Come to know capriphobia as I have! Let's Play Desktop Dungeons!

Wizard, because wizards are always fun in roguelikes! And a gnome because I like playing gnome wizards in Nethack!

I really need to look into this game. (Right after I started playing DCSS too!)

You can't change your profile? That's lame.

- Eddie

Looks like the first foray of "Jimmy" Pants into the Desktop Dungeons will be as a wizard! Let's see how this turns out.



Right off the bat, you can already tell this is different from a tutorial game. For one thing, there's a level 9 enemy sitting in the corner making throat-slitting motions. For another, GHOSTLY QUESTION MARKS! That's the wizard special ability to detect glyphs in action. Our first course of action is to hunt down the BURNDAYRAZ glyph to compensate for our not-Tolkien-wizard attack power.



Haha, that would be too easy if that was it. Oh well, this could be useful in getting to the others faster.



For example, right here. We could go the long way around, or we could just ENDISWAL.



Boo. IMAWAL is the opposite of ENDISWAL, a glyph that turns any enemy you use it on into a wall. This is stupid for at least four reasons. One, you don't get any experience for petrifying enemies. Two, turning them into walls means you have a new wall to deal with, rather than a very killable enemy. Three, it doesn't work on the one enemy you'd want to petrify, i.e. the dungeon boss. Four, it takes up a valuable slot on your glyph list.

Unless you convert it. Which I do.



And not a few steps later do we encounter the dungeon boss for today. One of the harder ones, too, and considering where he came from, can you really blame him?



That's right. What separates the boys from the men? A truckload of health. What makes this fun is that seeing as we have yet to get a win on this profile, this is about two thirds of Super Meat Man's actual health. And it's still colossal.



So instead we go make friends with the first thing we actually can kill. We don't kill it yet, though, because I'd like to get BURNDAYRAZ so we can try fighting a level 2 dude.



Another dead end, which we can get around with ENDISWAL once again. It's very useful early on.



Oooh, the divination glyph, LEMMISI. This will, for a paltry 2 mana (3 normally), reveal 3 random unexplored tiles. This treats them as actually explored tiles, meaning you can use this to "explore" even after the map's already mostly uncovered. The fun part, though, is that in doing so, you spend 3 mana, but also recover 3 mana from casting it. The upshot of this is that as long as you have at least 3 mana, you can regenerate health from unexplored tiles with LEMMISI. And since we're a wizard, we can (slowly) recover mana doing this as well. There's even awards for it, so apparently the devs don't consider that a bug.



Less useful. WEYTWUT randomly telprots you to another tile in the dungeon. Not too useful, really, but it beats IMAWAL, so we hang on to it.



And it turns our BURNDAYRAZ is in the least accessible place for us. Whee. Also, the PISORF glyph, which is like WEYTWUT, but for monsters. This makes it something like a more expensive ENDISWAL, which isn't so useful for us since we have ENDISWAL. But hey, we're a wizard and we can carry all four if we like. So I do.



After a bit more wandering and giving in to our homicidal nature briefly, we spy a shop. It's selling a fine sword like in the tutorial, but since this is the real world, they're asking for a lot more coin than we have on hand. I'm not going to do gold-collecting runs though because that's dumb and boring and I might actually win.



In the interest of diversity, rather than shortcutting past the meat man with ENDISWAL, I just have him PISORF instead. I have no idea where he ended up.



And then we have to use ENDISWAL anyway.

Only it doesn't actually work. Damn it, what does a wizard have to do to get some fireball magic around here?

The funny thing is, because we're a wizard, we know just where it is. Other magic users would just be stuck in the dark until they stumbled upon it by chance.



PISORF, mate.



We attempt the deadly and complex spell of "punch the guy in the face until he falls over" here.



At great cost to ourselves, it succeeds, and now we can use pyrokinesis like a normal person. Hooray! We ditch PISORF to make room for it.



Our first order of business: kill a level 2 monster for some bonus experience. With both BURNDAYRAZ and our physical attack, this is easily done.



