The Tavern

Motivation:

Mutations are cool (particularly surviving despite bad mutations), so more mutations is better.
Avoiding malmutate via careful positioning is fun and this would make it more important.
Potions of cure mutation would now be more important, and when to quaff cure mutation is a real strategic decision.
Less amulet-swapping in Slime.
Discourages the player from lovingly crafting the perfect character rather than playing the game, since no character will be immaculate for long.

If the goal is to increase the average number of carried muts can we make mutation sources less bad? Right now malmutate is about 90% bad muts, so running around in pan is unambiguously bad. If that percentage was more like 60% you'd end up with situations like "well I picked up berserkitis 1 and teleportitis 1 but I also have four resist pips.. do I really want to cure mut or will I live with it?".

"Discourages the player from lovingly crafting the perfect character rather than playing the game"

You'd also have to change mutations to bypass undead status, rot really isn't much of a discouragement. Either way though, I agree rMut should go away

"Discourages lovingly crafting the perfect character" would be a more impressive argument when bad mutations didn't range from "deadly and tedious" (teleport, berserk) to arguably beneficial (+wizard -spellpower on a melee utility caster). The same goes for weighting more heavily towards good mutations, since they range from excellent free resistances to losing equipment slots or getting an incredibly weak and inaccurate ranged attack that messes up your evocable hotkeys.

there's no way teleport/berserk are deadly, placid magic is arguably beneficial, or resistance mutations are excellent

i support removing rmut for 2 reasons
1. if malmutations are supposed to be a feature of the game its pretty dumb to have an item that makes them not a feature of the game
2. less amulet swapping

it's a tiny decrease in the difficulty of the game, since the two actually useful amulets are more likely to generate, but that doesn't seem like a deal breaker

If amulet of rMut gets removed, could we still keep rMut from other, rarer sources? Such as the Alchemist's Hat?

yeah, let dirtyhat keep rMut and reduce the enchantment by 4 to compensate

Plus halflings to -20hp! Otherwise too strong

Personally I wouldn't like to see rmut removed, only because I may do extended again one time and without it I find Pan unbearable to clear: what's the point to have a demon who isn't a danger at all (heck he sometimes even help with s. imps) but is everywhere and forces to play the positioning mini game without a strong reason? And a tier-2 demon who is annoying as hell but rarely dangerous by himself?

I agree with nago: having to pay close attention to your positioning every single time a neqoxec enters your field of view in the 40 to 60 pan floors you're forced to go through if you're dumb enough to enter pan in the first place would be tedious as hell. Which is why I support this proposal. SInce clearly devs are extremely reluctant to address the issue of tedium in extended branches, the best chance of that happening is if tedium reaches critical mass.

I'm assuming that removing rMut would probably be followed up with a rebalance of some sort to the common mutators. Regardless, it feels cheesy to have an effectively (90%) absolute resistance on a swappable slot.

nago wrote:what's the point to have a demon who isn't a danger at all (heck he sometimes even help with s. imps) but is everywhere and forces to play the positioning mini game without a strong reason? And a tier-2 demon who is annoying as hell but rarely dangerous by himself?

Those demons could be much less common or removed, or give temporary mutations (I think temporary mutations are actually better than permanent ones from monsters, they tend to give you multiple levels or something which is interesting and they can screw you tactically but don't make for strategic annoyances). There could even be a Tier-1 Chaos Fiend (or whatever) with permanent malmutate.

But without rMut, I think permanent malmutators should be less common than they are now.

Totally support the removal of the amulet.

- No amulet
- More cure mutation pots
- Mutation is always random - 50% for either good or bad
- Zin becomes less useless

Malmutate shouldn't be 50-50. It should be suboptimal. I don't really care if that's 70-30 or 90-10... that's really just tweaking the degree of badness.

And 50-50 would nerf Zin, since you'd be less likely to want to cure all muts. Not that Zin is underpowered.

I feel like cure mut potions should wipe at least some of the transient muts, so you either use it as a tactical or strategic consumable.

Deleted: completely misread the context

I like njvack's point. I think the only really common malmutator is the neqoxec. They could be given a line-of-sight targeted, temporary malmutate (i.e. exactly what they have now, but with temporary effects).

Bonus: since they would now be less dangerous, they could appear earlier to introduce new players to mutation mechanics.

