Good gods

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

There are three good gods in Dungeon Crawl's pantheon who are allied together in the fight against (so-called) evil: Zin the Law-Giver, the Shining One, and Elyvilon the Healer.

Characteristics

The good gods, being allies, have several features in common:

• Codes of conduct to which followers must abide, including hatred for evil.
  • Demonspawn and the undead (Mummies, Ghouls, Vampires, players in Death Form) are not allowed to worship good gods.
• No divine retribution for leaving their religion or converting to another god, unless it is evil. Penance is still incurred, but the god simply does not act upon it.
  • When switching between good gods, you will still receive "penance", but half of your original piety is retained.
• Several defensive and protective powers granted to their followers, able to be trained with Invocations.
• Good gods may intervene to save your life on an otherwise fatal blow, even while under penance.

Code of Conduct

The good gods share a code of conduct. Common elements across all three are:

• No Necromancy or evil spells.
  • Entering Death Form causes instant excommunication.
• No unholy items.
  • Wielding unholy weapons is fine, but actually attacking with one is not allowed. This allows you to take advantage of non-combat benefits provided by unholy artefact weapons safely. Wearing unholy armour, however, is immediately frowned upon.
  • Accidental use of unidentified forbidden items will be forgiven. This includes scrolls of torment for all three and potions of mutation (while under 6*) or lignification for Zin.
• No harming non-hostile neutral or allied beings.
  • Inner Flame explosions created by the player will anger the good gods if it hits an ally.
  • Confused allies hitting each other will incur penance to the player if one is killed. One should be cautious if enemies with Mass Confusion are present.

Additional requirements

Each god has additional requirements based on their likes and dislikes:

• Zin hates chaos and thus mutations and forms, but rewards selfless donations of gold and the slaying of chaotic creatures. It also takes a tithe automatically whenever followers pick up gold.
• The Shining One demands honourable combat, so prevents stabbing. You'll also gain a halo, preventing you from going invisible.
• Elyvilon preaches a creed of pacifism and allows you to pacify monsters instead of killing them. Slaying enemy creatures instead of sparing them will not cause penance, but also not grant piety (even for evil ones).

See each god's page for more details.

History

• Prior to 0.31, the good gods didn't mind if you used distortion weapons.
• Prior to 0.26, all three gods hated cannibalism.
• Prior to 0.15, holy monsters would often become friendly and allow the player to pass in peace if you worshiped a good god. This chance was based on your piety.
• Prior to 0.9, switching between good gods would not incur penance. Therefore, players would switch to Elyvilon, who had the weakest wrath, if they wanted to worship an evil/chaotic god.