Gozag Ym Sagoz

Version 0.22: 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.

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 divine 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. Gold piles on the ground have a chance to distract monsters, causing brief confusion. (Passive)

• Detect Gold: You map the location of all gold on the floor. (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. If your species cannot be hasted or go berserk, Gozag will not offer hasting or berserk effects.

• Call Merchant: Fund a merchant to set up a new shop. 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 most obvious 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. As long as you're not spamming high-level spells there's plenty of food in the game to keep you from starving, even without creating extra food shops. Note that it will be much more difficult to get dragon scales since dragons won't leave corpses.

The most dangerous drawback of worshiping Gozag is the lack of a reliable panic button. While Potion Petition's gold cost is almost nothing compared to the gold dropped by monsters, there's no promise that any of the offered potions will be useful in a given situation. Even then, these are generally only buffs--the only form of escape Gozag can offer is haste. This means that planning ahead, and preparing for the future by stocking up on escape options, is even more important when worshiping Gozag. This is aided by funding potion and scroll shops, and buying useful scrolls and potions to provide safer panic buttons.

In exchange, Gozag offers a large amount of power to those who plan ahead to use it. Funding armour and weapon shops can quickly result in a Gozag worshiper holding onto much better gear throughout the mid-game, and even late-game, than the average player would have. Similarly, by funding potion and scroll shops, players can get ahold of many more consumables than others might. However, Gozag's true power lies in his third ability. Bribing a branch, while expensive, can drastically reduce the difficulty of a level, by making potentially dangerous enemies become neutral, or even friendly. Few things simplify the Realm of Zot like an allied orb of fire. If your bribery fund begins to run low, you can put an extra 3000 gold towards it by using the ability again. This can be used to ensure the final floor of a branch is fully bribed. Similarly, you can bribe the Dungeon, Depths, and the Realm of Zot ahead of time to simplify the orb run, once you've cleared the monsters guarding the Orb of Zot.

Because Gozag's benefits are primarily oriented towards the late-game, and the god offers little before players have had time to build up a gold supply to purchase aid with, characters who have little trouble in the early game can best take advantage of Gozag. Conveniently, this primarily means pure physical characters. Such characters don't have the food issues that tend to plague casters, making the removal of corpses a fairly painless drawback.

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. 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.

Gozag is one of the few gods you can abandon while keeping permanent benefits granted via worship (items from Called Merchants).

History

Prior to 0.21, Gozag could offer haste or berserk via potion petition to species that couldn't be hasted or go berserk.

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.