Cheibriados

Version 0.26: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Take it easy."

Cheibriados is a god of deliberation. Those following Cheibriados travel more slowly the further they progress in their faith, and are forbidden from using any means to hasten themselves. In the process of so imitating their god, they attain perfection of mind and body, and the mysteries of time unfold before them. Especially devout followers may even momentarily abandon the flow of time and its needless disturbances. Followers of Cheibriados move more slowly as they gain favour, and are rewarded for killing creatures who are faster than they are. As they move slower, worshippers of Cheibriados are granted increased attributes. Cheibriados rewards the faithful with the power to slow other creatures and the power to briefly distort the flow of time. Devout worshippers will gain the ability to inflict great harm on all those who move more quickly than they do, and finally the ability to step out of the flow of time entirely. Cheibriados likes it when you kill fast things, relative to your speed. Cheibriados strongly dislikes it when you hasten yourself or others or use unnaturally quick items.

Appreciates

• Killing creatures that are faster than you, with a chance of a large piety increase for much faster creatures and ones with high HD ("Cheibriados (thoroughly) appreciates the change of pace").

Deprecates

• Increasing your speed by any means: this includes potions of haste, going berserk, Swiftness, weapons with the speed brand, quick blades, equipment with the rampaging ego, and boots or bardings with the running ego. You may not hasten or frenzy enemies, either. If the item causing haste, berserk, etc. was unidentified, or you were berserked/hastened against your will (moth of wrath, berserk mutation), Cheibriados will block the haste effect and not punish you for it. The message will say the protection was "just this once," but there is no actual limit on it. Do note that an identified wand of random effects will be punished by Cheibriados if you use it and it produces one of the forbidden effects.

Given Abilities

Piety Level -: "Sluggish Foo"

• Raises the support of your attributes: Cheibriados increases your Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence as your piety increases. Each stat increase comes with an incremental increase in your movement delay equal to 2 + piety/20 auts, capping at 10 auts for normal or faster speed player characters. Further stat increases occur at higher ranks of piety. At maximum piety you receive +15 to all stats.
• Bend Time: Slows everything adjacent to you. Monsters resist based on their HD rather than their willpower, which means that it can even affect enemies with unshakable will. (Costs 3 MP and 1-2 Piety)

Piety Level *: "Deliberate"

• Slows the effects of poison: The rate at which poison damages you is halved. This effectively doubles the duration of poison, but makes it much more survivable, especially in severe cases. The duration of the sickness is also halved.

Piety Level **: "Unhurried"

• No new abilities.

Piety Level ***: "Contemplative"

• Temporal Distortion: Moves nearby monsters forward through time, relative to you. In effect, this forces ranged opponents to move adjacent to you, but may also place them one space away. This ability does not cost a turn. (4 MP, 3-5 Piety)

Piety Level ****: "Epochal"

• Slouch: Damages everything in LOS (including invisible enemies) that's faster than you (Damage = [Speed Difference] × 4d3 / 2). Only monsters that have detected you take damage from Slouch. (5 MP, 8-12 Piety)

Piety Level *****: "Timeless"

• Step From Time: Moves you to nowhere and lets time pass. During that time, monsters wander away and may even go to sleep. Monsters that end up in your LOS must perform a fresh check against your stealth to notice you. (10 MP, 10-15 Piety)

Piety Level ******: "Foo Aeon"

• No new abilities.

In addition, Cheibriados does the following:

• Dramatically reduces the monster spawn rate and map morphing rate in the Abyss. (Passive)
• Prevent the speed bonus from going berserk through the Berserk mutation. (Passive)
• Reduces the Orb run monster spawn rate. (Passive)

Punishments

Offenders against Cheibriados will find their movements remain slow while the attention of Cheibriados remains upon them, and will frequently have any magical hasting stripped away. They may also become further slowed and exhausted, be put to sleep, or have wild and unpredictable magical effects from the depths of time unleashed upon them.

Upon abandonment, Cheibriados will continue to slow your movement for as long as its wrath persists. It will occasionally punish you with one of the following forms of divine retribution, increasing in severity with the danger of your current situation:

• Cheibriados's wrath always reduces the remaining duration of your haste status to 1 turn.
• At low tension: lose 1-5 points from a random stat.
• At medium tension: Slow for 100 turns.
• At high tension: Sleep for 4-8 turns with a 50% chance of slowing.
• At very high tension: make a very loud noise, sleep, and a 50% chance of slowing.