Or, a more complicated solution: Since the problem with lots of unresistable malmutators doesn't appear until the endgame, special-case high level characters. E.G. at level 23 "you have become set in your ways, and only the most powerful chaotic forces can alter your body for more than a short time."

duvessa wrote:the two actually useful amulets are more likely to generate

What non-faith amulet do you think is useful? Regen?

Yes please, remove rMut amulet and make neqoxec and cacodemon give temporary mutations. OoF can stay as it is.

reaver wrote:
duvessa wrote:the two actually useful amulets are more likely to generate
What non-faith amulet do you think is useful? Regen?

Obviously rage.

phloomp wrote:Motivation:
Mutations are cool (particularly surviving despite bad mutations), so more mutations is better.
Avoiding malmutate via careful positioning is fun and this would make it more important.
Potions of cure mutation would now be more important, and when to quaff cure mutation is a real strategic decision.
Less amulet-swapping in Slime.
Discourages the player from lovingly crafting the perfect character rather than playing the game, since no character will be immaculate for long.

Speak for yourself, I find doing 2 to just be annoying. Maybe if malmutate and mutations in general worked differently I would agree (like in some of the previous posts), but in the current system I want to wear rMut as soon as any source of malmutate appears.

If less swapping in general is the goal, then having only temporary malmutate could work. If malmutate could be cured with XP and the amount of XP required scaled with HD, even orbs of fire could have a scary effect.

reaver wrote:
duvessa wrote:the two actually useful amulets are more likely to generate
What non-faith amulet do you think is useful? Regen?

I forgot about rage, so make that three: faith, guardian spirit, rage.

Sprucery wrote:Yes please, remove rMut amulet and make neqoxec and cacodemon give temporary mutations. OoF can stay as it is.

Personally, I think OoFs are the worst mutator. The other mutators are all have the counterplay of careful positioning and killing them quickly, since they're squishy (besides Mnoleg, I guess). OoFs are tanky enough that there's basically nothing you can do to avoid getting malmuated by them. Obviously, this is somewhat balanced by that fact that by the time you fight them you're going to win soon anyway, but I hate the fact that, if you don't have a big stash of cure mutation potions or rMut, OoFs are basically just "hope you don't get any mutations that mess up your orb run." I once had a character who had no tools against mutation, and by the end of Zot 5 has Frail 3 and teleportitis, which felt kind of arbitrarily punishing and made the orb run quite difficult. Neqoxecs, Cacodemons, and Shining Eyes at least give you the option of killing them super fast, or just avoiding the areas they're in if you have no way to deal with them.

Anyway, overall, I'm in support of the proposals in this thread. Tone down the amount of permanent malmutation in the game, add more cure mutations, remove rMut.

Another possible option could be to make permanent mutations give you some sort of warning, kind of like Salamander Stormcallers or Entropy Weavers. Maybe not the exact mechanic, but I think a lot of the current frustration from malmutators is the whole "any given turn within LoF of a malmutator could semi-permanently lower my health by 10%" effect, which I think is the big source of frustration. It's really annoying when you it takes you two turns to kill a Shining Eye and get some significant malmutation during that period. If malmutation had some sort of windup like Stormcallers, so you have a turn or two to kill the enemy or block LoF before anything semi-permanent happens to you.

Why is malmutate still a thing that exists? With things like reform to corrosion and stat drain, and removal of elements like harpy food eating, and especially potion shattering / scroll burning, crawl has made a very intentional shift away from monsters affecting players' strategic resources unilaterally. Malmutate is the biggest sore thumb of an offender left.

When I do extended, even with a source of rMut and such, when aa mutator of some sort shows up on screen I end up having to stop everything and focus on these otherwise relatively trivial enemies, and completely upset the pace of the game just because even with mutation resistance the number of encounters I have with them and the potential long-term cost forces me to shift all my focus onto them. I already have to play the positioning game with rMut, and its horribly tedious to begin with!

Aetherus wrote:when aa mutator of some sort shows up on screen I end up having to stop everything and focus on these otherwise relatively trivial enemies

Why?

Counterpoint: change malmutators.

There really are just a few common malmutators: neqoxecs, cacodemons, and shining eyes. Let them contaminate you instead. This can be unavoidable, or caused by a bolt hitting you, or it may check MR, or it may be an attack flavor, like af:hunger but adding contam instead of taking satiation. Anyway, it's a build-up of potential malmutation that will only work if it's overwhelmingly frequent in a short amount of time. You might even avoid hasting and control-blinking. This would be more interesting than the current malmutation process, which is spontaneous and happens independently of your contamination level and other malmutation attempts.

