the use of unknown cards (not unknown decks per se). By doing both at high piety, you can generate decks at a high rate.

Hmm, to maximize DECKS, just sacrifice everything. Though some items won't count, as piety rises Nemelex gets more picky about giving away piety. Though an amulet of faith will help immensely.

Yes. You can pile up all your crap into one square and recieve an assload of decks, I'm sure it will be glorious.




*A lategame nemelex does not seem too useful unless you've a weird and incompetent character. I'll cover the decks.

Destruction: Useless unless you have lichform to negate torment. The cards in it aren't too useful lategame.

Escape: Swiftness, Haste, Instant Teleports and Controlled Blinking is in this deck. Lategame you'll probably just swiftness+haste or teleport.

Dungeons: More treasure! If a trove didn't spawn, you can create one. You can also create a labyrinth and bailey, as well as an infinite amount of bazaars. As an octopode, you can draw the water card to flood the dungeon and vitrify can make dangerous walled levels such as Zot:5 or elf:3 significantly more predictable by turning the walls transparent.

Summoning: You'll probably only use legendary decks lategame. You can spit out 6 lair grade monsters, red/yellow wasps (awesome if your enemy isn't poison resistant), tier 1/2 demons, two handed tukima's weapons, and bone dragons. Also crusade acts as a mass abjuration and mass enslavement both at once!

Wonders: You can use this deck to ruin or character or abyss yourself! The experience card acts as a potion of exp, helix can act as a curemut/mut potion and at higher levels will act in your favor to remove bad mutations or give you good ones. Shuffle will swap your stats around, alchemist converts gold->HP in emergencies, and wild magic is a zot trap.

Overall, I don't know about lategame mileage unless you want semi-powerful summons, want to change to character up, or spit out water and treasure portals.

[crate]

Nemelex is extremely strong lategame.

Decks of destruction are still very strong lategame. You can either triple draw or just make sure you don't draw them in a situation where a self-torment will kill you. Full LOS crystal spears are never a bad thing, and the other spells deal a lot of damage also. Deal four with destruction is pretty good.

Escape is also one of the most sure life-saving things in the game, since it has Tomb card (and warpwright is the fastest teleport in the game). Obviously you should stack these.

Summoning remains strong obviously.

Dungeons can drown stuff or use dowsing card if you want to save them instead of drawing through for trowel.

[mikee]

There is a lot of stuff I can let pass, but PLEASE stop telling people to vitrify zot:5 and other branch ends. :( Have you tried this? It's really bad.

In general, don't worry about piling things together to sac them. In this case, it might help you a little bit with piety decay. You could also start with a pile that would give you decks that are easier to spam for piety, such as a pile of weapons or books/jewellery/misc.

[cursednobleman]

There is a lot of stuff I can let pass, but PLEASE stop telling people to vitrify zot:5 and other branch ends. Have you tried this? It's really bad.

If you want me to stop suggesting it fine. I suppose as a part of my playstyle I generally like luring out enemies in branch ends one by one then killing them. With vitrify, I can use it as a poor mans ashenzari or antennae and only lure one monster out. areas like zot:5 or elf:3 have hooks and turns on the walls where enemies tend to get stuck, so I find vitrify helps me lure them out. Results and opinions vary I suppose.

[mikee]

No, it's really bad. I mean like "you should wield a banana" bad, not a matter of opinion or style.

[Bearserker]

Thx for your answers.

I already have cleaned elf:3, and I don't specially fear zot:5 so vitrification isn't a card I aim but yes, water can be great !

Actually, I'm a casual crawl player (I only won once one year ago with a mummy and I then stopped playing until now) and my goal is to test Namelex and prepare the post-end-game (hell, ziggurats and pandemonium, where I never went before).
I choose an Op, because I wanted to try this new race, I wanted to do the post-end-game wearing as many artefact rings as possible and I find very funny the idea to play a poulp wielding many decks of cards in his tentacles.
IE allowed me to have a very easy early-game because the starting book allow summoning shields and correct damage output including irresistible (for cold resistant) with icicle. If I die now, I'll try the same thing with an EE for the solid sandblast during early game, the statue form synergy, the over-powerful end-game spells and the good synergy with fire magic, providing a better end-game.

During my run, I've accumulated plenty wands, scrolls and potions of all kinds, and because I joined Sif Muna as soon as I saw an altar, I'm full of spell books.

So basically, I'll try to get some deck of wonders to increase my skills, and change my bad mutations (I've 3 bad mutations, the worst being "blurry vision 1")
I'll try to get many decks of dungeon too, in order to get several trowel cards and stack some water cards
Finally having a set of escape decks can be very usefull, at least for the "tomb" card.

To do this, I plan to :
- put an amulet of faith to increase my piety gain and the decks drop rate.
- then, I begin by just sacrificing several worthless potions, in order to weight towards wonders.
- then increase my piety while gaining some low level decks of wonders by blind-drawing the nine decks I've already found in my run. By doing this, loosing 20% of the "Wonders weight" will be negligeable and I should get a few more low level decks of wonders.
- then I will sacrifice most of my wands. I've stacked 50 of them during the run. I should get some more decks of low-mid level decks of wonders.
- then I'll sacrifice a huge number of books. I can sacrifice 60-70 of them and keep the 10-20 most interesting books. It should provide many mid-high level dungeon/wonders decks.
- then I use the decks of dungeon in hope for some trowel cards allowing me to hunt new artifacts.
- once I've used/marked/stacked most of my decks, I remove my amulet of faith. For the post-end-game, I need to be able to switch between more useful amulets.
- then I begin to sacrifice every armour I find to get decks of escape when I get back 200 piety, I mark these decks to always have reliable escape solutions available.

