Incoming Amulet Reform Discussion

[Sar]

the concern is that these changes are being made without the appropriate balancing adjustments elsewhere

You do realize this is just the first step of the reform?

[dynast]

Im just gonna be a little **** ****** for a moment and say that its hard for me to swallow that this was actually discussed before being put to experimentation(despite the fact that it was). Its almost like you guys forgot that amulets ARE MEANT for quick and convenient swapping, thats why they are called amulets or jewelry and not shackles. You guys saw great things like rCorr and rMut needs to go, warding needs buff and gourmand remove food, then quaffed some vodka and went "snap, amulet swapping is bad". People ******** about rMut needs to GET GOOD, stop farming zot 5 you little *****. rCorr is already not doing much so just remove the amulet and leave potions of resistance and art gear to do the work, move invis and flying to amulet where it belongs and buff flying to increave movespeed.

Delete after reading.

[Sprucery]

Change the amulet of the gourmand to reduce satiation by 2000 points upon removal (dropping an Engorged character to Full), partially negating its benefits. This effect should not bring satiation below Hungry.

I think it would be better to remove the warm-up time from the amulet and change it to make you hungry or very hungry upon removal. I would also remove the satiation requirement from vamp weapons (change it to autocurse if swapping must be discouraged).

[kuniqs]

Change the amulet of the gourmand to reduce satiation by 2000 points upon removal (dropping an Engorged character to Full), partially negating its benefits. This effect should not bring satiation below Hungry.

I think it would be better to remove the warm-up time from the amulet and change it to make you hungry or very hungry upon removal. I would also remove the satiation requirement from vamp weapons (change it to autocurse if swapping must be discouraged).

What's the point of dropping to Hungry and less when you can just eat a chunk immediately?

[ion_frigate]

Don't know if anyone has suggested this, but temporary Teleportitis 3 seems like a much better penalty for removing an amulet of dismissal. Thematic, non-permanent, not strictly consumable-dependent, and shouldn't really be scummable.

[dynast]

its not like you can switch to stasis or anything...

[Pollen_Golem]

I don't want to put words in the devs mouths here, but I think the intent is to just see how the game plays with no rmut at all. While it seems manifestly obvious to a lot of people in this thread that the answer is, "It doesn't play very well," it's still worth testing out, to see if it maybe creates some kind of interesting emergent gameplay. Plus, it gets the community all riled up and throwing out ideas!

I observed before that it's not their style to just tweak things and follow up on how it plays out:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18001
That's why new orc/elf/abyss get experimental branches on CBRO instead of getting tested in trunk.

I've gone ahead and split off the discussion about GDD, Trunk, and player criticism. Let's stay on topic re: the amulet changes, thanks guys.

Where? I can't find where you split it off to.

You do realize this is just the first step of the reform?

[kuniqs]

What if malmutate gave you contamination instead of mutations?

[ion_frigate]

its not like you can switch to stasis or anything...

That can be dealt with. Easy (and general) way would be to make stasis- or -Tele-blocked teleportations not decrement the XP timer. This could also need to be accompanied by giving stasis itself XP-expiring -Tele (basically a temporary -Tele mutation) on unequip to prevent tactical swapping.

[Dreemurr]

i started in 2014 and to date this is the biggest set of changes i have ever seen. i have to agree that amulets and amulet swapping in many cases feel too important and not interesting enough. I'm tired of scrounging around for rMut or Warding just so i can do a certain branch without it being suicidal. But I thought this punishing tedium was a part of the game? I was led to believe that when they removed every way of restoring stats possible and sustab's unreliability became really troubling, and sometimes you would have to spend thousands of turns looking for monsters that are both abundant and not overly deadly to grind your stats back on if one fell to or below 0 before you can start actually playing the game again. It's interesting that this would be proposed because I like the idea of not having to lug several amulets around anymore.

I'm not too worried about malmutate, there's absolutely no way it's going to stay the same now, especially considering that even with rMut they were still one of the highest priority kill targets. Without rMut even being an option, in their current form they reach a level of lethality and character crippling that is unlike anything else. Heck, even if they don't change malmutate I can just stick to playing only undeads

As for rCorr, my last character that killed TRJ got slapped with -54 Corr when the sob finally went down. Without rCorr I probably would have been in the hundreds. Corrosion changes hype too? Or is it just going to be more common on artefacts

[Jeremiah]

Combine rMut with Stasis, and call it Amulet of Unchanging or something. Have it also prevent transmutations (both good and bad), and probably cause glow on removal if there are no better ideas.

