SoulEvans: It seems it were just my first few runs that had no worms. I'm seeing worms in most runs now and since the temple breaking changes were reverted it makes it much easier to get angry gods. Its possible that breaking worm crystals affects future runs or something.
msfrog: For me it is not THAT often to have worms. Sometimes I find their tunnels, but not the actual worm. But when they spawn an angry god it is just annoying. You hardly have any chance against them, unless you have very good wands and / or are lucky enough that they get stuck somewhere.
I find worms every level, at least I see the earthquakes generated by worms nearby. I've started waiting for them to get far away before taking the portal, unsure if it helps.
You can usually outrun the gods, but fleeing into the snow area or the base is very dangerous. A little invisibium goes a long way to slip past the mobs and the god will get sidetracked fighting them. But you don't always have invisibium and theres a good chance it will get nerfed at some point anyways.. Teleportium in the temple is not advised, it takes you to the previous level more often than not.
SoulEvans: Same as what I saw. I did find a full health regeneration in the dark area in between last time I explored it, and theres more tunnels in the dark area than I remember being there. Unsure if it was changed or just my memory being bad.
msfrog: As I stated earlier, the dark area seems to be slightly different in every run. But it always contains only 2 HP orbs and a healing item, no more. If there are more tunnels, they are just dead ends.
Might just be that I haven't explored the dark area that often but that was my first time seeing a regeneration outside of the temple.
SoulEvans: Might just have to get used to playing with the starting wand =/
msfrog: This doesn't deal enough damage in later levels...
Its been working wonders for me so far: Clear the mines without shooting enemies (double gold kills) if theres no wands and with any enemy luck I'll have enough gold for the next two shops. If I do get a decent wand, just play like normal. Just been very frustrated taking it slow just to die to nonsense like angry gods and playing fast and loose has done wonders for my mindset. For example, just found out ice field is a god tier early game spell since the majority of early enemies can be perma stunlocked with it, letting you set up pacifist kills easy.
SoulEvans: Edit: Also started seeing enemies spawn with wands lately (not just picking them up). I assume they are player ghosts as I am 95% sure that a wand they had could only have been my old wand (saw blade, saw and cement seems unlikely to generate randomly).
msfrog: Hm, I didn't notice this yet. Whenever I found an enemy with a wand, there was an empty "altar" nearby. But wands can also spawn without that altar, e.g. from chests.
I've seen them maybe every 2nd or 3rd run (I tend to explore a ton). They look just like the player sprite, but a darker pallet and just float. They always have a wand and theres usually no empty pedestal nearby. Even when there is, you can identify the pedestal since it will bleed when it's wand is picked up by the player. If its a potion, the liquid will be nearby in plentiful amounts.
