Xom

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This page is about the god. For the card, see Xom card

"A new plaything!"

Xom is a wild and unpredictable god of chaos, who seeks not worshippers but playthings with which to toy. Many choose to follow Xom in the hope of receiving fabulous rewards and mighty powers, but Xom is nothing if not capricious. There is nothing a follower can do to influence Xom's mood. To worship Xom is to live riskily. In a good mood Xom may shower you with gifts, while at other times this capricious god could decide to “spice things up a little” and send you to your doom. If you prove yourself the stronger, so much the better; if not, well, there'll be other playthings...

Chaos Knights begin play worshiping Xom.

Piety

Unlike other gods, there is no way to change your piety; it is instead randomly changed.

For Xom, Piety's only use is to determine the niceness and strength of its actions. Xom's niceness depends on your Piety: the chance to perform a "good" action is approximately equal to Piety/2 % (this probability is increased during dangerous situations, like combat, up to 95%). The strength of Xom's actions will depend on how far you are from 100 Piety (in either direction).

Piety starts at 100 and changes by 1 point roughly every 20 turns (about 49% chance to move towards 100 and 51% chance to move away). When Xom acts, there's a 20% chance that your piety will be set to a random amount. Piety can be observed in the ^ screen by watching your favour status.

Depending on your piety, it displays the following messages:

• 0 - 20: A very special plaything of Xom.
• 21 - 50: A special plaything of Xom.
• 51 - 80: A plaything of Xom.
• 81 - 120: A toy of Xom.
• 121 - 150: A favourite toy of Xom.
• 151 - 180: A beloved toy of Xom.
• 181 - 200: Xom's teddy bear.

Amusement

Another important aspect of Xom is that it really, really hates being bored. When Xom is bored, Xom will act more often, and his/her actions will always be bad (excluding most harmless miscast effects). This is reflected by an "amusement" value, which ranges between 0 and 255.

When you start worshiping Xom, its amusement is set to between 2 and 80. Every 20 turns, there's a 50% chance that Xom's amusement will be decreased by one, until it reaches 0. When that happens, you'll get a message "Xom is BORED", and the bad stuff will start. You'll get a warning when the amusement gets down to 1 (at least 20 turns before it reaches 0): "Xom is getting BORED".

To avoid boring Xom, you should always try to keep it interested in you. Unfortunately, Xom is mostly amused by things you can't control (like being teleported away in the Abyss when the exit or a rune was in sight) or if you waste useful resources. When Xom finds something funny, its amusement may be rise to a random point depending on how much it enjoyed the event and if the new amusement is higher than its current amusement. You can guess how high the amusement was set by the message provided:

• Xom is interested: 12 - 25
• Xom is mildly amused: 26 - 50
• Xom is amused: 51 - 75
• Xom is highly amused!: 76 - 100
• Xom thinks this is hilarious!: 101 - 200
• Xom roars with laughter!: 201 - 255

Interest

When you do an X-interesting thing, a number between 0 and X-1 is randomly generated. This becomes Xom's interest level, if and only if it is greater than the old value. Xom interest decays at an average of 0.5 points every 20 turns. If Xom's interest reaches 0, Xom will become bored and make your life miserable.

You can make Xom more interested in you by doing or being affected by the following things:

• Extreme (255): Tomes exploding or summoning things against you, using random effects in dangerous combat, randomly teleporting into a dangerous situation, being banished to the Abyss or Pandemonium, being hit by a vulnerable element (200), losing a level, or teleporting in the Labyrinth as a non-minotaur.
• High (128): Drinking potions of strong poison or paralysis, wearing cursed jewelry or armor, eating mutagenic chunks (100), eating rotten mutagenic chunks (0-200), mutating (depends on the mutation), undead rotting, teleporting in the Labyrinth as a minotaur, or having meat rot as you butcher it.
• Medium (64): Drinking potions of slowing, confusion, degeneration, decay, or berserk rage, being frozen or poisoned by a tome, wearing a cursed weapon, using a sparkling fountain, creating a dungeon level (49), eating rotten/contaminated/rotgenic food (0-100), eating poison food (0-128), having your brain eaten (50), gear corroding, or when hostile monsters accidentally hit each other.
• Low(16): Tomes smoking, reading a manual (14), successful use of a box of beasts (14), enchanting things, gaining levels, anyone in sight fumbling in shallow water (14), fighting without weapon skill, having scrolls or potions destroyed, or being drained (20).
• Minor: Spell miscasts (the level), becoming confused (duration), or sustaining serious injury (varies).

