A Primer on Gods
In Death Must Die, everyone has their reasons for wanting to defeat the titular Death. In fact, even other gods have vendettas against Death, and some are looking to even the score. Seeing you as an instrument, they give you aid in the form of blessings, granting you powerful abilities.
Gods and their blessings form a large component of your build. Arguably they are one of the more important aspects, second only to items and equipment.
Each god focuses on a different gameplay aspect, and learning how their blessings effect your gameplay style is an important lesson for all beginning players. Additionally, it’s pretty fun to see how they all interact together. Whether it’s in terms of blessings or conversations about each other, there is a lot to enjoy about the god mechanic.
But how do you unlock them? How many can you take on a run? What do their blessings focus on? Which ones are the best?
This primer aims to give you all the information you need on the gods in Death Must Die.
How to Unlock New Gods
Thankfully for us players, unlocking gods is a very straightforward process. Similarly to characters, they unlock based on accumulated run time. This is time spent in actual runs, not total gameplay time.
You unlock the first goddess, Summer, immediately upon level up. She requires no run time and is usually the first goddess to help out. You unlock the last goddess, Ninh, at 40 minutes of run time. So it does not take too long to unlock them all.
Once they are all unlocked, you’ll start receiving all manner of blessings. Which gods will help your build and which can you ignore until next run?
Let’s take a brief look at them all, and get to know them a little better.
A Look at All The Gods
Before we can answer some of the in depth questions, let’s take a moment to describe each of the gods and what their blessings focus on. This should give you a good general idea of what to expect when they offer you choices upon level up.
Summer – Goddess of Fire
Summer is usually the first goddess to help the heroes, as she is unlocked right out of the gate. During her conversations, she will usually want you to sow as much chaos as you can. She is the sister of winter, and their personalities and motifs are polar opposites.
Her blessings focus on causing the burn status, and somewhat controlling the battlefield with lingering fire trails.
She has some basic synergy with almost every god, due to her passives being geared toward increasing base blessing damage overall. Though there is a special bit of synergy with Krom (due to raw attack speed/damage) and Winter (dual dragon summon shenanigans) that deserves special mention.
Her legendary Fire Dragon summon blessing is a sight to behold.
Krom – God of Conquest
Krom is a violent warmongering god, who wants nothing more than to defeat Death in combat. He unlocks after 5 minutes of run time.
His blessings all center on causing the rupture status and knocking back your enemies. Plenty of his blessings also cause straight damage increases. Interestingly enough, he has no ‘Power’ type blessings.
Krom has some mild synergy with Summer, due to them both offering ways to increase your attack speed. If your character can equip more than one strike, selecting Krom and Summer can be a lot of fun.
One of his legendary blessings, God of War, is a double edged sword, causing you to deal and take more damage. I’m not good enough to use it well, but it is incredible to see how much damage you do with it.
Mort – Daughter of Death
Even Death’s own daughter wants to see him defeated. Mort will unlock after 10 minutes of run time.
Mort is calmer than most the other gods, and tends to see the balance between life and death. She thinks that her father has lost sight of that.
Her blessings tend to emphasize the Cursed status, and status effects in general to a lesser extent. Mort also has two of the more interesting summons, capable of creating a massive army of allies if you get them both.
Mort has some interesting synergy with Time, particularly in regards to summons and manipulating exp. But one of the most new player friendly synergies involves Mort in combination with Lady Justice. If you can equip two Power blessings, Mort’s Fear and Lady Justice’s Radiance gives you a dual aura that melts enemies nearby.
One of her legendary blessings, Malady, causes status effects to spread to enemies if they die while affected. Additionally, it increases the damage of all your statuses. If you’re working towards a status build, consider using Mort’s blessings.
Moirai (The Fates) – Goddesses of Fate
The Moirai, also known as the Fates, are a group of detached goddesses, who claim to have no real agency in this fight against death. They are cold, detached, and somewhat aloof when you interact with them. They unlock after 10 minutes of run time, just like Mort.
Unlock other gods, they always have a chance of appearing, and do not count against your god limit. More on that later.
They only offer passive blessings, and as such are never truly a bad option, and synergize well with everything. Though some of their blessings are better than others.
It isn’t legendary, but one of their blessings increases the amount of projectiles you can shoot, which can make Lorien and Merris downright bananas with the right set up.
Winter – Goddess of Cold
Winter is a slow-paced, patient goddess, who speaks with a chilling echo. She is the sister of Summer, and unlocks after 15 minutes of run time.
Her blessings focus on inflicting both Chill and Frozen on your enemies, as well as boosting all status effects in general. She has a lot of passive blessings, as well as one of the best blessings for item farming in the game.
She has some synergy with Mort if you’re making a status build, but her most fun synergy is summons with Summer. If you can get both of their legendary dragon summons, it’s just a blast watching them fly over the battlefield.
