Vehumet

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

"Let it end in hellfire!"

Vehumet is a god of the destructive powers of magic. Followers will gain divine assistance in commanding the hermetic arts, and the most favoured stand to gain access to some of the fearsome spells in Vehumet's library. One's devotion to Vehumet can be proven by the causing of as much carnage and destruction as possible. Worshippers of Vehumet will quickly be able to recover their magical energy upon killing beings. As they gain favour, they will also gain enhancements to their destructive spells — first assistance in casting such spells and then increased range for conjurations. Vehumet will offer followers the knowledge of increasingly powerful destructive spells as they gain piety. Vehumet likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings and you destroy nonliving beings.

Restrictions

• Djinn's unusual approach to magic renders them unable to worship Vehumet.
• Demigods may not worship Vehumet (or any other deity).

Appreciates

• You killing monsters (living, demonic, holy, nonliving, and undead).

Deprecates

• Inactivity: You lose 1 piety per 340 turns, on average (1/17 chance every 20 turns).
• Abandonment.

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Sorcerer's Apprentice"

• No new abilities.

Piety level *: "Scholar of Destruction"

• Gain power from killing - When you kill a monster, you have a piety-dependent chance of recovering an average of (HD/4) MP. Specifically, you have a (piety-30)/piety% chance of healing 1d(HD/2) MP. HD is the hit dice of the monster killed. At max piety, you have an 85% chance. (Passive)

Piety level **: "Caster of Ruination"

• No new abilities.

Piety level ***: "Traumaturge"

• Aid to destructive magic - Your chance of miscasting destructive spells is significantly, roughly equal to having 2 stacks of wizardry.

Specifically, your raw spell success rate is multiplied by x66.6%. Generally, your actual failure rates will be smaller than (previous_fail% * .666) at any practical failure rate. Note that this bonus is not considered wizardry, so having wizardry x3 is not the same as having the Vehumet bonus and wizardry x1. Instead, the Vehumet bonus and wizardry multiplicatively stack.

Piety level ****: "Battlemage"

• Range increase for destructive magic - The range of destructive spells is increased by 1 tile. (Exceptions: Irradiate, Static Discharge, Arcjolt, Sticky Flame, Freeze, Frozen Ramparts, Hailstorm.) (Passive)

Piety level *****: "Warlock"

• No new abilities.

Piety level ******: "Luminary of Lethal Lore"

• No new abilities.

Destructive spells

Vehumet's "Destructive spells" include all Conjurations spells, plus spells with the spflag::destructive flag:

• Airstrike
• Eringya's Noxious Bog
• Freeze
• Frozen Ramparts
• Ignite Poison
• Ignition
• Inner Flame
• Kindle Blastsparks
• Lee's Rapid Deconstruction
• Maxwell's Capacitive Coupling
• Olgreb's Toxic Radiance
• Ozocubu's Refrigeration
• Plasma Beam
• Poisonous Vapours
• Polar Vortex
• Sandblast
• Scorch
• Shatter
• Yara's Violent Unravelling

Gifts

Spells. If you are above the first piety breakpoint and eligible for a gift, there is chance that Vehumet will offer you the knowledge of a Destructive spell. Vehumet will offer up to 15 spells:

Gift	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13-15
Spell levels	1	1-2	2-3	3-4	3-5	4-7	4-7	5-7	5-7	5-7	5-7	6-8	8-9

The first gift will always happen at * piety. Once a new gift is offered, you lose access to the previous gift. The last three spells, which are all level 8-9, are all offered at once, and will always be available so long as you continue to worship Vehumet. Vehumet will not gift spells that are already in your library and will attempt not to gift spells that had been previous gifts.

Gifts will tend to correlate with your trained elemental skills. Investing more into specific elemental skills (Fire, Ice, Earth, Air) increases the chance of a spell of said skill. Each school starts at 100 "weight", and every skill level adds 10 to it; the relative likelihood of a specific element is (their weight / total weight). For example, if you have 10 skill in Fire Magic and 0 in other schools, Fire Magic will be twice as likely, and the others are 66% as likely.

