Cheibriados

Version 0.31: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

"Take it easy."

Cheibriados is a god of deliberation. Those following Cheibriados travel more slowly the further they progress in their faith, and are forbidden from using any means to hasten themselves. In the process of so imitating their god, they attain perfection of mind and body, and the mysteries of time unfold before them. Especially devout followers may even momentarily abandon the flow of time and its needless disturbances. Followers of Cheibriados move more slowly as they gain favour, and are rewarded for killing creatures who are faster than they are. As they move slower, worshippers of Cheibriados are granted increased attributes. Cheibriados rewards the faithful with the power to slow other creatures and the power to briefly distort the flow of time. Devout worshippers will gain the ability to inflict great harm on all those who move more quickly than they do, and finally the ability to step out of the flow of time entirely. Cheibriados likes it when you kill fast things. Cheibriados strongly dislikes it when you hasten yourself or others or use unnaturally quick items.

Racial Restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Cheibriados (or any other god).

Fast species like Spriggans are able to worship Cheibriados, though lose much of their advantage.

Appreciates

• Killing creatures: the faster the creature's movement speed, and higher their HD, the more piety you gain. ("Cheibriados (thoroughly) appreciates the change of pace"). Creatures slower than 100% move speed give no piety.

Deprecates

• Inactivity: You lose 1 piety per 700 turns, on average (1/35 chance every 20 turns).
• Increasing your speed: this includes potions of haste, Swiftness, weapons with the speed brand, equipment with the rampaging ego, and the lightning scales. You may not hasten or frenzy enemies, either.
  • Armataurs are not punished for their innate rampaging.
  • A weapon of chaos will be punished if and only if it produces one of the forbidden effects.
  • This does not include self-berserk. If you drink a potion of berserk rage, you will go berserk but will move at normal speed, as if you were not berserk.
  • If you drink an unidentified potion of haste, you will still get the haste effect, and Cheibriados will not punish you for it.

Given Abilities

Piety Level -: "Sluggish Foo"

• Raises the support of your attributes: Cheibriados increases your strength, dexterity, and intelligence as your piety increases. Each stat increase comes with an incremental increase in your movement delay equal to 2 + piety / 20 auts, capping at 10 auts for normal or faster speed player characters. Further stat increases occur at higher ranks of piety. At maximum piety you receive +15 to all stats.
• Slows the effects of poison: The rate at which poison damages you is reduced by -33%. This increases the duration of poison, but makes it much more survivable, especially in severe cases. The duration of sickness is also halved.

In addition, Cheibriados does the following:

• Slows down the Zot clock, giving you 150% the time (+9,000 deca-aut per floor, up to 40,500 deca-aut at once). (Passive)
• Reduces monster spawn rate in the Abyss and Orb run by 50%. (Passive)
• Reduces the map morphing rate in the Abyss. (Passive)

Piety Level *: "Deliberate"

• Bend Time: Slows everything adjacent to you. Monsters resist based on their HD rather than their willpower, which means that it can even affect enemies with unshakable will. (Costs 3 MP and 1-2 Piety)

Piety Level **: "Unhurried"

• No new abilities.

Piety Level ***: "Contemplative"

• Temporal Distortion: Moves nearby monsters forward through time, relative to you. In effect, this forces ranged opponents to move adjacent to you, but may also place them one space away. This also causes poison damage and other time-related effects to happen. This ability does not cost a turn. (4 MP, 3-5 Piety)

Piety Level ****: "Epochal"

• Slouch: Damages everything in LOS (including invisible enemies) that's faster than you Damage = [Speed Difference, aut] × 4d3 / 2. Only monsters that have detected you take damage from Slouch. (5 MP, 8-12 Piety)

Piety Level *****: "Timeless"

• Step From Time: Moves you to nowhere and lets time pass. During that time, monsters wander away and may even go to sleep. Monsters that end up in your LOS must perform a fresh check against your stealth to notice you. Increasing Invocations increases the time where you are away. (10 MP, 10-15 Piety)

Piety Level ******: "Foo Aeon"

• No new abilities.

Punishments

Cheibriados does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Offenders against Cheibriados will find their movements remain slow while the attention of Cheibriados remains upon them, and will frequently have any magical hasting stripped away. They may also become further slowed and exhausted, be put to sleep, or have wild and unpredictable magical effects from the depths of time unleashed upon them. Cheibriados's wrath lasts for a relatively short duration.

Upon abandonment, Cheibriados will continue to slow your movement for as long as its wrath persists. It will occasionally punish you with one of the following forms of divine retribution, increasing in severity with the danger of your current situation:

• Cheibriados's wrath always reduces the remaining duration of your haste status to 1 turn.
• At low tension: lose 1-5 points from a random stat.
• At medium tension: Slow for 100 turns.
• At high tension: Sleep for 4-8 turns with a 50% chance of slowing.
• At very high tension: make a very loud noise, sleep, and a 50% chance of slowing.

