Mutationless Branches

[tasonir]

@Tasonir: Yes a lot of the Hell effects are silly but glow-induced mutations have much less of a chance to be blocked by rMut anyway. If by "pure melee" you mean "no casting," then 15 runers are completely viable without rMut, too. If you mean "literally only hits stuff with melee, or moves" then that character's viability has been so willfully compromised anyway that discussions of jewelry choice have really become irrelevant.

I try to be pretty reasonable - by pure melee I only mean it doesn't have a reliable way to quickly one shot a low hp monster at range (ex, nexoqec). My melee characters learn lots of spells, if you read a lot of my posts you're probably sick of me gushing about how much I love regeneration and recommending that you should totally learn aura of abjuration because of all the summoned fiends in extended. I just don't learn conjurations, or have a high skill ranged weapon for sniping mutators. Corners are great when they exist but you can't assume every level has corners, and dragging things across the level isn't an option when I'm worshipping Chei. Temporal distortion is, but it seems silly to spend piety when I can just use a resist mutation amulet instead. Even if I'm not slow, I'd rather use resist mutation than have to drag every nexoqec to a corner and wait for it to follow me.

[NessOnett]

3 rune wins are not outdated. 3 runes are needed to win, and many players who have won a large number of games believe that the most fun is to be had in the earlier stages of the game, making the ideal win the one that spends the least time in the late game -- e.g. a 3 rune win. One reason for this is that characters get sufficiently powerful and same-y that past a certain point the game is just a time sink and not a meaningful or interesting challenge. Another reason is that the most development effort has gone into the parts of the game that the most players experience -- the early and mid game.

You're welcome to get as many runes as you like if you enjoy the late game, but acknowledge that there are a number of skilled players who feel differently.

I have to assume you didn't actually read what I wrote. Because my primary point was this false dichotomy that the game can only be completed in 3 and 15 rune ways. Which you just demonstrated. Not-3 doesn't automatically equal tedious grinding of all 15 with pan and abyss scumming, cake-walking through challenge-less areas, and etc. There is in fact, believe it or not, a middle ground between the 2. It is possible to get more than 3, and still not go through the boring areas. My other point was that in a game where you get 3, there is no reason not to get 4. Unless you consider the Slime pits long and tedious(when it is factually one of the shortest and most spartan branches), because it is about as difficult as the Vaults these days. So 4 is a much more accurate count for an 'easy' win.

That's unfortunate in both the colloquial and literal sense. Getting mutated by a Hell effect is not particularly common, to the extent that I rarely have it happen to me even once over all four Hells. Someone else no doubt has a similar story of wearing an amulet of resist mutation and still having every malmutate attack on them succeed, because that's about equally likely.

NO! In fact that is not how basic math works. You are objectively, factually, inarguably, TEN TIMES more likely to be malmutated by the effects of hell without rMut than with it. That is hard-coded into the mechanics of the game. Saying that something mildly rare is equally likely as something extraordinarily rare because you don't like facing reality is a very poor argument and loses you a lot of credibility. I understand that it's upsetting to hear that things like this happen when you are trying to convince people it doesn't, but to tell what are actually just lies to try and circumvent it isn't right.

There is no set of negative mutations that would allow a MiFi who has no trouble against two orbs of fire to get one-hit-killed by an ancient lich. The most it can possibly do is 144 damage, which is very unlikely, and as a high-level minotaur, you'd have more hp than that even with hp -30%.

Just like the last point, a lie. Because it DID happen. Did I say I had no trouble with the orbs? No. Maybe I got lucky and rolled well. I took a lot of damage in the process to both of them. But trying to say it doesn't happen because you have no counterpoint is once again, very ineffective.

Would 12 negative mutations have made things worse for you? Yes, obviously. On the other hand, you also make it clear that you aren't even reading messages to find out what the orb of fire (a new monster) is doing. If you had, you would have noticed immediately that it's mutating you. After that, you would (should anyway) have adapted to that new information.

I knew exactly what it was doing. I had read extensively about OoFs. I noticed I was being mutated. But had to commit to the melee fight because it was all that this character was built to do(Once again, as a new player I hadn't rounded my character as well as I could have to have more offensive options). I also never pressed tab once(didn't even know what the key did back then, not that I'd have used it...trying to be careful), so to accuse me of things I never did because for a third time you lack a valid point...

I cleared through them as speedily as I could with the options I had because I was aware that they could mutate me. I made sure to engage them in 'safe' areas where it would be a 1v1 fight so I wouldn't have to worry about distractions. I used haste and offensive buffs to close distance and take them out fast(long since out of blinking scrolls). I took every measure that my limited game experience would allow me to take to fight an enemy I had only read about. But again, since this isn't sinking in, I was new. I didn't have the game knowledge to take out an Orb within 2 turns on a melee character. I did everything I could. Once again you're trying to give advice under the assumption that the people you're preaching to don't need it. If I were practiced enough to drop an Orb in 2 turns, I wouldn't be asking where to go. I don't understand why this is such a challenging concept to grasp.

