Chaos Knight of Xom Guide
Chaos knight (CK) is considered a challenging start. You start with a god, but that god is Xom, a chaotic and unpredictable god capable of both granting you aid and making your situation worse. Chaos knight may seem like just a challenge start, a background somebody would pick only for a challenge, or to get their greater player title. Many have given up on Xom from the get-go, splatting dozens of CKs switching god as soon as possible. But there is a lot that can be said about Xom mechanics and the rather complex experience of having Xom as your god. In this guide you will find everything you should know about Xom in general, and about CK start in particular, everything you should know so that you can get the most out of a CK, or any character worshipping Xom for that matter.
Contents
Xom piety and boredom
Piety
Xom works differently from other gods. As time passes Xom piety changes towards the positive (towards 200) or towards the negative (towards 0). This is displayed in the game as 7 values going from highest to lowest piety. The closer to max piety the more likely it is that Xom will perform a positive action, and the closer to 0 piety the more likely it is that Xom will perform a negative action. It should be noted that while at max piety it is much more likely that Xom will perform a positive action than a negative action, he can still perform a negative action.
Aside from the likelihood of positive or negative actions, piety also influences the strength of actions, if piety is closer to the highest or lowest value you can expect stronger actions.
There is also a second mechanic for Xom piety change, whenever Xom acts there is a 20% chance Xom piety will be set to a random value. So if it's say at 0 it cannot go any lower, so if piety changes through this mechanic it will be set to a higher (better) value. Coversely, if it's at 200 it cannot go any higher, so it will be set to a lower value.
Faith increases the speed of piety change by 33% and makes Xom act more often.
Tension increases the likelihood of a Xom action and increases the likelihood of an action being positive, so even at very low Xom piety if tension is sufficiently high there will be a decent chance of a positive action. Tension is influenced by monster hp, monster buffs, your hp, your buffs or debuffs. If there are no monsters nearby the tension is 0.
Boredom
Boredom is a mechanic that is separate from piety, basically, if there are certain actions that Xom finds "amusing" that will increase Xom amusement, if Xom amusement falls too low then you will get a message that Xom is getting bored, and when you are a boring thing Xom will take one, usually negative, but it can also be neutral (flavor) action. This doesn't really have a big impact on the gameplay other than that it's good to move to up/down stairs that you can safely go up/down when you get the message that Xom is getting bored. See also Boredom in Xom actions.
The elephant in the room
Let's address the elephant in the room. Should you switch from Xom as a CK? There are some things to consider here. Xom's wrath is one of the most brutal in the game, and Xom's penance is no holds barred. Under penance Xom doesn't act that often, but he can very much summon very ugly things around you when you are low level, banish you, or banish you and summon very ugly things. Being too low level to be banished by Xom under normal circumstances won't protect you from banishment under penance. Therefore switching from Xom as soon as possible is generally very risky, and this is attested to by the many CKs splatted soon after they abandoned Xom, which they did as soon as they found an altar with the god they wanted.
But should you switch later on? Generally speaking, after you get to D15 it's pretty safe to abandon Xom, but at that point you have already gotten through the most dangerous part of the game, the early game, and if you know what you are doing when worshipping Xom it probably doesn't make a big difference whether you abandon Xom or not. Worshipping Xom is not like being an atheist, if you know what you are doing Xom will give you items, so he does provide something for you. And the cost of that factoring in teleports, summons, can be maybe a few teleportation scrolls for the entire game. Also, while after abandoning Xom you do run some risk of getting banished, especially if you aren't in combat a lot, when worshipping Xom there is a low risk of getting banished for the entire time past a certain level. Xom banishing you is very rare, in some 4 rune games you won't be banished at all, in others you will be banished more than once, Xom scumming (see Xom scumming) increases the chance, but I think the most I ever got banished by Xom was maybe 4 times. However, Xom banishment gets more dangerous in the late game, since Xom can actually banish you to deep abyss (such as abyss 6) if you are sufficiently high level. This doesn't mean that Xom will always banish you to deep abyss in the late game, but it is possible. The "danger level of Xom banishment" curve looks like this: early game: bad middle game: ok late game: bad.
If you switch to Lugonu there is a good chance that Lugonu will banish a number of nearby enemies whenever Xom takes any action under penance, this includes the action of Xom summoning monsters around you, but also any other action such as buffing enemies, even neutral (flavor) actions and positive actions. It is not guaranteed, but it does make getting through Xom penance easier and safer. However, Lugonu's abilities are of limited use. Corrupt spawns neutral enemies around you that can hit enemies as well as you, and they don't provide xp if they kill enemies, this stealing your xp. Enter the Abyss is a questionable escape method before extended. Banish is useful, it's an instant kill attack that needs to pass a will check, it can be particularly powerful against uniques or strong enemies if you read a scroll of vulnerability, and don't care about the items the monster is carrying. At minimum, even if it doesn't pass the will check it will still malmutate living enemies. But you need to train invocations for it to be effective, while Xom doesn't need any invocations training for Xom scumming to work. Brand weapon with distortion is useful, but while distortion is a powerful brand, it does blink enemies around quite often, much more often than chaos brand, which is usually a negative. Still, Lugonu is a pretty good god to switch to from Xom.
All this being said, taking into consideration the banishment chance, penance actions, and the fact that to do it safely you have to first get through the most dangerous part of the game, switching away from Xom is generally a bit better than worshipping Xom if you switch to a god that gives your character good benefits. This is in 0.32 version, in 0.33 version when it's rarer that you get sent to Xom bazaar the benefit of switching is bigger.
There are some special cases:
If you get banished to the abyss by Xom, or through other means, and if you don't think you can safely get out of that level of abyss through killing enemies or finding an exit, then you should switch to Lugonu to get out of abyss. You can get out of abyss immediately, and Lugonu will help with Xom penance.
Mummy CK has a particularly strong incentive to switch away from Xom, since there is a chance that Xom will confuse you around enemies and you won't survive until confusion wears off. Okawaru can be a strong choice. That being said, with sufficiently high defenses a mummy CK can be manageable, but there is still some chance of sudden death in certain situations. If you do happen to find orange crystal plate armour, or amulet of the Four Winds, then you are immune to confusion from sources other than ambrosia.
CK start
CK is a melee start. You start with a +2 leather armor and a +0 low-tier weapon of chaos of your choice. The +2 leather armor at this stage of the game is a bit better than a +0 ring mail, so the armor is actually rather comparable to the scale mail fighters start with, since at the skill the characters will have at this stage of the game a scale mail trades some EV for a bit of AC. Because it's a melee start, and to a degree because of Xom mechanics, generally speaking species that are strong in melee (for example minotaur, troll, coglin) are good chaos knights. For some of the weakest CKs see Weak CKs.
Chaos brand
Some people are discouraged by the chaos branded weapon CK starts with, even to the point that they would prefer to start unarmed. But overall, all things considered, chaos is a strong brand.
Chaos works like this: each attack with the chaos brand has an 82.2% chance to pick a damaging brand, vampiric, or antimagic, a 10.5% chance of a good special effect, and a 7.3% chance of a potentially dangerous special effect. The possible brands are: flaming, freezing, electrocution, venom, draining, vampiric, holy wrath and antimagic. The possible good special effects are: confuse, slow, weaken, halve willpower, vitrify, corrode, sleep, paralyse (for 1 turn), petrify, ensnare in a web and create an allied or neutral clone. The possible potentially dangerous special effect are: might, haste, resistance, frenzy, blink, polymorph, create histile clone. DCSS wiki has a table with the percentage chances for every effect. There is also a 1% chance for every attack to apply the reaping effect to its damage, and this will result in chaos brand sometimes creating zombies or spectral undead. Chaos brand-created zombies have an interesting property of being essentially permanent, if you leave the level they won't despawn. You can go through the entire game and then come back to a floor of a dungeon, and your zombie will still be there. You can create a relic of long gone versions where player-created zombies never despawned.
So, why is chaos strong? Before we go further, it must be noted that all the chances listed on the wiki are theoretical, under no circumstance in the game will these be the actual chances to roll any of these effects, because chaos brand cannot roll an effect that would have no effect on the target, and no enemy in the game can be affected by all of these effects. If such an effect is chosen, then the effect is re-rolled. No living enemy can be affected by holy wrath, and no demonic or undead enemy can be affected by draining or vampiric. Therefore the chances to roll all of the other effects will be higher. The difference often won't be big, but it's there, and in some cases, like crystal guardians that are immune to multiple effects, the difference will in fact be big. Also, this doesn't mean that for example haste can't be rolled 2 times in a row, extending the duration, as it doesn't count as an effect that would have no effect on the target. When I list chances these are approximate, as against an "average enemy" the difference from the listed chances won't be that big, and the chance for all the other effects increases proportionately if some effect can't be rolled.
Let's look at the brands. Against an average enemy brands form 82.2% of chaos brand's effects distribution. Even just considering the brands it looks like chaos should at the very least be stronger than a flaming or freezing brand. Flaming/freezing/electrocution/venom each have 13.7% chance of being rolled, totalling 54.8% of all chaos effects. Draining, vampiric, holy wrath and antimagic each have 6.85% chance of being rolled, totalling 27.4% of all chaos effects. If any brands other than flaming or freezing can be rolled, with exception of venom, these are all generally considered an upgrade over flaming or freezing, at least against non-vulnerable enemies. Vampiric is a top tier brand (and it works on ranged weapons of chaos), draining is strong, if not often top tier, antimagic is top tier against casters, and holy wrath is top tier against enemies vulnerable to holy wrath. But the big one among all of these brands is electrocution. Normally electrocution brand has 25% chance of activating, on weapons of chaos it has roughly 13.7% chance of being rolled (and if it's rolled it doesn't have to pass an additional 25% chance of activating check), a bit above half of normal electrocution's chance to activate. But 75% of the time electrocution does nothing, while here, even if we assumed that good and bad special effects cancel each other out and the net benefit is 0 (it's not), electrocution activates 13.7% of the time, 68.5% (82.2%-13.7%) of the time you roll a non-electrocution damaging brand, and 17.8% it's as if "nothing" happened. Chaos brand deals 54.8% (13.7%/25%) of electrocution brand's electric damage, would it be worth it to sacrifice 45.2% of electrocution brand's damage in exchange for rolling non-electroction brands 68.5% of the time, including some of the top tier brands? Being able to roll venom brand does hold back chaos a little in this analysis, but it also must be noted that when chaos rolls these brands they activate "100%" of the time, meaning they don't need to pass an additional check like the respective brands. Venom activates 75% of the time, while when rolled by chaos it activates 13.7% "100%" of the time. Vampiric normally activates 60% of the time. Draining 50% of the time. So in this analysis it's not quite like rolling non-electrocution brand 68.5% of the time, it's like actually rolling upgraded versions of many of these brands 68.5% of the time. Also, electrocution doesn't work at all against enemies with rElec, while chaos brand just won't roll electrocution against these enemies. Even just considering this limited analysis it seems like chaos brand could be stronger than electrocution.
