Crawl Stone Soup gods are boring? suggest me one
Pixelface
I'm playing with a Minotaur Gladiator.
I saw that many gods are magic oriented or difficult to play, so I
exclude them directly; at this point looks like the only "melee" gods
are the one who require to sacrifice bodies (and I don't wont to press
"p" every damn time I step into a corpse so they're not ok for me) and
Xom, with whom the chanches of an unavoidable unexpected unfunny death
(like being instantly surrounded by high level hostile demons) rise
too much for my tastes.
Which god should I pick up?
David Ploog
> I'm playing with a Minotaur Gladiator.
>
> I saw that many gods are magic oriented or difficult to play, so I
> exclude them directly; at this point looks like the only "melee" gods
> are the one who require to sacrifice bodies (and I don't wont to press
> "p" every damn time I step into a corpse so they're not ok for me) and
> Xom, with whom the chanches of an unavoidable unexpected unfunny death
> (like being instantly surrounded by high level hostile demons) rise
> too much for my tastes.
I have trouble taking your posting seriously: "press p every damn time".
Nethack players are known to carry buttloads of things to their altar, not
to mention what ADOM and Angband players are known to do. I'll not defend
Crawl's interface here, it should obviously be improved, but pressing "p"
being too much after you pressed a number of keys for killing something...
sounds strange.
> Which god should I pick up?
Given your tone, I suspect you should pick up another roguelike, but if
you want to give Crawl a try, choose Yredelemnul. No corpse offers,
instead you can turn them into zombies.
David
Michal Bielinski
Beogh! Oh wait, you are wrong race. Think awhile about playing HOGl next
time. He's fun and you only 'p' orc corpses.
Maybe Shining One then? I am not too fond of him because he is really
boring deity. My love for mutations made me not give a chance to Zin but
perhaps you will find him useful.
Xom does create plentiful YASD but also some stupidly easy games. Once
I got acquirement-quality artifact weapon at DL 3.
--
Michal Bielinski
Pixelface
> I have trouble taking your posting seriously: "press p every damn time".
> Nethack players are known to carry buttloads of things to their altar, not
> to mention what ADOM and Angband players are known to do. I'll not defend
> Crawl's interface here, it should obviously be improved, but pressing "p"
> being too much after you pressed a number of keys for killing something...
> sounds strange.
> you want to give Crawl a try, choose Yredelemnul. No corpse offers,
> instead you can turn them into zombies.
>
> David
If I can avoid the hassle of pressing p every single time I step on a
corpse by just choosing a different god why the hell shouldn't I? I
like to play quickly, slowing down on interesting/dangerous situations
where tactical accuracy is important.
I played Adom a lot, and carrying around stuff to sacrifice to the
altar is not annoying at all; pressing a key every time after you kill
a foo is a totally different thing and IS annoying.
If you have problem understanding why this "p thing" represent a
problem for a rogueliker, then you're probably the kind of Adomer who
spent days in the gremlin cave stealing-killing until there were
enough rings of djinn to win the game without finding the process
BORING.
And no, I shouldn't pick up another roguelike.
JPEG
> I saw that many gods are magic oriented or difficult to play, so I
> exclude them directly; at this point looks like the only "melee" gods
> are the one who require to sacrifice bodies (and I don't wont to press
> "p" every damn time I step into a corpse so they're not ok for me)
Funny you should say that. I consider Trog one of the easiest gods in
the game (right after Sif Muna and Vehumet), precisely because I only
have to press "p" once in a while to please him. Also, berserking is
awesome! Really, try it - you'll probably want to check out the
corpses anyway for the stuff the monsters dropped, it's not a big
deal.
TSO is a melee god who doesn't like sacrifices but he's got loads of
restrictions about honorable combat etc., which can make playing him
somewhat annoying. Cheibriados doesn't require sacrifices either, but
for a melee character the slowing/non-hasting will probably bite you.
Still, fun to play.
> Xom, with whom the chanches of an unavoidable unexpected unfunny death
> (like being instantly surrounded by high level hostile demons) rise
> too much for my tastes.
Yes, Xom is someone you should probably not pick for your best
character. However, you should give him a try just for the fun of it
at some point.
Or you could always play an atheist. :)
jpeg
eoghan griffin
bbd9ac...@x42g2000yqx.googlegroups.com>, ecaf...@gmail.com says...
