Alignment and Religion decisions

Reiker

Reiker

Dalayan Adventurer
I'm a min-maxer at heart, I don't like to make decisions without having all the information. I've done the main quest up until the point where you have to start making good / evil decisions, and I don't want to go into this and regret my actions and possibly spending hours to correct them.

I currently play 2 unsworn characters: an iksar shaman and iksar monk. I'm looking for the alignment/religion decision that will gain me the most bonuses and best rewards. I also plan on raiding, and have heard that Pariah/Enthann/Jayla may be my only options if I want to raid... I'm kinda incredulous on this though.

It seems that Jayla/Sivyana would be "easy" to align to, are there some other benefits of the other gods that reward the "harder work"?

Any and all advice on this topic is welcome, as I want to be as well informed as possible before taking any actions on this. Thanks.

Edit: Also remain indecisive on Blackscale vs. Silver Crown vs. Council of Innovation... advice on these would also be helpful.
 
That wiki article mentions being able to get loot from your deity's home plane by turning in tokens. That idea has been scrapped. You'll never be able to acquire loot from your deity's home plane.

The specialization bonus you can receive is 20% for all deities except for Divine Light and Pariah which grant an automatic 15% specialization bonus.

The power of the augment you receive from your deity's quest should be stronger or weaker based on the power of the loot you can't acquire from raiding as a result of pledging to that deity. Nobody knows how much better the stronger augments will be because they haven't received their final rebalance yet. The order of augments from strongest to weakest will probably something like the following:
  • Tarhyl - Giving up ToT and deep FR
  • Shojar - Giving up Plane of Frost
  • Althuna - Giving up City of Mercy
  • Tarhansar - Giving up Plane of Water
  • Marlow - Giving up Plane of Nightmare
  • Sihala - Giving up Plane of Earth
  • Gradalsh - Giving up Plane of Entropy
  • Shiritri - Giving up Plane of Air
  • Sivyana - Giving up Plane of Torment and early FR
  • Enthann - Giving up nothing
  • Malath - Giving up nothing
  • Jayla - Giving up nothing
  • The Divine Light - Giving up nothing
  • Pariah - Giving up nothing
The differences between the strength of a lot of these zones is not very big and the augments will probably end up in three groups:
  • Strong augments: Tarhyl, Shojar
  • Medium augments: Althuna, Tarhansar, Marlow, Sihala, Gradalsh, Shiritri, Sivyana
  • Weak augments: Enthann, Malath, Jayla, The Divine Light, Pariah
Oh, one more thing that needs to be said, if you kill a creature protected by a deity you will never be able to pledge to that deity. Don't raid somewhere if you think you might want to pledge to that deity.

Faction choice doesn't have much impact. You will not be able to join a faction group if your character's alignment is in opposition to the alignment of the faction you are attempting to join:
  • Blackscale: EVIL
  • Silver Crown: LAWFUL
  • Council of Innovation: GOOD
 
I've read the wiki. It's good for information but not for recommendation. Wesell's post was a little more in-depth so I appreciate that.

So I guess the question is... what is more valuable: being able to raid and obtain loot from the gods' raid zones, or the augments themselves? Would someone who wants to perform the best prefer say a Tarhyl augment, or would pledging to say Enthann and having a "weak" augment but being able to raid in "ToT and deep FR" better outfit the character?

Edit: Also, will guilds deny applications based on the deity you swear to? For example, would a guild not accept applicants unable to raid in (example) Plane of Frost?
 
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The only suggestion at the moment, don't swear Tarhyl. Nothing in the game makes up for not being able to get the tarhyl weapons at this point. Nothing. The rest of the itemization holes in ToT are slowly being filled in with new content, but nothing replaces the weapons for most classes.
 
Could the tarhyl augs be made to rule so much that they would be worth forsaking all the ToT loot including the ToT epics? Like, having an "aura of the eternal" type benefit on the aug? That would be dreamy!!
 
Since you ask, the server rumor is only one toon has completed the Tarhyl augment. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is true. There are, however, a crap ton of Jayla/Enthann pledged toons in later raiding that I've noticed. Naturally, this is anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth.
 
I don't see why more deities wouldnt take a higher hit zonewise, I mean there's plenty of lorewise Shojar-aligned NPCs that could make up for it atm - despite no aug being released obviously.
 
Boehm said:
There are, however, a crap ton of Jayla/Enthann pledged toons in later raiding
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In your opinion is this because Jayla/Enthann is the most "intelligent" decision to make if you were going to raid but still wanted deity bonuses or because it is "easy"? I would always put in extra effort if it means my characters perform better however I don't want to get to a point where I'm like "shit, I wish I hadn't done that."
 
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Reiker said:
In your opinion is this because Jayla/Enthann is the most "intelligent" decision to make if you were going to raid but still wanted deity bonuses or because it is "easy"? I would always put in extra effort if it means my characters perform better however I don't want to get to a point where I'm like "shit, I wish I hadn't done that."
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IMO this isn't the "inteligent" way, this are people who mindlsessly killed everywhere and are now stuck with a terrible aug.