Acts

Every 20 turns (for a character with normal speed), Xom will turn its attention towards you, and depending on the situation (from 7% of the time if there are no monsters in view to 33% in the middle of a big fight) may decide to perform either a "good" action or a "bad" action.

Xom's actions will often be in context (i.e. turning you berserk if there's no one around), although nothing is guaranteed. Good actions are more likely if your Piety is high (see below).

"Good" Actions

• Affect you with a random potion effect among Healing, Heal Wounds, Magic, Speed, Might, Invisibility, Berserk Rage, and Experience (rarely). Only potions that will have an effect are picked (for example no Magic if you're at max MP).
• Make you cast a random spell.
• Confuse monsters around you.
• Summon one or more allies to help you.
• Offer you an item.
• Polymorph a random monster around you into a weaker monster (-3 HD).
• Swap the position of you and at least one monster near you (confuses the monster 50% of the time).
• Instantly teleport several times, likely up to a relatively safe place.
• Vitrify walls around you (this allows both you and monsters to see through).
• Give you a random good mutation (this will reduce your current HP, but no lower than 50% of your max HP).
• Throw a bolt of divine lightning, which explodes around you. There's a chance based on your HP (the lower, the better) that Xom will protect you against it.
• Prevent you from being banished.

"Bad" Actions

• Suffer a random miscast (often harmless).
• Instantly teleport several times, likely up to a relatively dangerous place.
• Adds a Chaos brand and several accuracy and damage increases to a random nearby creature's weapons and ammunitions.
• Give you a random mutation (this will reduce your current HP, but no lower than 50% of your max HP).
• Polymorph a random monster around you into a stronger monster (+2 HD).
• If stairs (or escape hatches) are in view they are moved towards you or away from you. For several turns, when you move on a stair or climb up or down a stair, there's a chance that it will slide away from you.
• Confuse you.
• Drain some of your experience.
• Cast Torment.
• Summon hostile demons or dancing weapons to fight you.
• Banish you.

Xom's actions, especially gifts, will often be in the spirit of what Xom (with its particular sense of humor) finds funny: if you're stuck with cursed gloves or rings, there's a good chance that Xom will give you a cursed ring, if you're using a specific type of weapon, Xom will probably give you a different kind, etc.

Occasionally, Xom will do something random, such as causing you to spew translocation energy behind you everywhere you go ("Go forth and redecorate, my child!")

In any case, Xom's actions will never directly kill you unless Xom's bored or you're under penance (a mutation or effect that would reduce a stat to 0 is cancelled, HP damage that would have killed you is cancelled, etc.). However, anything he summons is more than capable of killing you.

Revival

Rarely, upon death, Xom may intervene and save your life. This seems to be more likely with higher piety. Being revived merely cancels the damage from the action that would have killed you; it doesn't restore you to full health, just leaves you at the point you would be if the killing blow had not happened.

Gifts

Xom will occasionally give you gifts as one of his actions. These are delivered purely at random, not based on any Gift Timeout. Xom's gifts can be normal, useful items, but are usually chosen for maximum annoyance. Items range from excellent randarts to ridiculous trash (choko {god gift}, for example). Be careful, as Xom is perfectly happy to cause stat death with randarts.

Penance

If you leave Xom (voluntarily or not), your penance counter will be set to 50 (quite high!). While under penance, Xom will sometimes punish you (about once every 2000 turns) by performing a "bad" action from the list above. As a true god of chaos, however, there's a 10% chance that Xom will do a "good" action instead.

Trivia

When using a QWERTY keyboard layout, the name "Xom" is simply "Zin," but with all letters mistyped one key to the right.