Incidentally I have no problem with stomafilla proving infinite food in the game. It does so in a slightly inconvenient way (bloated status isn't good) and in the later game one can have infinite food from ratlings anyway. The game is clearly designed around having an early game food clock and a late game corruption clock, and the balance of these works quite well at the moment.

Herbs no longer are accepted as long-term sacrifices.

I'm undecided on this one. Early game, you can get more than 1 precrown if you really want to, but the second and third precrowns become really tedious. Frankly, it's already tedious enough that I never get precrowned at all, as it stands. And more than three precrowns is hardly possible unless you want to give up the pyramid for it.

Also, if you get an altar on, say, PC:5 you can do the same thing more efficiently I think?

Late game, you can gain piety much faster by casino gambling and saccing gold.

@adom-admin: Hot sugar, that was fast! Also, it really is amazing to have you working on the game again :D I'm looking forward to all the changes this month will bring!

Still doesn't completely solve the issue, as herbs can still be sold.

Herbs aren't worth very much to sell. That's a pretty minor consideration IMHO. There's much easier ways to generate gold.

I'm very pleased thanks guys.

Sacrifice the herbs, then get to level 17 inside the pyramid. :D

Also shopkeepers have gold limits, so it's all okay.

A great improvement. Curious, I've never had Waldenbrook run out.
We all know there's a much better source of unlimited gold anyway, that only last a few game turns.
Well, and some stunning.

And in just 26 minutes after the suggestion. Wow. Well done.

well, thats the end of multiple precrowns.

I've gotten multiple precrowns from just live sacrifices before. Generally lawful altar in cavern, of course...

But that's a different problem. The issue was about sacrificing. Please submit a new issue.

I'm fine with how it is, as JellySlayer pointed out, herbs aren't worth much gold.

Yep. And there's really no other use for sacrificing stomafillia (since for a crowning or a first precrowning, it's easier just to live-sacrifice than to set up an herb farm).

So the net effect is to take out one aspect of the game, that probably only a small minority of players bothered with, that didn't unbalance the game (since precrowns are, on the whole, not a great bet -- the likelihood of getting a really useless artifact already balanced them out). It's not as though a stomafillia farm guarantees you Preserver, Protector, and Nature's Companion. I think that for the one game in a hundred that a player who bothers with that effort gets that level of reward, the other 99 games are plenty of balance.

I hope TB doesn't continue to use "game balance" as a rationale to, essentially, enforce the preferred challenge games of a small number of players. It hardly seems necessary to "balance" Adom by making it harder.

That hour and a half I spent farming herbs for my obligatory early game crowning was always so magical to me. How will I cope now that my deity shall no longer be satisfied by weeds and grasses, and I have to sacrifice actual valuables? It will ruin the game of ADOM forever

Sorry for nitpicking, but I think that setting up a herb farm often used to be easier and faster than live-saccing for crowning. The secret is that the big room is one the worst places for a herb farm - the guidebook can give you quite the wrong idea. Other levels are much easier and less work to pacify, and you only need one square of the right type. Live saccing may be faster if you find an altar on a lucky location, such as near a bee hive or on a cavernous level, but only then.

But I mostly agree with the rest of your post. If someone wants to spend an hour pressing w5,,,w5,,, to get the black tome and the scorched spear.. I don't really see the harm.

It's not just precrowns, it's also essentially unlimited prayers for healing, power, satiation etc. Since other sources of easily abusable piety are already restricted the herbs stood out as a sore thumb in the game.

There's still one method to get cheap huge piety without generating any artifacts. It's called cross-aligned prayer.