But chaos is also special effects, 17.8% of the time. Here is my tier list of chaos special effects:
The effects closer to the left are better.
Great tier
Confusion
I would rank confusion as the strongest effect. It immediately disables an enemy, greatly reducing the chance of him hitting you, and can make him hit enemies around him, and himself. The duration is pretty long. No enemy is immune, unless he happens to be wearing amulet of the Four Winds or orange crystal plate armour, which is very unlikely.
Vitrify
That's +50% damage taken, you will kill an enemy much faster.
Petrify
That's an immediate slow, petrifying status slows down an enemy, makes him vulnerable to low-tier stabs, and reduces his EV, but makes him take 33% less damage. Once he is petrified it's like paralysis, except that he takes 50% less damage, which can sometimes make killing him before petrification runs out difficult. He also becomes immune to negative energy while petrified.
Overall, there is a 3.27% to get an effect from this tier.
Good tier
Ensnare
It's the same as netted, except that it can affect any enemy, with no exceptions as far as I know. It will make an enemy have to struggle against the net from 2 to 8 turns before he can attack you in melee, or with ranged or thrown weapons, but it doesn't disable spellcasting. When netted an enemy is vulnerable to low-tier stabs, and has reduced EV.
Slow
It reduces the speed of an enemy's actions, which reduces his damage output from all sources.
Weaken
It reduces an enemy's damage output in melee by 33%, but doesn't affect the damage output with ranged weapons, thrown weapons, or magic, hence I put it lower than slow.
Create allied or neutral clone
The chance for an allied or neutral clone is the same, a neutral clone might start hitting the enemy, but sometimes it won't, and it may start hitting you. An allied clone will increase your damage output and can provide distraction. The clone inherits the hp and buffs of the target, which can make him weaker if the target is at low hp and debuffed, or stronger if the target is at high hp and has positive buffs like might or haste.
Corrode
That's -8 AC. It has a not insignificant impact on your damage output.
Paralyse (for 1 turn)
Paralysis is good, but it lasts only one turn. It still lets you hit for more damage in that turn, and if you are using a short blade (or wearing hood of the assassin), then one high-tier stab might be all you need to kill an enemy.
Sleep
It's effectively like paralysis for 1 turn, but not all enemies can be affected.
Overall, there is a 5.6% to get an effect from this tier.
Somewhat good tier
Halve willpower
It can make your will-checking wands more effective, or if you are using hexes, then it can make them more effective, but other than that it won't make a difference.
A little bad tier
Blink
If an enemy blinks away from you when you are attacking him in melee, then generally that is a bit bad. It's ok if the enemy only has a melee attack, but if he uses magic or ranged attacks that can be a bit bad. When fighting in a corridor it is possible for an enemy to blink behind you. But it also could help you in some circumstances. Early on in the game it could rarely help you to escape, and if you are using a ranged weapon of chaos, then it is good if an enemy ends up blinking away from you, but he could, however, end up blinking closer to you.
Somewhat bad tier
Resistance
It will reduce the damage output from flaming, freezing and poison brands, and make an enemy immune to electrocution brand and corrosion special effect. It will also make an enemy take reduced damage from wands of iceblast, flame, make him immune to wands of acid and take reduced damage from lightning rod. But usually it doesn't make that big of a difference.
Bad tier
Polymorph
It makes an enemy lose its status effects, and if you are unlucky it could polymorph him into something more dangerous. Certain enemies with high HD like Gastronok can turn into something particularly dangerous. But generally the HD of the monster that you get from a polymorph is close to the HD of the monster before polymorph, it's not really comparable to Xom action polymorphs.
Frenzy
If it's a lone enemy, then that's effectively might+haste, which is bad, but if there are other enemies around you, then you can back off and watch the monster attack other enemies, hopefully dying.
Create hostile clone
It's like create allied or neutral clone, but the clone is hostile. It's like a permanent summon. If you are fighting in a corridor you can take them one on one.
Haste
It increases the speed of an enemy's actions, which increases his damage output from all sources.
Might
I put might as the worst effect, I would say it's worse than haste because of game mechanics. The way effects work is that you hit an enemy, if it rolls a special effect then it applies a buff or debuff to an enemy, and then the enemy turn follows. This means that you can hit an enemy, apply might which will increase its damage output by 50%, and then it hits you and deals 50% more damage with its attack, which you may not have expected. All the other effects work the same way, you could roll haste and then it's conceivable that the enemy gets 1 extra hit on you immediately which he wouldn't otherwise. But generally speaking getting hit for 50% more damage can be more dangerous than a chance to get hit twice, 2 attacks get reduced by AC twice, while 1 attack dealing 50% more damage will result in more damage getting past AC. That being said, might is unlikely to make a difference on enemy casters, while haste will. And haste is also dangerous on melee enemies, these 2 effects, might and haste, are pretty close in terms of how bad they are.
Overall, there is a 5.18% to get an effect from this tier.
Special effects summary
There is a 3.27% chance to get an effect from the Great tier, 5.6% from the Good tier, if we add in the effects from the 3 tiers above bad there is a 4.08% chance to get halve willpower/blink/resistance, and there is 5.18% chance to get an effect from the Bad tier. If we combine the Great and Good tiers there is a 8.87% chance to get a "good" effect, and 5.18% chance to get a "bad" effect. If you do happen to roll confusion it usually doesn't matter what other effects you have rolled as it essentially disables an enemy, vitrify allows you to kill an enemy very quickly, and petrify disables an enemy after some time. Overall the special effects are positive, there are some great effects that amount to an instakill, and some of the bad effects like might won't make a difference on a caster, plus some casters like ancient liches are already hasted, so rolling haste on them won't really make a difference. However, early game when you lack resources some of the effects can be dangerous, and it may be good to pick a weapon with some other brand.
Arena tests
Unless you happen to roll might or haste a chaos branded hand axe is generally going to outperform an unbranded war axe early game. I have run 99 rounds of 10 orc knights with hand axes of chaos vs 10 orc knights with war axes in arena, and orc knights with hand axes won 73 rounds, while orc knights with war axes won 26 rounds. This should also apply to other weapons, like a spear of chaos vs a trident, or a mace of chaos vs a flail. This technically makes chaos knight start with the strongest weapon out of all the melee starts, although it can turn bad if the fight would be close if you don't roll might/haste/frenzy, and then you do roll these bad effects.
I tried 99 rounds of 10 orc knights with hand axes of chaos vs 10 orc knights with hand axes of electrocution. What do you think was the result? The chaos team won 70 rounds, and the electrocution team won 29 rounds. I think it gives credence to my brand and special effects analysis. Chaos straight up beats electrocution.
Let's test chaos against distortion. 99 rounds of 10 orc knights with hand axes of chaos vs 10 orc knights with hand axes of distortion. How does chaos fare against what is sometimes considered to be the strongest brand? Team chaos won 44 rounds, while team distortion won 55 rounds.
But chaos brand damage depends on the damage of the weapon, while distortion damage doesn't. So let's try eveningstars of chaos vs eveningstars of distortion.
99 rounds of 10 orc knights with eveningstars of chaos vs 10 orc knights with eveningstars of distortion. The results are: chaos won 63 rounds and distortion 36. So with strong weapons chaos beats distortion.
But maybe the orc knights had too little hp and were dying too quickly. Let's try 99 rounds of 50 orc warlords with eveningstars of chaos vs 50 orc warlords with eveningstars of distortion. Team chaos won 68 rounds and team distortion won 31 rounds.
Also, let's try the best cases for distortion. The quick blades and demon whips.
99 rounds of 50 orc warlords with quick blades of chaos vs 50 orc warlords with quick blades of distortion. Team chaos won 67 rounds and team distortion won 32 rounds.
99 rounds of 50 orc warlords with demon whips of chaos vs 50 orc warlords with demon whips of distortion. Team chaos won 67 rounds and team distortion won 32 rounds.
Let's try speed. I would have also tried vampiric, but I can't get vampiric to work in the arena. Speed is often considered to be the king of all brands. 99 rounds of 50 orc warlords with eveningstars of chaos vs 50 orc warlords with eveningstars of speed. This one was very close, the results are: chaos won 51 rounds and speed won 48 rounds, but for a long time it was neck and neck. So it would seem that chaos is about as strong as speed?
Let's also try spectral. Spectral needs space to activate, so I tried try 99 rounds of 2 orc warlords with eveningstars of chaos vs 2 orc warlords with spectral eveningstars. If I tried to add more units they were still all clumping together, and spectral often didn't activate (the result of 10 orc warlords with eveningstars of chaos vs 10 orc warlords with spectral eveningstars was: chaos won 58 rounds and spectral won 41 rounds). The result of 99 rounds of 2 orc warlords with eveningstars of chaos vs 2 orc warlords with spectral eveningstars was: chaos won 33 rounds and spectral won 66 rounds. This is to be expected, as spectral is +70% damage as long as it can activate.
All tests were done in 0.32.1
Xom actions
As was mentioned in the Xom piety and boredom section, Xom takes various actions. How often he takes them and how positive or negative they are is affected by piety and tension.
Whether some action can be chosen also depends on environment, for example an action that buffs an enemy cannot be chosen if there are no enemies around, thus increasing the chance that other actions will be taken.
List of actions
This is a list of every possible Xom action along with descriptions and comments. Xom messages are the possible messages that you can get when Xom performs that action, separated with commas.
Gift
Xom messages: Xom grants you a gift!, "Here.", Xom's generous nature manifests itself., Xom grants you an implement of some kind., "Take this instrument of something!", "Take this token of my esteem.", Xom smiles on you., "Catch!", "Is this the Orb you wanted?", "Many adventurers have sought this Orb.", "Ponder my incredible Orb!"
Xom can give you all sorts of stuff, ranging from useless (e.g. a robe, a club), to god-tier (e.g. an amazing randart). Many gifts will be useless, some will be useful, especially at high piety, and sometimes you can get some great/amazing gifts. Generally, it takes time for Xom to give you good gifts, but that is why you Xom scum! Xom scumming will be covered in a later section. Gifts are often the biggest benefit of worshipping Xom, along with getting sent to Xom bazaar (see Xom bazaar).