Orb of Fire malmutate should be buffed, I think. Make it smite-targeted. Blocking line of fire with summons is so cheesy. Come on, bad mutations are the only thing now that can make the orb run interesting, out of speedrunning.

Disagree about removing all non-innate, non-XP-timed mutations. Their semi-permanent nature is very fun.

I like contamination build up. Removes the frustration of getting a bad mutation because it took you two turns to kill a Neqoxec and you got unlucky, but still keeps the threat of permanent damage if you don't approach mutators with caution.

For the reasons I already discussed, I'm against making OoF mutations more prominent. If we want the Orb run to be more interesting, make the orb run more interesting. Mutation roulette vs OoFs is extremely arbitrary, and my experience when it went poorly was that it felt like I was being unfairly punished for something I couldn't have prevented rather than an interesting twist on the Orb run.

Proposal: OOF only appear *after* you pick up the Orb, and give unavoidable Contam instead of malmutation. They're also a frequent Orb run spawn. If people really think that OOF are worth having around pre-Orb for their speed and fire damage, split them into two monsters (Orb of Fire and Orb of Fiery Chaos or something similar).

This would work whether rMut is removed or not, since rMut is only 50% protection against mutations from glow. I'll also add that if all malmutate were changed to glow, it'd be reasonable to leave rMut in, although preferably with a warm-up time (I personally think this is a good idea for all amulets as well, and should be an XP timer, not a turn timer; Faith could remain unchanged or not).

big fan of mutators causing contam instead

as long as it builds up quickly enough, it'll be a sufficient threat without being as heinously obnoxious as current malmutate

OoF are exactly the sort of mutators that are good; those that are not trivializable. Neqoxecs in many of the situations they occur are bad, because they're more of an interface tax than truly threatening. In others (the orcish mines for instance) they're pretty good...

Mutations don't need eradicated. The notion that I need careful tactics or I'll have generally bad things happen to me strategically is pretty good.

byrel wrote:The notion that I need careful tactics or I'll have generally bad things happen to me strategically is pretty good.

Honest question: what tactics allow you to avoid being mutated by OoFs? I've always felt like it was the other malmutators that punished you for tactical mistakes (the problem was that they often felt mostly trivial with the occasional very severe random punishment for a tiny tactical error), while getting mutated by OoFs just felt inevitable without rMut.

As long as you don't get teleportitis, blurry vision, or one of the mutations that interferes with healing, nothing OOFs mutate you with is going to nontrivially affect your chances to win, you're already in zot:5. You shouldn't get mutated too much if you use your might potions and don't use a wimpy 1h weapon. You can always just tele ninja the orb if you think your mutations will get so bad as to prevent winning due to the weakness of the character. Though, I don't see how a character concerned about having too many mutations due to taking too long to kill OOFs wouldn't be more concerned about dying to them.

tabstorm wrote:Though, I don't see how a character concerned about having too many mutations due to taking too long to kill OOFs wouldn't be more concerned about dying to them.

You can be built to tank an OOF reasonably well but have RNG dictate a bunch of malmutate attempts instead. High HP, rF+++ and deflect missiles means you can whittle down OOFs since only fireballs will reliably damage you. Having no rMut in those cases means a LOT of mutations (I think I've soaked up like 4-5 bad mutations in a single fight before, but I also had cure mutation handy so it wasn't a big deal).

How were you attacking it? A wimpy 1h weapon? (although it's possibile to get 5ish mut against a single oof if it decides only to malmutate)

I had a Kobold once who had teleportitis and Frail 3 (giving a total of half the normal HP) by the time I made it to the orb. Had to attack it with a wimpy 1h weapon because I was a Kobold.

Yeah, most of the time, the mutations a character gets from OoFs are pretty trivial, and any character who can kill the OoFs on the way to the orb should be able to handle the orb run with any mutations they get on the way. But then every once in a while, by sheer bad luck, a character who has no cure mutation potions can end up with some legitimately crippling mutations by the time they make it to the orb. So what we have is an effect that is trivial the vast majority of the time but very threatening a small portion of, and random chance is a major factor in deciding which it is from run to run (sure, killing OoFs faster helps, but taking a long time killing them already has the downside of making you dramatically more likely to die to them so I don't think it needs an extra penalty).

Yeah, the orb run ends up being more interesting with bad mutations, but it felt frustrating that me having a particularly difficult orb run that game was mostly the result of bad luck and not the conseqences of decisions I've made.

