Nemelex

• The deck of destruction is too dangerous to be used in dangerous situations, which is when you are supposed to use decks. Making the torment card rarer would make the deck significantly more attractive. – syllogism 2010-02-05 22:44
• I agree. I spam decks of destruction against harmless monsters. Torment cards are too common to use those decks against any real threats in the early game. Summoning decks are slightly overpowered. Mainly, the Foxfire card summons too many wasps and the Pentagram card seems better than Makhleb's Greater Servant ability. Maybe the chance of friendliness could match Makhleb's ability? — demos 2010-05-05 07:44
• For more suggestions, see dpeg's comments at 1568, esp. the development of a 'deck of night' oriented around stabbing.

Many deck types and levels are spammed. Whenever I get a deck with a higher level, I spam all lower-level decks so I can get more higher-level decks. Get rid of deck levels (plain, ornate, legendary). Retain card power, but determine it using a (possibly random function) of spell power or some combination of spell power, evocations, piety and tension. Evocation would have to play an important role in card power. — smock 2010-12-04 19:06

I second the removal of deck levels. Guess what gets thrown out whenever I need inventory space? That right, low-level decks. If all decks were equally useful, life as a Nemelex-ite would be less tedious and more fun, since I wouldn't be tossing out 25%-to-50% of what I get gifted as a matter of principle (“Oops, not a legendary deck!” *chucks deck* “Aw, how cute, a plain deck!” *chucks additional deck(s)*) Note that I'm mainly referring to when high-piety cases where there are a lot of decks. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE getting tons of decks since that's what keeps me alive as a follower of Nemelex. However, DCSS is an anti-grinding game, correct? Keeping “Plain” and “Ornate” decks around just to spam them for piety gets old really quick. How about Piety and/or Evocations governing the effect-level of drawn cards? Got good Evo, get Ornate some Legendary effects. Bad Evo? Plain-deck effects.

— Andy 2011-06-28 20:45

I still throw out “plain”-level decks, but due to the potential self-hazard now posed by Legendary decks, I now tend to prefer Ornate cards. So I guess my earlier complaint is much less essential (except when it comes to plain decks.) — Andy 2013-02-05 21:10

Using sacrifices to weight deck types is fun and flavorful but perhaps too hard to understand. Display the most recent “A Symbol of Foo appears over your head” in the Religion (^) screen. Or perhaps “Most recently, a symbol of Destruction appeared as you sacrificed a weapon.) — smock 2010-12-04 19:06

In the same vein as Jivya and Xom, I would love to see an animated Nemelex altar tile, as he is pretty much Las Vegas / Atlantic City. Maybe something neon-flashy, or (if it is possible to animate in sequence) his name scrolling across the banner. — XuaXua 2011-02-16 23:38

Inventory management can be overwhelming because the decks take up so many slots and the amount of decks in game fluctuates constantly. Decks could all be in the same slot and you choose one when invoking. Nemelex would limit and cease gifting if you hoard too many decks. — Kalma 2013-01-22 03:11

Could one of you nice programmers revert this annoying change to Nemelex? I used to have a few Stacked decks for use in emergencies, in conjunction with the Deal Four ability. Now it seems that someone went and disallowed the lower Nemelex-gifted god abilities on Stacked Decks. C'mon, we already lose food, magic, and piety for invoking each ability, and why would a deity disallow their own granted abilities to loyal followers *who aren't under penance*? Besides, I can't think of any reason the “Trickster God” DCSS deity of cheating sleight-of-hand card users would disallow “Deal Four” on a stacked deck. — Andy 2013-02-05 21:10

Deal Four gives an immense power: you can summon a horde, use a number of big conjurations, etc, all in one turn – it's balanced by you not knowing what exactly will you get. Removing that uncertainty would make the ability brokenly overpowered. You can already kill most hell/pan lords by chain-deal4 with them doing more than a squeal. — KiloByte 2013-02-06 16:42