[WalrusKing]

I don't want to put words in the devs mouths here, but I think the intent is to just see how the game plays with no rmut at all. While it seems manifestly obvious to a lot of people in this thread that the answer is, "It doesn't play very well," it's still worth testing out, to see if it maybe creates some kind of interesting emergent gameplay. Plus, it gets the community all riled up and throwing out ideas!

I observed before that it's not their style to just tweak things and follow up on how it plays out:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18001
That's why new orc/elf/abyss get experimental branches on CBRO instead of getting tested in trunk.

I can't remember the last time I've seen something in trunk walked back. Lava Orcs I guess?

As for other elements of amulet design:

I'm also in on the idea that frontloading the costs of using amulets is more interesting than having their costs on the back ends.

I don't feel like putting *contam on amulets is a good idea because I'd never wear an amulet of *contam unless the other options were trash, it was really sort of nobrainer good, or I had cancellation to spare post vaults or something. Thematic punishments for thematic rewards would work much better in my opinion.

Stopping regen for a non-aut period might also fit, but mechanically I don't know if such a penalty could be introduced easily, or if it would require some more serious tinkering with the code.

I'd think that using the current temporary mutation code with slow healing 3 would make this reasonably easy, and I like regeneration halting your regeneration temporarily as a drawback.

For dismissal, I think a much more interesting drawback than *contam would be teleportitis 3, or if something fancier was desired, one idea I had was a sort of reverse teleportitis wherein enemies are teleported to los from elsewhere from the level.

[dynast]

How ironic is that im currently playing a game with no amulets yet a ton of rings that i have to constantly swap in order to see invisible creatures, offset coldblooded against ice enemies, protect myself from fire, increase my int to cast transmutation spells before engaging and evoke invisibility. Of course i am swapping rings because i want and not because theres a dev behind me whipping my back. But that is just me who doesnt suffer from a tactical input syndrome where i get annoyed if my key presses are not causing enemies on the screen to die and the staircases to show up.

[Sprucery]

Change the amulet of the gourmand to reduce satiation by 2000 points upon removal (dropping an Engorged character to Full), partially negating its benefits. This effect should not bring satiation below Hungry.

I think it would be better to remove the warm-up time from the amulet and change it to make you hungry or very hungry upon removal. I would also remove the satiation requirement from vamp weapons (change it to autocurse if swapping must be discouraged).

What's the point of dropping to Hungry and less when you can just eat a chunk immediately?

It makes the amulet a little less swappable. But by all means let's make it starving instead of hungry to make it even less swappable.

[tedric]

I've gone ahead and split off the discussion about GDD, Trunk, and player criticism. Let's stay on topic re: the amulet changes, thanks guys.

Where? I can't find where you split it off to.

Took me a while, too. It's in The Bar, presumably b/c it's a meta-conversation about how to communicate changes that might be relevant to GDD conversations: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=18379

[Ceann]

I don't really see all the point of this "lets add XXX detrimental effect to these amulets so you don't swap them. It serves no purpose really, if you make them bad enough that I wouldn't want to swap them then I just won't wear any amulets until I find one worth wearing. I personally don't find the idea's of them to be very productive. Amulets are not just a "3rd ring" either you want me to wear them or you don't.

When you are thinking about design in my mind you have to think about what dev's intent is, when you are making changes you must have some objective you are looking for that you see as a means of improvement.

"Hopefully, removing it will force players to use tactics against
mutators more often, encouraging more interesting play overall."

The focus here would seem to be then, making Malmutate tactically relevant, more than "amulet reform". If it is actually about amulet reform then remove Malmutate and remove rMut, that problem is solved. If it is actually about making Malmutate tactically relevant then change Malmutate, not remove rMut as amulet reform to make Malmutate. tactically relevant.

[DraconicPenguin]

I don't really see all the point of this "lets add XXX detrimental effect to these amulets so you don't swap them. It serves no purpose really, if you make them bad enough that I wouldn't want to swap them then I just won't wear any amulets until I find one worth wearing. I personally don't find the idea's of them to be very productive. Amulets are not just a "3rd ring" either you want me to wear them or you don't.

When you are thinking about design in my mind you have to think about what dev's intent is, when you are making changes you must have some objective you are looking for that you see as a means of improvement.

"Hopefully, removing it will force players to use tactics against
mutators more often, encouraging more interesting play overall."