>
> If you have problem understanding why this "p thing" represent a
> problem for a rogueliker, then you're probably the kind of Adomer who
> spent days in the gremlin cave stealing-killing until there were
> enough rings of djinn to win the game without finding the process
> BORING.
>
> And no, I shouldn't pick up another roguelike.
Hahahaha. David has never played adom afaik. He is incredibly anti-
grinding and scumming. Maybe have a read of the crawl philosphy in the
manual, which he wrote. Heres a link: http://people.msoe.edu/
~brayshaj/files/irdc/irdc.2008.David.Ploog.v2.pdf
Just so you know, the interface for saccing stuff used to be much worse,
in original crawl you had to be praying to kill stuff and you had to
chop up corpses while praying to sac them. David and the other stone
soup devs have done great work in sorting out the crawl ui. Having to
just hit p after killing something is so minor, i mean your most likely
about to hit o for autoexplore anyways, your finger is right there. If
your using the numpad, you could macro p to + to make it easier.
This is definately a hell of alot nicer than the horrible grinding i had
to do in adom to sac stuff, either hitting rest a billion times for herb
scumming or dragging monsters to altars.
Pixelface
> In article <06a2c1c7-8ebf-4c01-851a-
> bbd9ac31c...@x42g2000yqx.googlegroups.com>, ecafle...@gmail.com says...
>
>
>
> > If you have problem understanding why this "p thing" represent a
> > problem for a rogueliker, then you're probably the kind of Adomer who
> > spent days in the gremlin cave stealing-killing until there were
> > enough rings of djinn to win the game without finding the process
> > BORING.
>
> > And no, I shouldn't pick up another roguelike.
>
> Hahahaha. David has never played adom afaik. He is incredibly anti-
> grinding and scumming. Maybe have a read of the crawl philosphy in the
> manual, which he wrote. Heres a link:http://people.msoe.edu/
> ~brayshaj/files/irdc/irdc.2008.David.Ploog.v2.pdf
>
> Just so you know, the interface for saccing stuff used to be much worse,
> in original crawl you had to be praying to kill stuff and you had to
> chop up corpses while praying to sac them. David and the other stone
> soup devs have done great work in sorting out the crawl ui. Having to
> just hit p after killing something is so minor, i mean your most likely
> about to hit o for autoexplore anyways, your finger is right there. If
> your using the numpad, you could macro p to + to make it easier.
>
You are right, this is NICER than the original Crawl, but not nice,
IMO.
Don't get me wrong: I think Stone Soup devs made a great work, and
their game is for sure one of the best (and also most played)
five roguelikes around in year 2010.
But what roguelikers love are tactical crucial situation, or even
inventory management, or race/skills/progress planning, etc etc etc.
Having to press an additional key every single time there's a fuckin'
dead kobold on the way is just not funny.
Nicer than praying while killing? Nicer than using "s"tealing (Adom)
on every enemy before killing it? Sure! But still not funny at all.
That's it.
David Ploog
> On 1 Ott, 12:34, eoghan griffin <eoghangrif...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In article <06a2c1c7-8ebf-4c01-851a-
>>
>>> If you have problem understanding why this "p thing" represent a
>>> problem for a rogueliker, then you're probably the kind of Adomer who
>>> spent days in the gremlin cave stealing-killing until there were
>>> enough rings of djinn to win the game without finding the process
>>> BORING.
>>
>>> And no, I shouldn't pick up another roguelike.
I wasn't sure for a moment how serious your dedication is :) Your comment
read like "I gotta press "p", this sucks" which made my blood boil
slightly.
>> Hahahaha. David has never played adom afaik.
Right! Only Nethack, in fact, which taught me a lot about roguelikes
(mostly, but not exclusively, about how to not do things, though).
>> Just so you know, the interface for saccing stuff used to be much worse,
>> in original crawl you had to be praying to kill stuff and you had to
>> chop up corpses while praying to sac them.
>
> You are right, this is NICER than the original Crawl, but not nice,
> IMO.
Fair enough. I agree that sacrifices to the blood gods are mindless,
repititive actions. There are some ways to get around that (by the way,
your criticism will always be much more appreciated if you at least at how
something could be improved instead of -- even rightfully -- stating that
it sucks; we are all amateurs and it's a free game, after all):
(1) Just don't. Give a bit more piety for kills and leave it at that.
