The Tavern

I hate mutations altogether.
I hate that game has no r.mut anymore.
And I hate that potions of cure mutation are almost nonexistent (found the first and the last around lvl25). Seriously a single potion. Dafuq?..

You feel a little pissed off.

You feel your anger subside.

I played my first 300 or so games avoiding mutations and seeing no upside in mutation roulette. Now I go all in on every piece of flesh, it is one of my favourite things in the game.

They are pretty annoying indeed but the cure mutation spawn rate has been increased to compensate so there's usually enough of them. You've either got quite unlucky or played around mutators poorly. If you're not using a setting like this (you could add orbs of fire there, i just do Zot at a snail's pace anyway)

Code:: force_more_message += (neqoxec|cacodemon|shining eye).*come

you probably should.

I use flash_screen_message for these. It helps, but you still catch a mutation here and there if you play a lot of late-game and not going straight for the orb.

y'know, you could always worship Zin...

Or Jiyva...

Or Xom.

I, too, want rMut back in the game.... and I love mutation roulette....

Since when does Xom provide mutation protection?!

infinitevox wrote:Since when does Xom provide mutation protection?!

Xom can remove your bad mutations and give you good ones. I've heard Xomites often go around with a bunch of good mutations. My Xomites tend to die early, though.

Yeah, I just played a Xom game earlier. Had 3 runes, 67 AC, 20 EV, 40 SH.
Then decided I *had* to do Elf. Got Abyssed (after already getting the abyssal rune the first time that happened), then died to a Lich's Crystal spear (42 damage) that Xom summoned.

Xom giveth and Xom taketh away.

hmm...
I've found the Hat of the Alchemist here and it's still have the rMut on it.
Is this a leftover from previous patches or game actually have rMut as a hidden stat?

The hat of the alchemist and the lajatang of order still can give rMut.

I'm pleased with the removal of rMut. It's making me play more carefully and thoughtfully, using terrain more, around mutators. I'm sure this will come back to bite me on the arse, but I actually feel I'm improving at the game.

Can potions of beneficial mutation be made to only give beneficial mutations please?

it already does

duvessa wrote:it already does

I don't think a Tm for example will appreciate wild magic? Or anyone with a great randart helmet getting it pushed off.

edit: of course the question is should all mutations from !benemut be beneficial to all characters or just to some...

Sprucery wrote:
duvessa wrote:it already does

I don't think a Tm for example will appreciate wild magic? Or anyone with a great randart helmet getting it pushed off.

edit: of course the question is should all mutations from !benemut be beneficial to all characters or just to some...

Duvessa is of the opinion that slotloss mutations are always good. Their damage increase is fairly significant, but whether that outweighs the loss of AC and potential resists is another question. It probably does in most cases without a randart hat or e.g. boots of running.

potion of beneficial mutation

A potion which grants a supposedly good mutation.

Wild magic is certainly the most absurd case. It is good for a small percentage of characters (those who use conjurations or hexes), neutral for an even smaller percentage (berserkers), and bad for most characters.

I usually just throw away benemut potions, because I don't want to risk losing my spells. This is clearly an overreaction though.

FR: Rename [potion of beneficial mutation] to [potion of 'beneficial' mutation]

milski wrote:Duvessa is of the opinion that slotloss mutations are always good. Their damage increase is fairly significant, but whether that outweighs the loss of AC and potential resists is another question. It probably does in most cases without a randart hat or e.g. boots of running.

Well, if my main form of offence is something else than melee, I'd rather have a good helmet than horns.

Magipi wrote:I usually just throw away benemut potions, because I don't want to risk losing my spells. This is clearly an overreaction though.

Heh, I always quaff them in great anticipation and fear at the same time. My current FeNe got passive mapping, MR+ and Str before wild magic, but in this case that was also a good mut.

The way I see it, they are beneficial most of the time. So I'm happy to quaff them on weak characters because it is likely to help (a bit). But on strong characters the potential benefit is smaller so I don't bother.

If you interpret "Can potions of beneficial mutation be made to only give beneficial mutations please?" as asking for benemut to only give mutations that are on average beneficial, it indeed already does that. All the non-badmuts in crawl provide on average a benefit (for things like slotloss, it's a benefit even if you assume ~50% of characters get a benefit and 50% a penalty, since the benefit is larger than the penalty).

If you instead interpret it as asking for benemut to only give mutations which are never bad, well, crawl doesn't have that.

But there are some mutations that are never bad, right? Like becoming resistant fire or cold, or gaining AC.

Crawl doesn't have a category for that. It has only "bad" and "not-bad". I mean I guess someone here could possibly code it up and try to submit a patch to create a distinction.

Oh, I see. You were referring literally to the code. Yes, another category like 'never bad' could be added. It wouldn't even take very much work. Still, it hardly seems worth the effort.

crate wrote:If you interpret "Can potions of beneficial mutation be made to only give beneficial mutations please?" as asking for benemut to only give mutations that are on average beneficial, it indeed already does that. All the non-badmuts in crawl provide on average a benefit (for things like slotloss, it's a benefit even if you assume ~50% of characters get a benefit and 50% a penalty, since the benefit is larger than the penalty).

If you instead interpret it as asking for benemut to only give mutations which are never bad, well, crawl doesn't have that.

I believe someone already stated how wild magic isn't beneficial most of the time. Slotloss mutations too are also very unwanted in most cases. Minor boost to offense (even less as a mage) is not worth losing a slot that a randart could go in.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:Oh, I see. You were referring literally to the code. Yes, another category like 'never bad' could be added. It wouldn't even take very much work. Still, it hardly seems worth the effort.

It is called "depends" in CA fork, potion of beneficial mutation cannot give such mutations: wild magic, evolution, horns etc. IMHO it is worth the effort, now I am never disappointed by the potion. Now that we often cure all mutations late game anyway, the potion needs the buff since it makes curing all mutations harder.

Wild magic is beneficial most of the time, and even if it isn't it is the single best mutation in the game (maybe worse than robust, I guess?) for characters where it is good.

It "depends"

Edit. MP-powered wands is "depends" too. Not sure why Wild magic can be given by potion of benemut in vanilla crawl, but MP-powered wands cannot. If anything, the latter is good for more characters.

Mutations that are never bad do not exist. Resistance and AC mutations still make it harder to mutate further or cure bad mutations, and therefore can be interpreted as detrimental. There were actually people who sometimes avoided quaffing potions of gain [stat] back when they existed, because they were afraid of being unable to cure bad mutations later.
This is pretty about as reasonable as interpreting wild magic as detrimental.
If there is any mutation in the game that is labeled as good but is actually detrimental, I think it is rMut, since I don't mutate unintentionally.

That's probably casuistry at this point but robust on Formicid of Ashenzari is never bad, you are immune to berserkitis, teleportitis and you don't care about blurry vision or any other mutation unless you started as Berserker and never put any bonus stat points into Int (though I am not sure, maybe Formicid is immune to slow status from zero stat too).

Do existing mutations have any impact on the mutation chosen? For instance, if you have foo 1, do you have a greater chance of getting foo 2 than bar 1?

MainiacJoe wrote:Do existing mutations have any impact on the mutation chosen? For instance, if you have foo 1, do you have a greater chance of getting foo 2 than bar 1?

No except for that Abyss monster who gives temporary mutations (star something).

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