The focus here would seem to be then, making Malmutate tactically relevant, more than "amulet reform". If it is actually about amulet reform then remove Malmutate and remove rMut, that problem is solved. If it is actually about making Malmutate tactically relevant then change Malmutate, not remove rMut as amulet reform to make Malmutate. tactically relevant.

Agreed. I'm honestly not even sure as to whether the issue at hand is even a serious enough one that the change must be tested directly in trunk and not in an experimental branch.

A simple way to address the Malmutate problem is to nerf the amulet of resist mutation to make it less effective against it. As for the amulet of regeneration, rot on removal was introduced on the grounds that it would discourage tedious repeated swapping of amulets. I'm not sure how big an issue this is as I do not play online but adding a cost of this sort for removing the amulet doesn't really seem to be the best idea. Extending the delay for putting on or taking off amulets can be enough to discourage excessive changes in combat.

[lazorexplosion]

The thing is, I think malmutation works well currently.

It's fun to have the occasional extreme game where you have no rMut and you play differently around mutators and end up with a weird set of mutations anyway and you're quaffing potions of mutation just because you've already got a bunch of bad mutations and maybe you can mutate your way out of bad mutations because it can't get any worse now.

Those are fun and memorable changes of pace, but having that be every game would be extremely annoying.

And then I feel like if you tone malmutation down to try and make it tolerable to include mutations in every game, you're going lose the interesting extreme games but it's still going to be a frequent annoyance. My feeling is trying to put it in the middle will result in it being a sort of mediocre, frequent, mid level annoyance.

I like it as a pair of extremes that are either pretty much nothing most games but memorably crazy and threatening some games depending on whether you find rMut.

Are you really sure that this is something that is actually broken before you put in a whole bunch of effort to 'fix' it?

[ydeve]

The issue has next to nothing to do with rMut. That's just a side benefit. If you go back and look at the GDD thread from late October, you'll find that the real idea was to make all the amulets more like "faith. The reasoning in the (other thread's) OP went kind of like this:

Faith is currently the most powerful amulet in the game, and since it is non-swappable, the decision to wear it or not is meaningful. Except the decision isn't meaningful because the other amulets are no where as strong. So lets make the other amulets more like faith: powerful but non-swappable.

The thread then goes on to discuss all the amulets and what could be done with them.

[bananaken]

Faith being the most powerful amulet is debatable.. I would want regeneration on at all times before faith depending on the race/god combo.

I don't know how to feel about adding removal penalty for every single amulet.. on paper it sounds like potential for the player to consider interesting tradeoffs but very annoying in practice.

[lazorexplosion]

A big part of the reason amulet of faith and its inability to be swapped is interesting is because you have to weight the consistent benefit of faith against a varying number of situational benefits.

By bucking the trend of swappability in the slot, it's interesting because it asks you to consider what swappable amulets you have, what situations you could cover with those amulets, how badly those situations would hurt you, what you can do to cover those situations without using the swappable amulets to decide whether giving up or regaining swappability in that slot to use the situational amulets is worth the penalty and the loss of the consistent benefit.

If you just make all the amulets non-swappable, then you just destroyed that decision making.

If can use faith and I find an amulet of clarity, I'm going to stick with faith, if I then find rMut I have to think about whether clarity+rMut available as needed is better than faith all the time. Weighting whether A > (B+E) or A > (C+E) or A > (B+C+E) has a bunch of strategic choice AND tactical choice. If I can only use one, and A > B > C for this character, put A on never change it, no brainer.

[ydeve]

Personally, I've found the cases where I want to swap amulets to be for relatively minor convenience. Out of all the amulets, Rage, Stasis(?), Warding(?), Regen, rMut are useful swappably.

Out of these, Regen is situational, it doesn't do much in fights and thus is mostly good for Abyss and speedrunning. No one designs for speedrunning, and you could just wear it all the time in Abyss if you want.

rMut is just a convenience, as already discussed to death in hundreds of different threads. There are myriads of ways to avoid mutations (everyone can learn sputterflies), and if you're depending entirely on rMut it doesn't even work 100% of the time.

Warding is useless.
Stasis is next to useless.

So that only leaves Rage.

On the other amulets: Gourmand is useless unless you're a caster using high level spells without |energy and even then doesn't let me spam the spells I want in Zot or extended. Clarity doesn't matter unless you're using lichform or CBoE. rCorr is mostly for Slime.

So really, you shouldn't have to constantly swap amulets. And it's not like new amulets are really non-swappable, they just discourage swapping. Current swapping is a lot lighter than god wrath, changing from "dismissal in early game to "regen for Abyss and then to "clarity or "guardSpirit in extended is perfectly doable.