So easily done, in fact, that we go for an encore on this level 3 goblin.



Goblins and warlocks are good enemies for wizards to fight, since their attack power isn't much of an obstacle to a guy who can blow them up from a distance. This is why a lot of the meat men are still around at the end of the update. Well, that and one other reason.

Oh, and I finally elect to snag that mana upgrade down there, bringing my maximum high enough to cast 3 BURNDAYRAZ without recovering. Woo!



So, since easy mode first dungeon lets us reliably kill enemies one level above us...



Let's get sassy.



Armed with a three-shot magical reserve, we take down the level 5 warlock without any trouble at all, bringing us up from a green number to a yellow one!



As celebration, we beat the hell out of his buddy.



Oh hey, I was wondering when one of the three guaranteed altars in any given game would show up.



Tikki-Tooki is a bit of an odd case among the gods. Despite the flavor text, his abilities really don't help out thief-style characters that much, since most of them have similar abilities of their own. He is one of the better gods for wizardly characters like ourselves, but we can't pay the 10 gold needed to join up just yet, so we'll ditch him for now.



And by "for now" I mean "for like three steps because I found enough cash to join up".



Jimmy Pants now counts himself among the worshippers of the trickster god!

Tikki-Tooki, more than anything else, loves to see his followers performing with great skill. For the most part, this means defeating enemies without getting hit. This is, naturally, pretty easy for wizards. However, the real trick is in learning the first strike rules of Desktop Dungeons. If you can't pull it off, expect frequent (although small) piety loss.

As for his boons, Dodging grants you a 10% chance to avoid any attack you may encounter, Gold just gives you 40 gold, First Strike lets you (almost) always hit first, and Poison will make it so enemies you hit physically won't recover while you explore until you attack something. Also, you can convert from the Pactmaker if you really want to.

Your starting piety for Tikki-Tooki is based on the remaining gold. Apparently, religion is half-off today, so we do start with some piety.



Since killing without being hit is such an important part of following Tikki-Tooki, let's go over the speed mechanics. The rule of thumb is if the monster is lower level than you, you hit it first, and if it dies, you don't get hit. Otherwise, it hits you first. However, if you have first strike, you always hit first... unless the enemy has first strike, like goblins do, in which case they will ALWAYS hit first.

In other words, we want to fight goblins exclusively with magic now, if we can help it.



AW MAN, I wish I'd waited. I like this guy more.



Jehora Jeheyu is the god of chaos and destruction. The two things he most approves of are damage and telprots, and he doesn't much care who is the recipient of either. To that end, he tends to frown upon using obvious defensive measures, and removes most kinds of them upon worship. Kind of the opposite of Tikki-Tooki, really. The boons are an odd mix: Chaos costs all your existing piety, and depending on how much you spend, will either fully heal you or kill you. Madness increases your damage. Bolstering destroys a health potion to boost your max health by like 15 or so, Retaliation gives you a mana shield (which hurts enemies that attack you for your level's worth in damage).

The real prize here, though, is Polymorph, which randomly changes all the enemies on the map, including the boss, into another type entirely. I will definitely show off Jehora Jeheyu later.



In the meantime, though, I mopped up a bunch of weak enemies for Tikki-Tooki, so now we can dodge some attacks.



Also, like Jehora Jeheyu, Tikki-Tooki loves a good telprot, so I waste my mana just before a level up warping about at random to gain loads of piety.



And in doing so, we stumble across the last altar! Who is this going to be?



Mystera Annur? That sounds familiar somehow.



Oh, now this is exciting. Mystera Annur is the typical magic goddess, granting all kinds of magic-related fun. However, following her has a ridiculous cost: she sets your physical attack power to 1. Which means your ONLY method of attack from then on is magic. Her boons are as follows: Magic increases your max mana, Faith increases the piety bonus for spellcasting, Flames increases the damage from BURNDAYRAZ, and Weakening eliminates magic resistance of enemies (which is useless since there aren't any magic-resistant enemies here).