Eh, I respectfully disagree. I more often kill myself: by save-scumming (to see what my success/failure rate would be), in the Tomb playing as a Demonspawn, I killed MYSELF 4 separate times trying Deal Four on different Legendary decks (one Summoning, 3 Destruction.) I kept getting Torment and Olgreb's Toxic Radiance cards (repeatedly!) from the Decks of Destruction, knocking off 250-to-300+ health points (I had the Robust demonspawn mutation, 318 maximum health points, maxed level and stats from Wizard mode.) The Summoning deck gave me two successful summonings, then threw me into the Abyss via a card from Nemelex's Penance Deck (“This card doesn't seem to belong here”) and then added insult to injury by the fourth summons giving me a predominantly angry Herd. Now I admit that I also had one spectacular Deal Four, from which I fired 3 orbs of electrical explosions and a fireball, but that was from an Ornate deck. Other Deal Fours were just plain useless, like Bolts of Draining and Agony against the Undead (that are immune, of course.) So maybe I'm just cursed, but at the moment Deal Four is not so much a spectacular attack option as it is a spectacular way of screwing oneself over. FOUR TIMES over. Considering how much effort (time to build piety, use of piety, magic, decks, sacrificing stuff from all over the dungeon, etc.) AND the fact that Stack Five poses additional costs to the Deal Four ability and STILL doesn't guarantee you will have 4 usable cards in a row, I think that using Deal Four on a stacked deck should be permissible. Plus the reasons I previously pointed out, about it not making sense that Nemelex would disallow one of his granted abilities because of *another* of his granted abilities. So in short, disallowing Deal Four on a stacked deck is an arbitrary, annoying, and just plain odd behavior for Nemelex. It's a god ability! If people want a nice, painful experience with a DCSS deity, they are free to try playing as a stabbing Assassin or Green Draconian while following The Shining One. — Andy 2013-02-13 21:33

Nemelex worshipers carry many decks, which are constantly given arbitrary letters. When using any action Nemelex action, the list of decks is presented sorted by letter. This forces the player to hunt through and locate appropriate decks (or constantly manually re-assign letters to decks). Decks should maintain their letter assignments, but by default should be listed sorted (1) alphabetically by Type (unknown Decks of “Cards” should come first), then (2) by increasing Power, then (3) by decreasing number of cards drawn (most drawn are presented first). — XuaXua 2013-05-13 03:20

Instead of gifting themed decks and having abilities to draw selectively from those decks, gift a growing (with piety, XP, items identified, or levels reached?) pool of cards and have abilities to combine or divide those cards into decks with listed Odds. Instead of stacking decks, have a Current Hand of cards that must be played before new cards are added to the Hand (and potentially offer bonus cards not normally offered for collecting and sacrificing a specific Hand).

Decks of the same type and rarity merge. ID of decks no longer reveals the top card (otherwise there are incentives to avoid merging). elliptic suggests that either rarity or deck type needs to be removed, at least for Nemelex-gifted decks, to reduce inventory slot pressure.

Nemelex worshippers have a “hand” of cards, one per piety rank. The hand can be inspected with @ or ^, but probably it makes sense to make it more prominent. The hand tracks and reveals identity and rarity level of cards (assuming rarity even still exists).

Power bonuses are unchanged from current Nemelex (but that would probably need to change if rarity is removed).

Abilities:

0: Deck gift on joining.

1: (passive) Evoking a deck puts a card into your hand as a free action,
   and does not play anything.  If your hand is already full, you must
   choose a card to discard (either the new card or one in hand).
   
   Should it fill your hand instead?  If there is one deck type that makes
   sense, but if there are multiple decks you might have a reason to draw
   from one in particular.

   (active) Play Card: play a card from your hand.  Same cost as normal
   deck evocation.

2: (active) Trump: Play one card from your hand, discarding from hand as
   many other cards as desired to boost the power.  Small piety and MP
   cost.

3: (active) Go Fish: Look through any number of cards in a deck (at least
   the top five).  Choose up to three cards and put them into your hand,
   discarding the rest as well as any cards in hand you choose to replace.
   Large piety and MP cost.

4: (no ability)

5: (active) Royal Flush: Play your entire hand at once.  Large piety and
   MP cost, exhaustion(?).

6: (passive) Playing cards and using non-free Nemelex abilities takes 7 aut
   rather than 10.

— neil = |amethyst 2015-12-08 22:08

• Edit: removed the 0* since it was essentially obsoleted by 1*; rename 3* — neil = |amethyst 2015-12-10 19:04