Did wretched stars change?

[VictorG]

I'm playing trunk, and I've been doing a few short trips to the Abyss. I ended up being heavily mutated... with permanent mutations. Perhaps I completely failed to register some mutagenic encounters, but I think I only faced wretched stars, which are supposed to mutate me only temporarily, right? With mutations between square brackets? Has some change been made?

[delarado]

I'm playing trunk, and I've been doing a few short trips to the Abyss. I ended up being heavily mutated... with permanent mutations. Perhaps I completely failed to register some mutagenic encounters, but I think I only faced wretched stars, which are supposed to mutate me only temporarily, right? With mutations between square brackets? Has some change been made?

Not that I know of. If you check your character log it tells you when and how you gained a mutation.


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[VictorG]

Thanks for the tip. Seems to have been shining eyes in Slime and neqoxec in Abyss, so I must just have missed out on that. Okay, that means I now dare to return to the Abyss.

[delarado]

Post a character dump and people will tell you how best to avoid gaining more mutations with the tools you have. The only times you can’t really avoid mutations is with several mutators on screen at once in open areas, and when you encounter orbs of fire. Even then there are sites to mitigate.

[VictorG]

The character is here: https://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/V ... ictorG.txt

Since I'm relying on Tornado (+ Refrigeration) a lot, fighting in open space is sort of the thing my character tends to be doing. If there's a better alternative, please let me know!

I also wouldn't mind some advice on which skills to train next, supposing I want to go on to extended. I'm thinking that I should get some more defence, but what? Fighting for more HP? Dodging? Is more shields worth it to get a better percentage on the warlock's mirror? (Is the deflect missiles spell worth it, if you already have reflection?) Should I go and get Controlled Blink online?

Also, not terribly sure about my body armour. I haven't found a nice artefact robe or leather yet, and I'm a bit intimidated by the armour requirements of anything above troll leather... but maybe I shouldn't be?

[petercordia]

With 6 strength I would stick to only the lightest armours myself (maybe going up to swamp scales).
You have CB at 50%. If you're not going into Zot anytime soon, definitely get it. It's an incredible escape tool In zot you can't cast it though.
Training more shields sounds good. There's no good reason not to upgrade to a medium shield at some point.
I'd amnese some of the spells you haven't cast in a while. You have a lot of powerful spells in your spell library, such as: Apportation (in the Abyss particularly), Deflect Missiles, Simulacrum, Darkness, Malign Gateway, Controlled Blink, Disjunction

[delarado]

You should examine your equipment.

You have 6 strength, which is very low. Not only that, you have some things giving you negative strength that only give you positive intrinsic you already have elsewhere, or one that is not useful to you. E.g you have 3 different items that give you relec, and one of them only gives you wiz enhancer in addition to relec - yet all of your spells are at 0% or 1% fail. I think you could swap some equipment around and get better strength or something else which may get you a net benefit. The ring of Phasing is well worth using. Also don't forget you SH Score increases the chance of reflection occurring.

Specifically for mutation capable enemies though:

Scroll of fog breaks LOS, as will orb of destruction (Although unreliable as it moves around)
Summon lightning spire will break LOS and zap the mutator at the same time. LRD is smite targeted and can also be used to blow walls up next to them while the lightning spire zaps them or your summons simply meat shield you.
Any summons will break LOS
Fireball will allow you to attack enemies from around corners/out of LOS.
Neqoxec cannot see invisible

Controlled blink is well worth learning.
Iron shot is a great non-elemental spell for killing resistant enemies
Get more fighting and dodging. How many runes do you want?