Now, the important thing is that we can convert to Mystera Annur, as loyal followers of Tikki-Tooki. Meaning we get all the benefits of Mystera's boons, but we don't lose our physical attack as a backup. Let's just click that conversion button and...



95 piety? Screw that, lady, I'll just stick with first strike.



Now the fun really begins. We can now fight enemies stronger than us and keep Tikki-Tooki from throwing a fit at the same time.



Yeah, being able to kill a level 9 enemy without a scratch? That's some crazy stuff.



I ran out of magic against this guy, so I had to go to blows. Apparently, not only does Tikki-Tooki forgive you if you get hit once after getting enough piety, but you also get rewarded piety for a successful PANTS PARRY.



Over here, we find another shop. I'm gonna save my piety rather than splurging on the Gold boon, though, because Tikki-Tooki's penalty for screwing up at 0 piety would kinda undo all the hard work we've put forth.



We gradually make our way up the ranks of the echeladder, now equipped with an orange number of prestige.

Unfortunately, we're out of enemies we can reliably kill. So it seems like we'll be fighting Super Meat Man soon. To ease this, I convert the LEMMISI and ENDISWAL glyphs to increase our max mana a bit more. Now we can cast four BURNDAYRAZ if we're full up.



Yeah, if you can keep Tikki-Tooki suitably impressed, a few hits here and there will only slightly annoy him.



If the items right now seem kinda useless... well, they are. But once we do some bonus stuff, we'll have some much more interesting shop inventories to entice us.



Enough lollygagging. You're going down, Super Meat Man!



First, we empty a few BURNDAYRAZ into him. This leaves a bit of a dent, but nothing he hasn't dealt with before.



To refuel for the second part of the fight, we go kill one of his underlings for a quick level up.



For phase 2 of the fight, I start dipping into my reserve of potions which have been untouched for the rest of the game. Each one restores 8 mana, so we get a lot more firepower out of them. I think the amount of whatever restored by potions is like 40% of your max value, but don't quote me on that.



Eventually, we run out of magic, but some fancy footwork on our end (Nice dodge!) and we've got Super Meat Man on the ropes.



Rockin'! This calls for a celebration!



Jimmy Pants, living large.



That went pretty well, actually. Tikki-Tooki proved surprisingly cooperative!

Also, check out that time. Don't expect me to break any records when LPing.



So aside from unlocking the goat enemy in the dungeons, we also have gained the sorcerer class! Sorcerers are much better at close combat than wizards are, and can use their spells to keep themselves going. This leads to a nice setup of hitting a guy, casting a spell of some kind, and then hitting him again. I rather like these guys. Humans, gnomes, and elves all make good sorcerers.



But what's this? There's also new dungeons available?

Yes, this is one of the side dungeons, the Snake Pit. It features new enemy types and has two bosses to deal with. Clearing this doesn't unlock new races or classes, but it does make our financial situation a bit smoother for each class that pulls it off. I'll do this as a side update later on, for reasons.



Also, there's the Gauntlet challenge. It's like the normal game, only it scales up in difficulty each time you win. Since it doesn't add anything new aside from numbers, I'll ignore this during my LP. You're welcome to try it at home, though.

Next Time: Keep voting for your favorite! Your options are now fighter, thief, priest, or sorcerer!

FIGHT-MAN!

The obvious answer here is Sorcerer

I mean, it's so obvious

Finish up the track and choose Sorcerer. You know what my next vote will be, too.

Pants the Gnome Thief.

Let us have THIEF! I really enjoy roguelike LPs.

Just downloaded v0.150 and it's a bit of an upgrade from my old v0.050 copy! I actually beat the game for the first time, using an elf wizard that combined BURNDAYRAZ with GETINDARE for major points with Tikki Tooki, converting all his other glyphs for mana. Took down a level 10 goblin in 17:07.

This.

I also made the mistake of downloading this game today and burned something like 3 hours all in one go. Ascended with all the basic classes though!

I vote sorcerer- magic is always fun :P New count time!
Fighter: 1
Sorcerer: 3
Thief: 4
Priest: 0

breakin' ties, I vote THIEF.

