Newbie stuff

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Welcome to the Priests Guild. This is a little guide based on the most common questions that get asked (to do with the guild that is, not 'can you ward this?', 'can you res me?' or 'can you passage me?'). If you have a common question you get asked which isn't here, feel free to add it to this page!

How do I join the Priests guild?

So, you've decided to join the Priests Guild. A most excellent choice...

The first step is to decide which god you want to worship. Each one grants a different set of rituals (although many rituals are common to several or all deities) and requires you to stay in a certain alignment range. If you are too far out of alignment, you will not be to access worshipper-only areas of the temple (which is where the guild teacher normally is) and you will not be able to perform rituals. It's therefore a good idea to set your alignment while you're still in Pumpkin Town! In the Priests room in the Guilds Grove, there is a fountain (representing Pishe) with some beetles floating in it. You can set your alignment by drowning or rescuing beetles (or both: if you drown too many beetles and become more evil than you want to be, you can rescue some to make up for it). Typing "score align" will tell you what your alignment currently is.

  • Pishe is happiest when you're very good or extremely good, though you can only get to "very good" from the fountain. Rescue beetles until it tells you you're as good as you can get there.
  • Gufnork is happiest when you're quite good. Rescuing five or six beetles should get you there.
  • Gapp is happiest when you're just "good". Rescuing two or three beetles should get you there.
  • Sandelfon is happiest when you're neutral. For him, leave the beetles alone.
  • Fish is happiest when you're very slightly evil. For him, you can drown a beetle or leave them alone altogether.
  • Hat is happiest when you're evil. Drowning three or so beetles should get you there.
  • Sek is happiest when you're very or extremely evil (though, as with the other end, you can only get to "very good" from the fountain). Drown beetles until it tells you you're as evil as you can get there.

Affecting your alignment by killing NPCs of the opposite alignment can be -especially for a newbie- a very long and hard process, so it's best to take advantage of the beetle fountain while you can.

Once you have decided which god to worship as set your alignment to something appropriate, you need to find their temple. While the main cities (Ankh-Morpork, Djelibeybi, and Bes Pelargic) all have temples for every god you can worship, you may want to read this brief description of where temples are located. This excellent Discworld maps site should help further.

If you have trouble finding the right temple, and you are in Ankh-Morpork, there's another thing you can do. First, go to the Temple of Small Gods. (From the Drum, go south along Short Street until you get to the intersection with the Street of Small Gods. Then, go east along the Street of Small Gods until you get to the temple--there is a wooden pole with a green note attached to it (a carriage stop) outside.) Once in the temple, find Scoone of Hat. (Go south until you reach the fountain in the atrium, then three rooms east, and he should be in the "western most point of the eastern corridor".) You can then say "help", and then say the name of the god whose temple you want to go to. Scoone, helpful fellow that he is, will then passage you to the temple.

Once in the temple, you must find the god's high altar and 'join' the priests guild. Congratulations, you are now a priest of the deity of your choice! Time to advance skills, learn rituals at the room with the religious instructor and become a famous priest!

Can you give me any starting tips and info?

Your primary skills are those of the faith tree, though the fighting skill tree is important to many priests who want to advance at a reasonable pace.

As you advance your faith skills, you will get a number of rituals (you are taught them automatically when you enter the room with your religious instructor, if you have the skills). To see what rituals you have, type 'rituals'. There is a help file for each of the rituals, simply type 'help <ritual>', e.g. 'help cure light wounds' and note you can also look up information on each of the rituals on the rituals page.

To use the rituals, you use the command 'perform', e.g. 'perform cure light wounds on me', for more help type 'syntax perform'. That is however fairly long to type so most priests use aliases for rituals, type 'help alias' for a detailed explanation on what they are, but as an example, typing 'alias cl perform cure light wounds on $*$' will set up an alias where if you type 'cl me' or ‘cl valkyr’ it will work the same as the example of performing the ritual. For more details and extra functionalities (such as standard arguments), read the helpfile.

How should I rearrange my stats?

This is not something to rush into quickly. Make sure you have read "help rearrange" and "help stats" before you attempt this, as well as asking other players from the same deity for advice. There is no such a thing as the best rearrange for a priest anymore. A rearrange for a Sekkite who wishes to go PK will strongly differ from a rearrange for a Pishite who only wishes to restore and resurrect people.

I would advice you to answer the following questions for yourself, before considering a rearrange:

  • Which rituals do I want to be good at and what skills do they use? (For example, dust devil (*.area) and major shield (de.se) and maybe blight (of.ta))
  • How important is fighting for me, and which fighting skills will I focus on? (Ex. Sword and parry; Mace and block; dagger and dodge)
  • Do I have any other expectations? (Ex. I want a high perception bonus)
  • Now that I have selected a couple of important skills, to what stats do they relate? (examine the skills-stats dependencies)

Now that you have determined which stats are most important for you, you should experiment on the mirror of Acim’s bonus generator with some different rearranges (what happens if I move one point from dex to int?) and pick the one you like best. Note that your stats also affect the rate at which your gp regenerate, and this can be calulated at the same site. Can you really afford that fighting heavy rearrange if it only gives 2 gp back every heartbeat? Do you want the maximum possible 4 gp regeneration and lose out on skills elsewhere?