She also has a lot of legendary blessings, including Hoarfrost, which causes enemies to take more damage based on the number of statuses they have. Again, heavily consider Winter if you’re going for a luck based status build.
Leigong – God of Lightning
Leigong is a cocky god, who enjoys doing what he wants when he wants. That includes helping you, after he unlocks after 20 minutes of elapsed run time.
His blessings all center on chance, movement speed, and manipulating cooldowns. Also, it isn’t too outrageous to state that he has the best combination of Strike blessings.
He has incredible synergy with Krom and Summer, due to the increases to attack speed. Which allows for his aforementioned Strikes to occur more often. Or if you decide to focus on casts, he has some useful passives that make each of your casts better.
One of his legendary blessings, Second Bolt, gives each of your casts a chance to trigger a second time. With the right setup, and a good amount of luck, you can create some powerful field clearing effects.
Lady Justice
Lady Justice is a stern goddess, who’s primary goal is to punish death for going back on his oath. She unlocks after 25 minutes of run time.
Her blessings emphasize healing your health, and boosting your defensive capabilities. She also tends to apply the Weakened status on enemies, which is a fairly powerful status effect.
As previously mentioned, she has a lot of synergy with Death, even beyond their dual aura build. Justice can increase life gain from all sources, and Death has plenty of ways to offer healing. Outside of that, due to her strong defensive capabilities, Lady Justice can fit well in most builds.
She is particularly good for new players, due to having some safety net blessings, such as Divine Shield. Also, most of her Power type blessings punishes enemies for attacking you.
One of her legendary blessings, Pandemonium, outright increases the rarity of all the blessings you have equipped.
Time
Time perhaps offers the singular most helpful gameplay ability to the heroes. It is his hourglass that allows us to return from death, and try to defeat Death again and again. He unlocks after 30 minutes of run time.
His blessings focus on experience points and leveling up. He also has a slight focus on increasing the duration of certain blessing types.
Time has great synergy across the board, especially if you get his duration improvement passives. A particular nod needs to be given with Mort, as they both can manipulate experience and combo well.
One legendary, Gem High, gives you an insane powerup after you’ve collected enough experience points. You can continually stack it, and keep the boost going.
Ninh – Goddess of Earth
The goddess Ninh loves shows of strength, and decides to help the heroes since they’ve proven themselves capable of challenging Death. She unlocks after 40 minutes of run time.
Her blessings are interesting to say the least. They heavily center on inflicting the Stun effect, but also increasing the area of your abilities.
She has Strike and Power synergies if you can get her passives that increase their area, meaning Leigong and Mort/Lady Justice. Strangely enough, she does not have a passive that would increase Cast area. I guess the thought process is that it would be too strong with the right cast combination.
She has a unique Dash blessing, which allows you to set up a wall that blocks enemies. However, I find it very tough to use, and end up walling myself into bad situations more often than not.
Her legendary blessing, Quake, causes a massive earthquake that deals significant damage to all enemies and stuns them.
As you can see, there are a lot of different gods, each with their own specialties and synergies. And this is truly the tip of the iceberg. In order to better fully understand god blessings and their impact on gameplay, it’s best to pick and choose gods for yourself.
How To Choose Gods
Choosing gods in Death Must Die is as simple as selecting a blessing. Getting the god you want requires manipulating alterations, banishes, and rerolls. Once you select a blessing that god is then added to your available gods for the run.
One thing that a lot of new players do is ignore the blessing manipulation abilities. That is a surefire way to force yourself into selecting gods and blessings you do not want. Always use your alterations, banishes, and rerolls, and ensure you get the gods you want.
After all you only can get a select few each run.
How Many Gods Do You Get Per Run
There is a cap on the amount of gods that join you each run in Death Must Die. The Moirai will always be available to offer you blessings, and as such do not count against that cap.
Outside of them, you can only select three other gods per run. Once you select blessings from three different gods (not including the Fates), that’s it, you are locked in. Which is again why it is so important to use those manipulation abilities.
However if you have the unique item, Possibility, you can break this limit. Possibility allows you to be favored by all the Gods, meaning you can get blessings from everyone all the time.
This has the potential to be completely game breaking, but also a ton of fun. You can get this item from Act 2, so be sure to farm it when you are able.
Conclusion
Hopefully you now have a better base understanding of all the gods in Death Must Die. They each offer you something different, and can completely change your gameplay during a run.
The most important takeaway is that god synergy is a real gamechanger, and you should experiment to find what works for you. Make sure that you are constantly altering, banishing, and rerolling to ensure that you get the blessings and gods you want. Since you’re limited to three (unless you have a particular unique item), it’s important to make them all count.
Good luck on all your future runs!