This is a more powerful brand though, so it seems more significant if you happen to be fighting demons.įun spell, very useful, I should have used it instead of dying. I never got to level 42 but I think my Smite Evil comments mostly apply. Very powerful spell and helps make priests feel unique. I know that for certain particular high dice weapons or artifacts this is potentially significant but - like I say - quite niche? By the time I got the book, every weapon I would consider using had multiple slays or brands there were a few evil monsters who would resist those elements or not apply to those slays and in that case this was a slight improvement - but not huge. Most of the time characters have at least one or two pieces of non-artifact gear with low plusses (possibly due to acid damage) so this spell is great for topping things back up. So where it's really useful is enchanting stacks of arrows - this is a major convenience but feels 'odd' - not quite in theme for a priest, or at least not really in theme with the other spell selection.

It comes so late that by the time you get it, you are almost certainly wielding and artifact or one of the better ego weapons and it's fairly unlikely you can enchant them much. Note - this is the only book with spells written not in the order of spell level. Great utility, seems slightly out of theme? Saves you hoarding restore life levels potionsĮxpensive and high failure rate means you can't rely on this spell until very late in the game (later than I got). Does give the class a flavour different from mages.Ĭonvenient (and thematic) spell. I still used it lots because it's better than using up consumables. I think I used it once on some ring I wanted to wear.Īwkward spell because it's too high range to be used as a phase door replacement but sufficiently low range that it quite often doesn't get you safe. I read somewhere that this is useless since you never really care about monsters lower level than you - that sounded plausible to me, so I never even tried it Not a bad spell but getting that many undead in LoS at once is a bit niche.Īs per my earlier comments in another thread, this just seems like terrible value for the SP and the risk - getting lots of evil monsters into LoS and waking them all up is a big price to pay unless you are going to do huge damage on them. Maybe if it's damage was higher and scaled a bit? For damage purposes, almost all light-sensitive monsters you care about are evil and OOD is way better value for the SP. Early on when being able to light corridors is really really useful, this is too expensive (at least I had limited SP and didn't want to give up on one more OOD) I just kept a Rod or Wand of light around. Keystone spell throughout the game even though it struggles a bit against high-HP monsters. Getting this early makes the early priest game so much less of a slog. Only used this once or twice when annoyed by fear. Very handy when you don't have an item granting see invis I have no idea if its bonuses are actually useful at typical low levels when melee is a struggle When the character grows up a bit this is great for topping up HP if you are temporarily out of range of your enemy.

Only detecting evil is good flavour for the class.įelt a little weak for the first few (15?) levels, especially compared to plentiful potions. Don't think I ever used it to damage light-sensitive monsters though. I'd be interested to hear thoughts from people who regularly win this game and understand balance better than I do.

Some notes on the priest spell selection in 4.2.1, having just played a priest reasonably successfully although nowhere close to a win.

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