"It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell."Commands.-- The Light Fantastic, Terry Practchett
| Pray: | This will channel all your guild points to your deity, reminding Them of your existence and, if you are
out of alignment, moving you back into Their favour with a satisfactory alignment for you god.
How effective your prayer will be in this is determined by your skill in faith.rituals.special. Pray is now more effective than it once was in moving alignment, especially if you are a long way outside alignment. It is fairly commonly believed that regular praying is essential, not just for alignments sake, but for ease of casting rituals. To be eligble for election to the High Priesthood, you also need to have prayed in the last 10 days or so. |
| Burial commands: | This will bury a corpse to the greater glory of your God. Like pray, this will move you into better standing with Them, and if you are out of alignment, it will bring you back towards your desired alignment. It costs 50gp (100 for some of the commands) to perform for each corpse, and how effective it is in changing alignment is determined by your faith.rituals.special. It is (possibly) more effective in moving your alignment than pray is. The different gods get various commands, namely ventisepelate, conflagrate, shroud, decompose and ensumpf. You can no longer use these commands whilst in combat, and you need to be at least level 25 to learn this command |
| Consecrate: | This consecrates an item to your deity, so it can be used for things such as remember place and imbue. This has to be done at the High altar of your deity, and you will also need to be within alignment. It takes 50gps to consecrate an item, and you need to have at least 150 bonus in faith.rituals.special to attempt this (or indeed, to learn the command, and you also need to be guild level 50 or above). |
To be able to use your abilities given to you by your god, you need to remain within your given alignment. The 3 main ways to remain in alignment are pray, the burial commands, and by keeping careful note of what npcs you kill.
The alignment of the npc you may be killing can be found in a number of ways. Firstly, the rituals 'see alignment' and 'detect alignment' will tell you the alignment of all in the room, or a single npc respectively. Also, the red-hilted daggers available in the Sandelfon temple shop will tell alignment (if they are significantly different from neutral) in the form of a coloured flame when used to attack a target. If you are trying to keep an evil alignment, good things to kill are priests of good alignment, Althea, and in the Oasis. To try and keep a good alignment, the best place to kill things is the Gloomy forest.
Pray and the burial commands effect your alignment directly. How good they are at moving you alignment is dependend on what skill you have in the faith.rituals.special skill, and can be very efficient at changing the alignment with a good bonus.
Previously, pray seemed fairly ineffective, especially compared to the burial commands, but there seems to be a change, where the effectiveness of the two is more equal. Pray also seems to be more effective when you are far out of alignment than when you are close, while the burial commands seem to be fairly effective no matter what your alignment is.
If you are a long way out of alignment, but lack any great level of skill in faith.rituals.special (this happens most often with worshippers from other guilds) then it is possible to go to your High Priest for 'penance'. This ritual, only available to High Priests, will move the targets (who must of course be a worshipper of the same god) alignment back into that which the God desires.
Note that the light ritual can give some indication of alignment for those who do not have the detect alignment ritual. When performed upon the target, they give off a certain light which can give a rough indication of what range they belong to.Cyan - More good aligned.
Green - Only slightly good to neutral.
Yellow - Neutral to slightly evil. Red - More evil aligned.
The amount of experience you can get from casting rituals has been increased to a useful level. While not a huge amount on their own for experienced priests, they can make a nice supplement to experience received from killing, and give newbie priests a nice start before they are able to earn much exps normally.
It appears to be 4 times the gp cost, and there does not seem to be any cap on the highest amount possible.
To try and prevent experience farming, a number of casts of the same ritual in short periods of time will reduce the experience gained from each cast. That is, you will get 270 exps for the first cast of minor shield, but the next cast you might only get 200 exps or less, and so on.
Pray is an extremely good for gaining experience, returning 5 times the guild points spent each pray, which is not decreased the more often you pray.
