Avoiding mutation

[HenryFlower]

A recent YASD of mine got some nice Oka gifts (vampiric lajanang and +11 randart crystal plate) but found exactly one !CureMutation and no rMut.

By a few levels into Pan, I had assembled nice set of mutations even post single cure quaff (slow healing 1, fast metabolism 3, herbivore 1, -20% HP, burry vision 1). That wasn't what killed me (failure to run away early enough did it), but it raised a few questions for me:

1) Since mutating monsters mutate by a LOS attack, you avoid mutation by using allies, summons, fog, walls, etc. to break LOS, correct?
2) At some point, a fighter has to get in LOS of a mutating monster to kill it, correct? (A magic user can obviously just use summons to both avoid LOS and off the mutating monster)
3) In a similar situation, is pushing through Hell/Pan silly? (is lack of rMut an invitation to a 5 rune game?)

I probably didn't have my LOS tactics down, but it seemed like every other encounter with a mutating monster ended up with at least one bad mutation.

[yogaFLAME]

You're aware that your oka fighter can cast spells, right

[HenryFlower]

Yep, had summon butterflies.

[bobross419]

There are a few ways that I like to handle mutators as melee without rMut. If I'm polearms (which I usually am because they are so awesome), I just get them in position and evoke past them. Javs and bolts of penetration work well also... If you're with Oki you can get 8 throwing pretty quick and he'll gift you some ammo of pen; otherwise, Shoals should have at least one stack of Pen or there should be some bolts of pen from yaktaurs. Wands of Cold/Fire shoot bolts, so you can get hits with them through a pack too.

With that said, by the time you're ready to go to Pan/Hells you can pretty much handle Oki's wrath and do a TSO switch for the holy brand. You can switch to Zin for mut protection or to cure your muts without incurring TSO wrath. If you're going to use Zin for cleaning your muts, you may as well clear a path to Hell:7s while you have Zin's Hell protection (Or just knock out Hells entirely).

Worst case scenario, jump into a Zig for a few levels. I usually find a few !cmut before things get too crazy.