The Tavern

I've been annoyed by Drained lately (which is probably a good thing: shows that the Draining change matters).

The downside of draining is that all you can do is wait the damn thing out. That's especially yucky with red Drained.

So why not make some potion available to reverse draining?

The easiest thing would be to rename "Restore Abilities" to "Restoration" and have that potion restore Drained status.

Draining is only restored by gaining exp, waiting does nothing.

I think you could actually keep the original name, since removing drained status is also "restoring abilities," renaming it to restoration may be more opaque (my first thought would be "restoration" = "unpolymorph" personally).

I think this could be added to !restore abilities without upsetting balance, and (even if only in a very small way) it would maybe make that potion less boring. Imagine if curing only got rid of poison (no small HP restore, no confusion removal)—that's kind of like what !RA is right now. It could use another effect so that when/how to use it may actually involve more of a decision from time to time.

I agree. Draining is annoying, and RA potions don't get much use until later.

There is already a potion to cure draining, it is called potion of experience

!RA removing draining would be cool. the potions usually have no use before zot/hell, and this would make them at least somewhat useful in the earlier game.

The more I think about this, the more sure I feel it would just give me anther status to be annoyed about when I can't cure it. Right now, drain feels unique, and if you dick about it's nasty but otherwise fine.

I like the new drain; it's a bad, noticeable effect which you have to earn your recovery. If there was a potion for it, you can bypass the earning part of it, which seems a bit cheaty to me.

Maybe make restore abilities cure a fraction of draining? That way, if you're drained red, you can get somewhat better, but you still have to earn XP to fully get rid of it.

I hate the new drain. But I feel that it now works as it should. Draining is something that should be feared and not easily got rid of. So I agree with bitcode that bypassing it with potion would give a cheaty feeling.

I didn't mean rest waiting, I meant going around killing stuff for a long time. Most of the time, the effect isn't that harmful, but if a big fight, or with red Drained status, it can be pretty deadly.

As other people have noted, the effect of using !RA is that you have a potion that's currently useful later in game, to cure int loss from Nexoqothingys or brain worms or general stat loss from major mummies, and making it more useful early game (where the difference between skill points is meaningful).

I never ever use restore abilities and this would not change if it removed drain

You'd rather have unused potions than get rid of a crippling, common, annoying effect?

If this happens, could we please also combine ring of life protection and ring of sustain abilities?

Seconding this.

Why? To make Tomb easier? That's a nerf to Necromutation.

Probably because they're both useless early game, semi-useless mid game. Might as well combine them into one decent ring.

A ring of sustab and rN would hardly be considered decent.
Of course, it would be indeed better than the existing rN and sustab.

I've been bothered by this statement for a while. It's equivalent to the statement:

"I would never quaff a potion that would raise all my trained skills by a point or two for a reasonable duration"

I just don't understand the logic there.

I wouldn't use it there because drained is pretty much never a big deal, and I'd rather save them on the off chance I manage to get a stat drained to under 0. Rather than using them for a marginal benefit, I will always choose to save them for the rare chance of huge benefit(not getting hit by stat-damage/malus), simply because the huge negative outweighs the rarity in my expected value calculation. In practice this means I just never use them since that sort of stat situation is pretty rare. (NB I've never done tomb and would probably wear SustAb if I did.)

Calling draining "crippling" is a bit much, the psychological effect of seeing "drained" is an order of magnitude more significant than the in-game effects. If anything it makes me train my weapon skill just a hair above mindelay so a bit of draining doesn't knock me a delay point.

I use them frequently and would probably use them more frequently if they removed drain.

My guess would be that significant stat drain basically doesn't exist in normal game so the potions are kinda useless, a lot of people don't carry them and those people probably won't carry them for a very rare chance of getting drained significantly, since you can remove drain by killing dudes without cluttering your inventory.

Done.

Restore abilities now does triple duty.

First you would have to be carrying the potion. Since item destruction still exists, it is quite clear that the developers do not want players to carry potions. Any potion you do carry must be of very high utility, enough so that you are willing to risk it being destroyed countless times throughout the game on the basis that it will make a major difference at a critical moment. Additionally any potion you carry must compete directly with things like haste and heal wounds and curing and elemental evokers for inventory space. Carrying restore abilities, even bothering to pick it up, is a waste of time and valuable resources.

Stat drain outside of extended is functionally non-existent. And stat drain in general is functionally irrelevant unless you somehow acquire a huge amount of stat drain all at once. You can lose half your int on a caster and barely notice the effect. Even if you do manage to get major stat drain (by being very bad at crawl) you can just 5 it away, so that restore abilities is at best an unnecessary convenience. Unless you are a deep dwarf, carrying it is insane.

Draining is similar. In the vast majority of situations, it is insignificant. But on the flipside, if you actually through terrible play manage to get enough draining to be a real concern, then you have far more serious concerns, namely the fact that the shadow dragon over there apparently hit you with draining breath a dozen or so times, which means you shouldn't have been trying to fight it in the first place, so you should already be fleeing for your life for reasons unrelated to draining, after which you will be free to clear out elf 1 or whatever to cure your drain. You still gain nothing but convenience with restore abilities, convenience which is rendered utterly useless by the much great inconvenience of taking up inventory space. Inventory space which could've gone to another potion of speed or a potion of agility or a fan of gales or rod of warding or some other thing you could've used to just not get drained in the first place.

Inventory is not relevant- once the fight is over, you can find one on the floor.

Skill drain is very common outside of extended. Red stat drain is rarer, but when there's shadow dragons around, it's not that rare. Facing a bunch of wights can also get you pretty drained sometimes, or a random enemy with a draining weapon.

being drained isn't usually too big of a deal, but if you're primarily a caster and get badly drained, you can get pretty damn screwed. Having the ability to quaff a restore abilities (I mean the name's already perfect) to remove the status would be a godsend for those casters.

EDIT:
I meant skill drain, non stat drain...

Just got rid of some red drain with this.
5/5, would quaff again.