Lil' Hitler action GO!

Alright, halfling berserkers are awesome. Kill the dungeon boss at level 7? Yes please.

Wait, we can unlock berserkers? Okay, that gets my vote. . . for next round.

Something to unlock berserker then. Fighter presumably? Let's be boring. Human Fighter.

I dunno if they've made this game easier in the last few revisions or if my roguelike skills have just gone up in the meantime, but I just got another win - human fighter, in 15:52, against a level 10 goat. If I hadn't gotten a BYSSEPS rune and a Glowing Guardian altar (and enough retroactive piety with the Guardian to immediately buy death protection) I don't know what I would have done.

Hope you don't mind the peanut gallery chiming in with their own stories, Kalir.

Note that this was the left edge of the map. There is no way out.

You stupid fool, did you really think Desktop Dungeons was obligated to give you a way out?

Yeah, sometimes Desktop Dungeons gives you unwinnable scenarios. But hey, not like you lose a lot of time for that. By all means, bring up your own tales of glory or hilarity.

Also, Recettear41, I'm carrying over the non-wizard votes for last time, as part of a vote/queue thing. This means tracking who voted what, and fortunately for all involved, I've got that right here.

So uh yeah looks like thief is coming up next.

And a human berserker takes down Lord Gobb at 9:48. That was my first under-ten-minute win, not to mention the first time I've won by just an upright slugging match instead of tricky use of spells.

Theoretically, you can get out by having an unbelievable string of dodges. Just saying.

Spoiler alert: I didn't.



Are you excited for tiny Hitler thievery times? I sure am!



A promising start for our gnome thief, with a potion, a killable enemy, a health tile, and an altar within one step of him!



The altar is to Binlor Ironshield, one of the three "good" gods of Desktop Dungeons. You can tell they're all good because they all let you convert between them. Binlor is basically the dwarf god of dwarves. (Moradin, not Armok.) He appreciates a good fight and quality mining (ENDISWAL), but not so much non-mining magic. The Mining boon takes out a bunch of walls, Hardiness grants some physical resistance (reducing the damage you take from physical attacks), and the expensive Heroics boon takes you straight to level 10, although you can no longer gain piety. Not really a bad god, but since thieves tend to use plenty of magic, we'll give him a pass for today.



And not a few steps later, we find one of the newly unlocked monsters: the goat! Goats are really kind of pitiful, statwise. Low health and damage. They do have a bit of magic resistance, though. Magic resistance works differently for BURNDAYRAZ and other glyphs. Against BURNDAYRAZ, it works the same as physical resistance. For glyphs like IMAWAL and PISORF, it gives the goat the indicated chance of outright ignoring the spell. Which isn't really a big deal, because as previously mentioned, goats are not really that threatening. Mostly.



Blah. I do not want this glyph, but I'll keep it for now so I can turn it into a mana potion later or something.



There's our handsome Stabber bonus at work. Really, though, the best benefit of the thief is that potions affect both health and mana. The extra powerups and first stab are just icing on that very delicious piecake.



Stabbing can't carry us through fights like this though. And if you attack a monster, but can't kill it off, you lose the stabber bonus next time you come around. Lesson: thieves should not pick fights they can't win.



Since our last run gave us loads of dosh, we decide to spend a bit for a pendant of health.



This turns out to be a good investment on our part.



It's worth mentioning that even though we've gotten past the first easy-mode dungeon, the next few are still going to be a bit easier than normal.



BURNDAYRAZ, eh? Let's see what we can do with this.



Sure, that might weaken the damage from BURNDAYRAZ...



But that won't stop us for a second. This is probably a reward for beating the game first with perhaps the most difficult class for newbies to use: watering down the monster selection with goats.



We can still kill non-goats, though.



Since we don't have ENDISWAL here, PISORF is actually worth the glyph slot.

Aw man, you again? Come on, this is an LP, I want to show off the other bosses.



Super Meat Man's reappearance does let me show off something, though. Compare his health here to the first time we fought him. Now that we've proven ourselves as capable adventurers, he's not holding back (as much).



