Priest

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Priest
Tier 1 Class
Human Priest Large.png
Class traits
Class trait: GOOD HEALTH GOOD HEALTH
An extra 3 health is gained per level
Class trait: GOOD DRINK GOOD DRINK
Item: Health Potion Health Potions are 100% effective
Class trait: GOOD GOLLY GOOD GOLLY
Physical damage against Trait: Undead Undead is +100%
Suggested Races
Class: Priest Halfling Priest, Class: Priest Orc Priest, Class: Priest Elf Priest
Class Challenges
No challenges
Unlocking
Building: Church Level 1 House Of The Holy

Humble folk of the cloth, Priests are not especially adept at combat. However, they tend to have a remarkably high constitution due to their vegan diets and morning aerobics sessions, which comes in handy when someone has to go deal with a local undead infestation. Stupid undead.

So, what's he about?

Class trait: GOOD HEALTH GOOD HEALTH: A rather large health bonus that rewards you for leveling up. It lets you land melee hits against targets that are higher level than you. If you can kill them, you get bonus XP, which lets you level up and get more health.

Class trait: GOOD DRINK GOOD DRINK: An unrealy strong buff to the healing potion effect, it makes them more than twice as good. Everyone gets 10 health per level and the Priest has extra health per level. Health is what you use to "pay" for melee hits, and your melee damage also goes up with level. That's why this ability rewards you for leveling up, and encourages you to save your health potions for the boss.

Class trait: GOOD GOLLY GOOD GOLLY: This means several things, and has several uses.

It's the biggest buff to damage in the game, but only works against about 25% of enemies. There are undead on every map, and if you have Item: Pepper the Dog Pepper the Dog in your locker you can use it to "mark" a boss as undead if you want to make sure you get to use this against a boss.

If you pick your targets, you can use Class trait: GOOD GOLLY GOOD GOLLY to kill undead above your level and get bonus XP. This is what you should be looking to do most of the time. It is what usually helps you level up.

If you happen to outlevel undead monsters you get first strike against them, and this can mean you can kill some pretty large undead without getting hit back. This can make the abiltiy useful for spellcasters.

Since your base damage goes up with your level, it also rewards you for leveling up.

TAKEN TOGETHER: As can be plainly seen, the "Priest" is all you would expect a stereotypical Fighter to be - a tanky melee guy who melee's stuff and has a lot of health. He wants to get his levels, and can do that by picking his targets. The health and the damage bonus can be used to take out large undead for bonus experience. This also lets you outlevel the other guys, so you can use the other guys as XP powerups in the middle of the boss fight. When you're as huge as you can get - drink all your potions for more hits on the boss. That's the general idea.

HOWEVER: Since all of his abilities are geared towards the late game, and since he has trouble worshipping gods (see section below), the Priest tends to be more about glyph use than melee fighiting than the skillset implies. The Priest needs to level up somehow, and more often than not, glyphs are the only reliable way to do that.

What is he NOT about

What isn't plain to see is that he is the worst possible class in the whole game for fiddling with most gods if you're a beginner. He's a lightning rod for punishments! This often trips up new players - the "Priest" is more of an exorcist, or rather, a fighter who happens to be good against undead. Many players assume that he is supposed to be used to try out gods. Don't! Figure gods out a bit with other characters, they are much more forgiving and easy to use than they would look if you start with a priest.

In detail:

The Glowing Guardian - doesn't like you using potions. He has a few other minor rules, and most characters don't mind not using potions (or even converting potions to please him), but the Priest really, really wants to use his potions. Many folks never touch any gods because their first experience with them was trying Glowing Guardian out with a Priest, it ending horribly, and them concluding the game is way too punishing to even bother trying to figure it out. It isn't, it's just that the Priest is uniquely unsuited to worshiping that guy.

Dracul - would be the best Priest deity ever, the Priest is all about health and refills, and Dracul is all about health and refills. He even hands out damage resistance! Except Dracul doesn't like you drinking health potions and killing undead. And you're the guy who's all about drinking health potions and killing undead. Yeah.

Taurog - Is pretty safe, except the problem is that 2 out of 3 Priest abilities are late game abilities, and the third is quite situational. So the priest really wants to be able to use his glyphs to level up. It's not that it won't work, depending on your race and the difficulty level, it's just that you're shooting yourself in the foot and you don't even realize it.