[ololoev]

If player gets only 1/4 piety bonus from amulet of faith, shouldn't the take-off penalty be reduced too?

[bananaken]

Out of these, Regen is situational, it doesn't do much in fights and thus is mostly good for Abyss and speedrunning. No one designs for speedrunning, and you could just wear it all the time in Abyss if you want.

Regen amulet is easily a core item if it's your only source of regeneration, it's not really as situational as you're making it sound. Keeping it on during fights boosts survivability significantly thanks to most fights lasting many turns and preventing damage altogether not being possible at all times. It reduces piety decay on relevant gods by recovering extra HP during fights and reducing resting time; you don't have to do turn count speedruns to realize it's beneficial to your piety gain to relegate some of your recovery time to auto-explore and not pressing '5', and regeneration makes this a lot less risky.

[adozu]

i thought the idea was to make gear choiche more interesting

as i see it this is going towards: "lets add tedium to amulet swaps so we're discouraged from tedious swapping gameplay"


...uh?

its especially egregious to read comments like "lets make annoying amulet effect toggle-able" cool, i mean, its a lot less keypresses than, i dunno, taking off the amulet right?

[kuniqs]

One change I would welcome is moving all the resist amulets (corrosion, mutation) to ring slots, and leaving the amulet slot for things that are mostly good, but bad under circumstances (clarity and ambrosia, spirit and spellcasting, stasis and... uh...)

[Lasty]

I think people are correct that the current contam/rot effects aren't ideal, and I'm leaning towards inflicting thematic temporary muts instead, possibly on equip instead of unequip. The idea isn't that you shouldn't be able to swap amulets, but that you should be switching them strategically instead of tactically.

It is not intended that every amulet will have a swapping penalty, and a new amulet that I'm currently working on will not have one. Swapping penalties are for amulets like faith that give cumulative strategic bonuses, amulets like guardian spirit that are abusable as an in-combat swap (+50 hp for 5 AUT!), and amulets that you are incentivized to constantly swap in and out again in certain circumstances (regen and dismissal). An amulet like the Amulet of Shielding doesn't need an equip/unequip penalty because it's always desirable to have it on, and so not wearing it is the penalty to removing it, and it gives no cumulative strategic benefit.

[dynast]

Adding swapping pnealties to amulets just leave the player to the optimal decision of "well, i dont need this amulet to win the game, so why should i put it on in the first place?". You are better off only leaving randart amulets in the game since those would have a appeal and consequently a *contam/*drain ego alongside it.

[dpeg]

Adding swapping penalties to amulets just leave the player to the optimal decision of "well, i dont need this amulet to win the game, so why should i put it on in the first place?".

You sound serious, so I'll state, just this once: the statement is completely wrong.

It is wrong already for formal reasons (because penalties could vary between trivial and crippling), but it's also wrong with the penalties you can experience right now, whether trunk or stable.

[dynast]

Unlike rings, no amulet offers anything that is "core" for the player to have, since most of their benefits not only are situational but are also solved by consumables. So why should a player ever put on a amulet unless it doesnt have a penalty to do so? Many players carry Ring of Ice and Fire but dont equip them because walking around vulnerable to a element is worse than walking around vulnerable to none, saving it to swap as situations arrive. If you gave a penalty to those rings, be it contam or element weakness on removal do you think people would still bother picking them up? You just turned some amulets into little traps and as soon as players realise it they will just start avoiding them. Ironically, again, my game only spawned 2 amulets of dismissal so far, which im not using, im currently doing crypts and a amulet of warding would have been welcome, i feel like my potions of cancellation are better served taking off the contam from irradiate, which i can spam if things get grim.

[archaeo]

Unlike rings, no amulet offers anything that is "core" for the player to have, since most of their benefits not only are situational but are also solved by consumables.

I think the entire point, dynast, is to change that. To make amulets into a very consequential piece of equipment that acts differently from rings, weapons, and armour. In my mind, it'd be ideal if each amulet was a bit like having a 1* or 2* passive or active god ability; the "wrath" isn't nearly as bad, but the power isn't so great, and you can switch them with greater ease.

Obviously, problems like the fact that Amulet of Dismissal isn't very good or desirable is something that needs to get fixed, but I like this general direction for amulets even if I'm not crazy about the implementation right now.

[Lasty]

I completely disagree about the amulet of dismissal being good or desirable. My experience is that it's quite strong for certain characters.

