Godless, great deal or horrible mistake?

[Ruln]

I've seen a lot of debate in game over the merits and demerits of various positive and negative perks Positive perks cost pick points, negative perks give you pick points. In evaluating wether a particular perk is worth having I look at the cost and the benifit. In the case of the godless perk I am excluded from the god quests and thus can not gain the advantage of 20% extra experience in three seperate skills. (Limited of course by the fact that the three gods can not be enemies.

 

The conventional wisdom seems to be that godless is great at lower levels but at higher levels it becomes more and more of a pain as that 20% experience boost is a huge factor in gaining skill levels. Thus a lot of people reset.

 

Thats the downside as I understand it. Now for the upside. Eight PP's. What is that worth? Depends on where you spend them to some extent. First though I want to outline my understanding of PP's. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Total PP's = OA + 5 + negative perks

 

I'm OA 55. I have "I can't dance" & "Godless" as negative peerks These add up to 13 pp's.

 

55+5+13=73

 

If I subtract the five starting PP's this means I have as many PP's as an OA 68 character.

 

How many exps does it take to go from OA55 to OA68?

 

OA55=2,514,027

OA68=6,058,407

 

Meaning these two negative perks have currently gained me ~3.5 million exps of pp's.

 

And as I advance that number will rapidly increase. OA69 is ~400k exps and things continue to escalate rapidly from there.

 

So the question is, are negative perks worth it? In particular is godless since it takes away from me the ability to do god quests and thus reduces the exps I earn in specific skills. Since my primary interest areas are harvest and alchemy this doesn't factor in very much...

 

As the OA levels go up, PP's become more and more hard to come by. Thus their value increases.

 

So is godless worth it? Have I made any mistakes in my summary above?

 

One thing that occurs to me is that waiting to take godless until some fairly high OA level might be a good stratagy... Then you would get the benifit of the extra god related exps for a long time plus the extra eight pp's...

[Daxon]

You'll discover later on in the game that having a higher p/c usually means slower training. Keep that in mind if you ever plan to take it, but I don't advise taking it to begin with.

[The_Pale_Elf]

I personally did not get godless, and I maxed out the manu god quests before ever gaining a manu exp point. I gained 18 levels on the night I finished the last quest, and I'm happy with the exp boost. It was a large price, having to buy and toss a tit serp and tit chain armor, but now I'll always have +20% manu exp. Money comes and goes, but exp is for keeps.

 

As for the pps, I don't know if I miss em or not. I could have +80EMU carry cap. I could have a bit more coordination, and be a better fighter of foxes and rabbits. That would be nice... But it's more of a question for individuals. If you want the bonus 20% exp, you're giving up 8pp AND the cost of the items, (rabbit furs and deer antlers are nothing, but just toss the god a tit serp?). Still, for those of us who feel that exp bonus' are the best thing ever, and don't wanna spend extra pp on reasoning.

[shasso]

If I subtract the five starting PP's this means I have as many PP's as an OA 68 character.

dude, you dont get any free pickpoints, you start with overall 5 so thats where those 5pp come from. When you reset you have 0 pp but also level 0 overall

 

and if you ask me, gods rock. Those +20% in 3 differents will get you more exp in skills AND in overall, whitch will compensate for the 8 pp's and you can still take it at a later time. Blessings are kinda nice also

Edited March 12, 2005 by shasso

[Stormbringer]

I took Godless at about lvl 25, as i didnt realise you could serve 3 gods. i thought it was just one, (must not have read whatever i was supposed to read). So when i weighed it up, it was well worth it. Now i regret it, but i dont want to reset at lvl 41. Just have to live with it i suppose. I can see it getting much more of a burden at later levels though.

 

I like Ruln's mathematical approach. it makes me feel better about taking the perk

[Paladin]

I'm (almost) a pure fighter, and for me Godless would be very bad. If i decided that i won't train anymore, i could take it (along with other neg perks), and it would be a very good boost in PK.

But for a fighter, there are the antisocial and powerhungry perks that are very good - practicaly free PP for me.