There are issues with Fedhas: this god clearly wants corpses, not kills
but there the sacrifice mechanic is a bit lighter (you don't have to walk
over the corpses) and is a bit more tactical (you get short-lived fungi
only you can walk/shoot through, so the question _when_ to decompose can
be interesting)
(2) Only care for some sacrifices. Instead of mindlessly sacrificing
everything, gods should ask for something better: how can you offer rats
at **** piety and get away with it? It's clearly giant and dragon time!
(3) Automated sacrifice: you walk over the corpse and thereby offer the
corpse. Gotta ask your god (via prayer perhaps) to spare a corpse for
yourself, which will not make him too happy.
Different solutions for different gods is cool, too.
> But what roguelikers like are tactical crucial situation, or even
> inventory management, or race/skills/progress planning, etc etc etc.
> Pressing a key every single time there's a corpse is just not funny.
> Nicer than praying while killing? Sure! But still not funny. That's
> all.
Okay, we got. See above how we can try to turn this into something
constructive. Also while I fully accept that you're playing right here,
right now, oblivous to history, accept that we have inherited a huge game
and changes (especially psychological ones like getting rid of stuff)
sometimes come slowly.
David
Pixelface
You're right.. but I didn't knew you were one of the developer, sorry
hahah.
I was upset because I really like Stone Soup and I'm playing a lot
(and furthermore I'm a roguelike-only videogamer), and reading a
comment of someone who told me "if you don't like pressing p every
time then you can't get this game, go play something else like world
of whatever" really pissed me off hahah.
I really appreciate your dedication to the game and I understand that
changes can come slowly.
I also appreciate your positive attitude towards possible improvements
to the game, so here's what I think of your 3 ideas:
#1 Good alternative! Sure, imaging some Conan thug that after a
violent battle takes the corpse of his enemy and then offers it to
Khrom as a gift is cool and coreographic, but a random minotaur who
sacrifices everything he kills is far from that. So leaving only the
kills as something that pleases a chaotic god is a good option. Maybe
possible variants are gods who like/dislike kills by melee/ranged/
magic, or a combination of those factors. Gods who appreciate blunt
weapons, who dislike slashing weapons. Stuff like that, combinated.
#2 Also a good alternative. Every "corpse-sacrificing-god" could
prefere a very specifical kind of enemy - rare enemies, strong ones,
something like that. Or maybe 1 exemplar for every kind of monster.
#3 Can't say why, but I really don't like this. Too "lazy", in a kind
of way that makes go away every aspect of the coolness of sacrificing
corpses of falled enemies. Again, nicer but not nice.
Things that came in my mind:
#4: to sacrifice a corpse, you need to drop it over an altar (like in
Adom).
#5: to sacrifice a corpse, you need to use a "charge" of a specifical
stuff (consumable like incense, candles, etc), so it's best to save
those charges for corpses of strong enemies (uniques, giants, etc).
#6: sacrificing a corpse requires many turns of game time. so choosing
if sacrificing or not that dead kobold is no more a no-brainer.
#7: sacrificing corpses can increase the piety only for a fixed amount
of points. (different to "a certain level"). so after 100-150 or so
sacrifices, the player starts getting a message like "thou should
prove your valour in a different way". if his piety go down, he still
can't anymore sacrifice corpses, because he already got the fixed
amount of piety points that every character can obtain via
sacrificing.
BTW, your #1 (with or without the stuff I suggested) is definitively
the one I'd like the most.
Szanth
Jesus. All of your suggestions sound horrible to me. They make it even
more of a hassle! Seriously. Pressing "p" versus dragging dead bodies
back to the altar that's god knows how many levels above where you
are. Why. That's backtracking. And the other seem to just make
sacrificing less effective and worthwhile. You can have the same
effect by just not sacrificing as often if you don't want to.
Don't change it! Goddamn. It's a great system the way it is, it allows
the user to do whatever they want with that corpse; chop for meat,
sacrifice, suck blood, grow mushrooms - whatever! If you change it so
the default is that the corpse is auto-sacrificed, that's just more a
pain in the ass when you -don't- want to do so. Which is often, for
quite a few builds.
Joachim Schipper
> Fair enough. I agree that sacrifices to the blood gods are mindless,
>
> (1) Just don't. Give a bit more piety for kills and leave it at that.
> There are issues with Fedhas: this god clearly wants corpses, not kills
> but there the sacrifice mechanic is a bit lighter (you don't have to walk
> over the corpses) and is a bit more tactical (you get short-lived fungi
> only you can walk/shoot through, so the question _when_ to decompose can
> be interesting)
>
> (2) Only care for some sacrifices. Instead of mindlessly sacrificing
> everything, gods should ask for something better: how can you offer rats
> at **** piety and get away with it? It's clearly giant and dragon time!
