Piety
Piety is a measure of your standing with your chosen god. You earn piety by performing actions in accordance with your god's code of conduct. The more you have, the more rewards your god will lavish upon you in the form of special abilities and gifts.
Piety is measured on a scale from 1-200; most characters start at 15 piety when first worshipping a god. If piety drops below 1, you are excommunicated and incur penance.
Abilities
When your piety reaches certain levels, your god may grant you a new ability. Some of these abilities must be invoked with the a command and cost MP and/or piety. Others are passive, working automatically and (usually) without cost.
You cannot see your exact piety number in-game, but you can estimate it from the number of stars shown by your god's name on your HUD. Not coincidentally, these stars are the levels of piety required for you to receive new abilities.
| Ability Level | Piety |
|---|---|
| 1-29 | |
| * | 30-49 |
| ** | 50-74 |
| *** | 75-99 |
| **** | 100-119 |
| ***** | 120-160 |
| ****** | 161-200 |
Not all gods give abilities at each level. For example, Okawaru gives the ability to invoke Heroism at *, and then nothing until Finesse at ****. Also, many gods grant powers that improve with your exact piety (not just your star level), so it is worth cultivating piety even if you think you've earned every reward on your god's chart.
Gifts
Along with abilities, many gods will grant random gifts of powerful items to a particularly pious worshiper. Usually, a sufficiently high piety is all that you need for a gift, but some gods set further conditions for certain gifts.
If you qualify for a gift from your particular god, you have a small chance to receive it every time you gain piety.
If you receive a gift, you undergo a period of "gift timeout", the length of which varies by god. You cannot receive any more gifts until your gift timeout expires. It will not go down on its own; you can only decrease it with actions that raise your piety (which instead go towards reducing the gift timeout).
Piety Decay
Your piety decreases over time. Every 10-30 turns (with uniform distribution), the game makes a roll to deplete one piety. Depending on your god, there is a 1/17 or 1/35 chance to do so; on average, you'll lose 1 piety every 340 or 700 decaAut, respectively.
Gods with fast piety decay (lose 1 piety roughly every 340 turns):
- Beogh
- Dithmenos
- Jiyva
- Kikubaaqudgha
- Lugonu
- Makhleb
- Okawaru
- Qazlal
- Sif Muna
- Trog
- Vehumet
- The Wu Jian Council
- Zin
Gods with slow piety decay (lose 1 piety roughly every 700 turns):
Uskayaw has extremely fast piety gain and decay, while Ignis has none. Ashenzari, Ru, Xom, and Yredelemnul have their own unique piety systems, which do not use the normal decay function. And Gozag doesn't use piety at all (caring only about gold).
Estimating Piety
You can estimate your piety by looking at the Favour description on your religion screen (command ^).
| Favour | Piety |
|---|---|
| Beneath notice | 5 or less |
| Noncommittal | 6+ |
| Noted your presence | 21+ |
| Most pleased | 41+ |
| Rising star | 71+ |
| Shining star | 101+ |
| Prized avatar | 131+ |
Xom
Followers of Xom get different descriptions and a randomised piety system - see the article for details.