It's worth mentioning that when it comes to xp misc evocables (xp evocables) and scrolls, Xom can ignore game restrictions. He can give you scrolls of butterflies when only scrolls of summoning can normally spawn in a game and vice versa, and he can gift you any xp evocable, so with horn of Geryon you could have a total of 8 xp evocables in a game.
Weapons can also have their brand changed to chaos by Xom upon being given, including artifacts.
Examples of possible gifts: A robe, a club, a scale mail, stones, boomerangs, an orb (if you get an orb Xom message will be "Is this the Orb you wanted?", "Many adventurers have sought this Orb.", or "Ponder my incredible Orb!"), a wand, an xp evocable, a scroll, a potion, a randart, an unrandart, a talisman, a rare weapon, rare armor.
Xom can also gift you gold. Normal stacks are around a few dozens of gold pieces, Xom can also sometimes give you large stacks, which are about 10 times the amount in normal stacks, for example 600, 900.
Summon friendly monsters
Xom messages: "Serve the mortal, my child!", "Serve the toy, my child!", Xom opens a gate., "Serve the mortal, my children!", Xom grants you some temporary aid., Xom momentarily opens a gate.
Got paralysed by Grinder? That multiplies your tension by 10, which increases the likelihood of Xom acting and the action being positive. While you are paralysed, Xom summons a quicksilver dragon, which proceeds to one shot Grinder. Having trouble against Blorkula? Xom summons a golden dragon. Such situations can happen, but usually you don't need such overwhelming force on your side. Xom generally summons fairly strong monsters (Unless it's from casting a spell like Summon Small Mammal, but Xom casting spells through you is a different action that can sometimes look like friendly summon.), and if they are singular monsters they will often be buffed with regeneration. Any kind of Xom many-creature friendly summon is likely to make the fight much easier, if not immediately ensure your victory, and singular monsters are often decently strong too.
The summoned creatures will often be demons, chaos-themed creatures like chaos spawns and apocalypse crabs, reapers with scythes of chaos, abominations, tentacled monstrosities, shapeshifters, drakes or dragons.
Animate monster weapon
Xom messages: "Time to have some fun!", You hear Xom's maniacal laughter., Xom grants you a minor favour., Xom smiles on you.
This creates a dancing weapon like with the spell Tukima's Dance, that is fairly long lasting. It can help you clear the floor and is particularly strong early game.
Surround you with demonic plants
Xom messages: Xom shows off a fistful of green thumbs., Xom spreads life in this Dungeon full of death., Xom incites some dramatic evolution in the adjacent floor mould., "It's alive! It's alive!", Xom adds fresh vegetables to this Dungeon dish., Xom plants some magic beans in the ground.
Fills a square area around you with demonic plants. This prevents monsters that aren't already around you from reaching you until the plants are destroyed, but you also have to destroy the plants if you want to walk out.
Various scenery flavor effects
Xom messages: Xom briefly touches your surroundings., Xom complains about the scenery., Xom alters the dungeon around you., Xom adds some personal touches to your environment., "There, this looks better.", "Just a minor improvement...", Xom accidentally drops some snacks., Xom prepares the finest cultivars of fruit found anywhere, then drops them., Xom [offers|fetches] you some snacks., Xom prepares a banquet formed from your trail of carnage through the Dungeon., Xom offers some snacks, fresh out of the oven., Xom suggests a refreshing change of pace., Xom tears open a few small holes in reality., Xom bends space into knots., Xom almost notices you., Xom's attention almost turns to you for a moment., Xom's power almost touches on you for a moment., You almost hear Xom's maniacal laughter.
These actions are "neutral", they just change some tiles or do nothing.
These include things like: Make water bubble/swirl/glow/flash/boil/freeze (available only if there is shallow water in sight), "Off to the side, you spot something lurking in deep water." (available only if there is deep water in sight), warp trees by chaos, changing them to demonic trees (this can be reverted if Xom takes the same action on the same trees) (only available if there are trees in sight), spawn Xom altars around you, spawn teleportation traps around, spawns gateways to abyss around you, spawn caches of fruits around you, spawns caches of meat around you, open or close doors (available only if there are doors in sight), turn water in fountains into blood (available only if there are fountains in sight), "Ground briefly shifts under you." This list is not exhaustive.
Surround you with glass doors (good)
Xom messages: A short distance around you seems to assume a strange safe solidity., Xom creates a safe adventurer enclosure., "Would you like some space to yourself, mortal?"
Surrounds you with glass doors in a square shape, and displaces enemies around you behind the doors. This gives you some safety, and if these enemies cannot open doors, like animals, then it can make the fight easier.
High-level slimes will just move through the doors.
Surround you with glass doors (bad)
Xom messages: Xom raises up and pulls in a makeshift [warmonger|duelist]'s arena., Xom locks you up as an exhibit to study., Xom constructs another @player_genus@ Petting Zoo.
Same as above, but keeps some enemies around you depending on XL and how many enemies are already adjacent.
Send you to Xom bazaar
Xom messages: Xom whisks you away into a realm of unfathomable savings!, Xom casts you into... a shopping extravaganza?, Xom offers you everything you could ever need (to amuse Xom)., Xom offers you everything you could ever need (in Xom's infallible divine judgment)., The world spins wildly as Xom's jovial laughter rings., "Your coin purse has grown too comfortable in its little world, mortal!"
See Xom bazaar.
"Rearrange the pieces"
Xom messages: Xom decides to rearrange the pieces., "First here, now there.", "This might be better!", "This is how I like it!"
You swap places with a monster, it can confuse the monster you swapped places with, but it doesn't always happen. It's also possible for you to swap places with a monster inside a group of monsters, although it happens rarely, and the more monsters there are the higher the tension will be, thus reducing the chance of it happening.
Also, Xom can make you swap places with a plant.
Teleportation journey
Xom messages: "Whee!", "Let's go for a ride!", "Where it stops, nobody knows!", Xom twists space around you.
Teleports you to a few places on the map in a single turn, and if it's a positive (good) action, then it lands in a relatively safe place, and if it's a negative (bad) action, then it lands you in a relatively dangerous place.
Confusion
Xom messages: "Heh heh heh...", Xom's power touches on your mind for a moment., Xom titters., "Stumble well, my pet!", Xom's power touches upon your body and mind for a moment.
Confuses you, and also can confuse nearby enemies, but it doesn't always happen. Particularly dangerous for a mummy, but other characters can quaff a potion of curing, unless they are in death form or have -Potion status effect. Xom can also try to confuse you and enemies in sight if you have clarity, in which case it's a pure benefit.
In 0.33 version Xom can also confuse debris.
Draining or torment
Xom messages: "You have displeased me, mortal.", "You have grown too confident for your meagre worth.", Xom's power touches on you for a moment., You hear Xom's maniacal laughter., "Suffer!"
Normally, only draining or stat draining (if you are playing on a version that has it) is possible, if Xom is bored then torment is also possible. But due to the boredom mechanics it's not really a big deal, and in fact getting tormented would often be better, as then it can be fully healed and you don't have to recover from drain. If you are playing on a version with stat loss, the chance is 50% for stat loss, 25% for drain, and 25% for torment, but torment can only be rolled if Xom is bored. Draining is reduced by negative energy resistance, and I believe Xom cannot perform draining action if the player has rN+++, which would have no effect. Xom cannot drain or torment undead. Assuming you are playing on a version with stat drain, any character can get stat drained, and stat drain can be a limiting factor for characters Xom scumming early game, particularly undead.
Torment all creatures in sight, including the player
Xom messages: Xom torments the living!, Xom spreads torment and darkness!, Xom unleashes waves of agony!, Xom's malign attention turns towards your situation for a moment., The hand of Xom pokes all present souls.
This is a rare acton, but possible. I believe it's not possible if you are immune to torment.
Summon hostile monsters
Xom messages: "Time to have some fun!", "Fight to survive, mortal.", "Let's see if it's strong enough to survive yet.", You hear Xom's maniacal laughter.
Similar to summon friendly monsters, but it doesn't have a version where it summons just one strong monster that is often buffed with regeneration, but I believe it's possible for Xom to end up summoning only one hostile monster sometimes, it's also possible for Xom to summon just "hostile" butterflies.
Unlike summon friendly monsters the summons don't immediately despawn when you leave the level, but they are normal summons, they will despawn after some time. Best way to deal with it is usually to run to stairs and wait for summons to despawn. It's preferable to run to stairs taking you to a place where you know there are no monsters, but if you can't get to such stairs you can consider taking stairs to an unexplored level. These summons are also vlunerable to Yara's Violent Unravelling and nameless horror's Abjuration, if you happen to be able to get friendly nameless horrors from Spellbinder.
There is a bug where if you are putting on or removing armor (putting on/removing amulet should also work the same way) and Xom summons monsters around you, then you won't get a prompt to interrput putting on/removing armor, potentially resulting in your death. But it appears that if you add the lines into your rc file to force more messages when Xom summons monsters, then you will get a prompt to interrupt (see Xom rc file).
The summoned monsters can be shadow creatures + some other monsters like demons, or chaos-themed monsters like chaos spawns. Since it's shadow creatures, in some areas it can summon some particularly dangerous monsters for certain characters, namely tarantella in lair and spider when you are playing as a mummy CK. Smoke demons can also be particularly dangerous for mummy CKs because of their sticky flame and steam, chaos spawns also have a chance to confuse a mummy with their chaotic attacks.
Summon player clones
Xom messages: Xom feels like there should be more of you to share with the Dungeon., Xom gently smashes a mirror over your [@random_body_part_external_singular@|@random_body_part_external_plural@].
Summons one friendly player illusion and two hostile player illusions. These aren't ghosts, so they can be vulnerable to poison and negative energy. These clones despawn relatively quickly, they can have a decently strong melee attack, but their main threat comes from their (your) spells. They are able to use the spells you have memorized, and Xom being able to summon your clones is the reason why you shouldn't memorize some spells at some stages in the game, and some spells you probably should never memorize (see Your spells can kill you).
Drain your magic and produce monsters
Xom messages: Xom displaces most of your magic for a moment., Xom reveals to you one of the great and terrible secrets of magic., Xom curiously channels energy out of your body., Xom picks up your mind and accidentally drops it., Xom gives you a terrible headache., "You don't need this, do you?", Your magic slithers out of your reeling mind!, Your power and thoughts are overwhelmed by magic-eaters manifest!, Your magic wrenches itself out of your [@random_body_part_internal_singular@|@random_body_part_internal_plural@]!, Your magic flows out through your [@random_body_part_external_singular@|@random_body_part_external_plural@]!, Your magic rips itself out through your [@random_body_part_any_singular@|@random_body_part_any_plural@]!