>
> (3) Automated sacrifice: you walk over the corpse and thereby offer the
> corpse. Gotta ask your god (via prayer perhaps) to spare a corpse for
> yourself, which will not make him too happy.
>
> Different solutions for different gods is cool, too.
Since *not* sacrificing a corpse before continuing exploring is almost
always a mistake, why not just make 'o' do the right thing?
Of course, this opens the question what the right thing is. I propose
butchering edible corpses if you're hungry; if not, sacrificing corpses
if your god wants them; if not, casting Fulsome Distillation on
non-clean corpses. Ghouls and Nemelex may be somewhat difficult here; I
propose ghouls butchering corpses if doing so would help them, and not
auto-sacrificing to Nemelex (since you'll most likely want to sacrifice
their belongings as well, anyway).
Joachim
Rubinstein
> Things that came in my mind:
>
> #4: to sacrifice a corpse, you need to drop it over an altar (like in
> Adom).
> #5: to sacrifice a corpse, you need to use a "charge" of a specifical
> stuff (consumable like incense, candles, etc), so it's best to save
> those charges for corpses of strong enemies (uniques, giants, etc).
> #6: sacrificing a corpse requires many turns of game time. so choosing
> if sacrificing or not that dead kobold is no more a no-brainer.
> #7: sacrificing corpses can increase the piety only for a fixed amount
> of points. (different to "a certain level"). so after 100-150 or so
> sacrifices, the player starts getting a message like "thou should
> prove your valour in a different way". if his piety go down, he still
> can't anymore sacrifice corpses, because he already got the fixed
> amount of piety points that every character can obtain via
> sacrificing.
Can't help myself, but some of your ideas remind me of some older
versions of crawl or are just too much adomlike in my book. I doubt
you'll convince a majority of crawl players with these ideas. Take #4
for example. This will lead to repetitive gameplay. Though it's not a
big deal with auto-travel walking back to the temple, even if 3 levels
away, imagine how boring that is: travel - drop - pray.
You want it more complex? I guess crawl players don't like stuff that
distracts from the main game and that is basically fighting monsters
rather than administrative or formal tasks. And for the minimalistic
pressing 'p': It _has_ to be a decision all the time, at least for heavy
food consumers. It's always a question between "should I pump up piety
or should I better take care of not to die by starvation by saving my
unrottable precious food rations?"
Anyway, I like the new behavior better than the old one, though pray &
cut never was a big hassle either. Just another finger-macro.
Ah, almost forgot... welcome to Dungeon Crawl! :)
--
...da scheuste das Grinsal und astete von Huepf zu Huepf,
um den Schonboden zu walden!
James Spencer
TO ACTUALLY EAT THEM! When will the terror end! </sarcasm>
Crawl is actually pretty merciful on the need for arbitrary key
mashing, IMHO. If I were a Crawl dev I'd probably err on the side of
slightly more fun and reasonably transparent (from my POV) complexity
in some areas... But at least the Crawl Devs are very lucid and
articulate about where they are going. At a certain point it just gets
impractical to automate away that next keystroke-- I suppose they
could try an auto-sacrafice regime where: If I can't eat it, and I
can't animate it or use it for a known spell, and it will impress my
god, and I'm not near max piety, sacrifice this corpse automatically.
But that gets kind of messy...
Erwin M.
> Since *not* sacrificing a corpse before continuing exploring is almost
> always a mistake, why not just make 'o' do the right thing?
>
> Of course, this opens the question what the right thing is. I propose
> butchering edible corpses if you're hungry; if not, sacrificing corpses
> if your god wants them;
If I know I'm going to be hungry soon, I'll butcher a corpse (especially
a clean one) so I don't have to backtrack. Even with a blood god.
> if not, casting Fulsome Distillation on
> non-clean corpses.
Getting water from clean corpses has tactical uses too, and it's spare
small value permafood in an emergency.
> Ghouls and Nemelex may be somewhat difficult here; I
> propose ghouls butchering corpses if doing so would help them, and not
> auto-sacrificing to Nemelex (since you'll most likely want to sacrifice
> their belongings as well, anyway).
It helps for ghouls in the long run regardless -- they can always nom
the chunks after they rot.
David Ploog
> Since *not* sacrificing a corpse before continuing exploring is almost
> always a mistake, why not just make 'o' do the right thing?
