Alignment

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To be able to use the abilities given to you by your god, you need to remain within your given alignment. Being near the edge of alignment will make performing rituals harder, and being out of alignment will make performing rituals impossible. You will also be unable to enter the temple vestry to advance or get back rituals after death if you are out of alignment. The first warning that you're getting out of alignment is when "score align" says your deity is "pleased" with you (as opposed to "very happy"). At a certain point after that, you'll start seeing the message that it's more difficult to perform rituals "because you can barely feel the presence of [deity]". With lower levels of faith.rituals.special, you'll also see messages that you "find yourself slightly distracted from your prayers" or "find it hard to keep [deity] in your thoughts as you pray" while praying when you're starting to get out of alignment. The three main ways to remain in alignment are pray, the ritual burial commands, and by killing npcs of an appropriate alignment.

Killing things

If you are trying to keep an evil alignment, good things to kill are priests of good alignment, like Althea. Easy pickings for a youngster are small rodents and rabbits on the roads surrounding Ankh-Morpork. To try to keep a good alignment, the best places to kill things are areas such as the Gloomy forest and most places where you get attacked on sight. Easy targets include ravens on the roads and fields outside Ankh-Morpork, and crabs on the beaches around the Circle Sea. Killing atheists in the TOSG is good for every alignment. Please do NOT kill shopkeeper priests, this is most inconvenient and even illegal. The alignment of the NPC you may be killing can be found in a number of ways. Firstly, the rituals See Alignment and Detect Alignment will tell you the alignment of all in the room, or a single NPC respectively. You can also check the List of NPC Alignments, although this is far from complete.

Alternatives to Detect/See Alignment

The light ritual can give some indication of alignment for those who do not have the detect alignment ritual. When performed upon the target, they give off a certain colour light which can give a rough indication of what range they belong to.

  • Violet - Really good (thirty-one to fifty degrees good).
  • Lilac - Rather good (fifteen to twenty-nine degrees good).
  • Blue - Fairly good (five to thirteen degrees good).
  • Cyan - Somewhat good (two to four degrees good).
  • Green - Slightly good, neutral, or slightly evil (up to one degree good or evil).
  • Yellow - Somewhat evil (two to five degrees evil).
  • Orange - Fairly evil (six to fourteen degrees evil).
  • Red - Rather evil (fifteen to twenty-nine degrees evil).
  • Crimson - Really evil (thirty to forty-three degrees evil).

Also, the red-hilted daggers available in the Sandelfon temple shop will show a target's alignment when used to attack them (if they are significantly different from neutral), in the form of a colored flame. The flame doesn't necessarily appear with every successful attack--it seems to be related to damage dealt. The colour of the flame shows whether they're good or evil and the intensity shows how good or evil they are. While there are some gaps in the scale, here's a rough idea of what the intensities mean:

  • A jet of white flame: 16 to 50 degrees good.
  • A gout of white flame: 5 to 11 degrees good.
  • A flicker of white flame: 2 to 4 degrees good.
  • Nothing: 1 degree good to 1 degree evil
  • A flicker of black flame: 2 to 4 degrees evil.
  • A gout of black flame: 6 to 15 degrees evil.
  • A jet of black flame: 20 to 47 degrees evil.

Praying and burial commands

Pray and the burial commands affect your alignment directly, moving it towards your deity's ideal alignment. How good they are at moving your alignment is dependent on what skill you have in the faith.rituals.special skill, and can be very efficient at changing the alignment with a good bonus.

Pray seems to be more effective when you are far out of alignment than when you are close, while the burial commands seem to be fairly effective no matter what your alignment is.

Someone else--a follower or priest of the same deity--can pray for you to help you move your alignment.

Newbie coffers

Putting priestly things in newbie coffers used to be a way to change your alignment, but it no longer seems to work after certain holy items getting a price cut. This has not, however, been extensively tested.


Shattering relics

Another way of changing your alignment is by shattering holy relics; this generally moves you away from the alignment of the deity whose relic you shattered and towards that of your own deity. The alignment shift varies somewhat (seeming to have a random factor of some kind).

  • Pishe relics: move you about 3-5 degrees, around 4 degrees on average.
  • Gufnork relics: move you about 2 degrees.
  • Gapp relics: move you about 1-2 degrees.
  • Sandelfon relics: move you about half a degree on average.
  • Fish relics: move you about a degree (maybe a little less).
  • Hat relics: move you about 1-3 degrees, around 2 degrees on average.
  • Sek relics: move you about 2-5 degrees, around 3 degrees on average.

