God tweaks

Giving NPCs parasites isn't much use, according to my reading of the code they can't die of starvation, faint from hunger, or even lose stats from nutrition states.

Seconded!

In my test game, something like 60 monsters died due to parasites by the time the ennerbeast killed me. Side note: lightning wands are super weak.

The symbiont idea is neat. You would have to eat twice as much but it helps you heal more quickly too. And maybe it keeps growing and you have to "carry" it so it counts towards your burdened/stressed status. The bigger it gets the harder it is to vomit out, and if you wait too long it'll burst out of you

Awesome!

Random chance for statue to turn into a mouse statue?


The parasites still do damage, if I remember aright.

The symbiont idea is great, but I wouldn't make it a chestburster. No other god is actively trying to kill you after a successful prayer.

BTW, how hard would it be to make limbs regrown by Scabies use the unused tentacle-limb graphics? It doesn't need to have any special effect, just a minor flavor bit and spook for new players.

Haha yeah I took it a little far. But I do like the idea of more things like the valpurium +10 sword. They are really helpful for a short time but could screw you over if you're not careful.

What if Silva upgraded leathery stuff like Loricatus, but if an eligible item is not wielded in right hand, tried to upgrade wooden secondary material of the item? Right now, the player has no way of changing the secondary material of things like spears, axes or any other weapon with wooden haft. Giving Silva the option to turn all hafts up to ebony could be nice.

Now, no the subject of championship gifts, I find that many gods seem to lack in their championship gifts. So:

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

I think this idea overlaps somewhat with the random gifts that most of the gods already give. This has a 5% chance of happening any time your relation is above 100, and creates a random aligned item with value between relation/2 and relation*2, then fixes it if it's broken and adds enchantments.
The result of this in the game is that I already pray to Dulcis repeatedly in the hope of randomly receiving a lyre of charm, I'm often drowning in helmets of attractivity from Mellis, Silva showers me with quarterstaves and the occasional thunder hammer, Loricatus gives me scrolls of repair and the occasional SoCM/SoHM, Atavus gives lamps, scrolls of wishing, and random chests, Cleptia gives me almost as many haste/invis wands as my heart desires (and cloaks), Seges gives me stethoscopes, Sophos gives me scrolls of charging, and Infuscor has occasionally given me wands of cloning!
So the question is less whether all the gods should give gifts as much as whether the current system of gifts is at an appropriate level of reliability, ease of access, and generosity, and whether some item alignments are correct (thunder hammer, cloak of fire resistance, etc.).

After reading this last post I don't think I ever realized how powerful/useful the gods were. i would pray to atavus for the plate and then run down to c- for the mace and get cleptia on my side for my Whips O Thievery. I didnt realize that atavus gave you random wishing scrolls and lamsp. thats pretty cool.

Is the list of the gods favors on the wiki? Even after all these years i am surprised at how little i know about most of them.

The wiki is, as far as I can tell, quite out of date in a lot of respect...

The wiki lists (incompletely) the gifts that the gods like to receive. These more or less correspond to the random gifts they give. I think they're more likely to give aligned items rather than unaligned items made of an aligned material. Script/item.dat is the most reliable reference for that kind of info.

Bumping this thread because of the ring of unchanging pull request that is hangin on github.

I really like the idea of making it a championship gift of Scabies, because she's (IMHO) a bit weak and the ring is an interesting and unique way of making her prayers more controlled by the player. What do you think about merging the ring of unchanging as a championship gift of Scabies?

Unchanging is not about control, that would be polycontrol. Unchanging helps you make better use of the random shapes Scabies gives you.

Ultimately it's the same idea - you are halting change for an indeterminate amount of time. You are exercising control over your shape. Most likely someone with the RoU would polymorph themselves several times until they landed in a useful shape, slip on their ring, and away they go.

Here's an alternate idea for a Scabies championship-type gift: a unique wand with infinite (or quasi-infinite - perhaps it recharges itself periodically?) charges which randomly does one of several thematic effects when 'z'apped. Things such as a polymorph ray, or a splash of poison.