Drains most of your magic and produces 3 brain worms/mana vipers/quicksilver elementals depending on your XL. Some of all of them can be neutral, in which case they will usually attack enemies around you, as such this is more often a positive effect than a negative one. But not all of them will always be neutral, often it can happen that 2 neutral and 1 hostile will spawn, it's also possible for all to be hostile, but it's more common for 2 to be neutral and 1 hostile, or 2 hostile and 1 neutral, or all 3 neutral.
Banishment
Xom messages: "You have grown too comfortable in your little world, mortal!", Xom casts you into the Abyss!, The world seems to spin as Xom's maniacal laughter rings.
The dreaded banishment. Xom will banish you to abyss, with depth depending on your XL. At high level it is possible, although not very likely, for Xom to banish you to deep abyss, such as abyss 6. If that happens you can truly say you are in hell. With a lot of resources and some luck it's possible to get out of abyss 7 in a 4 rune game, but it's definitely not easy. It may be the case that Xom can only banish you to abyss 6 only if he is bored, but if abyss 6 or 7 is the lowest level you got banished to, then if you get banished again that is where you will be sent whether Xom is bored or not.
If there are enemies in sight, then the chance to get banished is lower, since more actions can be taken and tension will make the actions more likely to be positive. Although it's not guaranteed, and you can even get banished at max piety when Xom isn't bored. Though one time it has happened to me there were no enemies around.
Xom cannot banish you if you are below level 9, unless you are under penance.
Revert Xom banishment
Xom messages: "Kidding!", "On second thoughts, though...", "No, I've changed my mind.", Xom pulls you back into the comparable quietude of the dungeon.
Xom can revert banishment caused by his own action. Xom will always revert banishment if you are too low level to get banished, but will never revert if he is bored or you are under penance.
Revert non-Xom banishment
Xom messages: "Get back here!", "No you don't!", Xom pulls you back into the comparable quietude of the dungeon.
Xom can also revert banishment from other sources.
Chaos upgrade
Xom messages: Xom's power touches on a nearby weapon., "Have a taste of chaos, mortal.", Xom chortles.
Changes an enemy's weapon brand to chaos and increases its enchantment. It can be a desirable action if the enemy has a good weapon, then you can take it off of him and you get a decently enchanted, hopefully rare, weapon of chaos.
Noise
Xom messages: Xom makes a sudden noise! You hear @weapon_noise@, "Boo!", Xom does a drum roll.
Emits a loud noise. Unless you are stabbing it probably won't make a big difference.
Fake shatter
Xom messages: "Ka-crash!", "Let the forces of chaos tear it all down!", Xom reshapes the earth., Xom reveals the great annihilating truth to the Dungeon's walls!
Emits a lound noise, as loud as when casting Shatter spell. Destroys some nearby walls and turns them into debris.
Blink monsters
Xom messages: "Over there now!", "Get over here!", Xom decides to shift things around a little.
Blinks monsters, sometimes towards the player, sometimes randomly.
Mass haste
Xom messages: Xom speeds up the battle., Xom demands a faster pace., "Hurry it up!"
Hastes you and everything in sight. Considered a positive action, since whatever somes into line of sight won't be hasted. Formicids are immune to haste, and so only enemies will be hasted, which is bad.
Mass slow
Xom messages: Xom feels like nobody present is taking it easy enough., Xom bends time into knots., "Don't be so hasty!"
Slows you and everything in sight. Considered a negative action, since whatever somes into line of sight won't be slowed. Formicids are immune to slow, and so only enemies will be slowed, which is good.
Mass paralysis
Xom messages: Xom stops everything to savour the moment., Xom stomps on time for a few moments., Xom prepares the audience for the floor's solo!
Paralyses you and everything in sight. More or less neutral, but the paralysis can last a few turns, which can be enough for some enemies to enter the line of sight. Formicids are immune to paralysis, and so only enemies will be paralysed, which is good.
Word of recall
Xom messages: Xom feels like this meagre party needs more guests., Xom sends out highly concerning invitations., Xom demands a dramatic dialogue!, Xom grants a terrible voice to the voiceless.
Makes an enemy start vocalizing a word of recall, like ironbound convokers. Depending on the enemy a different flavor text will be used.
Potion effects
Xom messages: "Go forth and destroy!", "Go forth and cause havoc, mortal!", Xom grants you a minor favour., Xom smiles on you.
Xom can give any potion effect that can affect your character, so he can't make you go berserk if you are undead. This works like Gozag's potion petition, so mummy's inability to drink doesn't prevent Xom from granting it the potion of experience effect.
Some effects like attraction, berserk, or possibly ambrosia can be bad. Potions other than experience, curing, heal wounds, magic and berserk rage get bonus power. Xom can't grant the effect of potions of moonshine (or in older versions potions of degeneration), potions of lignification, potions of mutation, potions of resistance, and potions of enlightenment.
Technically, even a mummy with clarity isn't fully immune to confusion since Xom can grant you the ambrosia affect, which ignores clarity. But it's rather unlikely, and at the very least if it happens to your mummy with clarity, then it will have some additional regeneration. But getting ambrosia potion effect as a mummy is rare.
Cleaving
Xom messages: "Go forth and destroy!", "Go forth and cause havoc, mortal!", Xom grants you a minor favour., Xom smiles on you.
Xom can add the cleaving effect to your weapon. It will have no effect if your weapon already has cleaving. This mean that your polearm can effectively work like Lochaber axe, if you are using a polearm, that is.
Magic mapping and detection
Xom messages: "See what I see, my child!", Xom grants you insight., Xom smirks.
Combines magic mapping effect, detect items and detect creatures. Thi effect, along with its normal benefits, can also reveal what is normally unseen, namely the flaws in level generation. It can reveal small holes, few tiles big, in swamp, or the normally inaccessible area behind trees in a vault on Lair 5 (you can still get teleported there). So it can help find bugs. As of now these should be fixed.
Cast a spell
Xom messages: Xom's power flows through you!, Xom plays with reality for a moment., Xom guffaws.
Casts a random spell through the player. Only some spells are castable, and Xom can cast some spells that player can't normally cast, namely Chain of Chaos. These spells include spells like summon hydra, summon cactus giant, death channel, avaken armour, malign gateway, discord, fulsome fusillade, disjunction, fugue of the fallen, and others.
Cloud trail
Xom messages: "Go forth and redecorate, my child!", "This place needs a little more atmosphere."
Causes you create clouds on the last tile you moved from. Possible types of clouds are: magical condensation (does nothing), miasma, calcifying dust, mitagenic fog, excruciating misery, salt (opaque, won't be replaced by other clouds), and blastmotes. Trail of blastmotes is especially interesting, as it essentially leaves a trail of mines behind you. If an enemy steps on one of them, then it will detonate the entire trail, potentially blowing you up.
"Good" polymorph
Xom messages: "This might be better!", "Hum-dee-hum-dee-hum...", Xom's power touches your surroundings., You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle.
Polymorphs a monster. As explained here, the HD of the resultant monster can vary by 8 from the "goal HD", which for good polymorph is the HD of the monster before polymorph - 3, and for bad polymorph it's HD +2. So the HD of the resultant polymorphed monster can range from HD + 5 to HD - 11 (it can't go lower than 1), weighed towards HD - 3. This is different from how normal wands of polymorph work, or chaos brand polymorph works, and it can potentially result in some very dangerous monsters. It's possible for Xom to polymorph a centaur warrior into a juggernaut with a bad polymorph (HD + 10), but the resultant monster doesn't necessarily need to have so much higher HD to be much more dangerous. A good polymorph can polymorph Gastronok into a shadow dragon (HD - 3), also, a bad polymorph (and good polymorph, for that matter) can polymorph a death yak into an iron giant. A "meager" + 2 HD increase can polymorph an orc warlord into a shadow dragon. But it can also quite effectively neutralise dangerous monsters, it can for example turn Parghit (HD 27) into a shard shrike (HD 21), which also gives more xp if you kill it than Parghit. All of these examples have happened in my games.
Xom can also act with "good" and "bad" polymorphs on your allies. There is also a chance that Xom polymorph will turn any monster into a shapeshifter (a glowing shapeshifter).
"Bad" polymorph
Xom messages: "This might be better!", "Hum-dee-hum-dee-hum...", Xom's power touches your surroundings., You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle.
Same as above, but the "goal HD" is HD + 2, instead of HD - 3.
"Wave of despair"
Xom messages: Xom recounts a horror story in an instant., Xom joyfully recalls the collapse of multiple Dungeon civilisations.,
Creates human skeletons around you in a square, fears all nearby monsters, halves yours and theirs willpower, and drains you and monsters. Fear and draining have no effect on monsters immune to fear and draning.
Give good mutations
Xom messages: "You need some minor adjustments, mortal!", "Let me alter your pitiful body.", Xom's power touches on you for a moment., You hear Xom's maniacal cackling., With a gout of [@rainbow_colour@|@misc_colour@] light, Xom rebuilds you.
Xom can give you a set of mutations, all of which can be good. Xom can also give you singular good mutations.
This can't be chosen if you are an undead and are immune to mutations, but Xom can bypass mutation immunity from level 3 of mutation resistance mutation.
Give random mutations
Xom messages: "You need some minor improvements, mortal!", "Let me alter your body.", Xom's power brushes against you for a moment., You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle., With a flash of [@rainbow_colour@|@misc_colour@] light, Xom rebuilds you.
Xom can give you a set of mutations, most of them can be good, most of them can be bad, or they can be all bad. Xom can also give you singular mutations, either good or bad.
This can't be chosen if you are an undead and are immune to mutations, but Xom can bypass mutation immunity from level 3 of mutation resistance mutation.
Divine lightning
Xom messages: The area is suffused with divine lightning!, Xom hurls blasts of lightning!, "Ready, aim, fire!"
Creates a sort of a 5x5 ball lightning explosion centered on the player, then creates bolts of lightning similar to the old black draconian breath, with a chance to aim the bolts at nearby enemies. You are protected from the damage depending on your hp, this can't kill you, unless maybe you are under penance.
Snakes to sticks
Xom messages: Xom transforms those around you., "I like them better like this.", "Never liked these squiggly things.", Xom touches your surroundings., "This might be better!", "Hum-dee-hum-dee-hum...", Xom's power touches your surroundings., You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle.
Turns a hostile snake into a "stick", which is a javelin, or any of the following weapons: club, spear, trident, halberd, glaive, quarterstaff, shortbow, longbow, giant club, giant spiked club. Weapon will never be branded.