I don't care at all about decks of destruction/summoning : spamming freezing clouds, ice beasts and ice storms works well, and I complete this arsenal with dispel undead and orb of destruction.
Keeping only 3 weight categories should maximize my chances of getting new decks of wonder/dungeon because the only other category will decrease by 20% on each deck of escape gift.

Do you think it's a viable strategy ?
Do you see some other optimizations I didn't think or mention ?
Do you see some problems in this plan ?
- for example, I'm so noob, I'm not sure the sif muna's gifts have a value and can be sacrificed.
- I don't know if there is an initial weight in each category at the moment I join Nemelex. So I don't know if I should sacrifice more than worthless potions to hope weighting towards deck of wonders at the begining.

[nordetsa]

No, it's really bad. I mean like "you should wield a banana" bad, not a matter of opinion or style.

Why is it that bad? Is vitrifying walls dangerous?

[Kate]

- then, I begin by just sacrificing several worthless potions, in order to weight towards wonders.

Nemelex thinks they're worthless too.

[Bearserker]

Nemelex thinks they're worthless too.

Yeah, but I've read somewhere worthless potions are valued 1.
So, if every weight starts at 0, and I sacrifice 5 worthless potions, I should have :
Destruction : 0
Dungeon : 0
Escape : 0
Summoning : 0
Wonders : 5

Then, if I use the deck I've already found in the dungeon, I should get a deck and because Wonders is the only category with a weight, I should automatically get a deck of wonders (and the weight becomes 4).
If I continue emptying my already owned decks, I should get a few low-mid level decks of Wonders, without having to sacrifice valuable items.

Does it work ?

[mikee]

Why is it that bad? Is vitrifying walls dangerous?

Yes.

[nordetsa]

Why is it that bad? Is vitrifying walls dangerous?

Yes.

I mean, on what account? Are there some spells that can be used even when there's a transparent wall blocking the way? I think I read sort of that thing in Crawlwiki...

[BlackSheep]

Not anymore. Targeting was changed so that transparent walls block everything except vision. (You can't even 't'ell an ally to 'a'ttack something behind a glass wall.)

[cursednobleman]

Nemelex thinks they're worthless too.

Yeah, but I've read somewhere worthless potions are valued 1.
So, if every weight starts at 0, and I sacrifice 5 worthless potions, I should have :
Destruction : 0
Dungeon : 0
Escape : 0
Summoning : 0
Wonders : 5

Then, if I use the deck I've already found in the dungeon, I should get a deck and because Wonders is the only category with a weight, I should automatically get a deck of wonders (and the weight becomes 4).
If I continue emptying my already owned decks, I should get a few low-mid level decks of Wonders, without having to sacrifice valuable items.

Does it work ?

It might work in theory, but you'll have to generate enough piety to get a deck. So you'd have to sac a ton of junk items or start spamming decks to create piety. I don't have any problems when I sacrifice (pretty much only) wands to get deck of wonders in the lategame. Earlygame you can sacrifice rations though. I don't consider it worthwhile to sacrifice potions or scrolls if they're good.

[crate]

If you don't think vitrifying Zot:5 is bad I would simply suggest you go try it in wizmode, it's really awful and this should be obvious once you try it. Letting more things in Zot see you is not a good thing.

[Bearserker]

It might work in theory, but you'll have to generate enough piety to get a deck. So you'd have to sac a ton of junk items or start spamming decks to create piety. I don't have any problems when I sacrifice (pretty much only) wands to get deck of wonders in the lategame. Earlygame you can sacrifice rations though. I don't consider it worthwhile to sacrifice potions or scrolls if they're good.

I got 9 decks and an amulet of faith during my run.
Weighting a little bit toward only one category (several worthless potions) should be enough to convert my 9 decks into a few less decks of this category (while gaining lots of piety !). Good deal, especially when the category contains some overpowered cards.
It's better to spam decks before sacrificing wands because the weight of "Wonders" will not drop significantly during the first gifts as it has always been very low.

So, it seems theorically a bit too easy to control Nemelex gifts during endgame.
I'll try this this evening or tomorow. If it's unbalanced, I'll tell it here.

[XuaXua]

You know what I'd like for Nemelex followers?

Now that we have auto-sacrifice (or at least auto-travel to sacrifice), players who follow Nemelex shoudl have a programmable flag flipped to autopickup=true for decks.

Explained as:
Currently, autopickup is false for decks for all players including Nemelex followers.

Add a new flag, default true, for autopickup of decks if following nemelex; allow the flag to be configurable to false in the config file.

[Kate]

You can do that already in Lua.

  Code:

: if you.god() == "Nemelex Xobeh" then
autopickup_exceptions = <deck
: end

You can probably do it without even needing to save/load with add_autopickup_func.

[BlackSheep]

It's a strong candidate for being automatic, though. Nemelex followers are going to be interested in every deck they encounter.