Also, why does the Godess of Famine feed you? I mean, yes, it's school food, but still... seems anti-thematic.

Yes, but I think you are taking the "chaos" aspect too literally. Necromancers can also (persumably) control their zombies, and they are using the (chaotic) magic of Infuscor. Nefaqs is a dominatrix godess - she's all about control. Mortifer wants to destroy the world - that's not chaos, that's oblivion.

IMO, the names "law" and "chaos" are not especially well-fitting for the gods - they are simply two opposing factions, maybe closer to "good" and "evil", but with Valpurus as the King, I'd be quite careful with calling lawful gods "good"...

Ultimately, I don't think being chaotic means the gods would oppose all means of control. Maybe they are more impulsive and moody, but why would they be opposed to control when they try to conquer and control the world?


That's the idea. It would be nice from gameplay perspective to evetually gain a tool for making the most out of the effects you are granted by Scabies. It would also make her more powerful, so she would be on par with the other gods.


That pretty much recreates her prayer effects. I think being ablt to pray for those effects is enough.


It's school food, that's worse than starvation. Remember she is also godess of disease and poisons - she pretty much feeds you one of the worst poisons in existence, which is not at all anti-thematic.

What if... Scabies gave you a status effect, where you vomit poison onto enemies randomly as you attack them, without interfering with your attacks.

And without losing nutrition points?

Well, that's the thing. There isn't much point arguing about a championship gift that'd make the most of the prayer effects when most people don't even pray to Scabies because the prayer effects suck. I looked back through the thread to refresh my memory and though I made some general suggestions nobody added anything more to it. This poison spitting status would replace the poison splash, which is worse than a bottle of poison as it stands. At least the bottle can be carried around, applied to a weapon, thrown and broken at your leisure without a timer attached, and the broken bottle can be swapped out via Mellis. This status would basically extend the poison splashing without changing what it does too much. Why stop at poison though? Could be interesting to vomit mutant blood all over your enemies and randomly polymorph them too, or acid, or maybe even vomit healing fluids all over yourself. Not losing any nutrition points is a bit iffy, Scabies is a chaotic god. There's gotta be some drawback. Maybe half the nutrition?

Actually, that's the point of the ring - polymorph can be powerful, and with the ring, the random polymorphs from prayers to Scabies would no longer suck. I like Scabies and I would like her to be more powerful.

Changing her other effects to be better is a nice added bonus, but I think the ring is a good first step.

What if one of the prayer effects of Dulcis (as the resident pet god) raised the attributes of all nearby pets when you pray to her? She's also currently quite underpowered, and making her a full-blown support for pet keepers might be nice.

Underpowered? She's the only god more lawful than Sophos that I regularly pray to. Free taming is really useful for science talk.

Re: Scabies and her prayer effects sucking. At this point, I'm just vomiting ideas. If y'all decide the RoU is the best solution, that's fine. Personally, I feel there is a better way to make her interesting. I just don't know what it is.

It makes sense, in my mind, for the champion of a deity to personify the deity's sphere of influence, and to spread that influence through the world - i.e. the Champion of the God of Law and Order being the world's greatest police officer. In that sense, it could also be interesting if a devotee of Scabies became a plague carrier - themselves immune (though a Cha hit might be thematically appropriate) but spreading horrible diseases everywhere they go. Food might rot faster around them, though the champion themselves might need less food to survive. (After all, it wouldn't make sense for a god to starve their champion to death - even if that god were the god of famine). The poison-spray could be nifty too. Each of these effects might be a gift ring (or amulet or cloak or ...).

Personally, also, I dislike the association between "mutation" and "polymorphing". I mean, I suppose it makes sense in that eating mutant flesh gives you polymorphitis - but the mutants themselves do not polymorph. I think it might be more thematic if the mutations were a little more permanent and subtle, like fucking with attributes (with a tendency towards raising them, but not in every case) or even ADOM-style chaos mutations.