He didn't anticipate the game-changing value of high-level goats, though. Hahahaha!



Oh, here's something new. The GETINDARE glyph grants your next attack the first strike ability. "But wait," I hear you say. "Why even bother with Tikki-Tooki's ability if you can get a glyph that does the same for cheap?" Well, that's a good question, with a good answer: first strike is most useful for finishing off weakened high-level enemies. And most people weaken high-level enemies with the use of BURNDAYRAZ. Therefore, your average character won't have the mana to use as many BURNDAYRAZ as they like if they have to rely on GETINDARE for the final blow. It's still pretty useful for players who prefer to weaken high-level enemies with physical attacks, though, and those guys are very unlikely to follow Tikki-Tooki. So hey, everybody wins!



Take our thief, for example. In this case, continued battle with this warlock would ordinarily mean death.



All we have to do, though, is GETINDARE...



And oh how the tables have turned!



A little while later, we find one of the other buffing glyphs, BYSSEPS. This one is also great for physically-inclined characters, since it's dirt cheap and damage boosts are useful in almost all situations.



I don't think we'll need to spend too much this time around, so we skip the fine sword. I guess that's one benefit of the existing gold system: normal players have to make a choice of making the current run easier at the possible expense of later runs.



Here's the LEMMISI glyph. We don't really need it, though, so we convert it into a mana potion.



The Pactmaker? At level 7? Bluh, pass.



With our current mana as it is, we have enough to use BURNDAYRAZ twice, followed by a BYSSEPS-buffed stab attack. Not too shabby!



In fact, against some enemies, like meat men, it's way more economical to use BYSSEPS attacks exclusively, rather than shelling out the six mana for BURNDAYRAZ.



Health potions are cheap and thieves get plenty of mileage from them, so hey, why not.



Sadly, it's really late in the game, so I won't get to show off Jehora Jeheyu as well as I'd like, but he sure beats the other two options, so hey!

Fair warning if you're a defensive sort of player. Jehora hates people who go out of their way to avoid injury.



As such, our first act as his follower is to convert GETINDARE into a potion, where it won't piss off Jehora.

Funny thing is, we ditched a teleporting glyph to make room for it, and Jehora sure loves telprots.



The starting piety for Jehora is totally random, as befitting of a chaos god. I think we managed to get the worst possible value, but hey, so it goes.



As with Tikki-Tooki, we start off our worship by mopping up all the weak enemies left. Jehora gives us props for all the needless bloodshed.



Now that we've mopped up enough to get close to a level, let's deal with the revenge of Super Meat Man.



Jehora loves a good tussle, especially if it's a crazy-ass mess where all parties involved get hurt.



After we go get our post-beatdown level, we pay a visit to Jehora's altar.



pain is cupcake weakness leaving the body



Unfortunately, this time around, Super Meat Man withstood two full-on assaults without dropping for good.



Fortunately, we've got plenty of potions to keep us going.



And we've got enough to up our maximum health, too!



Killing Super Meat Man twice in as many games: only possible if it's easy mode. Or you're a thief, because thieves rock.



Well, I'm happy I won and all, but didn't that seem a bit bland to anyone else? That was almost the same as our previous run, and I know the game is capable of way more than that.



Unlike Tikki-Tooki's victory spoils, Jehora Jeheyu prefers to cap it off with a game of Russian roulette. Using five bullets.



Funny thing is, if you kill the boss but die afterwards...

It still counts as a win! Hot damn!



As for our unlockables, we've unlocked both the gorgon enemy from the tutorial, and my favorite class, the rogue. Starting the game with only five health is a bit daunting, but the insane damage, catch-free first strike, and a one-in-five dodge chance for extra icing on the cake all add up to a fast-paced daredevil playstyle. Rogues are awesome. You can either play a dwarf rogue to offset the health penalty, or a human rogue to take your damage up to absolutely insane heights.

Next Time: ...Actually, no. Y'know what? No. That run up there? That was boring and it sucked and nothing new happened.