Last and not least, characters die in crawl. They die particularly often when the player gets overconfident, starts holding down tab, and ignores their message window. Players are supposed to learn from this that they should avoid overconfidence, avoid reckless incaution, and read their message window -- especially when they're in an unfamiliar situation. There's another person who has this same story except instead of getting malmutated while tabbing down the orbs of fire, they got tormented by a curse toe that wandered into view and then killed by the orb of fire fireballs or a stray electric golem or whatever. The problem in this case isn't that your character got mutated, but that you were recklessly incautious.

Again, lies and slander. What is the gaming equivalent of 'slut-shaming'? Never held down tab. Didn't ignore my message window(I checked after the fight to get an accurate count and assess the damage overall). I played as cautiously as possible given the tools and knowledge I had available.

But even if you don't believe me. Even if you assume that I tabbed through the fight. What would I have done even if I had gone more slowly. I lacked mobility choices. I lacked ranged options. What basic, bush-league tactics that a starry eyed new player would have mastered could I have employed in the middle of a melee fight with an Orb. I could run away, and then have to re-engage and get hit while closing distance. I could...hit him. Which is what I did. So instead of baseless accusing me of playing poorly(which I already admitted), why not say in real terms what I did wrong. How my recklessness caused my death, and list all these adaptations I would have made if I were going slower.

Orbs aren't the only things that need to be drawn around corners -- using terrain against monsters is crawl 101. But even presupposing that a player doesn't know that, they could learn that it's seen as an obvious choice by reading duvessa's post -- or one of the various other posts in this thread making the same point. None of these pieces of advice are unintelligible or useless to new players. They're only useless if you decide that it's not worth taking the time to listen to what an experienced player is saying.

You're right. The corners was a bad example. There were no corners. It was Zot5. I saw them in an open area. Couldn't draw them back because they were faster than me(and I decided if I tried to draw them, it would merely be exposing me longer). So that was a poor example of a thing to say. My point was that I'm sure there are dozens of better ways that you can take on Orbs when you're better. Summon butterflies, controlled blink, etc. But I didn't have those tools available on that character due to poor character building(which is something you can expect from a new player regardless how many guides they read), nor did I know all of those things. Corners was a really bad example when there's so many better ones.

Have you actually done this? If yes, then you're nuts, because that's incredibly tedious. If not, then this is just silly hyperbole. Further, anyone who can use a controller and can learn can achieve this given enough time because death isn't permanent in Dark Souls. It just requires enough patience and time.

Uhhhh...what? Death being permanent doesn't matter. Your argument is that if they have enough time and patience they can do it. The same statement could be said even if there was permadeath, it would just take a lot more time and patience with deaths setting you back a bit more(which is further pointless, since the reason I made that comparison was that I DON'T DIE when doing that. Because I learned the game, and got good. Because I started with the basics and built from there getting better over time). The same statement could be said about Dungeon Crawl for exactly the same reason. I could use a godless mummy monk, training only spellcasting skills and never learning any spells. And given enough time and trial I could eventually get all 15 runes. But it'd be a lot more efficient for me to start out as a MiBe, learn the game; go to a harder race, learn the game; add more challenge conditions, learn the game. And I would get to the point of clearing that mummy challenge far sooner. Just like I could try and teach a pre-schooler calculus. And they might be able to grasp it by the time they hit 30 or 40. But it becomes a lot more efficient to teach them basic arithmetic first, and ramp it up slowly building on the basics. Which is why school works that way.

[dirtywick]

You don't NEED any resistance to win. They're insurance against mistakes.

rMut is desirable in some areas because the consequences of making a mistake are probably very bad and not easily undone. If you're confident in your ability to avoid mistakes in those areas, by all means wear something else you don't need.

[and into]

Pretty sure hell effects can only mutate you through glow, or by spawning stuff that can malmutate you. For the latter you do have some other options, for the former if you lack ?vulnerability then yeah, you are likely to get mutated. And if you do roll a mutation from glow those are special cased and rMut only protects from them 50% of the time by the way. (This has already been stated in other posts.)

To answer the basic question, which I think had already been addressed but if not: Slime Pits have some malmutating stuff, so does Abyss (but less than it used to back in 0.10 or so), but Pan and Hells probably have greater probability of giving you permanent mutations one way or another. Orbs of Fire cause mutations too obviously but are almost entirely limited to Zot, and mostly Zot:5, so you don't have to deal with those unless you are about to win the game.

However no branch in the game is literally mutationless, there are rare vaults and rare enemy spawns who can summon mutating stuff and there are Zot traps and there is banishment and weapons of distortion that can send you to the abyss where you can get mutated. So strictly speaking the only literally mutationless area is the Ecumenical Temple.

As for the rest, I'm not interested in discussing things with someone who literally accuses others of slander when they try to talk about game tactics, and assumes that the very good and helpful advice that people take the time to communicate is secretly some maliciously intended insult. And I doubt others are either.

Locking thread. Hopefully some folks reading this get something useful out of the helpful advice that many people offered in this thread, but it seems pretty clear that this is just going to degenerate further.

EDIT: If you disagree with my locking the thread, shoot me a PM with arguments for reopening. Thanks.