Tuesday, 22nd February 2011, 18:13 by TwilightPhoenix
It was mentioned earlier, but I'm going to second the status effect inducing chunks. Pretty much, you find yourself only eating clean chunks, poison chunks if you have resist poison, and sickness chunks because they seem to be the most common and don't always make you sick. All other chunks except mutagenic meat is pointless. Sickness chunks are annoying because they either feed you or make you sick. You'll usually just go somewhere safe, chomp them all, and then rest off any sickness before it has any negative effects. Sickness is rarely a problem and is mostly just an inconvenience. The only time getting sick from meat is a threat is when you're starving, but then you'll probably just suck it up and eat perma-food, so it's not that much of a threat. It's not an interesting decision, it's just "eat until I can't or I'm out of meat, rest sickness, and go back to killing". Poison chunks are boring because they're binary. If you don't have resist poison, you ignore them because they poison you with no nutrition. If you do, then they're just clean chunks. Rotting chunks are worse since they rot you without nutrition, meaning you'll never touch them. Maybe Ghouls like them, but I've never gotten a Ghoul far enough to munch a rot inducing chunk. And finally, while mutagenic chunks do provide mutations, they never provide nutrition. So, they're interesting and fun if you want mutations, but if you don't, then they serve no purpose.
Also, why do Merfolk lose all Transmutations when in water? I can understand most forms, but Ice Beasts can swim and Blade Hands affects only your hands, not your tail. Kind of annoying you cannot combine Merfolk's great transmutation aptitude with their swimming ability.
The best strategy most frequently overlooked by new players for surviving: not starting a fight to begin with.