Burn webs
Xom messages: Xom [gleefully|mirthfully] wrecks local arachnid artwork., The light of Xom [brushes upon|sweeps through] your surroundings., "Feel my power!", Xom gives a demonstration of destructive might., "Let it end in hellfire!"
Turns webs into clouds of flame. Usually it's basically a flavor, but it's possible that some monster could step into the flame.
Destruction (sticky fireballs)
Xom messages: "Burn, baby, burn!", "Ka-boom!", Xom calls forth mighty explosions., Xom rains down devastation!, Xom sneezes violently., "Feel my power!", Xom gives a demonstration of destructive might., "Let it end in hellfire!"
Creates sticky fireball explosions centered on nearby monsters, which are like fireballs, but apply sticky flame to all monsters hit. It can never hit you. It will also create explosions centered on nearby plants.
Fake destruction
Xom messages: "Feel my power!", Xom gives a demonstration of destructive might., "Let it end in hellfire!"
I believe this one creates fireball explosion effects centered on nearby monsters, but these "explosions" do no damage.
Spawn force lance living spells
Xom messages: Xom drops down a force battalion!, Xom calls in the force cavalry!, Xom lights up the force fireworks!, Xom launches an entire fire-cart's barrage!, Xom manifests dramatic pipe organ chords!
Pushes away nearby monsters to make room for summons, and spawns force lance living spells around you. These will cast themselves at nearby enemies.
Accidental homicide
Xom messages: "Oops, I didn't mean to do that!"
Used if you die from a Xom action if you aren't under penance or Xom isn't bored. I believe if that happens you always get your life saved.
Weird death
Xom messages: "How'd that happen? Weird."
Used if you die by falling into deep lava or deep water. If that happens Xom can't save your life.
Life saving
Xom messages: "Let me repair your body.", Xom tricks Death into leaving you alone., Xom's maniacal laughter scares Death away., Xom's power revives you., Xom brings you back to life., Xom smiles on you., "Toy, don't you die on me yet!", Xom saves you before everything goes @mono_colour@., "One more [life|try|go].", "What? Wait, NO!", "Hey, things were just getting interesting!", "NOOOOOOO, not my @_xom_plaything_@!", "Not here, not now.", "Just one more try.", Xom is feeling generous., "Hey, that's my @_xom_plaything_@!", "Oh, no, you don't!", "That's my @_xom_plaything_@, go get your own!", "Leave my @_xom_plaything_@ alone!"
Xom can save your life if you die, healing you for some hp. This is very rare, don't count on this to happen in your game, even if you are at max piety.
Also, if a death is not considered "worth saving", then Xom can't save your life. These include getting killed (or "killed") by: Leaving, winning, quitting, falling into lava, deep water, draining, starvation, zot, rotting, self-aimed, targeting.
Repel stairs
Xom messages: Xom changes the scenery., Xom pokes at a nearby @staircase@., Xom pushes on a nearby @staircase@., Xom pulls on a nearby @staircase@., "Tag, you're it!", Xom alters the dungeon around you.
Xom moves nearby stairs, and if you try to step on stairs then they can slide away from you, they can also slide away from you if you try to go down/up them. This makes it harder to leave the level. But it's also possible that it could rarely help you a bit, in a place like Vaults 5 it could help you by moving stairs to a better position away from the open area in the middle.
This actually doesn't only work on stairs, Xom will also move nearby altars as well, and if you try to pray at them they can also slide away from you. But in practice this can only really matter in abyss with altars of Lugonu, or maybe in Slime 5 if you did try to switch from Xom to Jivya, or were under Xom penance.
It can also be a source of some difficulties/bugs. If Xom moves stairs to a branch, then sometimes unless you move down these stairs, then trying to automove to an area in that branch will result in the "Sorry, I don't know how to get there." message. Also, if Xom moves the entrance to a timed portal, and you enter through that timed portal and leave, then the automatic annotation for that portal in dungeon overview will still be there, and it will never disappear.
Good enchant monster
Xom messages: "This might be better!", "Hum-dee-hum-dee-hum...", Xom's power touches your surroundings., You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle.
Petrifies, paralyses, vitrifies or slows nearby monsters. Interestingly, petrification from this action can affect gargoyles, which are otherwise immune to petrification.
Bad enchant monster
Xom messages: "This might be better!", "Hum-dee-hum-dee-hum...", Xom's power touches your surroundings., You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle.
Hastes, mights, gives regeneration or resistance to nearby monsters.
Good hyper enchant monster
Xom messages: "Witness the rise of a true [hero|champion]!", Xom demands grand glory in combat!, Xom's power very briefly touches upon your surroundings., You hear Xom's avuncular cackling.
Summons a weak ally and gives it nearly every buff in the game. If you do happen to already have a sufficiently weak ally, then it can be buffed instead. Possible monsters are things like hell rats, cerulean imps, an elephant if you are lucky. Since the ally is weak the buffs won't make it as strong as say a golden dragon, but it's not that weak either. It can deal damage, but its hp is relatively low.
Mass charm
Xom messages: Xom readies the chaos crusade!, Xom seizes a variety of puppet strings., "Would you like more friends, my child?", Xom bribes nearby enemies with the offer of @_trout_species_@ trout., The hand of Xom pokes present minds.
Charms some, or all of the nearby enemies.
Stealth
Xom messages: Xom shushes you conspicuously., Xom whispers: Shhh!
As you enter an unexplored floor, there is a chance that Xom will give you a stealth buff.
Cloud
Xom messages: "The weather's been a little too boring around here.", Xom asks Qazlal to spice things up a little., "Forecast: mostly cloudy."
Creates a cloud on your character, this can be either a cloud of seething chaos or a scroll of fog effect. If it's a cloud of seething chaos, then it's a single cloud spawned on your character (or sometimes ~3 clouds around it) that will then spread outwards over the span of a few turns. The cloud of seething chaos can be dangerous if you don't step out of it.
Seething chaos inflicts similar special effects to the chaos brand, with some differences. One difference is that instead of frenzing enemies it berserks them.
Boring death
Xom messages: Xom yawns loudly!, "Boring in life, boring in death...", "What!? That's it?", "I guess I need a new plaything now.", "Huh? Did I miss anything?", "It was about time.", "This toy is broken.", "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.", "It's not fun and games unless someone loses an eye."
Used if your death is considered boring.
Laughter
Xom messages: Xom guffaws!, Xom roars with laughter!, Xom thinks this is hilarious!, Xom is highly amused!, Xom cackles wildly!, Xom snickers!, Xom laughs nastily!, Xom howls with laughter!, Xom bursts into laughter!, Xom giggles madly!, Xom titters!, Xom chuckles heartily!, Xom chortles!
Used post-game in response to "You die...".
Influencing Xom actions
You can influence what Xom actions you are likely to get. If there are no enemies in sight, then the actions that require enemies cannot be chosen, thus increasing the likelihood of all other actions. Also, tension (when there are monsters in sight) increases the likelihood of a combat ation being taken. So say you are at the lowest piety, if you then explore and fight enemies, then that increases the chance that bad combat-related actions are taken, so you decrease the likelihood that Xom will say malmutate you. Likewise, if you are at the highest piety and then fight enemies, that decreases the likelihood that you will get gifts. This is the basis of the second kind of Xom scumming.
If you are fighting an enemy and you would want Xom to help you, then make sure your piety is relatively high, and then if the enemy is not faster than you you can run away until Xom takes an action. If the enemy is below a certain threshold of strength even if Xom takes a bad action you can generally deal with it, but if you try to kite a sufficiently strong enemy at minimum piety you could end up with things like haste buff, or a bad polymorph. This can especially be a problem early game. The higher the tension the more likely is a good action, but if you are at very low piety you still might get a bad action, even if you are fighting a strong enemy.
You can also limit or increase the ranged of possible actions by choosing in what kind of environment you are. If you are on a level that exploration estimate determines to not be fully explored, then teleportation journey, or at least a certain kind of teleportation journey, becomes possible, when otherwise it isn't. So if you have a fully explored level teleportation journey or a specific kind of it is not possible, while if you have a level that appears to be fully explored, but there is an unopened vault, then it doesn't count as fully explored. Likewise you can apparently make the level not count as explored by pressing X and then ctrl+f. In that case if you are at low piety you also make teleportation journey possible, which is good because that's another action that is possible, thus slightly reducing the chance of bad actions, but at the same time if you end up on that level when at high piety, then it's bad because it reduces the chance of good actions. You could also explore the level after pressing X and ctrl+f, but then if you have low piety and the point of unexploring was to reduce the chance of Xom taking a bad action Xom can summon enemies around you when you are exploring, which may be worse than if you stayed on stairs.
Another way is choosing the environment that is your field of view. See Ideal scumming setup.
Boredom
Bored Xom is very likely to perform a bad action, and it can be particularly bad. So there is some advantage to keeping Xom amused. One may think that you can do nothing to reliably keep Xom amused, at least not without wasting resources, but that is not true. The simplest way to keep Xom amused is to use a weapon of chaos a lot. Over time chaos will do things like might an enemy, and Xom can consider it funny, even if the enemy is at low health and will die after the next hit. Chaos can also confuse enemies, and Xom thinks its funny when enemies hit themselves and other enemies around them. If you keep using a weapon of chaos Xom amusement will be kept relatively high, but he can still get bored if you Xom scum and run down his amusement value. But ultimately it doesn't make that big of a difference, and using a weapon of chaos keeps Xom amused between scumming.
There is also a way to generate Xom amusement on demand if you have allies and mephitic cloud spell. You can summon allies, like with summon small mammal spell, and then cast mephitic cloud over them. They will hit each other and themselves, which will generate Xom amusement. The fact that it's normal summons doesn't matter. I have tested it in wizard mode, and it works, but to get it to work well it's best to go into a small space so that your confused allies don't wander too far and keep hitting each other. I consistently get "Xom thinks this is hilarious!" messages after they hit each other for a bit. It would work even better if you could summon more allies and confuse them, but there doesn't seem to be a way to confuse other monsters you can summon except sphinxes, and you can summon only 2 of them. However, the benefit of being able to generate amusement this way is not big enough to train these spells just for that reason, and it could be a bit tedious. If you are using a weapon of chaos it would only really give you some benefit when you are Xom scumming. Boredom doesn't make that big of a difference, even if you do happen to be playing as a character that can cast mephitic cloud and summon small mammal, it's not clear if the extra effort would be worth it.