Strategy

Cheibriados is one of the riskiest gods on first worship. At 0 piety, Chei slows your movement speed - making it impossible to retreat normally from enemies - with minimal benefit in return. While you do get some very powerful tools later on, worshipping Cheibriados will greatly magnify the deadliness of your mistakes for the entire game. One careless step could translate to two or three needless enemy attacks, which be lethal then and there. Fortunately, Chei only affects your movement speed; all other actions act as normal.

Once you reach a decent amount of piety, you'll get some fairly significant stat boosts. Any character can afford to wear heavier armour, while having more powerful attacks, while casting spells with greater success. Casters and ranged fighters benefit the most from these boosts. They can also attack from a distance, meaning you don't have to slowly walk towards an enemy.

Even traditionally "melee" characters can viably use utility spells like Translocations to great effect. Lesser Beckoning can bring enemies closer to you, and Manifold Assault can attack multiple enemies from a distance. Meanwhile, any character can use Blink, Iskenderun's Mystic Blast, etc., for their positioning merits.

The slow species (Barachi and Naga) have a strong synergy with the slow god. They are already slower than normal, so they suffer much less from the initial worshipping period. Also, Barachi's Hop is especially useful as a repositioning tool. Of course, Chei isn't their only choice -- other gods should be considered just the same.

Ability Strategy

Cheibriados offers several excellent abilities:

• Bend Time can reliably slow even the strongest enemies for very little piety. While pious followers still can't run away, slowed enemies not only move slower, but attack slower too. Level 4.0 in Invocations gives a 4% or lower failure rate.

• Temporal Distortion is an instantaneous ability that "jumps forward" in time. It has a number of powerful tactical uses which may not be obvious. Level 7.0 in Invocations gives a 4% or lower failure rate.
  • The most direct use is to bring enemies closer, so that melee characters can be in attack range. Conversely, it might open a small distance for you to escape through the stairs.
  • It can be used to dodge orbs of destruction, dissipate harmful clouds, or split up merged slime creatures.
  • Damage-over-time effects like poison or Sticky flame apply themselves over skipped time.

• Slouch is not cheap, but it is an effective irresistible attack against everything in sight. Damage is based on your and monster movement speed, but not Invocations. It works best on fast monsters, such as invisible unseen horrors or the swarms of the Spider's Nest. Level 9.0 in Invocations gives a < 4% failure rate.
  • Assuming a move delay of 20, Slouch will deal on average 60 damage to opponents of speed 20 (killer bees) and 40 damage to opponents of speed 10 (most monsters).

• Don't forget you have Step From Time. It can spare you from certain-death situations; by the time you return, most enemies will have wandered off and summoned enemies will have run out of time. Remaining monsters might not even notice your return, if you have high stealth. Unlike Slouch, the strength of Step From Time, and not just the success chance, depends on Invocations skill. Level 14 in Invocations gives a < 4% failure rate.
  • Step From Time is much more effective in open levels with lots of space for monsters to redistribute themselves. It is less effective in constrained areas, like small portal levels.

Tips & Tricks

• For safety, you can use the shift-direction key or auto-explore; they both automatically stop you when enemies are spotted.
• Sleeping monsters count as having 0 movement speed, so are unaffected by Slouch.

History

• Prior to 0.31, the slower you were, the more piety you gained.
• Prior to 0.28, Cheibriados forbade followers from intentionally going berserk (unintentional berserks had speed boost suppressed). Bend Time was available on worship, and the poison-slowing effect was unlocked at 1* piety.
• Prior to 0.27, Cheibriados would disapprove of using quick blades.
• Prior to 0.26, Cheibriados would slow your metabolism at 1* piety (instead of slowing the Zot clock).
• Prior to 0.25, Cheibriados's wrath inflicted random miscast effects instead of creating noise.
• Prior to 0.20, Cheibriados's wrath could exhaust you and force you to Step from Time. Also, the wrath had a chance to curse an item.
• Prior to 0.19, Cheibriados didn't have piety decay.
• Prior to 0.17, slouch damage wasn't based on monster movement speed.
• Prior to 0.14, Bend Time became available at 1* piety.
• Prior to 0.10, Cheibriados would only give you bonus stats if you wore equipment with the ponderousness ego (and offered an ability which allowed you to convert your gear into ponderous artifacts). Cheibriados would also offer various resistances as well. These benefits increased with each equipment slot you made ponderous.
• Prior to 0.9, species with equipment restrictions were unable to get the full ponderous benefits from Cheibriados, and each new ponderous item gave a larger benefit than the last.
• Cheibriados was added in 0.6.