Binlor Ironshield - would be great because he helps you with resistances and damage, except he punishes you for leveling up by taking away any resistances you might have acquired. And you really want to level up, and you really want some resistances as they make all your health and refils way more valuable. If you don't have any resistances, it's fine, sure, but you really like your resistances an would like to have them.

Mystera Annur - would be a great option for the Priest because you want to use your glyphs to level up and then becaome a huge melee monster with all your potions saved for the late game. The problem is that the by far most common Undead enemies, the ones you're most eager and likely to fight, are Zombie and Wraiths. Of those two the Wight is much easier to tackle - unless you're worshipping Mystera who'll punish you for killing them AND for getting mana burned (which you will if you melee them, and you want to be able to do that). Yeah.

Jehora Jeheyu - he's not particularly bad for Priests, per se, he just doesn't have that much to offer you, and he's a bit tricky to handle for a beginner. Also, he can randomly poison you, and the Priest likes blowing Healing Potions to solve that much less than any other guy out there.

Tikki Tooki - likes guys who have an easy time leveling up and then rewards them with a late game. You're more of a guy with a late game looking for ways to level up. It can work spectacularly well if you pick your targets and play a more spellcastery race for your priest, and the first strike glyph is tepting, but it can also easily be a decision that you come to regret if you're not comfortable with gods yet. Also - his late game can cost you precious health potions.

Then, when you know what these guys don't like, you can (and should) figure out how to use them with "Priests".

Strategy

What priests generally want to do, first and foremost, is get levels. They can get them easily enough by killing higher level undead. This will require glyph use - remember, even if you're the most tanky, fightery guy you still have use for glyphs.

You can use the damage glyphs, and the first strike / slow glyphs, ofc, but you can also make especially good use of other ones, too. IMAWAL bonus experience is very precious to a Priest since he's looking for valuable Undead kills, and it makes them more valuable. ENDISWAL can be pre-cast while you explore, and stackig up a bit of temporary resistance that way can let you get an whole adittional hit in on an enemy. All the glyphs you unlock along with the tier 3 classess are quite handy on priests. This makes the spelcastery races quite good priests, and since the priests are so stacked for late game, their inventory is very likely to be loaded with glyphs all the time.

No priest but the the Halfling can afford to blow potions on leveling up. This means that besides glyphs, and ites, most advanced Priest plans involve gods, and the best ones include the sort of gods who don't like you using potions. If you know your way around gods - go nuts. Carefully. God play with Priests usually boils down to joining an incompatible god after you've done what the god doesn't want you doing - like joinig Dracul mid-fight with the boss, after you've used all your healing potions and don't have any undead left to fight (except possibly the boss). Or moving into another god at the right time.

An important thing: Priests tend to have large health-pools. Items and boons can make them even larger than usual. There are several techniques to leveragingn this. One is to land a hit, and then explore just a tiny bit if it lets you get another hit in. Make sure you fireball the enemy to slow his regeneration, while you're at it. Getting damage resistance does wonders for folks with big health, and makes your potions worth even more.

Once you've got your levels, just throw everything at the boss. Definitelly use the regen-fighting technique outlined above against a boss, if applicable. As far as the master plan goes, it's as simple as they come.

Races

Like the stereotypical RPG Fighters of old, the DD "Priest" is rather single-minded. This ends up producing a strange outcome as every race you pair with him produces a wildly different character. Late-gamers like Humans and Dwarves are a bit redundant with what the priest allready offers, Orcs are more melee oriented than most others, Elves and Gnomes tend to balance his troubles out, Goblins are weird and awkward because any other goblin but the Priest is a great god worshipper, and the Halflings are just broken.

Class: Priest Human Priest

This combination can suffer a bit from the "too much payoff" problem - human bonus comes into play with levels, and most of what the priest does becomes relevant with levels. On the other hand, the end-game is sure to be stable - you're likely to end up fat, with plenty of damage vs. anyone and silly huge damage vs. undead, along with a few cheat-code tier healing potions. Getting there is going to take glyphs, cherry-picking targets and, quite probably, gods.

On the helpful side, the human is not in a rush to convert glyphs, so you can and should play the glyph game - the ability to get first strike or slow enemy monsters is quite handy. Using ENDISWAL to prepare strikes, or IMAWAL to get more out of high-level undead kills can be quite proffitable.

Worshiping a helpful deity, provided you know how to get around the various Priest-specific traps can do wonders for you, too. In case of humans, you would really enjoy being able to make use of Dracul's extra refills - the trick to that is to join Dracul after you've killed all of the undead and used up all your health potions allready. This can mean joining a god in the middle of the fight with the boss.