Xom scumming
Now we can move on to the dark art of Xom scumming. I would define Xom scumming as waiting in place over stairs primarily in hope that Xom will give you gifts, but also at times in hope that Xom will give you beneficial mutations. Here I would count getting sent to Xom bazaar as a kind of a gift, since you can buy various things in Xom bazaar (there is also some gold in there).
In the past Xom scumming was synonymous with waiting thousands of turns as a mummy chaos knight, often on D:1, getting gifts from Xom but also getting heavily stat drained. Mummy was one of the only 2 species (the other one being vampire) that didn't require food, and so the only limit to how long you could wait early game was being able to survive Xom actions, and how much stat drain you could take. Nowadays instead of food there is Zot clock, and no species can ignore it, unless you get through a Ziggurat.
2 kinds of Xom scumming
Xom scumming can be divided into 2 kinds (types).
First kind (type 1)
This is similar the "old" Xom scumming. Basically, what you do here is you wait under stairs regardless of your piety before you reach level 9, since once you reach level 9 Xom can banish you. The reason why you stay on stairs is so that you can move up or down the stairs and wait for Xom summons to time out if he summons enemies. It's not ideal to start Xom scumming if you are between an explored and an unexplored level, or 2 unexplored levels, since Xom can teleport you around the map, which can be dangerous, and also it has a minor impact on the chance to get a gift, since some actions are only possible if an exploration estimate determines the map is not fully explored.
The procedure looks like this: I start the game, I explore D:1, I move to D2, I explore D2. I start with 6000 turns on the Zot clock, for each explored floor I get 6000 turns, but a maximum of 27000 can be stored per branch. At this point I can start Xom scumming, I will probably have over 10000 turns on the Zot clock, you can check how many turns do you have in the branch you are in by pressing E. You should keep track of the number of turns you have left when type 1 Xom scumming. I move under the stairs to D:1 and press the key to wait for 100 turns, if there are summons I move up and wait 100 turns for them to time out. You can run down the Zot clock to like ~6000-4000 turns in the dungeon at that stage before exploring further. Overall, you can get to over 40000 turn count before you reach level 9 when type 1 Xom scumming.
Important things to note before you start scumming:
- It's possible that when Xom scumming you can end up in a situation where Xom summons enemies on a floor, you move up, and then soon Xom summons enemies again. If that happens as long as you have a decently strong character you should be able to go on the floor where the enemies are weaker, and run away from them to another stairs.
- If you are a living character Xom can drain you, if you are an undead and playing on versions before 0.33 you can get stat drained (living characters can get stat drained there too). As a living character getting drained is a big limitation on how much you can scum, if you get drained you should gain some xp to recover from draining. It's not advisable to let yourself get heavily drained when Xom scumming, you might end up with a character that is much weaker, and you could have trouble recovering from drain.
- As an undead on a version before 0.33 stat drain is a limitation on how much you can scum. If a stat you are relying on gets drained too much it can significantly impact how strong you are in combat, so similarly, if you get stat drained too much you should get some xp to recover at least some stat drain. But compared to draining it takes more stat drain to make an impact. 2x normal Xom draining on a living character with no rN can be quite crippling, while it usually takes many stat drains for it to have a significant impact on combat performance.
- If you are an undead on version 0.33 you cannot get drained by Xom, and you are essentially encouraged to scum.
- Mutations can be a problem as a living character, you could get a terrible set of mutations. But generally over time the good and bad mutations tend to average out when type 1 Xom scumming, and if you also type 2 Xom scum odds are you will get some good mutations that way. Getting drained is a bigger limitation as a living character to how much you can scum than getting bad mutations.
- As you explore new floors you get more turns on the Zot clock, but you also increase the chance that you will get shafted and you will have to fight your way back up, which will bring you closer to, or past level 9. So ideally you shouldn't for example explore to floor 4 without doing any Xom scumming, even if you can't get drained. You haven't reached the limit of turns on the Zot clock at that point, but you run the risk of getting shafted.
- If you happen to find Temple before reaching level 9, Temple is basically almost 6000 free turns, you can run down the clock in temple to ~500 turns. You could run it down lower, but it's not going to make much of a difference. Also, floors in timed portals count as separate branches with 6000 Zot turns, it's possible to scum there, at least until Zot summon monsters around you and you will have to leave.
- Ideally you would avoid accidentally advancing to level 9 before you Xom scum enough. It's still possible to type 1 Xom scum if you are past level 9, but you run the risk of banishment and you should take that into consideration. Overall it's probably not worth it to type 1 Xom scum past level 9, outside of things like waiting for you to get better piety (see Second kind (type 2)), also, effectively achieving the same effect as when type 1 Xom scumming is unavoidable when you move through areas without enemies, like when backtracking. Due to the time it takes to get through bad piety it can take quite a bit of time to get good items when type 1 Xom scumming.
Second kind (type 2)
Here you Xom scum only when you are at sufficiently high piety. It's almost always good to type 2 Xom scum when you are at highest piety, it can be good at second highest piety, it also can be done at third highest piety. The point is that unlike type 1 you don't just wait regardless of your piety, but you purposefuly wait only when your piety is high, and you explore when your piety is low.
The point is that if you explore at highest piety it's very likely to get wasted on actions on enemies you would be able to beat anyway, and so it's almost always good to Xom scum when you are at highest piety. You will get more benefit out of the gifts you can get, and possibly mutations. An exception is if there is an enemy or a group of enemies that you wouldn't be able to beat without a good Xom action/actions, this can happen particularly in early game.
This can, and should be done throughout the entire game. If you get highest piety it's good to go to stairs and Xom scum, it's also often good when you have second highest piety.
Important things to note before you start scumming:
- As with the first kind, it's possible that when Xom scumming you can end up in a situation where Xom summons enemies on a floor, you move up, and then soon Xom summons enemies again. If that happens as long as you have a decently strong character you should be able to go on the floor where the enemies are weaker, and run away from them to another stairs.
- As mentioned above, one exception is if there is a group of enemies that you wouldn't be able to beat without a good Xom action/actions. Then using high Xom piety in combat can be justified.
- If you are in the middle of combat, or if for example you ended up getting shafted, then you don't need to abandon the fight you are fighting to Xom scum.
- Another exception is the final floors of certain branches. If it's one of the 4 S branches, Zot, Elf, probably also Lair and Orc, then you shouldn't enter them at low piety because they often have vaults full of enemies, and if you enter them at low piety you increase the chance that Xom will teleport you to an area full of enemies. Therefore if you do have low piety you should wait until you don't have low piety before entering them, in this case that's not exactly the same as type 1 Xom scumming, but the effect is essentially the same. If you have highest or second highest piety then you can just enter these floors like that. One may think that it would be good to enter all final floors at high Xom piety, but other branches don't really have the same kind of vaults full of enemies. Dungeon doesn't have it. Crypt doesn't have the same kind of areas with such enemy density, and when you enter it you are often relatively strong. Depths doesn't have it, it does have an area with draconians, but again, it's not the same enemy density. Slime 5 often has an area with somewhat more enemies near TRJ, but it's not the same enemy density. In Vaults 5 if you get teleported odds are you will be placed closer to a side, and teleporting and moving to a side in Vaults 5 is a valid strategy. Still, you could do it, but it can take some time for piety to go up, it increases the risk of banishment slightly, and I wouldn't say getting teleported to any area in these other branches is comparable in the level of danger to getting teleported into vaults in the branches I mentioned.
Ideal scumming setup
When Xom scumming you would want to maximize the chance of getting a good action to get a gift when you have high piety and minimize the chance to get a really terrible action when you have low piety. It appears that the less non-desirable actions are possible when you have high piety the higher the chance to get a desirable action.
When you have high piety the basic thing you would want to do is to make it so that there are no enemies in sight, this significantly increases the chance to get a gift. So as I mentioned earlier, go to stairs and out of combat. But even monsters like plants or debris make some actions possible, in 0.33 version debris can be confused, and in general I believe on any relatively modern version there are some "combat" actions that become possible even if the only "enemies" you have in sight is plants. Sticky fireballs may be possible, but I'm not completely sure about that. I think in 0.33 plants can be confused, but not in 0.32, or maybe they can. Regardless, ideally you would have no plnants or debris in sight.
When you are on a floor that is not considered fully explored teleportion journey (or a certain kind of teleportation journey) becomes possible (see Influencing Xom actions). A floor is not considered fully explored when there are unopened vaults, or when other areas are unexplored, this includes if you press X and ctrl+f to unexplore the map. Therefore, when at high piety the chance to get a gift is slightly higher if you are on an explored floor.
There are various flavor actions that become possible only when certain dungeon features are visible. Therefore making them unavailable should increase the chance to get other actions. That terrain is water, trees, metal walls, fountains, statues, lava, stone arches. Also doors, but I believe doors can only be opened or closed if the map is considered not fully explored, so if the map is considered fully explored, then it shouldn't matter. So to maximize the chance of a good action you would want more or less to just see plain dungeon around the stairs.
When at low piety ideally you would want to make these "neutral" actions available, so that they can sometimes be chosen instead of bad actions. Also, making teleportation journey possible would in theory be slightly good because that's another action that is possible, thus slightly reducing the chance of bad actions. But at the same time if you press X and ctrl+f, and later end up on that unexplored level when at high piety, then it would be bad because it reduces the chance of good actions. You could also explore the level after pressing X and ctrl+f, but then if you have low piety and the point of unexploring was to reduce the chance of Xom taking a bad action Xom can summon enemies around you when you are exploring, which may be worse than if you stayed on stairs.
If you put yourself into a 1 square space behind doors, so that you can only see 1 tile, then Xom wouldn't be able to summon enemies around you. I tested it in wizard mode and waited for over 30k turns on D:1 in a hole behind doors, and Xom never spawned enemies. But that doesn't seem preferable for most characters, since when you are at low piety it would increase the chance of drain/banishment. Though, if you are an undead on 0.33 version type 1 Xom scumming you can consider it if you do happen to find such a hole. Xom first chooses to perform or not perform an action, and then chooses from the available actions, so making bad actions impossible won't reduce the number of bad actions Xom will take, it won't make your piety change slower.
Overall, all of these optimizations should have a very small, maybe sometimes small effect, and it's ok if you scum on any stairs if you can't immediately find "ideal" stairs.
To sum it up:
Ideally, at high piety you would Xom scum on stairs on a fully explored floor, where you have just plain dungeon in view and you can't see plants/debris, water, trees, metal walls, fountains, statues, lava, stone arches. Just dungeon walls and floor, possibly with doors if it's a fully explored floor. If you are at low piety you would ideally want these dungeon features to be visible to make flavor actions associated with them possible. But as far as I know these optimizations should have a very small, maybe sometimes small effect, and it's ok if you scum on any stairs if you can't immediately find "ideal" stairs.
