Vehumet

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Let it end in hellfire!"

Vehumet is a god of the destructive powers of magic. Followers will gain divine assistance in commanding the hermetic arts, and the most favoured stand to gain access to some of the fearsome spells in Vehumet's library. One's devotion to Vehumet can be proven by the causing of as much carnage and destruction as possible. Worshippers of Vehumet will quickly be able to recover their magical energy upon killing beings. As they gain favour, they will also gain enhancements to their destructive spells — first assistance in casting such spells and then increased range for conjurations. Vehumet will offer followers the knowledge of increasingly powerful destructive spells as they gain piety. Vehumet likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings and you destroy nonliving beings.

Restrictions

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

Appreciates

• You killing monsters (living, demonic, holy, nonliving, and undead).

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"

• No new abilities.

Piety level *: "Scholar of Destruction"

• Gain power from killing - When you kill a monster, you have a piety-based chance of gaining 1d(HD/2) in MP, where HD is the hit dice of the monster killed. This chance is (piety-30)/piety. At full piety, 85%. (Passive)

Piety level **: "Caster of Ruination"

• No new abilities.

Piety level ***: "Traumaturge"

• Aid to destructive magic - Your chance of miscasting destructive spells is reduced by 33%, equivalent to 2 sources of wizardry. (Passive)

Piety level ****: "Battlemage"

• Range increase for destructive magic - The range of destructive spells is increased by 1 tile. (Exceptions: Static Discharge, Sticky Flame, Freeze, Irradiate, and Frozen Ramparts.) (Passive)

Piety level *****: "Warlock"

• No new abilities.

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

• No new abilities.

What Vehumet considers Destructive magic

Vehumet's "Destructive spells" include all Conjurations spells, plus:

• Airstrike
• Eringya's Noxious Bog
• Freeze
• Frozen Ramparts
• Ignite Poison
• Ignition
• Inner Flame
• Lee's Rapid Deconstruction
• Maxwell's Capacitive Coupling
• Olgreb's Toxic Radiance
• Ozocubu's Refrigeration
• Poisonous Vapours
• Polar Vortex
• Sandblast
• Scorch
• Shatter
• Yara's Violent Unravelling.

Gifts

Spells. If you are above the first 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:

Gift	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13-15
Spell levels	1	1-2	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 at * piety. 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 previous gifts.

Gifts will tend to correlate with your trained skills. Investing more into specific elemental skills (Fire, Ice, Earth, Air) increases the chance of a spell of said skill. Each school starts at 100 "weight", and every skill level adds 10 to it; the relative likelihood of a specific element is (their weight / total weight). For example, if you have 10 Fire Magic and 0 in other schools, Fire Magic will be twice as likely, and the others are 66% as likely.

The gift timeout is 98+2d50 turns for the first four gifts, and 128+2d50+2d15 for the rest.

Punishments

Vehumet does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments upon disloyal followers! Those that anger Vehumet find destruction amply heaped upon them. Novices are struck by flame and frost; archmages by crystal spears and firestorms. Their own conjurations, too, are wont to misfire at the worst possible moments. Vehumet's wrath lasts for a relatively short duration.

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.

Vehumet also has a 5% chance to punish you whenever you cast a destructive spell. The spell still succeeds, but you get a miscast effect anyway.

Strategy

Vehumet offers a nearly guaranteed engine, or way to kill things, up thru Zot:5. The god's abilities (or lack thereof) might not seem all that impressive at first glance; even Sif Muna offers some form of active ability. But Vehumet's curated spell gifts, starting from 1* piety, ensure a method to kill those pesky orbs of fire and just about everything else. In a way, you aren't worshipping Vehumet; think of your spells as the actual god.

Two free ranks of wizardry help get powerful midgame spells (for example, Freezing Cloud) online faster, while making level 9 spells reasonable to cast in a 3-rune game. The +1 range also certainly helps with many spells. All this comes with zero Invocations investment. Combined with the wizardry, and 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. Vehumet is one of the weaker gods in the earlier stages of the game. For spellcaster backgrounds, the first couple spell gifts generally aren't strong enough to compete with your own spells. Those 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*. And as you progress, Vehumet remains deceptively simple; while an engine is a tool to kill things, strong spells and good general play are still required to make up for a lack of active abilities.

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 (picking up a book will mark all spells therein as "seen"), it may be worth buying early spell books from magic schools you don't 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

• In 0.27, Poisonous Vapours gained support from Vehumet.
• In 0.26, Vehumet's spell gifts were widened in level range.
• In 0.25, spells were reworked. Vehumet used to support various conjurations that are now deleted.
• Prior to 0.16, Vehumet would explictly discourage spells that could cause antitraining (Fire/Ice, Air/Earth).
• Vehumet underwent a complete overhaul in 0.12, dropping summoning support, MP cost reduction, and book gifts, instead gifting destructive spells directly. For information about Vehumet prior to 0.12, see this revision.