[archaeo]

I think it's quite strong, just like I think Distortion is a very strong brand. However, a 10% proc chance is too unreliable to stake my character on, which means that I can't really count on it to get me out of danger, and in every other situation, I mostly just want enemies where I can see them and kill them. In an emergency, I'll still usually have to burn a consumable; in a non-emergency, I don't want to teleport the monster away. Add in the fact that I need one of two rare potions to safely take it off makes it an iffy choice, imo.

A more powerful active effect, up to and including Disjunction, seems more desirable to me. Grey contam on use, temporary teleportitis on removal. But I imagine other, cooler ideas are available.

[njvack]

If dismissal teleportation chance depended on damage done (as % of maxHP) it might be better than a flat 10% chance.

Anyhow this probably belongs in a thread about dismissal in particular, I think this general amulet rework thread is going to get increasingly out of hand as more things change...?

[DraconicPenguin]

The idea isn't that you shouldn't be able to swap amulets, but that you should be switching them strategically instead of tactically.

I'm of the opinion that if this is intended, it would be best to extend the delay for putting on or taking off amulets from 5 auts to 20 auts, which means that switching amulets (taking one off and putting another one on) takes four turns instead of one. This on its own makes tactical, in-combat changes much more difficult, and would lessen the need to add switching penalties for individual amulets.

[dynast]

I completely disagree about the amulet of dismissal being good or desirable. My experience is that it's quite strong for certain characters.

But is it better than a scroll of teleportation? or a ring of teleportation?

I dont get what you mean by that, archaeo, if the purpose is to make players pick a amulet and stick to it i say again that artifact amulets are more likely to stick to a player's neck, and they are more interesting overall.

Anyways i already spew too much garbage out of my mouth for one topic, i will go **** about somewhere else.

[archaeo]

I dont get what you mean by that, archaeo, if the purpose is to make players pick a amulet and stick to it i say again that artifact amulets are more likely to stick to a player's neck, and they are more interesting overall.

I think my point is that I find it interesting if an equipment slot is reserved for a single, very powerful class of items that are intended to make a big change in the way your character approaches the game. I don't see the purpose as making a player stick to a single amulet, but instead just makes it consequential to change amulets, not so much that you're suffering from the effects forever, but enough that swapping casually isn't really done. It's a balancing act, but I like the concept.

I wouldn't really be opposed to the idea of making all amulets into artefacts, such that they are guaranteed to come with at least one other property. But I get the feeling that people will laugh that off as overpowered and silly.

[ydeve]

But is it better than a scroll of teleportation? or a ring of teleportation?

It's completely different from ?tele and =tele. Teleportation is for resetting the situation entirely, while dismissal is for reducing the number of enemies in los to a more reasonable number. I can think of three general cases where dismissal is useful.

1) You have a clear path to the upstairs and stumble across a pack of monsters that you can't handle completely. As you pick off a monster or two before running away, dismissal reduces the number of monsters so that you can take out the rest.

2) You are retreating to the upstairs (with lowered HP or MP) and more monsters (with ranged attacks) appear. Tele would be reckless as you need to actually find a place to rest. Dismissal makes the retreat safer and saves you a !heal/!haste/!inv or two.

3) (more of a side benefit) You hit a monster with a damaging status (poison/sticky flame) enough to kill it and dismissal tele's it away. Now it's dead without you having to wait it out while taking damage.

All three situations happen a lot with magic backgrounds.

[tabstorm]

reserved for a single, very powerful class of items that are intended to make a big change in the way your character approaches the game

None of this applies to the amulet slot though, when considering only generic amulets.

[Pollen_Golem]

On a whim I explored the possibility of flipping the basic idea of the amulets reform on its head - to make rings hard to swap. The result seems neater than I expected. It's in CYC now but I think it answers various complaints here. For example, your set of rings becomes akin to a low-tier low-wrath God, while the swapping "dance" is simplified to reduce tedium and encouraged as a tactic. Maybe jewellery was never broken down to its essentials like this before? Anyway check it out viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18386

Unfortunately it has nothing to say about Dismissal.

[archaeo]

reserved for a single, very powerful class of items that are intended to make a big change in the way your character approaches the game

None of this applies to the amulet slot though, when considering only generic amulets.

Yes, tabstorm. That's why this is "amulet reform" instead of "amulet tweaks." And why I suggested that they get boosted further.