So my thought is, malmuation on OoFs has no real effect most games, but very rarely it makes the orb run more difficult. If the occasional more difficult orb run is a good thing, why don't we find a different way to make it a more common problem? If it isn't, why have malmutate on OoFs at all?

Potion of might is a really good consumable to use vs. oofs.

Yeah, being built around short blades makes it hard to take down OOFs, but normally you can keep a potion of might/berserk handy for those cases. If you ran out or haven't found any, well, you just have to tank them for a bit. :oops:

The game is trying to tell you not to build around short blades.

tabstorm wrote:The game is trying to tell you not to build around short blades.

I know short blades won't do enough to high AC targets, I was just answering this:

tabstorm wrote:Though, I don't see how a character concerned about having too many mutations due to taking too long to kill OOFs wouldn't be more concerned about dying to them.

Sorry for answering, I guess?

Okay, so my question still remains. OoFs already punish you for taking too long to kill them by being very likely to kill you. Why do they need an extra punishment for taking too long to kill them even if you survive the encounter? For an enemy that seems meant to serve as the ultimate final enemy before getting the orb, OoFs often feel like they're just a gear check.

I feel like we're kind of derailing the thread, though. I guess I can make another thread if I want a discussion about the merits of OoFs and leave this thread to be a discussion of mutation. So to get back on that topic, I'll reiterate my stance that replacing malmutate with contamination sounds like a great idea that would keep Cacodemons, Neqoxecs, and Shining Eyes interesting without being quite as annoying. Since rMut is only 50% effective against mutations from contamination, I think it could be fine staying or removed, either way.

OoFs have been debated, but I haven't seen anyone mention Mnoleg. Would he keep his directly mutagenic attack, or would giving him a contaminating attack be better? I kind of like giving him a contaminating attack. It doesn't necessarily make him strictly less threatening, since it would make hasting against him riskier and contamination buildup can also cause damage.

OK, pull request up for removing randomly generated rMut amulets. Fleshworks should still be able to specifically create one I think...

If replacing Malmutate with a Cause Glow attack seems to be a good idea, then why not instead of getting rid of "rMut turn it into an amulet of decontamination, giving either passive constant accelerated glow reduction, or evokable reduction by an Evocations-based amount?

That would be counterplay approximately as interesting às rMut, so you wouldn't really gain much.

duvessa wrote:there's no way teleport/berserk are deadly

teleportitis puts you into monster los nowadays

IMHO orbs of fire having mutation is the least annoying of the common mutators - You only fight a handful of them and them having something which isn't damaging makes them less deadly. Nexoqec's are far, far more annoying, even if they can be killed with a stiff breeze. I wouldn't want the amulet removed unless it came hand in hand with some other mutation reform - making nex's give temporary mutations or something like that.

teleportitis puts you into monster los nowadays

Only as often as it used to before, though. From what I recall it basically just rolls a random teleport, then checks if there's a monster there, and if there isn't, you don't move. I think the overall rates had to be fiddled with a bit but the goal was to keep the rate about the same, even if it's not exactly the same.

I like Pollen_Golem's idea of changing the way malmutators work. The contamination idea is one I've even considered suggesting before. It makes a lot of sense as it utilises a system that already exists.

Even if contamination isn't a good way to go with it, for whatever reason, it could still involve some kind of semi-invisible meter. For example, Malmutate gives you "warning shots" before taking effect. An enemy hits you with Malmutate, you feel your body being altered. You're hit with it again, you feel your body beginning to change. You're hit a third time? Bam! You get your mutation; the process resets.

It would give players a bit more warning and leeway rather than the all-or-nothing sorta thing we've got going on presently. It encourages altering your tactics as the meter builds. Deciding whether to fight on or to break LOS until the meter cools off. But, more related to the matter at hand, it would also allow us to do away with the Amulet of Resist Mutation.

Because, to me at the very least, the Amulet of Resist Mutation isn't some tedious and annoying element of the game. It's a part of the game that offer me a way to bypass a tedious and annoying element of the game. Sure, I could probably just "get good" as the old saying goes, but I'd rather avoid having to play the Mutation Roulette every time I come across a random neqoxec or whatever.

I think a more strategic role for amulets of resist mutation would be amulets of suppress mutation, so instead of preventing mutations from occuring, it just cancels all (non-species) mutations while it's worn. Temporary mutations from wretched stars should remain unsuppressed since those don't have significant strategic impact on a character. An obvious swapping penalty is to give a player a bad mutation.

The Tavern

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