SURPRISE TWO-PART SNAKE PIT UPDATE, SUCKAS



The Snake Pit is one of the four side dungeons in Desktop Dungeons. It's probably the easiest, but even so, it has two bosses to deal with. The monsters here are selected from only three types, all of which were courteous enough to appear right at the start. First off, the serpent. This monster can eventually be unlocked for the normal dungeon as well. Their stats are average, but they pack a poisonous bite that prevents your health from regenerating unless you level up or take a health potion. They're kind of a challenge, but we can deal with them, especially what with our potion surplus as a thief.



Just below it is the newly-unlocked gorgon enemy. Gorgons have some of the lowest health in the game, but they have both first strike and a fearsome death gaze, which will petrify (read: kill) anyone who attacks them having 50% or less health. The upshot of this is that the high level ones are great for killing early for bonus experience, but the low-level ones can surprise you if you try to mop them up for a level mid-fight.



The last of the three is unique to the Snake Pit: the naga. Their stats aren't very good at all, but their attack will permanently downgrade your own attack power. As such, if you intend to fight a naga, do not let it hit you. Their weakening effect is permanent and stackable, and a careless player will find themselves unable to fight at all.



Yeah, thanks for the early glyph, Snake Pit. Bluh.



Up in the corner, we find an altar to a new god, the Earthmother.



Y'know how the IMAWAL glyph is useless and terrible and no one likes it? In order to justify it's existence, the Earthmother is a goddess whose playstyle revolves around the usage of IMAWAL. This is, as you can probably guess, a phenomenally dumb idea. But it's worse than you think!

The Greenblood boon grants you poison resistance. Which sounds like it'd be phenomenally useful here, right? Well, it would be, except that the Earthmother dislikes the killing of natural monsters. In other words, goats and serpents. There is exactly one other kind of monster that poisons, and we have to win with the rogue to unlock it.

The next boon, Plantation, turns all the slain enemies (hereafter referred to as bloodstains) on screen into plants. Each plant created in this way grants 10 piety. Which is a lot, even considering the cost of the boon itself. The problem, though, is that these plants are immune to physical attacks. And even if you kill them with BURNDAYRAZ to get past, the Earthmother gets pissed. You can still IMAWAL them (for somewhat less piety than using it on a monster would give) but that just makes the problem worse, because now you have a solid wall rather than a flammable plant to deal with.

Stoneform is actually kind of useful. If you can manage to get 100 piety with the Earthmother, you can use this to increase the bonuses on a level-up by a not-insignificant amount. However, you only get these bonuses while still worshipping the Earthmother. And once you've spent the piety on this, you have only the barest of incentives to stay with her. So it's a choice between staying with a fairly-useless goddess for level-up boosts, or switching to one of the other two, not-totally-terrible gods, minus their beneficial on-worship effects AND your hard-earned future Stoneform boosts (you do keep previous ones).

tl;dr version: Optimal Earthmother play involves killing and petrifying a bunch of weak monsters early on, leveling up as much as possible after that, and then once you hit the high levels, converting to a god who doesn't hate it when you do smart things like kill snakes and remove walls. The Earthmother is terrible and I will try at least once this LP to play a successful Earthmother run for the sake of your amusement.



In the meantime, if this serpent was only a few levels higher, this Snake Pit run would already be over.



As is, we just end up poisoned instead. Normally, such a thing early on would be a death sentence. But we're a thief, and we've got potions a-plenty, so this isn't too big of a deal.



Seriously? Seriously? Seriously.



One side effect of having two bosses is that you tend to find a boss a lot faster than normal.



Anyway, this is Medusa. There's two noteworthy features to her. One, her health. It is terrible. Because of this, I consider her one of the easiest bosses in the game.

Two, her death gaze. Unlike every other gorgon in the game, Medusa can and will kill you if you are not at full health before attacking her. But hey, you're given a few health potions and a BURNDAYRAZ glyph. I do hope you can work out a solution by yourself.