Does higher turn count matter?
Of course if you are Xom scumming that will increase your turn count. But unless you are specifically aiming for a low turn count win that is unlikely to matter. You could conceivably want all of your wins to be as low turn count as possible, but Xom scumming is part of Xom gameplay, if you want to get the most out of Xom you should Xom scum.
Xom bazaar
Have you seen this artifact?
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It's one of the strongest, if not the strongest weapon in the game, and you can get it only from Xom's bazaar.
Xom bazaar is a special kind of a bazaar that you can get to only if Xom sends you there. You can get sent to multiple Xom bazaars per game, but after every Xom bazaar visit the chance to get sent to another one is reduced.
Xom bazaar is an area in a chaotic realm. It's delineated by walls in an X shape and it's full of traps and "customers". There are potions of moonshine/degeneration there, if you haven't identified these, then you will identify them. There is also some gold in there, but you need to have a certain amount of gold for Xom to be able to send you to a bazaar in the first place.
Before you start exploring, watch out if you have a trail of clouds of seething chaos. It can turn some customers hostile, you don't want that. You should wait for your trail to expire.
God of the marketplace
There are 3 shops. The first one is with weapons, rings, there can be also a scarf, an amulet (0.33 version), and there is a chance for there to be some special artifacts like slippery slippers, hat of the bear spirit, orange crystal plate armour. The second ship is with books, wands, manual, talismans (often an artifact talisman). The last one is with darts, potions, scrolls.
The items are generally chaos themed and considered "risky" (for example slick slippers, hat of the bear spirit, or potions like berserk, ambrosia), but generally very cheap for how strong they are and it's not uncommon to find amazing artifacts for less than 1000 gold. Scrolls of immolation can cost 24 gold each, 3 potions of berserk cost 90 gold, and wands go for like ~171 gold for ~13 charges of wand of warping. I don't remember the exact prices for all of these items, but they are in the ballpark.
The weapon shop sells rings that have properties like ^Contam, or ^Drain, and -Will, -rF, -rC, but otherwise have great stats and can cost like ~600 (but can go up to around 1000). It also, of course, sells weapons. Some of them are things like +5 demon whips of chaos, or randarts of chaos (for example demon whip, glaive, bardiche, great mace). Amulets will also have a negative property.
It can also sell unrandarts, some of them will be upgraded with a chaos brand in addition to whatever brand they normally have. These are the chaotic unrandarts, and they are just stronger than their normal versions. Not all unrandart weapons have a chaotic version, but there is quite a few of them. For example chaotic Spriggan's Knife, Eos, Lochaber axe, autumn katana, Spellbinder. It can also sell certain normal unrandart weapons, but these have to be already considered "risky", these include obsidian axe, glaive of Prune, Singing Sword, plutonium sword.
The weapon shop can also sell non-weapon unrandarts, but these must be considered "risky", for example hat of the Bear Spirit, Mad Mage's Maulers, ratskin cloak, slick slippers, seven-league boots, robe of Folly, but also things like orange crystal plate armour or tower shield of Ignorance.
Xom bazaar is simply amazing, and sending you there is often the best action Xom can take. Xom bazaar makes Xom much better, you could get an amazing artifact early on in the game. If the weapon shop doesn't have the weapon using the skill you have trained you can also simply buy whatever good artifact weapon is available and switch to that weapon type if you feel like it.
While Gozag's shops are often underwhelming and overpriced, Xom's bazaar is incomparably better, with much better and much more affordable items.
What should you buy?
Before you start buying explore the entire area, there is some gold in the bazaar and you would want to know all of your options before you start buying. Weapon is a prime consideration if you don't have a good weapon, though if you already have a good weapon (possibly from a previous bazaar), then you may not find an upgrade. Rings can be very good, also an amulet. Some unrandarts can be very good, as an undead CK you are unlikely to find a better headgear than hat of the bear spirit.
You can find great, and rather cheap manuals. If it's for a skill you are using it might be worth it to buy it, and it's going to have a bigger impact early on in the game.
Scrolls of immolation are very cheap and can be very useful, as long as you have enough rF. It's generally good to buy all scrolls of immolation, unless you wouldn't have enough money for the artifacts/weapons you would like to buy. It can be ok to spend all of the gold you have in a Xom bazaar.
Wands, especially other than polymorph, charming, paralysis, are another good item to buy. While Xom doesn't provide you with any activable abilities like other gods, the wands he occassionally gives you and the cheap wands in Xom bazaar can perform a similar function. That, and scrolls of immolation. Warping, iceblast, roots are good wands to buy. You can also buy paralysis, charming is generally less useful than paralysis, and you are unlikely to get much return on investment by buying polymorph.
Ambrosia is not particularly useful, but potions of berserk rage are good. You will probably have enough potions of lignification, and you won't need potions of attraction much. But early game lignification can be useful.
Scrolls of silence are useful, they are more expensive but they can be worth it. Scrolls of poison, vulnerability (particularly if you have wands of paralysis) can also be good to buy because of how cheap they are.
If you don't have any of these items identified it might be worth it to buy it just to identify it.
Darts of dysjunction can be useful. If you have high stealth, then datura, atropa can be also good. They are very cheap.
If you are using magic you can find some affordable books with various spells.
If you are using shapeshifting you can find great artifact talismans. It's not uncommon to find one artifact talisman in a Xom bazaar.
Version differences
Throughout the guide I have been mentioning differences between various versions, and one difference in particular has a big influence on how strong Xom is. This difference is in how likely you are to get sent to Xom bazaar.
Xom in 0.32 is stronger than Xom 0.33 because in 0.32 you are significantly more likely to get sent to a Xom bazaar. It appears that out of all the versions, in 0.32 Xom is the strongest. You are maybe 2/3 as likely to get sent to a Xom bazaar in a comparable amount of time in 0.33? But maybe it could be half as likely. I'm estimating the difference based on limited data, I haven't tried to figure it out from the code.
Another big difference is removal of stat drain in 0.33. For undead this is good, for living characters this is somewhat bad, since it's better to get stat drained than drained by Xom.
Xom rc file
Put these into your rc file:
force_more_message += .* erupts in a glittering mayhem of colour force_more_message += .* evaporates and reforms as force_more_message += "Time to have some fun!" force_more_message += "Fight to survive, mortal." force_more_message += "Let's see if it's strong enough to survive yet." force_more_message += You hear Xom's maniacal laughter. force_more_message += Xom feels like there should be more of you to share with the Dungeon. force_more_message += Xom gently smashes a mirror over your force_more_message += Xom displaces most of your magic for a moment. force_more_message += Xom reveals to you one of the great and terrible secrets of magic. force_more_message += Xom curiously channels energy out of your body. force_more_message += Xom picks up your mind and accidentally drops it. force_more_message += Xom gives you a terrible headache. force_more_message += "You don't need this, do you?" force_more_message += Your magic slithers out of your reeling mind! force_more_message += Your power and thoughts are overwhelmed by magic-eaters manifest! force_more_message += Your magic wrenches itself out of your force_more_message += Your magic flows out through your force_more_message += Your magic rips itself out through your force_more_message += "Heh heh heh..." force_more_message += Xom's power touches on your mind for a moment. force_more_message += Xom titters. force_more_message += "Stumble well, my pet!" force_more_message += Xom's power touches upon your body and mind for a moment. force_more_message += Xom decides to rearrange the pieces. force_more_message += "First here, now there." force_more_message += "This might be better!" force_more_message += "This is how I like it!" force_more_message += "The weather's been a little too boring around here." force_more_message += Xom asks Qazlal to spice things up a little. force_more_message += mostly cloudy. force_more_message += (The|Your).*falls away!
Without these it can be difficult to react in time when Xom does one of the dangerous actions. These cover all of the actions where you could immediately get screwed by the Xom action. These are for things like Xom summoning enemies during a fight, chaos upgrade, Xom potentially spawning a cloud of seething chaos on top of you.
Here is what exactly are these for:
Lines: .* erupts in a glittering mayhem of colour
Action: Chaos upgrade
Lines: .* evaporates and reforms as
Action: Polymorph, both from a Xom action and a weapon of chaos.
Lines: "Time to have some fun!", "Fight to survive, mortal.", "Let's see if it's strong enough to survive yet.", You hear Xom's maniacal laughter.
Action: Summon hostile monsters
Lines: Xom feels like there should be more of you to share with the Dungeon., Xom gently smashes a mirror over your
Action: Summon player clones
Lines: Xom displaces most of your magic for a moment., Xom reveals to you one of the great and terrible secrets of magic., Xom curiously channels energy out of your body., Xom picks up your mind and accidentally drops it., Xom gives you a terrible headache., "You don't need this, do you?", Your magic slithers out of your reeling mind!, Your power and thoughts are overwhelmed by magic-eaters manifest!, Your magic wrenches itself out of your, Your magic flows out through your, Your magic rips itself out through your
Action: Drain your magic and produce monsters
Lines: "Heh heh heh...", Xom's power touches on your mind for a moment., Xom titters., "Stumble well, my pet!", Xom's power touches upon your body and mind for a moment.
Action: Confusion
Lines: Xom decides to rearrange the pieces., "First here, now there.", "This might be better!", "This is how I like it!"
Action: "Rearrange the pieces"
Lines: "The weather's been a little too boring around here.", Xom asks Qazlal to spice things up a little., mostly cloudy.
Action: Cloud, specifically cloud of seething chaos, scroll of fog effect can give a false positive.
Lines: (The|Your).*falls away!
Action: In case a mutation, can be from Xom, causes your helmet to fall off. I believe the message is the same if a level 3 mutation causes you to be unable to wear gloves/boots, so it should also work for gloves/boots.
Your spells can kill you
Since there is a chance that Xom can summon you clones (2 hostile and 1 friendly), memorizing some spells can end up being very dangerous. Maybe you think it's not such a big deal, maybe you think there is always some counterplay... and then you memorize Olgreb's Toxic Radiance early on and get hit by 2x Toxic Radiance when you have no rPois. So, that's one example.
Here is how player clones work: They are basically like player ghosts except that if you are living they are living, if you are undead they are undead, they are not always insubstantial undead, unless you are an insubstantial undead. This means that things like curare can work on them.