The intelligent way is to look at your alignment/heartland faction, pick a deity with a good aug (those Wessel listed as Medium + Shojar), pledge to that god and never ever kill any of his followers.

This way you miss out on one of ~5 raid zones on the same tier, know early where you want to end, alignment wise, AND get a non-terrible aug that will stay with you forever.
 
Nwaij said:
IMO this isn't the "inteligent" way, this are people who mindlsessly killed everywhere and are now stuck with a terrible aug.

The intelligent way is to look at your alignment/heartland faction, pick a deity with a good aug (those Wessel listed as Medium + Shojar), pledge to that god and never ever kill any of his followers.

This way you miss out on one of ~5 raid zones on the same tier, know early where you want to end, alignment wise, AND get a non-terrible aug that will stay with you forever.
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Okay... back to the original question then. Which of the medium aug deities should I align to? Should I go Shojar or is Plane of Frost too valuable to give up. If the latter, which "given up plane" to "aug power" ratio is the best?
 
Reiker said:
Okay... back to the original question then. Which of the medium aug deities should I align to? Should I go Shojar or is Plane of Frost too valuable to give up. If the latter, which "given up plane" to "aug power" ratio is the best?
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Doesn't really matter there, there is such a minimal difference in the various augs that you are better off selecting on the basis of things like "what clickies would I miss out on".

Also I would highly recommend going to alignment extremes, and ignoring any deity that is not at an extreme. It will make your quest choices way easier, and you won't suffer any for it. I.e burn the dumpster full of puppies or toss them beef jerky questing style.
 
Reiker said:
In your opinion is this because Jayla/Enthann is the most "intelligent" decision to make if you were going to raid but still wanted deity bonuses or because it is "easy"? I would always put in extra effort if it means my characters perform better however I don't want to get to a point where I'm like "shit, I wish I hadn't done that."
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I'm not a min/maxer so I think you are spending way too much time worrying about this. That said most people who I've spoken too about it say they chose jayla/enthann so they can have an aug and raid all zones.

Neutral also isn't hard, but requires some balancing since you will get +- hits doing various questlines. So you just need to keep an eye out for opposite hits. "Easy" for iksars would probably be Marlow and choosing silver crown. There is a lot of t5 content and you won't miss much loot wise. That said none of the @ T5ish dieties is going to hurt you. Choosing Shojar or Tarhyl would be a big mistake that might make you switch pariah in my opinion.

edit: yeah what aisling said as well. Also, what I said on Shojar is conditional on your guild situation. Cinn's suggestion on gradalsh is a really good one as well.
 
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Some of the problems I should note with keeping neutral is both hits varying in size, and having no way of knowing (unless you've been keeping notes) which side of neutral you're currently closer to. It should be obvious how that can become problematic, and how simply choosing something like lawful evil (extremely obvious choices in most cases) will avoid that problem altogether.
 
thats somewhat true aisling but alignment is a continuum and neutral is more than one unit wide.

Also, there are some quests/options that will make you more neutral, regardless of what faction you begin with, although they are mostly limited to the aug quests of deities who have neutral as a portion of their alignment.
 
Personally, I'd recommend going althuna or marlow since paladin's and sk's get these deities from start and dont get to choose. The augs are decent and most guilds have one of both classes. Ie, no matter what guild you end up in you wont be the only one who cannot raid that zone.

also I'd expect both of these augs to remain pretty much exactly on tier with each others, since giving paladins or sk's a superior aug would be unbalancing.

As for Silvercrown, Blackscale or COI: if you go with either marlow or althuna I'd recommend going SilverCrown. They probably have the most boring quests (long annoying kill greenies to get faction quests), but getting a perfect order alignment will prove most difficult, and with sc you get that (ie will help you reach a 20% deity alignment).
 
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Boehm said:
Since you ask, the server rumor is only one toon has completed the Tarhyl augment. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is true. There are, however, a crap ton of Jayla/Enthann pledged toons in later raiding that I've noticed. Naturally, this is anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth.
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Sateru completed it. He's the only one.
 
robopirateninja said:
thats somewhat true aisling but alignment is a continuum and neutral is more than one unit wide.

Also, there are some quests/options that will make you more neutral, regardless of what faction you begin with, although they are mostly limited to the aug quests of deities who have neutral as a portion of their alignment.
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Oh I know, that. However you're still flying blind, and to a large extent relying on memory over quests that may take several months to complete. Right now there are a bunch of little hits floating around, they are finite though.

The last part I was not aware of. I was under the impression neutral wasn't assigned a point value, and good and evil, law and chaos were.
 
The deity aug quests for the neutral dietys (excluding enthann) figure out which side you are leaning to more, and adjust you in the right direction, after all in doing the diety quest you MUST be doing your deitys work.
 
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