Shattering a relic seems to be an act that isn't inherently good or evil, but rather one that depends on what your own deity's ideal alignment is. For example, Sekkites who shatter Gufnorkian relics will get more evil, while Pishites who shatter Gufnorkian relics will get more good if they're under perfect alignment (since, despite Gufnork being good, Gufnork is still more evil than Pishe).

Though shattering relics can get you out of alignment (if shattering the relic gives you more of an alignment shift than you actually needed), it seems to be difficult or impossible to get too far out of alignment that way. If you're too good for your deity, shattering the relic of one who's more evil than yours will not make you even more good and bring you further out of alignment--it will simply have no effect. One possibility is that you don't get the alignment shift if your own deity's ideal alignment is between your own current alignment and the ideal alignment of the deity whose relic you're shattering. (I.e: for a Pishite (ideal alignment 25-26 good) who's 27 degrees good, shattering a relic of any type except Pishite would have no effect, since 25-26 good is between 27 good and any other god's ideal alignment.)

In sum, assuming all this is right: if you're too good for your deity, shatter relics of deities who are more good-aligned than yours. If you're too evil, shatter relics of deities who are more evil-aligned than yours.

Shattering a relic of your own deity is a bad idea, as it will make them angry with you and you'll be unable to perform rituals for an unknown period of time.

Things that may (or may not) make a small difference:

  • How far out of alignment you are (relic-shattering may be slightly more effective when you're further out of alignment).
  • Your fa.ri.sp bonus (relic-shattering may be slightly more effective with a high bonus)

Supporting research.

Other, more restrictive methods

  • Performing Resurrect makes you more good, by about a degree.
  • Certain quests change your alignment, though obviously this a one-time-only thing. For at least some of these, there are both good and evil options for completing the quest (which may not be mentioned on quest solution pages).
  • If you're still in Pumpkin Town, you can drown or rescue beetles in the priests' guild hut to make yourself up to about 25 degrees good or evil. (See here.)

Burning things in Sek's fire pit

Burning things in the fire pit in Sek's temple in Djelibeybi (northwest part of the main hall) has a small effect on alignment, appearing to make someone about 1/40 of a degree more evil per object. The syntax for this is "burn <object> in {pit|fire pit|firepit}".

It appears that all edible items may be burnt: this includes paper, most body parts, fluff, and food.

It is possible to go significantly past ideal Sekkite alignment this way.

(This has been tested with a Sekkite character burning cigarette paper, cabbages, and various human body parts. It's unknown whether the alignment shift is the same for all priesthoods.)

Putting fluff on Gufnork's altar

Putting fluffs (from the ritual Summon Fluff) on Gufnork's low altar either makes you more good (up to about 5 degrees good, it appears) or moves you towards Gufnork's ideal alignment. It also replenishes some of your health. This probably works for all fluffy things, not just fluffs.

Current research:

  • Using sizeable balls of fluff (3/9 lb each), starting at 2 good/barely good, and detecting alignment after every ten:
    • After 10, 20 fluffs on altar: 3 good/good
    • After 30, 40 fluffs on altar: 4 good/good
    • After 50, 60, 70, 80 fluffs on altar: 5 good/good (Gufnork pleased)

...suggesting that with sizeable balls of fluff, it takes around 20 to move you one degree in alignment, that you can get up to 5 good this way, and that you can't get into perfect Gufnorkian alignment this way--at least not from the "too evil" side of things.

Using Sarilak

Using a Sarilak--a heavy-sword that takes a hundred levels in fi.me.heavy-sword to hold--will make you more evil. Just holding it doesn't seem to have any effect: holding it for over two hours without killing anything had no detectable effect on alignment of a test character (fa.ri.sp of 5/26, starting and ending neutral). It's possible that higher skills give a different result, though, or that starting alignment has something to do with it.

  • Killing nothing but neutral npcs (rats, cockroaches, pigeons, crows, dogs, beggars, servants, men, women, and children in Ankh-Morpork) took a test character from neutral to 8 evil after about an hour--after that alignment appeared to fluctuate from around 7-9 evil. This seemed to be the ceiling for killing neutral things.
  • Killing nothing but rabbits (10 good) and thrushes/redwings/blackbirds (9 good), then nothing but rabbits for a few hours after that got the same character to 48 evil and counting.

(Comparison with killing the same types of things using a regular weapon to follow at some later point.)

Note that if you are at all good, Sarilak will jump out of your hands, landing on the ground, as soon as you start fighting.