Spells
Here are some of the spells/groups of spells along with comments:
Irradiate
Probably the most dangerous spell to memorize. While when worshipping any other god Irradiate is a very good spell, with Xom it's different. If you get unlucky you could potentially die from full hp in 1 turn, getting hit 2 times by Irradiate, all it takes is just 1 turn of carelessness. Or you might be forced to use blink to get far away from your clones. Here I died from almost full hp in 2 turns in a moment of carelessness, getting hit for 128 damage despite having 36 AC. Now, I did take +30% damage from 2x harm, but still, taking 30% less damage a character with less AC could still get two shotted. Harm works before AC, but assuming AC didn't reduce the damage by a significant amount we can assume 128 damage is 130% of the damage, and so then 98.46 would be 100%. Based on this we could estimate that a character with 36 AC could take around 100-90 damage per cast. Mind you, I don't remember what was the actual damage on Irradiate used by the clones there, so maximum damage you could take in such a situation could be higher. And I had 36 AC, 41 EV, 17 SH, there were plenty of enemies but I wasn't really taking damage, until I got killed in 2 hits.
Olgreb's Toxic Radiance
Only really a big danger if you have no rPois, so you should never memorize it if you have no rPois. Generally, if you have rPois you can memorize it.
Chain Lightning
Yeah, I can imagine this one going badly. I could see it being more dangerous than Irradiate, but at least given that it's a level 9 spell you are less likely to have it memorized.
Dispel Undead
It's probably not worth it to memorize it if you are an undead.
Lehudib's Crystal Spear, Bombard
It might be too dangerous memorizing Crystal Spear, but I imagine Bombard would be somewhat more manageable, while still dangerous.
High-level destructive spells like Fire Storm, Polar Vortex, Shatter
If you do end up as a high-level mage worshipping Xom it can be dangerous to memorize these, but if you have a mage with decently high defenses these are not necessarily as big of a threat as some of the spells mentioned before. Fire Storm's damage is reduced by fire resistance, Polar Vortex's by cold resistance, and if it ends up being cast by a clone it will damage other clones and enemies, and the damage of Shatter can be significantly reduced by flying.
Silence
Getting silenced may sound scary, but it might not be such a big deal, often you can quaff haste to scape, and if you read teleportation before you get silenced you will get teleported. Wand of quicksilver could also dispel Silence if it hits clones, albeit temporarily.
Various summoning spells
Not such a big deal, but they can be used by clones.
Animate Armour, Fortress Blast
Can never be used by clones because they don't wear armour, so it's safe to memorize. You don't have to be worried you will get hit by an animated crystal plate armour or blasted for high damage.
Weak CKs
These 3 are probably the weakest CKs. They are roughly ranked from the least weak to weakest.
Mummy CK
I think as the least bad out of the 3 I would rank mummy CK. Now, one may think that mummy should be the worst CK, and it does have an inherent issue with consistency due to confusion, but I think it shouldn't be judged just based on a small chance to die without counterplay in certain situations. Mummy is vulnerable to confusion, has poor aptitudes and -rF, but it does have some good things going for it, which is why I don't think it's the worst CK.
Big thing it has is innate faith, which will increase the amount of gifts from Xom scumming. Mummy does often get more good items from Xom than other characters because of that. Mummy has no armor restrictions, which is particularly important for a melee start like a CK, the other 2 CKs have significant armor restrictions. This allows it to get AC relatively easily. Its -rF can be a problem, but it can be played around. While it does have poor aptitudes, its fighting aptitude is ok, not all of its aptitudes are bad. It also has undead resistances, so it's immune to poison, pain. With extra gifts early game, no armor restrictions and undead resistances it's early game doesn't feel so bad, but it does have to watch out for fire damage. And because of confusion you have to be a bit paranoid throughout the game with where you are fighting enemies, if a mummy is in a corridor it often doesn't have too much trouble surviving confusion, but if it's in the open and suddenly its shield stops working it can take much more damage. High defenses can help you survive confusion, which in the case of mummy usually means having a lot of AC.
Also, you might want to avoid putting on items with harm, if you get confused it's essentially just a negative, and it could get you killed when you would have survived if you didn't have harm.
Poltergeist CK
The problem with poltergeist is that it's not a very strong melee start because it lacks defenses early on. This may seem surprising since PoCK is a recommended start, but there are some things working against it. It starts with 3 AC and to get more it needs to find more aux armor, and aux armor is relatively rare, while another character could just pick up normal armor, and get more AC out of it as well.
It does get +3/4 AC early on from a debuffed enemy, and +1 AC for every additional debuffed enemy, later on it can allow poltergeist to get pretty high AC, with many debuffed enemies you can go over 40 AC. But while +3/4 AC early game is nice, you will still have 6-7 AC assuming you haven't found an additional aux item yet, and you need some luck to find one. And you don't get that very reliably with a weapon of chaos, you just need some luck to get that since the chance to roll a debuff is not that high. Therefore if you find a weapon of draining that's a big buff for poltergeist since it's much more reliable at debuffing enemies. If it happens poltergeist CK is not that bad early game, but you would need some luck to find such a weapon. Later on poltergeist CK can be pretty strong, but I'm ranking it lower than mummy because of its issues early game. With other gods you can use an activable ability like Okawaru's Heroism to make your weak melee character stronger, but Xom doesn't have activable abilities.
Poltergeist also has -10% hp while mummy has normal hp. It does have a better melee aptitudes, but it does have -1 fighting, and its LB/SB aptitudes are awerage. You would probably want to pick LB or SB as a poltergeist CK. It does have good throwing aptitude, which is nice. It's shields aptitude is also below average, although for that to matter you would have to find a shield in the first place. It's dodging aptitude is +1, but dodging scales with dexterity, so to get a lot of EV you would need a lot of dexterity, and you won't have that much early game. Some other characters get +2 or +3 dodging aptitude, and EV is poltergeist's only defensive skill until it can get a shield.
Octopode CK
It's not such a surprise that a species designed around being able to wear 8 rings is weak early game. CK is a melee start, and while constriction deals a lot of damage, you have no armor to speak of, -10% hp, and +0 dodging aptitude. Importantly, constriction doesn't work against all enemies, and against these enemies you are just a character with perfectly average aptitudes that cannot wear any armor and has -10% hp. Melee octopode is just pretty weak, and you can't ameliorate your weaknesses with god abilities or certain shapeshifting forms, certain spells, or a lot of dexterity, things you can have access to later on in the game. Xom has no abilities like Okawaru's Heroism to activate, nor does he offer ranged abilities like Qazlal's Upheaval or Maklheb's Unleash Destruction. Octopode can try to switch to magic as soon as possible, but you would need to find spells that you can use to deal damage, you may just not find the right spells early on. And by relying on spells you could run into the risks associated with clones using your spells that I have mentioned in Your spells can kill you. Plus if you get surrounded by summons magic won't help you to escape as much as good defenses. Switching to ranged is pretty good, you can get a hand cannon and a shield later on, but if you don't find a hand cannon for a long time it can be ok to use a two handed ranged weapon. You benefit from ranged weapons in Xom's bazaar (you can find longbows, triple crossbows, hand cannons there), and Xom can sometimes give you a ranged weapon. You can also find great rings in Xom's bazaar, which octopode will appreciate.
Miscellaneous tips & tricks
Here are some tips & tricks that weren't mentioned in earlier sections:
- Faith is generally good when worshipping Xom, but it might not be worth it to wear an amulet of faith instead of an amulet that provides you more a direct benefit in combat, like an amulet of reflection or regeneration. But it can be good to carry an amulet of faith, then if you have high piety and want to type 2 Xom scum, you can put on an amulet of faith. It will take less turns.
- If Xom is getting bored then if there is an action that increases his amusement he will stop getting bored.
- If there is a strong enemy look at your piety before engaging him, if your piety is low you may want to come back and engage when you have higher Xom piety.
- If you are using maces & flails skill Xom is not more likely to give you Mace of Variability. Xom is not guaranteed or more likely to give or offer you in bazaar Mace of Variability, that would be too predictable.
- Before you use a scroll of immolation make sure you have enough rF, you can swap rings if needed.
- You can combine a scroll of butterflies and a scroll of immolation to set off immolation explosions immediately. You read a scroll of butterflies and then immediately a scroll of butterflies, when even a single butterfly gets killed by enemies it will set off a chain of explosions. Butterflies make somewhat weaker explosions (3d15 vs 3d20 of normal enemies and 3d25 of large and giant enemies, large and giant enemies also make a 2 radius explosion), but this way you immediately create inner flame explosions, and there are many butterflies, so there will be many explosions. This tactic is often limited by the number of scrolls of butterflies that you have.
- If you want to rest when low hp it's good to go to stairs and move to an explored level, there is a chance that Xom will teleport you around when you are low hp.
- Don't underestimate reapers with scythes of chaos that Xom will sometimes summon as enemies.
- If Xom summons enemies that are summoners, like bogarts, shadow demons or world binders, then if you do want to kill the summons you should prioritize them, but as said in Summon hostile monsters usually the best way to deal with summons is to run to stairs. But sometimes it may be easier to kill all of the summons.
- If you can't run away from summons one way to deal with it is to teleport.
- Odds are you will get some wands when Xom scumming, so it can be good to train evocations when worshipping Xom.
- If Xom summons brain worms keep in mind that they deal more damage with their ranged attack if you have no MP.
- If you want to have great mutations for megazigging or whatnot, you can consider Xom. While Jiyva will rearrange your mutations, if you have the highest Xom piety you are very likely to get only good mutations. You could switch to death form when you have low Xom piety, to block mutations, and go out of death form when you have high Xom piety. With enough time you could in principle get almost all, or maybe even all of the good mutations in the game. For example here I got a lucky set achieved only thanks to type 2 Xom scumming. I later lost some of these mutations, but still had many good/great ones.
- As a deep elf or kobold CK you can switch to ranged weapons.
- As a felid CK you may want to learn some spells early on. If you don't find good spells in the dungeon odds are you will find some in Xom bazaar if Xom sends you there. You can ignore some of the risks I have mentioned in Your spells can kill you since as felid if you die you get second chances. Also, when you die that is amusing to Xom.
Gameplay
Other guides focus a lot on gameplay. They cover the entire game, all of the important gameplay mechanics, and what skills specifically you should train in what order. I didn't really want this guide to be like that, I didn't want to write something as long as a PhD thesis, that would be 2 or 3 times as long as this guide, and most of which would be general gameplay advice. There are already other guides, some of which are well known, that spend a lot of time explaining general gameplay mechanics and giving general gameplay advice. Most of the time a CK is a melee fighter, what skills it is training, what equipment it is using, what attributes it is focusing on increasing, will be quite similar to something like a Fighter. When worshipping Xom you don't use invocations, and you get more evocables, so training evocations can be more valuable. Whether you are using a plain broad axe or a chaos-infused superweapon you are still training, or have trained, axes.