[Malaclypse]

I personally don't take too much care of the worthiness of a particular perk. It's just a matter of taste, and on how I want to develop my char, to become an individual. From this point, together with a good background story of your character, this perk can be of great benefit, also I don't have it. (See for example the Omnimodus Ecclesia guild)

 

But yes, the extra experience gained from the gods, will become much more valuable in later levels. And as Pale already mentioned, the rationality cross attribute does the same, not in such a high manner like the gods quests, but it does it for any skill beside fighting AFAIR. If you are going to become a non-fighting char, it's imho definitely worth to take a closer look at the relation of rationality and experience gained.

[swisstest]

The 5 pickpoints you get at the start come from the 750 experience you are given with 3 attack and 3 defense, so they count with your overall experience. However, I agree that the godless perk, while benificial for a low level player can have a negative effect once you reach higher levels. As such, it forces players who wish to gain the benifits of the perk to reset... <_< Just part of the game I suppose.

 

E.S.

[Ruln]

Here's how I did the math to figure out how many PP's I had. I was told by somebody online that you get five "free" ones and it turns out this worked with some screwy math I had in figuring out how many pp's I had. Here's a hopefully accurate breakdown....

 

Basic Attributes (value, pp's spent)

Ph    14 (10)
Coord 20 (16)
Reas   9 (5)
Will  13 (9)
Inst   4 (0)
Vit    5 (1)
----------
     41  pp's spent

Nexus

Human  5
Animal 1
Veg    0
Ino    5
Art    4
Magic  1
-----------
     16  pp's spent

Positive Perks

MM     5
FRegen 3
---------------
      8


Unspent 3
-----------
       3

41+16+8+3 = 68 pp's

I'm OA 55, so I have 13 extra PP's.  These come from...

Godless       8
Can't Daknce  5

 

Now for some whatifs... (Again, please correct me if I have any of these wrong)

 

Spending those eight godless pp's on increasing my rationality four points would have for instance given me 4 extra exp's for every ess I made. In the case of fe this is nearly double. In the case of titanium bars it is about 2% extra. These extra exps are applied to all skills from what I understand though I'm unclear on the formulas for stuff other then alchemy.

 

spending those eight pp's on MM and faast regen would give me the ability to choose my time for combat and regenerate MP & EP at three times the normal rate. As a alchemist/harvester MM also vastly enhances my ability to gain exps since I could go places and harvest things at much lower levels then I would have been able to do otherwise. In conjunction with the 120 harvests per game hour cap this is a big deal.

 

There is no harvest or alch god. Given this fact anyone who's primary interest is in alch & harvest isn't losing much with godless, right?

 

As always please correct me if I've made any mistakes.

 

Currently I'm having trouble understanding the downsides of godless from the point of view of a harvest/alch/explorer character. And I'm not clear that its really a downside for other professions given the steadily increasing price of PP's at higher OA levels. Though PP's are highly variable in value depending on what they are spent on and what is available/desirable at the time. If you decide at OA90 that you really want to make potions after never having done so before and you have a zero vegital nexus... Well you're going to need a huge number of exps to get your nexus up to five.

[Earl]

Spending eight pick points on improving rationality by four is correct, however the 4 rationality will give you 2 extra points per essence but 4 extra exp per harvest.

 

I believe the bonus rationality gives is +Rat/2 for all manu, alch, pot, craft and magic. You get +Rat per harvest. I was told it may be +Rat/3 for a successful attack or defend. I do not know how it effects summoning.

[Ruln]

Hmm, I get 10 exps for each FE, and FE is listed as base of five in the encyclopedia so I'd assumed based on my 11 rationality that alch exp bonus was rationality/2 rounded down...

[Malaclypse]

The formula of RAT/2 is true for producing skills. I'm not sure tho how it behaves with fighting skills and harvesting. Imho for summoning and magic it's the same as with production skills.

 

Currently I'm having trouble understanding the downsides of godless from the point of view of a harvest/alch/explorer character.

If you stick to those two skills only (not counting exploring as a skill), there is imho no downside in taking godless, as there are no gods supporting those skills. For these using godless would be indeed an advantage, as you get 8pp without any detriments, like 'loosing' experience because you won't the extra bonus from the god. This might change, if and alchemy and/or harvesting god gets implemented at some time.

[Azazel]

I believe the bonus rationality gives is +Rat/2 for all manu, alch, pot, craft and magic. You get +Rat per harvest. I was told it may be +Rat/3 for a successful attack or defend. I do not know how it effects summoning.

That is correct. The bonus for Summoning is Ratio/2 (lowered down).