High Priest Victory in Ivan 0.55

I managed to achieve a high priest victory in the latest version a week ago or so, but was lazy of posting it here until now, so here it goes. It was a great playthrough and for quite a while I enjoyed wielding the axe named Eptyron while softening the material of golems as well as the armor and weapon of my enemies. Many times the armors would end up being made of human skin or flesh. Ha, imagine how bizarre that would look! Also, great weapon to train arm strength.

Eventually, I became the champion of Valpurus and switched to the valpurium two handed sword and the valpurium shield. I think that combination is very strong, specially since now shields also grant AV, so I think getting both items from one pray might be a bit overpowered. I don't know, maybe you should only get one of them for each pray but enchanted +2, starting with the sword? Also, Atavus enchanting all your gear (except weapons) at least up to +3/+4 is great and helps in saving scrolls for the end game. With that said, lawful gods are really worth it now, which is an improvement. Getting perma haste and perma invisibility from a mystic dark frog is always awesome, and now more than ever since permanent states get blue the moment you reach the threshold needed, so you don't have to speculate on that anyomre. Another great change I say.

I believe I killed all the named baddies except Ischaldirh, which never spawned since my hp wasn't very high even by the end of the playthrough. Also, I couldn't find the spider silk golem, even though I spent a lot of time looking for it and wasted some scrolls of detect material in the process. I really wanted to find it because I had lots of scrolls of charging (like 4 I think), but the only wand of cloning I had unfortunately came with only one charge.

Sherarax was beheaded (no amulet saving her life this time!) by one of the two archangels I brought into the battle while I stood behind watching. It was funny because Sherarax stole the archangel's weapon so the archangel beheaded her with her bare fists. Past Elpuri things got really tough in the mage room level, when I got my valpurium armor and my valpurium sword teleported away! Luckily, I was carrying Danny's sapphire two handed scimitar which was a good enough replacement, but my torso was almost destroyed without any armor. Oree was a tough battle, but only because of the elder dark mages who are nasty with their striking spells. Even with valpurium armor one spell could leave my chest badly damaged and things got very dangerous more than once because of that. Also, it didn't help I couldn't zap wands easily at them because of the map layout I got.

Finally, Petrus put me on the verge of death more than once. That justifier is really scary. I decided to be honorable and face him directly by refusing to hand the shirt of the golden eagle when prompted to (previously tamed the mystic frogs because they're a real pain otherwise). The bastard attacked me instantly wounding me badly so I had to teleport away. I think that should be changed, he should get angry but not attack right away on the very same turn. I wanted to kill the least amount of people possible in Attnam for roleplaying reasons and refusing to hand the golden shirt is the only way everyone will stop being hostile after Petrus dies, but it's very risky. Anyway, we fought face to face a couple more times outside the cathedral, needing to teleport when he inflicted heavy damage on me until I severed one of his limbs and then proceeded to kite him safely. I was already the champion of Valpurus 3 times throughout the game, so after Petrus' defeat it was only a matter of offering a couple items to be named champion once more and become the new high priest.

Well, this got really long, but I hope my suggestions help and you find the post entertaining at least. Here are some screenshots. Note the amazing (and not so much) gifts I got from the gods in more than one occasion, such as a vermis+3 or a dark matter mace+9!

Edit: It would be nice to add this version number to the available ones when submitting the score so I can accurately submit it.

Congrats!

Nice! Been a looong time since I’ve won the game

Conbloodygratulations mate.

Thank you, guys! Those gifted bananas will be happily eaten and their peels promptly used to train dexterity.

By the way, I forgot to mention something important: sci-talking should be made easier. Not by making npcs train int and wis faster (or maybe yes) but by making it easier to repeatedly talk to the same person/creature. Currently, they move all over the place and there is no way of holding a key to talk to friendlies continuously, you always have to go through the menu. I think this could be fixed simply by adding a 'repeat last action' (capital R) command in a very similar fashion as the reapply one, except it would always talk to the last person you talked to and prompt no direction. Also, making it so that you can talk from more than only one tile away, since it's not realistic that you need to be that close to address someone, so moving creatures such as the frogs in the cathedral aren't so much of a pain to talk to. With those simple changes it would be possible to hold a key in place (with its risks outside towns) and train int and wis faster.

Congrats

Hmm, perhaps when PC and a non-hostile NPC chats, it could end all their action points, since they have stopped to chat with the PC. 'R' would then have to memorize the chat direction.

That's actually an excellent idea/implementation: chatting with someone uses your action, it should also use theirs and prevent them from moving away - unless they are actively trying to kill (or run away from) you. There might be exceptions (banana growers, tourists & tour guides, patrolling guards, etc).

Sounds good to me. As long as you can hold a key and chat repeatedly, the chore that it is sci talking would be made much more bearable.

There should also be some exception for when the neutral / friendly NPC being talked to is attacked by another NPC. Using a hostile genie to kill things in Attnam while keeping them occupied with chatting comes to mind as an edge case. It could also result in other possible exploits in the future between two mutually hostile teams with one or both being neutral to the player.

Have a scroll of enchant statement (+1).