Gozag Ym Sagoz

Version 0.18: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Greed is good."

Gozag Ym Sagoz the Greedy teaches that the world belongs to the rich. Those accepting this principle may exchange their gold for divine assistance. Followers of Gozag do not earn piety; the only way to impress this god is by amassing a fortune, and worshippers may request as much assistance as they can afford. Fortunately, Gozag's worshippers are said to have the touch of gold. For Gozag, both flesh and food are inferior to wealth, and therefore all corpses are turned into gold piles. These piles of gold may briefly distract nearby monsters. Stalwarts can order immediate help in the form of potions, with prices dictated by the Greedy. Particularly well-off adherents may attract shopkeepers into the dungeon, and even bribe entire branches of the dungeon. Gozag will also duplicate any one non-artifact item for a servant. Gozag likes it when you collect gold.

Racial Restrictions

Demigods may not worship Gozag Ym Sagoz or any other deity.

Additional Restrictions

Gozag requires a service fee for joining; this starts at 0 gold and rises with the amount of gold generated in the game:

Service fee = (Generated gold - Generated gold/log10(Generated gold+10))/2

Characters without enough gold receive the message, "Gozag does not accept service from beggars like you!"

Monks who have not yet chosen a god are exempt from this fee, as are those who join Gozag through a faded altar.

Appreciates/Deprecates

Gozag Ym Sagoz is a reasonable businessgod, and does not allow personal feelings to affect its behavior one way or another. All interactions with Gozag Ym Sagoz revolve purely around gold. This also means that amulets of faith have no effect, since Gozag doesn't care about piety.

Given Abilities

As Gozag Ym Sagoz has no piety system, all of its granted abilities are available upon joining. Players are notified when they have gathered enough gold to use the next given ability.

• Golden touch: Defeated enemies turn into piles of gold (the amount of gold varies; bigger, stronger monsters tend to generate more), but never leave corpses. Killing monsters creates a temporary effect which may distract nearby creatures, making them forget about you. (Passive)

• Detect Gold and shops: You map the location of gold on the floor in a medium area around you and map the location of shops you have funded on your current dungeon level. (Passive)

• Potion Petition: Purchase one set of potion effects. You immediately get the effects of one of three sets of potions, each containing 1-6 random, different potions. Sets containing more and/or better potions are more expensive to purchase. Once you activate the ability, you must choose and pay for one of the sets. The first use of Potion Petition is free, but each additional use costs 400 gold.

• Call Merchant: Fund a merchant to set up a new shop somewhere near to areas of the dungeon you have explored. You choose one out of four different Merchants with different shop types, one of which is a food shop (Mummies and vampires are not offered the food shop, thus receive only three choices). The first use of Call Merchant costs at most 800 gold for the best shop, increasing by 200 gold per use (though most shops are actually much cheaper). The chosen shop is placed at your feet.

• Bribe Branch: Send money to the inhabitants of a branch to turn them temporarily neutral or incite them to join you. Unique Hell and Pan lords are unaffected. (Costs 3000 Gold)
  • You must be in the branch to use this ability. Adds 3000 gold to this branch's bribe fund. Monsters have a chance based on their HD (stronger monsters have a higher chance) to either become peaceful (for some gold from the bribe fund) or become your permanent allies (for more gold from the fund). The chance is rolled when they first notice you.
  • Allied monsters take from the fund when fighting, but not over time.
  • Attacking one of these pacified monsters result in turning all pacified monsters in sight hostile.
  • This power can be incredibly useful in branches with dangerous enemies. Having a few Orbs of fire or Ancient liches on your side can make a big difference.

Punishments

Upon leaving Gozag Ym Sagoz, any funded stores close, as they are unable to pay their debts without your funds. Any bribed monsters turn hostile. In addition:

• Petition for your drink to fail: When quaffing potions, there is a high chance that you will lose a turn (but not the potion).
• Turn to gold: When buying from shops, there is a chance your purchase will turn into 1 piece of gold.
• Incite: Permanently buffs an enemy with a potion effect.
• Claim gold: Gozag claims about 10% of any gold you pick up (much like Zin).

Strategy

Gozag's drawback, the lack of corpses, is not as bad as it sounds for most characters. Spellcasters may want to train more spellcasting than usual to reduce spell hunger, but as long as you're not spamming high-level spells or rods, there's plenty of food in the game to keep you from starving, even without creating extra food shops.

However, characters that rely heavily on corpses, such as Necromancers, ghouls, vampires, and trolls, should think twice before choosing to follow Gozag, as you'll be turning everything you kill into gold. Felids and kobolds also suffer to a lesser extent. You will have a harder time getting dragon armour, since dragons leave no corpses to butcher. Dancing weapons turn to gold too, so don't bother with the hall of blades.

Gozag is an especially appealing choice for spriggans and mummies; they have less use for corpses than most species (barring Necromancy). Spriggan worshippers can actually get access to more food than they usually would by calling in extra food shops, and Potion Petition helps make up for the fact that mummies can't normally drink potions.

History

Several aspects of Gozag were different prior to 0.17:

• Service fee was higher
• Gold distraction was centered on the generated gold, rather than the player.
• The cost of Potion Petition increased with use
• Only monsters that normally left corpses dropped gold.
• Bribes only worked on humanoid and demonic enemies.
• Call Merchant placed shops on unexplored floors in Dungeon, Depths, Vaults, and only at your feet when those branches were fully explored.

Gozag Ym Sagoz was added in 0.16.