[WingedEspeon]

I don't mind discouraging the swapping of amulets, but I feel that tactical swapping of amulets should have tactical punishments to prevent swapping. A ghoul may still swap in regen after fights and swap in dismissal whenever they feel like it because of how easily they cure rot, while a mummy might find themselves very punished for wear identifying amulets. amulet of dissmissal is going to be just plain bad on some characters, and making blue amulets act like shitty randarts with *contam is just too nethacky for me. At least *contam randarts have the decency to tell you that they are randarts and therefore potentially dangerous to try on even with some ?RC.

Troll leather armour (and troll hides for those that don't want to use ?EA) is another scource of regeneration, but nobady carries one around just to swap in after fights because there is a tactical punishment for such behavior. occasionally I will disengage, auto travel to some armour lying around somewhere, swap in the armour, and reengage (this is generally reserved for things like Nikola and rElec gear), but that generally happens less than once per ascension and isn't tedious. Armour already has a really good mechanic to prevent swapping that doesn't arbitrarily punish some species more than others, why not extend the same mechanic to amulets and be done with it.

[ion_frigate]

Armour already has a really good mechanic to prevent swapping that doesn't arbitrarily punish some species more than others, why not extend the same mechanic to amulets and be done with it.

On the devwiki, one of the other suggested costs for the amulet of regeneration was torment. Torment upon equipping and unequipping the amulet would be a great way to dissuade players from tactically swapping the amulet without completely imitating armor.

[gdami1]

What if amulet of resist mutation also have "Contam". It would limit swapping a lot!

[WingedEspeon]

Armour already has a really good mechanic to prevent swapping that doesn't arbitrarily punish some species more than others, why not extend the same mechanic to amulets and be done with it.

On the devwiki, one of the other suggested costs for the amulet of regeneration was torment. Torment upon equipping and unequipping the amulet would be a great way to dissuade players from tactically swapping the amulet without completely imitating armor.

I think that torment would be a great drawback for amulet of regeneration. I already used to wear regen all the time a lot, and not having to worry about rotting my mummy of switch out would be nice. Simply replace the torment with Holy word for undead (I believe they behave similarly for players), and make DD immune (since the regen amulet doesn't do anything for them anyway and wear IDing is nice), and make the torment/HW targeted on the player (no need to give unlimited torment scrolls) and you have a good tactical punishment for swapping.

[Lasty]

I had initially planned torment as the cost for removing regen -- it's a similar penalty to removing faith, in that it removes some of the resource you just gained. Other devs felt that this would be irritating, as it would prompt players to rest after removing regen to wear-id other amulets, so we settled on the compromise of light rotting at the time.

Again, I now think that giving a temporary level of frail on equip is probably a better penalty, since it has a similar effect but wears off naturally instead of being a small potion of curing tax.

[ion_frigate]

Again, I now think that giving a temporary level of frail on equip is probably a better penalty, since it has a similar effect but wears off naturally instead of being a small potion of curing tax.

This is perhaps a discussion for another thread, but why not just XP-gate rot itself?

Failing that, a temporary level of frail sounds a lot better than (semi-permanent) rot.

[ydeve]

And if we're doing that ("faith and "guardSpirit have penalties similar in severity to xp-gated frail after all), then "dismissal doesn't have to be as harsh as *Contam. Xp-gated teleportitis would prevent tactical swapping just as well.

[Lasty]

Yeah, something along those lines. Teleportitis has the one drawback of doing nothing for formicids, so I might make it a temporary -EV mutation instead (like anti-phase-shift, thematically). I'm hoping I'll have a chance to work on things tonight.

[lethediver]

Hi, I just wanted to say I don't really like the direction of the amulet changes.

1) Adds a lot of complexity. There's different removal penalties for each amulet? That's a lot for new players to pick up.

2) Not thematic / not intuitive. There is "cursed" gear in a lot of RPGs, but not a lot of neutral, unintelligent gear which would inflict harm on you for the crime of taking it off. It kind of just doesn't even really make sense, there's no tradition of amulets doing stuff like this in any game or setting.

At least the ammy of faith made sense, because your god would be wroth at you for removing an item which venerates them.

3) Malmutate was already tedious and unreliable to deal with while having rMut. Without rMut, the late game just got even more annoying. Please at least have more cure mutation potions or something if you're going to remove rMut. I don't want to have to treat every neqoxec like a boss fight.

4) Neither here nor there, but death cobs hunger thing is too strong. =p My melee char would rather fight an ancient lich and OOF in zot than two death cobs, no joke.