I am not happy about this, but I did consider the following change once:
if you follow a blood god, then autoexplore treats corpses like
interesting items without autopickup (in other words, autoexplore will
walk to spots with corpses, leaving it to the player whether to press 'p'
or 'c').
> Of course, this opens the question what the right thing is. I propose
> butchering edible corpses if you're hungry; if not, sacrificing corpses
> if your god wants them; if not, casting Fulsome Distillation on
> non-clean corpses. Ghouls and Nemelex may be somewhat difficult here; I
> propose ghouls butchering corpses if doing so would help them, and not
> auto-sacrificing to Nemelex (since you'll most likely want to sacrifice
> their belongings as well, anyway).
Nemelex is indeed a problem: you are sacrificing so much over the course
of a game that it is a burden [1]. My proposal is that the Nemelex ^!
screen (the one that explains which item types lead to which decks) should
allow the player to (un)mark types. Marked types would be considered as
interesting, just like with corpses and blood gods above. Thus,
autoexplore would automatically walk to all spots containing items you
currently are shoving off to Nemelex.
Did I mention that we need coders? A patch for this would immediately
go in, but it will take a long while (if at all) until a core dev will
tackle this little bit of Nemelex interface. Hint hint :)
David
[1] While the newbies won't listen, let me still mention the insanity that
was old Nemelex sacrifice: 'dpy,' (drop portal altar, pray, confirm, pick
up altar), although I think I missed a key. Any veteran who still knows?
And as funny as that may sound, by deflating all that to a single 'p', we
did lose a bit of flavour: no more portable altars, which makes me a
little sad.
Szanth
There's always a use for a body, though. If you can't do one thing,
you can do another. If you have the game decide for you what that is,
you'll have people complaining that it does things they don't want it
to do. The perfect middleground is to just have one key for each
individual thing you want it to do; which is what it has now.
Szanth
O_o In my experience the game -does- always autowalk to the corpse
after I kill something. It's great.
Galehar
Exactly. In 0.7, if you enable the option (I don't think it's default)
explore_stop += greedy_visited_item_stack
You will automatically go to each stack so you can loot, sacrifice,
butcher, distil or whatever. IMHO, it can't be automated more. There is
so many things you can do with a corpse, it has to stay the player's
decision.
Szanth
Hm, I suppose I was wrong, I didn't have that activated. What exactly
do I change in the init.txt to get that?
Galehar
Well, like I just wrote, just add the following line to your init.txt:
explore_stop += greedy_visited_item_stack
autoexplore will visit any stack you have never been to and stop. I
think to won't go to single item stack.
Michal Bielinski
> While the newbies won't listen, let me still mention the insanity that
> was old Nemelex sacrifice: 'dpy,' (drop portal altar, pray, confirm, pick
> up altar), although I think I missed a key. Any veteran who still knows?
> And as funny as that may sound, by deflating all that to a single 'p', we
> did lose a bit of flavour: no more portable altars, which makes me a
> little sad.
Nemelex's Vacuum Cleaner was a fine thing indeed. Despite me never trying
old trickster (his reputation of perfect munchkin god turned me away) I
still remember the tales of YAVP mentioning nice, tidy and totally empty
dungeon after ascension. :-)
--
Michal Bielinski
David Ploog
We kept this! The dungeon is just as nice and tidy as back then! The god
is just a little less broken and (hopefully) more fun.
David
Szanth
Eh it's already in there, is there a character I have to delete to
make it activated?
Rubinstein
Are you by any chance on a Unix system?
From one of the first lines of init.txt:
# On Unix systems (such as Mac OS X, Linux and the BSDs), you must copy
# init.txt to ~/.crawlrc as:
# cp init.txt ~/.crawlrc
The init.txt in the original folder does nothing, it's just a template.
Don't forget the dot, .crawlrc _must_ be hidden.
Don't know how it works on Windows though...
Szanth
Nope, Windows XP. In Crawl > Settings > Init.txt, it says
explore_stop += greedy_visited_item_stack
#
Joachim Schipper
> On Fri, 1 Oct 2010, Joachim Schipper wrote:
>> Since *not* sacrificing a corpse before continuing exploring is almost
>> always a mistake, why not just make 'o' do the right thing?
>
> I am not happy about this, but I did consider the following change once:
> if you follow a blood god, then autoexplore treats corpses like
> interesting items without autopickup (in other words, autoexplore will
> walk to spots with corpses, leaving it to the player whether to press 'p'
> or 'c').