Oh look, it's the second-least useful glyph in the game. WONAFYT summons a monster of your level to a tile next to you, presumably so you can kill it. Of course, the main reason you want this is to kill something for experience, and the monster population is heavily weighted towards the lower end. So a lower-level character would either (a) walk to a nearby killable monster, or (b) run out of mana before getting enough experience to plow through to greener pastures. Higher-level characters wouldn't even need to bother. Still, it can be useful to a certain class, so it beats IMAWAL.

The Snake Pit finally relents and gives us something that isn't totally useless: a troll heart! If you can buy one of these early on, it's a low-cost investment with a great payoff. A level 1 buy is perfect.



Let's get a fine sword too, why not.



Again, I would've preferred ENDISWAL, but I don't expect sympathy from this Snake Pit anymore.



Case in point: I telprot that naga out of the way in the hopes of a cool altar, and he ends up blocking off my escape route. Thanks, Snake Pit! I hate you too!



Fortunately, we score a level off of a nearby serpent, enough to cast a second PISORF.



And we finally find the BURNDAYRAZ glyph. Now we can start fighting back.



Our first step: killing things way stronger than us for bonus experience. This is also the second, third, fifth, and last step.



Oh hey, the other boss!



For all his mythological clout, J�rmungandr is basically a really big serpent. Which makes him one of the easier bosses, actually, since poison on a boss is kind of a waste. Still, having two bosses to the Snake Pit makes it a bit tougher than a vanilla dungeon.



Huh. It's the last of the three good gods, the Shining One! Er, no, wait, it says "Glowing Guardian". Whoops.



Anyway, the Glowing Guardian is the classic holy crusade god. What makes them interesting is that it's most effective to worship the Glowing Guardian at the end of a game, DURING the boss fight, due to the way starting piety is calculated (based on the damage you've taken before worship) and the full heal you get upon worshipping him. As far as piety while worshipping goes, the Glowing Guardian expects followers to act with chivalry, slaying evil beasts (for example, serpents), fighting bravely against dire odds, and so forth. Apparently, this excludes the use of potions, which thieves kinda rely on, so it would be unwise to worship the Glowing Guardian right now. The boons granted are Healing, which fully heals you, Protection, which lets you take a single killing blow the same way a fighter would, and the high-cost Absolution, which absolves all fallen enemies, granting +1 max health for each bloodstain on screen.



The fun thing about serpents is that even if they poison you, it doesn't matter if you level up from killing them.



Meanwhile, gorgons are pushovers.



Oh cool, now all of our glyphs are useful!



No seriously. Gorgons are PUSHOVERS.

Unless you want to kill a low-level one for a free level-up. If it says "petrification" there? Just walk away, man, it ain't worth it.



Same with "weaken". I am so glad naga are exclusive to the Snake Pit. Actually, each of the four side dungeons has a unique type of monster to it. These monsters, thankfully, don't have boss variants.



If it says "poison"... well, use your best judgment. Also, sometimes my math is wrong and I don't kill an enemy on my first try. Whoops!



Don't mind if I do!



I decide to pass on this, remembering our early investment in a troll heart.



Taurog is probably the best of the gods here, but even so, I like being able to use BURNDAYRAZ and BYSSEPS, so I'll just save the Glowing Guardian for one of the two boss fights.



Haha! Looks like my math skills aren't so bad after all!



...Or not.



Okay okay. Let's go kill Medusa.

Yeah, we're only level 7. So what? I've killed Super Meat Man at level 2 before, I'll have you know!



Two mana potions later, we fry Medusa to a crisp. Now let's go tango with her serpentine friend over there.



Our magic and stabbing takes us halfway, so let's go break out the holy goodness, eh?



The phrase "deathbed conversion" comes to mind. Also, we're still poisoned. You're such a slacker, Glowing Guardian.



We've taken a LOT of hits throughout the Snake Pit, so the Glowing Guardian is very sympathetic to our cause.



Even more so, once we continue our pseudo-one-sided fight against J�rmungandr.



We petition the Glowing Guardian for another heal, and keep at it.