Remove or Revert Mimics

[bcadren]

The current iteration of mimics rarely adds anything interesting to the game at all; the average encounter with a mimic these days goes:

  Code:

Found 27 gold pieces.
The gold mimic disappears in a puff of smoke.

IE: We stopped autoexplore for no reason at all.

There is nothing remotely interesting, challenging or fun about that, it's just...message spam. The only exception were current mimics add anything interesting is rune mimics, if you don't have apportation and therefore fight your way through a vault for nothing. The experience is disappointment, sure; but it's -something-.

I propose the one of the following is done:

1. All randomly-placed mimics are removed; so only vault-placed mimics exist. (IE No running into a gold mimic at random; but rune mimics and staircase mimics placed by vaults are still around).
2. Mimics are returned to being a creature instead of roughly nothing; but are placed only on things autoexplore would stop to tell you you found and not things autopickup would try to pickup.
3. Both 1 and 2.
4. Mimics are removed completely.

I'm not sure which of those steps is best, but the current situation with mimics is...not good.

[le_nerd]

I think that portal mimics, and to a lesser extent branch mimics are actually interesting. You jogg across a level accompanied by the melting and crackling of an ice cave, high tension, a swarm of death yaks following you- BAM mimic. For most of the other mimics though I agree. Staircase mimics have startled me once I think, item mimics as well.

[Quazifuji]

I think that portal mimics, and to a lesser extent branch mimics are actually interesting. You jogg across a level accompanied by the melting and crackling of an ice cave, high tension, a swarm of death yaks following you- BAM mimic.

I feel like those situations could always be made more interesting if you were rewarded by the actual portal.

I do find some branch entrance mimics interesting, but only because they create an extra branch entrance vault and some of those are interesting (e.g. extra mummies in Crypt or more shoal enemies in Lair).

[jejorda2]

If mimics activated when you walked into the portal or picked up the item, then became an enemy to defeat, then became the item they mimicked, would there be scumming?

There would be a reason to come back and defeat the thing rather than escape and exclude it.

The portal should probably always either be timed or a duplicate, so if you run away from the stairs to Vaults you can find another set elsewhere on the level or on another level.

Or would this end up like shadow traps/old constriction mimics? Where the fight is either easy or it kills you, and you never get to pick your battles? What if it was always a sleeping mimic that you noticed upon entering/getting it, and then you could choose whether to attack and wake it?

[duvessa]

If mimics activated when you walked into the portal or picked up the item, then became an enemy to defeat, then became the item they mimicked, would there be scumming?

Yes, you'd still want to check stairs and any other useful squares for mimics in advance, since killing the mimic would take turns that you might need to use running away from some other monster later.
My suggestion is for mimics to work as they currently do, vanishing in a puff of smoke, except that they also become the item they mimicked, like you describe. This preserves all the humor and purpose that mimics have ever had, while removing the scumming.

[Chicken]

They seem really pointless to me also. You basically should buff them waaay up - give them constriction, paralysis, slowing, blink allies encircling or something, and big nasty teeth. But give characters a chance to spot them, either via see invisible or like with detecting traps (think the latter would be better). That way it's somewhere between a sucker punch and a total washout.

[TeshiAlair]

Alternative idea is to make mimics always spawn with a ring of traps around them so they actually do something when you approach them.