Gift Breakpoints

Vehumet gives spells at the following points, assuming you have gifts left:

• Gift #1: Always gift at 30 (1*) piety
• Gifts #2-5: Always gift by 53, 71, 89, 107 piety, respectively. These may be given a little earlier than this.
• Gifts #6-15: At ≥ 120 (5*) piety, uses the gift timeout system, for timeout = 28 + (2d30)/2. When timeout = 0, there's a 5% chance to get a gift whenever you gain piety.
  • The final four gifts (#12-15) can only be given at 6* piety.

There is a cooldown of 98 + 2d50 turns between gifts. If you'd reach a gift threshold during the cooldown, you don't get the gift. For gifts #2-5, you'll just get the gift the next time you gain piety. However, this cooldown could theoretically matter for the 5* -based gifts, since you'd need to roll the 5% chance again.

Punishments

Vehumet does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments upon disloyal followers! Those that anger Vehumet find destruction amply heaped upon them. Novices are struck by flame and frost; archmages by crystal spears and firestorms. Their own conjurations, too, are wont to misfire at the worst possible moments. Vehumet's wrath lasts for a relatively short duration.

Those who abandon Vehumet are periodically bombarded with a wide range of harmful Conjurations; various spells of a spell level between 1 + XL/5 and 1 + XL/3 are cast on you.

Vehumet also has a 5% chance to punish you whenever you cast a destructive spell. The spell still succeeds, but you get a miscast effect anyway.

Strategy

Vehumet offers a nearly guaranteed "engine", or way to kill things, up through Zot:5. However, without any active abilities, Vehumet is worse in emergency situations. In a way, you aren't worshipping Vehumet; think of your spells as the actual god.

The curated spell gifts, starting from 1* of piety, ensure some method to kill those pesky orbs of fire (and just about everything else). Two free ranks of wizardry help get your powerful spells online faster. It makes level 9 spells (more) reasonable to cast in a 3-rune game. And the +1 range is helpful for certain spells. All this comes with zero Invocations investment. When combined with the wizardry, worshippers can afford to invest more into defensive skills, or even hybridize.

Whether "having spells as a god" is a good thing is up to you, but it does come with a few downsides. Without active abilities, you have less ways to deal with a dangerous situation. In addition, Vehumet is one of the weaker gods for the early game. For spellcaster backgrounds, the first few spell gifts generally won't be much of an improvement compared to your own spells. Characters new to spellcasting have to take time to train up magic, which might not be all that powerful by the time you hit 1* or even 3*. Furthermore, there are ways to get an "engine" without taking up the god slot.

Overall, using Vehumet is not as simple as it may seem. Your spells may be strong, but good general play is still necessary to make up for a lack of actives.

Tips & Tricks

• The MP refund is fairly weak early on, but really shines with higher-level AOE spells that take out multiple enemies at once. Vehumet doesn't even require you to use spells; bashing them to death with a magical staff or firing a wand works just as well.
• Since Vehumet will try to gift spells which you haven't yet seen (picking up a book will mark all spells therein as "seen"), it may be worth buying early spell books from magic schools you don't want.
• Vehumet is one of the few gods you can abandon while keeping permanent benefits granted via worship (spells learned via direct gift).
  • Vehumet is a decent god for the extended game, thanks to the strong MP regen, but a god with useful active abilities may be preferred. For example, The Shining One provides active abilities and both HP and MP restoration when killing evil monsters (which make up most of the extended game monster lists).
  • Vehumet is actually one of the stronger Ziggurat gods, as the sheer mass of enemies you'll be killing provides a massive amount of MP.

History

• Prior to 0.31, Vehumet's spell failure reduction would only stack with 1 level of wizardry.
• In 0.26, Vehumet's spell gifts were widened in level range.
• Prior to 0.16, Vehumet tried not to gift spells that could cause antitraining (Fire/Ice, Air/Earth).
• Vehumet underwent a complete overhaul in 0.12, dropping summoning support, MP cost reduction, and book gifts, instead gifting destructive spells directly. For information about Vehumet prior to 0.12, see this revision.