Class: Priest Dwarf Priest

This combinatio can easily suffer a bit from the "too much payoff" problem - both the priest abilities and the dwarf racial bonus really kick in later on. However, finding suitable undead to kill can let you jumpstart your dwarf career, and once you're a big fat dwarf your healing potions will restore absurd ammounts of total health. In fact, this combination has the highest amount of maximum health from amongst all race-class combinations.

Big health alone, even with 4-5 full restores, might not be enough. You don't really do much damage against non-undead, have no innate spellcasting ability, and are practically the only class who has actual trouble comfortably worshiping a number of gods. On the god front, the fact that you play fine with Earthmother is a big deal, especially since you can move into Dracul after you've killed most of the undead and spent most of your health potions.

Play the glyphs and items to level up - you're not in a rush to convert them. Get the levels, and try to find things that make your end game health worth more - damage resistance and damage. Look for things that restore health, too. If you level up efficiently, you will have low level monsters around to kill in the middle of the boss fight to level you up and refill that way, too.

This combination is also the best to finish the Priest Gold ChallengePriest Gold Challenge The Triad.

Class: Priest Elf Priest

Somewhat unintuitively, the Elven Priest is a very smooth combination. The reason is that the Priest is so melee and late game oriented that having a race that covers spellcasting from early on suddenly makes them nicely rounded. Other races would be well advised to start their priests off as spellcasters too, except for most non-elves that takes using gods, and Priests are terrible at worshiping gods. Which makes Elves incredible priests.

The general idea is that you can convert most glyphs when you find them apart from whatever gives you first strike and your damage glyph of choice. Or any useful combination of glyphs which lets you just dump most others into easy to find mana. Then you combine your effortlessly solid spellcasting and your huge damage vs undead to level up as high as possible. Then you just throw all your health and mana at the boss. It's really very simple.

An Elf Priest also has a bit of an easier time when it comes to worshipping gods simply because he's not so single-mindedly bent on melee, and his spellcasting prowess helps him fight things other than undead. It is a common PQI combination, and while it looks incredibly unsinergistic it really teaches a player to appreciate and recognize a well rounded class/race combo, as opposed to single-mindedly streamlined ones.

Class: Priest Halfling Priest

There are not many class/race combinations as single-mindedly streamlined as this one. Class trait: GOOD DRINK GOOD DRINK is an unreal ability, it only makes any sense because the number of healing potions available to adventurers is somewhat firmly limited to 5, and doesn't go much above that in most circumstances. Halflings can turn any old junk into healing potions. This is in theory, and in practice, not all that far from what cheating would be like if there were such a thing in DD.

It's not god mode, though, as while you'll have enough health refills to put Dracul out of bussiness, you still need to pick your targets, use your glyphs, maybe get your resistances up to make those refills worth more and, and this is important, make sure you don't somehow screw up while worshiping gods. Because all those things you're looking for are most easily found by worshiping gods, and, as is so often the case with Priests, you're the guy most likely to randomly screw it up somehow.

Otherwise, this thing does multiple badges on Vicious Dungeon runs easily, especially in experienced hands. In inexperienced hands, you can still just pick Taurog up, dump most of your glyphs (err, keep some first strike handy), charge at dudes, blow your potions to level up and still end up dropping a boss or two at lower difficulties. Or any difficulty.

Also, the potion friendly items such, the Tri-Sword and the Alchemist Scroll sinergize perfectly with being Halfling Priest, just to make it even stronger.

Class: Priest Gnome Priest

The Class: Priest Gnome Priest makes for a curious case - the gnome is arguably a late game race, and the priest is a late game class. However, the gnome isn't in a rush to convert glyphs, and building a gnome up means getting him a larger mana pool. This is most often achieved through exploration. And the Priest wants to go around looking for glyphs and good Undead targets. What happens is that you end up overexploring a bit, but you have a decent mana pool to help you level the priest up - and you have a rather easy time fighting the undead you happened to scout out.

What it also means is that if preparations are involved, and you know you'll be a gnome, you can easily prep up a decent spellcasting setup, which means you'll be starting out as a decent spellcasting priest and have an easy time leveling up. And if you've built up a mana pool, you can even use mana potions to help you make extra big kills while conserving your precious health potions.

