Does contamination do anything?

[hawthornbunny]

Hey all, long-time player but first-time commenter. I wanted to talk about something that's always bugged me a little. What's the in-game effect or significance of magical contamination?

I mean, I know what it's supposed to do, in that if you get too contaminated, bad things like mutations happen, but I've never gotten into a situation where this even comes close to happening. I'm not even sure how to contaminate my character on purpose. Nothing bad happens when I get contaminated by miscasts or potion-drinking. I know that miscasting high level spells can cause higher-level contamination, but this is never a problem either, since I would never cast a spell that has a high chance of failure (since it probably wouldn't work and would just exhaust my MP for no gain).

Is it something that only becomes relevant later in the game?

[Siegurt]

Being hasted or invisible cause fair-sized chunks of contamination (If you try to do both at once, or string them together in a row you're almost certain to have something bad happen to you) But it's set up so that if you haste or invis yourself once, and let the contamination wear off, you'll never experience bad effects.

You really don't want the bad stuff to happen to you, if you haven't seen it happen, then that's a good thing.

[hawthornbunny]

I like to think that the bad stuff might be interesting at least The thing is, I've played Crawl for years, and to me, "Contam" is just a word that appears sometimes and then goes away. It's never even accidentally been a problem. (Also, I can't think of many reasons why I'd string haste and invisibility together; if I'm invisible, I generally don't need haste)

[Floodkiller]

Being hasted or invisible cause fair-sized chunks of contamination (If you try to do both at once, or string them together in a row you're almost certain to have something bad happen to you) But it's set up so that if you haste or invis yourself once, and let the contamination wear off, you'll never experience bad effects.

You really don't want the bad stuff to happen to you, if you haven't seen it happen, then that's a good thing.

In 0.20, Haste will no longer give contamination, so the combo creating too much contamination won't be a problem anymore

I like to think that the bad stuff might be interesting at least The thing is, I've played Crawl for years, and to me, "Contam" is just a word that appears sometimes and then goes away. It's never even accidentally been a problem. (Also, I can't think of many reasons why I'd string haste and invisibility together; if I'm invisible, I generally don't need haste)

Bad stuff includes glowing so brightly that invisibility doesn't work anymore, becoming malmutated (or deteriorated if undead) as your excess contamination bleeds away, and eventually reaching the point where you begin to explode constantly due to the large amounts of contamination your body contains.

[tabstorm]

Once, I died to getting yellow contam from miscasting deflect missiles with a red percentage, getting teleportitis, which triggered one tile from the upstair on elf 2, and I didn't manage to teleport out of the hall of blades after several tries. So in theory you can die from it, it just requires a lot of other events to come together.

[tasonir]

I know that miscasting high level spells can cause higher-level contamination, but this is never a problem either, since I would never cast a spell that has a high chance of failure (since it probably wouldn't work and would just exhaust my MP for no gain).

Is it something that only becomes relevant later in the game?

Depending on the spell and your casting ability, it's possible to have yellow or even red spells at <10% fail rate. Generally speaking, for high level spells the miscast severity will be higher for a longer period of time until you can solidly cast the spell. Sometimes when getting statue form online, I'll cast it a few times at yellow miscast because 98% of the time, it's quite safe and I need that power boost for the current fight. There is a 1-2% chance of going straight to yellow contamination from doing that, and you'll usually end up with some mutations. I've played thousands of games of crawl and use statue form very frequently and over the last 4-5 years I think this has happened to me twice. So definitely possible, but not common and if you wanted to be more safe you could wait until you had stronger casting to avoid it entirely.

It's easier to have red miscasts and still <10% fail on level 9 spells, but I don't use those as often as statue form, because they're generally overkill and I don't play many characters who focus on casting. I tend to fall towards the melee end, with some amount of hybridization.

The biggest purpose of contamination was to prevent people from casting haste 3-4 times in a row, back when it was a spell. That isn't an issue now that the spell and the wand have been removed, haste is much more limited.

[njvack]

Unless I'm mistaken, cblink also causes contamination, so you can't just keep bopping all over the place until your MP runs out.

But yeah, contamination is a system you don't interact with much; it's more of a regulator to keep you from overusing some strong effects or casting spells with high fail rates.

The miscast protection from Sif and Kiku is actually pretty good; there are lots of spells that are worth casting at a 40% fail rate if miscasts aren't something to worry about.

[Majang]

I did have malmutations from contamination. I like playing casters with a high emphasis on level 9 spells, and having two miscasts in a row, even with 10% fail rate, happens at least once per game. I think one of the hells also kept contaminating you (Tartarus?), and it may have been a mummy curse once, so there were times in previous versions were contamination presented a real problem. In the new version 20, mutations seem to be much more a way of life, and easier dealt with, so nowadays the purpose of contamination may have run its course.

[hawthornbunny]

For the record I'm not advocating that contamination be removed; I like it! It's a unique concept that I've never seen in other games. It's just that it's never seemed to be relevant is all, which seems to fly against the usual DCSS philosophy of cutting out the cruft.

[therealnebgrebaes]

Contamination, as you have probably just read, can mess with you in a wide variety of manners. If you don't have any potions of cancellation, having Contam read in yellow in your character script means that you will have at least one assuredly bad mutation on the way for you. The more contamination you have, the more of these that you will receive. If you for some reason decide to get yet more of it, stealth becomes harder for you as you begin to glow (thus also preventing invisibility from being useful for a time). While it may not seem like such a bad thing (it really isn't at small levels), it can mess you up.

[Sprucery]

having Contam read in yellow in your character script means that you will have at least one assuredly bad mutation on the way for you.

Actually, yellow contamination does not guarantee that you'll get a mutation (the exact amount of contamination is not shown), and when you get one there is a small chance that it is a good mutation.

If the contamination level is in the higher end of yellow zone, you may also get a damaging explosion.

[duvessa]

having Contam read in yellow in your character script means that you will have at least one assuredly bad mutation on the way for you.

Actually, yellow contamination does not guarantee that you'll get a mutation

In fact there is no contamination level that guarantees you'll get a mutation or explosion