Nobody seems to have mentioned that getting piety with him is very easy, even easier as you continue. You get piety mainly from evil creatures, and how many of them are there!? 65% or more, at least!
He can be helpful for mages too; the ones that have abyssmal STR and CON that not even their spells can compensate for.
"I wanted it to be able to crush you like a mouse! Now it'll only be able to crush you like a... spaniel." - STAR
Still you aren't that strong to go on all by yourself. It is faith that keeps you going, even if you don't pray your god.
Well, okay. It doesn't make you any less winner if you believe in someone other than yourself. That previous comment was to justify why I do what I do.
Stronk is a potent combatant with a terrifying appearance.
Hm, practically everybody seems to go with Tulkas for fighters. I used to do that too, but then I discovered how powerful Melkor's Curse spell is, and fire immunity, and invisibility. And when playing a warrior anyway, the strength and con bonuses aren't really that amazing (that goes for both gods), your stats'll max out anyway. I'd only play Tulkas again if I want a god I hardly want to bother with (ie no prayer). Or maybe with a haftedmaster, since Divine Aim's purely *critical* blows at level 20 would work very well with stunning blows.
If the only reason you haven't tried Melkor is cause he's *evil*, well, yeah, that's your choice. I usually just ignore that point when I'm roleplaying my character and making them a story.
What is there not to love about him? Curse is great for everyone, warriors especially with auto-casting, Udun is fantastic for mages, fire immunity is nothing to sneeze at either. Piety is pretty easy to come by by mid-game, except maybe for a rogue using traps as offence (which would take longer per kill). And if I ever find the stupid ring I'll be wearing it (unless my character *really* needed extra speed or attack power) anyway. Tulkas and Eru (for warriors and mages) are fine, but the advantages just aren't as good in my opinion.
Just my 5c (2c coins went out ages ago! )
There are three things you can never escape in life:
Food, sex and advertising.
Manwe is my favorite of the gods. He gives a lot of nice status effects (Flying, Free Action, +7 Speed) and very useful utility spells (phase, recharge, noxious cloud). Plus, he can raise your luck with Manwe's Blessing, among other things.
The piety isn't really that much of a problem. Just warp around the good creatures; for the most part, they're usually low level enough for you to safely ignore them. The only real menace to piety are the cheerful leprechauns, IMO. They're early enough to not have much piety to spare, but late enough to be able to have a significant impact on piety. Later on, you'll be killing so many major demons that occassional angels won't leave a large dent on your piety.
I'm chiming in for Melkor as well. Recent convert (har har)! I always used to do Tulkas regardless of race/class because he's so easy to keep happy, and everyone likes STR/CON bonuses, even mages. Earth has some good spells too, if you get Pray up there.
However now I believe there's nothing in the world like Melkor for a melee fighter. Once you get Prayer up for auto-curse effects like slow and weakness, it's unbelievable. Even if my guy is surrounded with great Wyrms, with enough speed I can give each of them a round of lovetaps, at which point they're all so cursed and slowed I can finish them off at my leisure. Prior to praying to Melkor, the only dungeons I'd ever managed to "clean out" (killing the guardian and/or going all the way to the bottom) were the Downs, Orc Cave, Mirkwood, Hexalacre (sp), the Maze, the Illusory Castle, Sandworm Lair, and Moria collectively. The first Melkor dude I started added Erebor, Land of Rhun, Halls of the Dead, Dol Guldur, Mordor and Cirith Ungol to this list by himself. As I believe Lord Dimwit's super help guide notes, the auto-curse even works on all uniques. I highly recommend it. This guy I started killed both the Undead Sorceror in the Halls of the Dead and the Necromancer in Dol Guldur without either of them getting an attack off. And hit and runs - you can tag someone a bunch of times to super-curse them, and then bolt away while they trudge after you in slow motion. I love doing this even if it's risky, because why should Smeagol et al. be the only ones who get insult attacks? Combined with the granted invisibility at higher levels and it's like you're fighting the French army: you end up moving 10x as fast as your enemies while they mill around in confusion when they do move, trying to find you even though you're standing right there.
Also - I haven't had any problem with gaining piety even in the beginning of the game (the Orc caves help a lot too), and you can even use Altars of Darkness. It's even themely to worship him if you're playing an undead subclass like vampire or zombie. Good times.
I'm the best at what I do. But what I do isn't very nice.
Just to add to all of the melkor loving (hating?) Melkor for a warrior is great. Once you get your piety, prayer and wisdom (or is it intellegence, this reduces spell fail) up curse is great. Melkor was the god of the best character that I have played. I was doing one of the tough level 45 quest and forgot to pray for a little bit and after I started praying my character started mopping the floor with monsters. The difference was night and day.
Right now I am running a sorcer with Eru, mostly just for the mana and stuff not the god spells. Seems to be ok and the piety gain is easy.
Eru is my daddy for mage types, but that's because I never did like Sorcerors. -50% hp? No thanks, but I do want divination spells and I don't want to pay for them.
With Eru's god quests, max spellpower, and a good +spellpower staff, you get all of the effects in the divination school except *id* for 0 skill points ("enlightenment" you get from See the Music) and you also get a low level manathrust for plinking stuff to death.
That's about 40 skillpoints worth of flexibility. The extra mp is gravy.
I tend to find enough +speed items late game that Manwe isn't all that.
I like Yavanna because she grants a lot of useful spells. It's true that it's hard to really gain any piety at the beginning of the game, but if you don't pray much then you should be able to get through the Barrow-downs without going below -1000 piety. As an alternative, you could start as an atheist and switch to Yavanna when you reach Lorien. Either way, there is a large piety bonus that you can get early in the game that will offset this; read spoilers to find out where to get it.
I also like my sorcerors to follow Melkor solely to get Udun spells. The INT loss is not really a problem because most equipment that a sorceror will choose to wear will often give an INT bonus, thus making it easy to reach max INT, and sorcerors need all the CON they can get.
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