That seems sensible; is there a reason that didn't go in?
>> Of course, this opens the question what the right thing is. I propose
>> butchering edible corpses if you're hungry; if not, sacrificing corpses
>> if your god wants them; if not, casting Fulsome Distillation on
>> non-clean corpses. Ghouls and Nemelex may be somewhat difficult here; I
>> propose ghouls butchering corpses if doing so would help them, and not
>> auto-sacrificing to Nemelex (since you'll most likely want to sacrifice
>> their belongings as well, anyway).
>
> Nemelex is indeed a problem: you are sacrificing so much over the course
> of a game that it is a burden [1]. My proposal is that the Nemelex ^!
> screen (the one that explains which item types lead to which decks) should
> allow the player to (un)mark types. Marked types would be considered as
> interesting, just like with corpses and blood gods above. Thus,
> autoexplore would automatically walk to all spots containing items you
> currently are shoving off to Nemelex.
That seems sensible.
> Did I mention that we need coders? A patch for this would immediately
> go in, but it will take a long while (if at all) until a core dev will
> tackle this little bit of Nemelex interface. Hint hint :)
Not for a while, I'm afraid... I have many other things to do.
Joachim
Galehar
I've just tested it again, it is the default behaviour in 0.7. You
shouldn't have anything to do, I don't know why it doesn't for you.
You're playing the latest stable version, 0.7.1, right?
Rubinstein
Forgive me an innocent stupid question: In my init.txt this line is
out-commented by default. You surely removed the '#' in front of this
line, didn't you?
Szanth
Yerp.
Szanth
Do... do I have to? Would that do it?
Rubinstein
If it should be ON by default (even without that line) than bad luck.
Just try removing that '#', save and restart. Can't hurt at least.
paul...@yahoo.com
> (3) Automated sacrifice: you walk over the corpse and thereby offer the
> corpse.
Perhaps what is needed is a Greedy God. You walk over a corpse (or
pile of stuff from a recent kill) and the god sometimes randomly takes
stuff. You gain piety for this but lose the items. He won't take a p
key sacrifice but rather grabs stuff himself. He only takes stuff
from fresh kills and only once. Moving back and forth over the pile
has no effect.
This takes the p key out of play but, of course, you might lose that
nice corpse you need to eat or that really nice item that the mob was
wielding...
David Ploog
> David Ploog <dpl...@mi.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>> On Fri, 1 Oct 2010, Joachim Schipper wrote:
>>> Since *not* sacrificing a corpse before continuing exploring is almost
>>> always a mistake, why not just make 'o' do the right thing?
>>
>> I am not happy about this, but I did consider the following change once:
>> if you follow a blood god, then autoexplore treats corpses like
>> interesting items without autopickup (in other words, autoexplore will
>> walk to spots with corpses, leaving it to the player whether to press 'p'
>> or 'c').
>
> That seems sensible; is there a reason that didn't go in?
So much to do! Did you read my comment on coding power?
It is not the most urgent change, so it will have to wait...
David
b0rsuk
>
> (and I don't wont to press
> "p" every damn time I step into a corpse so they're not ok for me) and
> Xom, with whom the chanches of an unavoidable unexpected unfunny death
> (like being instantly surrounded by high level hostile demons) rise
> too much for my tastes.
>
> Which god should I pick up?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Yredelemnul. It's a good choice for
a warrior. You can't even sacrifice corpses - you only get piety for
kills. Piety increases slightly slower for this reason. You can raise
zombies (but never have to). You'll be getting free allies pretty
soon, they include Skeletal Warriors and Bone Dragons. You get two
great panic buttons: Drain Life affects a large area and heals you,
while prayer effect uses a lot of piety but mirrors heaps of damage.
Back in the day when Xom was less deadly and more useful (beta26 -
mosly haste, might, invis, berserk and miscast effects) I liked Xom
because of low micromanagement. Now he's survivable, but you hardly
get enough in exchange.
So-called "good gods": The Shining One, Elyvilon, Zin also don't
accept corpses and most kills. TSO and Zin are an okay choice for a
lazy player - you get either protection from invisible+accuracy
+lifeforce protection, or mutation resitance. Zin's mutation
resistance means you an clear Slime Pits being protected from
corrosion as well as mutation, which is basically all the danger
there. And in Zot you can wear any amulet you like fighting orbs of
fire, they almost require mutation resistance.