As with the Elven Priest, this is a frequent PQI combination, and this offers a lot of opportunity to practice it. Somewhat similar to the Elf, the Gnome Priest adds an aspect of flexibility and ease when it comes to dealing with melee-unfriendly enemies. It takes a bit more effort to play than the Elf, and is bound to be a bit more glyph oriented, but it's quite worthwhile once you get a hang of it. The flexibility and the ease of prepping up a deadly gnome lets it shine in longer Vicious scenarios where it's stacked end-game inevitably comes into play.

Class: Priest Orc Priest

Class: Priest Orc Priests are a nicely balanced combination. Combining the Orc's increased base damage with the Priest's Class trait: GOOD HEALTH GOOD HEALTH makes them decent melee fighters. The fact that it works great early on makes it especially appealing since the Priests crave a strong early game. Orc like to explore in order to find stuff to convert, and Priests like to explore in order to find Undead to kill, so that sinergizes nicely.


The Orc's increased base damage synergizes well with the Class trait: GOOD GOLLY GOOD GOLLY, too, allowing for undead enemies to be taken out extremely early. Combined with first strike (a Getindare glyph, for example) an Class: Priest Orc Priest can eliminate very high level undead enemies. On that note, don't madly convert ever glyph you find, Burndayraz is always useful to a priest to regen-fight that little bit for an extra hit.


When the signficance of the Orc bonus stats tapering off, all the Priestly goodness starts kicking in, and you usually end up being pleasantly well rounded. Damage resistance is your friend, as is crafty worship of gods which let you follow up on your limited supply of healing potions.


Class: Priest Goblin Priest

Playing a Class: Priest Goblin Priest is awkward, even for experienced users. Especially for experienced goblin users, because so much of good goblin play involves gods. And it's a bit difficult to explain why this is so without delving into gods.

In short - the Priest Health bonus would mean something, but most goblins get that by worshiping a god with an easy to acquire health bonus. The way goblins usually get it also means they get their health up-front, which is how they prefer it, as they have no fighting ability otherwise. They also like both their health and their mana bars getting big and useful, and the Priest only contribtes to the Health plan.

Since Priest are lousy at worshiping the Glowing Guardian, and getting stuff out of Jehora Jeheyu requires giving up potions, being a priest is easily at odds with the best goblin strategies - ones strong enough to ignore your class and just play "a goblin worshiping god X".

However, Goblins do appreciate the big ole healing potions endgame and the damage bonus against the undead. And the priest does appreciate being able to pad out fat Undead kills with experience out of nowhere, as well as occasionally being able to skip a level when there aren't suitable Undead to kill, or when poison would make their life miserable. And Priests love their levels, and Goblins can help them get those levels, but converting glyps for experience isn't such a hot deal for Priests.

The best advice, if you'd like to play Goblin Priests, is to make your life easier with preparations. Grab Magnet:Fireball so that you can start using both your bars right away. The cook up a plan, something like - prep a lockered Keg of Health and Jehora Jeheyu. Being able to slow things right off the bat, along with an affordable health boost, and all the mana boosts you'd like, is likely going to work out.

Gods

As for Gods, God: Glowing Guardian Glowing Guardian is a big no, because he doesn't allow you to exploit your health potions without taking a serious hit to your piety. God: Jehora Jeheyu Jehora Jeheyu is a great god for the Priest to worship thanks to his Boost Health boon. An investment on a single health potion for 25 max health can go a a long way. God: The Earthmother The Earthmother is also not a bad choice, because God boon: Vine Form Vine Form is pretty cheap, and the Earthmother is a great source of piety. Combine this with God boon: Warrior's Pact Warrior's Pact for a large boost to your HP. God: Dracul Dracul could work, if you can get Trait: Sanguine Sanguine up to significant levels. Combined with a decently leveled Trait: Sanguine Sanguine and Class trait: GOOD HEALTH GOOD HEALTH allows you to heal quite a large amount of health. You do get penalized for drink Health Potions, but it's not as bad as the God: Glowing Guardian Glowing Guardian. Alternating between Sanguine and Health Potions will ensure you won't get punished big time.

Items

Obviously, items like the Item: Trisword Trisword and Item: Alchemist Scroll Alchemist Scroll work very well with the Priest, allowing you to get great leverage out of them, thanks to the Priest's natural dependency on Health Potions. Item: Naga Cauldron Naga Cauldron makes potions overheal even when you are not debuffed, giving you 100% HP every time.

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