Strategy

• Unlike the other gods, successfully worshiping Cheibriados greatly magnifies the deadliness of your mistakes. Remember to always use shift-direction key or auto-explore while exploring, as that will automatically stop you when you spot an enemy. One careless step while worshiping Cheibriados could translate to two or three needless enemy attacks, which could very well be lethal.
• Ranged attacks and magic do not encourage you to move towards or away from your enemies.
• Those who worship Cheibriados should try to take advantage of their stat boosts as much as possible. Devotees of Cheibriados can wear heavier armour unencumbered, cast stronger spells and have high EV, SH, and Stealth.
• Translocations spells like Blink or Passage of Golubria can help you get around more quickly, as can Passwall. Translocations are also helpful for dealing with enemies, whether dragging ranged opponents closer (Lesser Beckoning), knocking melee foes away (Iskenderun's Mystic Blast), or sending dangerous threats elsewhere (Dispersal, Disjunction).
• Training your Invocations skill is important, as Cheibriados offers several excellent abilities:
  • Bend Time can reliably slow even the strongest enemies for very little piety, reducing their attack speed while yours remains the same. Skill level 7.0 in Invocations will give 4% or lower failure for Bend Time at all relevant piety levels.
  • Temporal distortion is an instantaneous ability that "jumps forward" in time. It has a number of powerful tactical uses which may not be obvious at first. Skill level 7.0 in Invocations will give 4% or lower failure for Temporal Distortion at all relevant piety levels.
    • The most direct use of temporal distortion is to pull in ranged attackers so that melee characters can fight without having to walk towards monsters or take damage while waiting for an approach. It can also be used for the opposite effect: if you are resting on stairs and monsters are in melee range, distortion can be used to possibly move them away from you so that you can escape up the stairs without being followed.
    • Temporal distortion can be used to dodge enemy orbs of destruction, which will pass through you; this is particularly helpful against orb spiders. You can use it to dissipate harmful clouds (especially low-duration clouds like flames produced by fire crabs) and split up slime creatures that have merged.
    • Temporal Distortion also works well with poison or Sticky flame; apply a damage-over-time effect, then warp time forward to when your foes have been injured by it.
  • Slouch's piety cost is not cheap, but it is an effective irresistible attack against everything in sight, even invisible enemies like unseen horrors. Slouch's damage is based on the difference between your speed and the target's, so particularly fast or hasted enemies will take a high damage. Areas filled with fast enemies such as the Spider's Nest are especially ripe for Slouching. Note that Invocations does not affect Slouch's damage, only its success rate. 9.0 skill in Invocations will give you a <4% failure rate with Slouch at all relevant piety levels. Assuming your movement delay is 20, Slouch will deal on average 60 damage to opponents of speed 20 (killer bees) and 40 damage to opponents of speed 10 (most monsters).
  • Don't forget you have Step From Time. It can spare you from certain-death situations; by the time you return, most enemies will have wandered off and summoned enemies will have run out of time. Enemies that haven't wandered off might not even notice your return if you have high stealth.
    • Step From Time is much more effective in open levels with lots of space for monsters to redistribute themselves. In constrained areas like the Shoals or small portal levels, it is less effective, so beware. Unlike Slouch, the strength of Step From Time, and not just the success chance, depends on Invocations skill. Skill level 14.0 in Invocations will give less than 4% failure in Step From Time at all relevant piety levels.

History

• Prior to 0.26, Cheibriados would slow your metabolism at 1* piety.
• Prior to 0.25, Cheibriados's wrath inflicted random miscast effects instead of creating noise.
• Prior to 0.20, Cheibriados's wrath could exhaust you and force you to Step from Time. Also, the wrath had a chance to curse an item.
• Prior to 0.17, slouch damage wasn't based on monster movement speed.
• Prior to 0.14, Bend Time only became available at 1* piety.
• Prior to 0.10, Cheibriados would only give you bonus stats if you wore equipment with the ponderousness ego (and offered an ability which allowed you to convert your gear into ponderous artifacts). Cheibriados would also offer various resistances as well. These benefits increased with each equipment slot you made ponderous.
• Prior to 0.9, species with equipment restrictions were unable to get the full ponderous benefits from Cheibriados, and each new ponderous item gave a larger benefit than the last.
• Cheibriados was added in 0.6.