Vehumet

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Template:Version034 File:Vehumet altar.png "Let it end in hellfire!"

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Restrictions

  • Djinn's unusual approach to magic renders them unable to worship Vehumet.
  • Demigods may not worship Vehumet (or any other deity).

Appreciates

Deprecates

  • Inactivity: You lose 1 piety per 340 turns, on average (1/17 chance every 20 turns).
  • Abandonment.

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Sorcerer's Apprentice"

  • Vehumet offers a spell gift immediately on worship (see below for details).

Piety level *: "Scholar of Destruction"

  • Gain power from killing - When you kill a monster, you have a piety-dependent chance of recovering MP. There is a 30 + (50 * (max(piety - 30, 130)/130)% chance<ref>Template:Source ref
    piety_breakpoint(0) = 1* piety = 30
    piety_breakpoint(5) = 6* piety = 160</ref> of recovering 1d(HD/2) MP.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> HD is the hit dice of the monster killed. At 6* piety, you have an 80% chance. (Passive)

Piety level **: "Caster of Ruination"

  • No new abilities.

Piety level ***: "Traumaturge"

  • Aid to destructive magic - Your chance of miscasting destructive spells is significantly reduced, roughly equal to having 2 stacks of wizardry.
Specifically, your raw spell failure rate is multiplied by x66.6%. Generally, your actual failure rates will be smaller than (previous_fail% * .666) at any practical failure rate. Note that this bonus is not considered wizardry, so having wizardry x3 is not the same as having the Vehumet bonus and wizardry x1. Instead, the Vehumet bonus and wizardry multiplicatively stack.

Piety level ****: "Battlemage"

Piety level *****: "Warlock"

  • No new abilities.

Piety level ******: "Luminary of Lethal Lore"

  • No new abilities.

Destructive spells

Vehumet's "Destructive spells" include all Conjurations spells, plus spells with the spflag::destructive flag:<ref>Template:Source ref</ref>

Gifts

Spells. If you are above the respective piety breakpoint and eligible for a gift, there is chance that Vehumet will offer you the knowledge of a Destructive spell. Vehumet will offer up to 15 spells:<ref>Template:Source ref</ref>

Gift 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13-15
Spell levels 1 2-3 2-3 3-4 3-5 4-7 4-7 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7 6-8 8-9

The first gift will always happen on worship. Once a new gift is offered, you lose access to the previous gift. The last three spells, which are all level 8-9, are all offered at once, and will always be available so long as you continue to worship Vehumet. Vehumet will not gift spells that are already in your library and will attempt not to gift spells that had been offered previously.

Gifts will tend to correlate with your skills; all spell schools are considered, and multi-school spells are weighted on their average skill level.

Gift Breakpoints

Vehumet gives spells at the following points, assuming you have gifts left:<ref>Template:Source ref</ref>

  • Gift #1: Always gift immediately.
  • Gifts #2-5: Always gift by 53, 71, 89, 107 piety, respectively. These may be given a little earlier than this.
  • Gifts #6-15: At ≥ 120 (5*) piety, uses the gift timeout system, for timeout = 28 + (2d30)/2.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> When timeout = 0, there's a 5% chance to get a gift whenever you gain piety.
    • The final four gifts (#12-15) can only be given at 6* piety.

There is a cooldown of 98 + 2d50 turns between gifts. If you'd reach a gift threshold during the cooldown, you don't get the gift. For gifts #2-5, you'll just get the gift the next time you gain piety. However, this cooldown could theoretically matter for the 5* -based gifts, since you'd need to roll the 5% chance again.

Punishments

Template:Flavour

Those who abandon Vehumet are periodically bombarded with a wide range of harmful Conjurations; various spells of a spell level between 1 + XL/5 and 1 + XL/3 are cast on you.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref>

Vehumet also has a 5% chance to punish you whenever you cast a destructive spell.<ref>Template:Source ref</ref> The spell still succeeds, but you get a miscast effect anyway.

Strategy

Vehumet offers a nearly guaranteed "engine", or way to kill things, up through Zot:5. However, without any active abilities, Vehumet is worse in emergency situations. In a way, you aren't worshipping Vehumet; think of your spells as the actual god.

The curated spell gifts, starting on worship, ensure some method to kill those pesky orbs of fire (and just about everything else). Two free ranks of wizardry help get your powerful spells online faster. It makes level 9 spells (more) reasonable to cast in a 3-rune game. And the +1 range is helpful for certain spells. All this comes with zero Invocations investment. When combined with the wizardry, worshippers can afford to invest more into defensive skills, or even hybridize.

Whether "having spells as a god" is a good thing is up to you, but it does come with a few downsides. Without active abilities, you have less ways to deal with a dangerous situation. In addition, Vehumet is one of the weaker gods for the early game. For spellcaster backgrounds, the first few spell gifts generally won't be much of an improvement compared to your own spells. Characters new to spellcasting have to take time to train up magic, which might not be all that powerful by the time you hit 1* or even 3*. Furthermore, there are ways to get an "engine" without taking up the god slot.

Overall, using Vehumet is not as simple as it may seem. Your spells may be strong, but good general play is still necessary to make up for a lack of actives.

Tips & Tricks

  • The MP refund is fairly weak early on, but really shines with higher-level AOE spells that take out multiple enemies at once. Vehumet doesn't even require you to use spells; bashing them to death with a magical staff or firing a wand works just as well.
  • Since Vehumet will try to gift spells which you haven't yet seen, it could theoretically be worth buying 'irrelevant' spells to increase the chance of getting a spell you want.
  • Vehumet is one of the few gods you can abandon while keeping permanent benefits granted via worship (spells learned via direct gift).
  • Vehumet is a decent god for the extended game, thanks to the strong MP regen, but a god with useful active abilities may be preferred. For example, The Shining One provides active abilities and both HP and MP restoration when killing evil monsters (which make up most of the extended game monster lists).
  • Vehumet is actually one of the stronger Ziggurat gods, as the sheer mass of enemies you'll be killing provides a massive amount of MP.

History

References

<references />

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