There! You have now rearranged! Normally you are stuck with this rearrange for the rest of your character’s life. If you would happen to feel the need to make a minor adjustment (one stat point at a time), you should consider visiting one of the Retrophrenologists located in most large cities.

How do I advance my skills?

You can advance your skills in the worshipper area of your temple, also called the vestry. Type ‘info’, or ‘cost faith’ to see what you can advance in your primaries, what you currently have in those skills, and the experience cost to move up one level. You can also type 'cost faith to 50' for example, to see the xp cost of getting your overall faith to 50 from where you are now.

To advance, you can type 'advance faith' or you can advance the subskills by using 'advance faith.rituals.defensive.self', note that you can use the first two letters as a shortcut, ie 'advance fa.ri.de.se' or ‘advance fa.ri.de.se to 100’ or advance fa.ri.de.se by 10’. You can also advance a little of the other skill trees, try typing 'cost fighting', 'cost other' and so on.

What should I advance?

To start with, you will need to advance overall faith (at least up to level 5, when you can advance faith.rituals, then you need 10 faith.rituals to be able to advance faith.rituals.defensive etc.) This can only be done up to level 50 however, at which point you have no choice but to advance the individual subskills shown in the list. In reality, no-one actually advances faith to 50, as you can get going better by advancing the subskills for the rituals you want instead.

As to what particular skills you should advance after or even before this, my advice is to look at what rituals you can get on the gods page, or look on the rituals page to see which you would like to be able to use, then advance the subskill that the rituals you want use.

Note you should try and learn some fighting as quickly as possible, firstly the 10 levels available in the guild, then more off other players. The best practice is to take the fighting exercises in the newbie area. With any luck you can get your blunt, sharp, pierce, parry and dodge to level 5 without any cost!

Also recommended is advancing your adventuring.health in the guild to get more hit points. The 500 or so you start out with can disappear all too quick! The guild will let you advance this skill to level 25.

How can I get money and experience, I can't even kill a cockroach!

First of all don't rush through the newbie area too quickly. I know you are desperate to get into the action but completing all of the guild tasks will equip you with a nice set of basic skills. And don't despair, these are super cockroaches, really, they are, but with your skills from Pumpkin Town everything will get a bit easier. Those skills are cheap there and out on the Disc you have to pay for them with money and XP (eXperience Points).

You must understand that the priests guild is not the most easy guild to start a character off in. We are one of the few unlucky guilds that have no primary skills capable of doing direct damage to an opponent, instead we have to rely on the non-primary fighting skills. The 10 levels of fighting you can learn in the priests guild are probably not going to be enough to start killing anything beyond small rodents; you are going to need to learn more off another player. This is now fairly expensive to do, so you will need to earn some experience.

Without fighting you can get experience by idling and performing rituals. Once you have learnt a bit of fighting (I would recommend to concentrate on one weapon type at first) then you will be able to go out and smite mightily. At this stage, the only rituals which will be a great deal of help to you will be cure light wounds, dust devil and minor shield.

Now that you can get money and experience by killing things, you can go on your merry way, using this to learn more fighting to kill tougher things, or learning faith to get some of the more powerful rituals going (especially major shield).

Why does it say my God's attention is elsewhere?

Performing a ritual is an attempt to get your God(dess) to use some of His/Her power to aid you in something. How convincing you are in your attempt to get your God to do this for you depends on your bonus in the faith skills relevant to that particular ritual. If your God's attention is elsewhere, this means you did not have sufficient faith to convince your God to help you, and that His/Her attention turned to other things (drinking, eating, plotting…). You will need to increase your skills in the future in order to increase your chance to succeed your ritual.

Pray and the burial commands don't seem to do anything, what do they have to do with alignment?

Basically, they will move your alignment back into favour with your god, but how effective they are at it does depend on your faith.rituals.special bonus. Check the alignment section for more details.

What is a square stone/ivory statue/black medallion etc. and what does it do?

These are upgraded versions of the holy symbols which are used in some rituals and are readily available in the temple shops. Any ritual that requires a holy symbol to perform can be performed with one of these as a substitute. Each god has a different one, and they can't be re-consecrated (you can try, but they're "too [deity-specific word] to change"). Another possible substitute, for every god, are charged prayer beads. They can replace a symbol, an amulet and a relic, all at the same time.

  • Pishe: Narrow ivory bracelet (old: small ivory statue)
  • Gufnork: Fluffy ball
  • Gapp: Golden thimble
  • Sandelfon: Square stone
  • Fish: Line of shark teeth (old: ritual fishing rod)
  • Hat: Brass feather
  • Sek: Black metal medallion

Why am I slightly distracted from my prayers?

It's a combination of being out of alignment and/or having low faith.rituals.special. Get into alignment (when in perfect alignment, "score align" will say that your deity is "very happy with you") and you'll stop seeing it, or get more faith.rituals.special and you'll have to be further out of alignment before you get that message.