The way major shields works is fairly simple. They are not linked to damage, but only time, if you can keep performing minor shield regularly then you shouldn't have to worry about it falling in the middle of a fight. The shield works by absorbing a fairly constant amount of the damage from every single hit that is directed at you. While this is only a fairly small amount, maybe 2, or 3 hundred hit points, many npcs often do less than this per hit, so it is fairly effective. If the individual hit is fairly small, then the major shield would absorb it all, and the "your divine protection absorbs most of the blow" message is shown. However, if the hit was too powerful for the major shield to fully absorb, and this message is not shown, this does not mean the shield in fact did nothing. The shield absorbs all the damage it possibly can, then it passes the rest of this damage on to you, and your other methods of defense. This is why major shields seem somewhat ineffective against specials, since they are usually much more damaging than normal attacks and are much more than the shield can handle. The leftover damage passed on can now be dealt with in other ways. If you are using aegis, the aegis cuts in and then halves (or less if your skill is not very high) this passed-on damage. At this stage, you become like any normal person (ie, no other shields, such as those of wizards and witches, which in any case work before a major shield). The leftover damage then hits you directly, and you have to rely on your armour, skin or clothing to protect you. Of course, since the damage has already been reduced somewhat by the shield (and possibly aegis) then the armour is a lot more effective protecting you than it otherwise would be, and more of the hits will be stopped by the armour with you taking no damage than you would without the shield.
Note that a minor shield can now act as a weak major shield if performed with a sufficiently high bonus, but will never be as strong as a reasonable major shield. The shields of the various Gods protect differently against the different forms of attack, sharp, pierce and blunt (which includes unarmed). A rought indication of how each of the Gods shields work follows. Note that on the whole, regardless of your Gods strength, sharp and pierce tend to go through major shield more easily than blunt does.
Sandelfon - The shields of Sandelfon might tend to be a bit stronger against pierce, while being fairly normal at sharp and blunt.
Gapp - The shields of Gapp also seem to be stronger at pierce, and fairly normal at sharp and blunt.
Gufnork - Possibly slightly stronger against pierce, but not a great deal of difference overall.
Pishe - The shields of Pishe seem to be very good against blunt, but might suffer a bit against pierce and sharp.
Hat - These seem to be slightly stronger against sharp and possibly pierce, but normal against blunt.
Fish - These shields seem to be quite strong against sharp, and reasonable against pierce, but seem to let a bit more blunt damage through.
Sek - Didn't seem to change a great deal, being possibly slightly stronger against sharp.
On occasions, it is useful to get as high wisdom as possible, in order to make something more effective. Usually, this will occur when you are trying to get the most powerful ward you can, when you are trying to imbue something hard, trying to passage a large group of people, or if applicable, doing a resurrect. It can also help if you have just gotten a ritual and are having difficulty casting it, but be warned, boosting your wisdom to cast any rituals will increase your bonuses, which will usually make faith tms harder to get, although if you are below the range where a ritual usually tms, using a boost could increase your chances. The maximum boost to wisdom that is possible is now only +7 (It used to be possible to get +14).
Some ways to boost your wisdom are:
| Flat Caps: | A flat cap can be a handy item to carry around. It will give whoever wears it +3 wis, +2 int and -3 strength. You might want to be careful about wearing a flat cap too long, and really, you shouldn't really be wearing it that long anyhow, the duration of the effects is now long enough (about a minute) to do whatever you were intending, and they really aren't designed for continued use. You should be careful if you use a flat cap to cast passage, the large drop in strength can easily cause you to drop something. The flat cap weighs only 1 pound, so it is fairly handy to carry around for that odd ward or imbue, and can be bought at the t-shop for $125. |
| Bronze Helms: | Almost the same as the flat cap, except intended more for wizards, as it gives +3 int, +2 wis and -3 con. There is no longer any need for a priest to have a bronze helm, since, like all stat modifiers, it will interfer with other stat modifiers. If you try and use both the flat cap and bronze helm, you will not only get no more wisdom than if you had used the flat cap alone, you also get much higher penalties than the -3 strength and -3 con, and since this alone only gives +2 to wisdom and weighs 5 pounds instead of 1, they are not normally used by priests. |
| Bless: | Bless is a ritual, also available on the faith items which gives +1 to wisdom, and your other stats. Bless is not a stat modifying item, so it can be used with the flat cap and will give another 1 to all stats, with no further penalties. |
| OC bonuses: | Ohulan Cutash (OC) contains a number of temples. The temple of small gods in OC can give a +2 bonus to wisdom, or more specifically, it will give +1 bonus twice, so it might be a good idea to leave the temple and come back in after the first. It will last for 10 minutes or so, and all you have to do to get the bonus is wait in the tosg in OC. This same bonus might also be available from a temple in the ramtops. |
| Prayer Beads: | These add +2 to wisdom when fully charged, though they do interfere with the cap, helm or headband to only give +1. |
| Other Bonuses: | Other bonuses can be obtained by means of various quest items, and although they do not give their full effect when combined with the flat cap (or the cap does not, depending on which order you use them), they will still add another 1 to wisdom. |