Potion of beneficial mutation

[BlackSheep]

Agreed, tilting the effect toward removing bad mutations makes Cure Mutation potions less interesting.

[danharaj]

Having any mutation set is just bad in general because if you later get a bad mutation !cmut will not be guaranteed to remove it. !cmut isn't sought after because it's so good but because it's the only semi-reliable way to remove bad mutations short of divine intervention and it's so rare. And having more mutations, good or not, makes it harder to use it to rid yourself of bad mutations. And generally the bad mutations are much worse than most of the good ones.

[galehar]

how about we change !cmut so that its effect scale with the number of mutation you have? If it has an independent 1/3 chance of curing for each mutation, then you always have the same chance of getting rid of a bad one, no matter how many you've got. That would make players less paranoid about being mutated.

[crate]

I don't think I have ever nor will ever avoid quaffing a gain stat potion just in case I need to cure mutations later. Most of my winning games have zero bad mutations going into zot:5 anyway.

[evilmike]

I don't think cure mutation should be changed. But if it is changed in the way galehar suggests, I think it should do it like this:

1. Each mutation has an independent 1/3 chance of being cured.
2. If this results in zero mutations being picked, roll again.

This is necessary, because otherwise you'll occasionally get no effect from drinking cure mut (especially if you only have one or two mutations).

[tasonir]

Certainly the recheck for 0 mutations is needed, but I'd also suggest having the cure chance be at least 50%. You aren't frequently going to have more than 6-8 mutations, and cure mutation currently averages around 3-4 removed.

It'd remove slightly more for 10+ mutation characters, and slightly less for 3-4 mutations, and even less for 2 mutation characters.

[dd]

Personally I think cure mutation pots should be slightly more common.

[Arkhan]

Personally I think cure mutation pots should be slightly more common.

This treasure trove requires 2 potions of cure mutation to enter! Give it the items?
Mmnope.

I really wouldn't mind a beneficial change to cMut in general. It's really silly looking at every melee character's lategame build and saying "well I'd put that amulet on but I need rMut for half the post-endgame instead so screw that" or "This wrath is manageable, right? Where's that Zin altar?" Mutations are basically the limiting factor in doing the end game content from what I can tell from my one 15 rune melee run. Damage to health can obviously be recovered after a fight. Damage to equipment is manageable via scrolls and just using artefacts to begin with. Uncurable mutations end the run outright.

I mean, is it supposed to be this way to prevent someone from like... farming Pan until they max 4-5 skills out?

[bobross419]

Personally I think cure mutation pots should be slightly more common.

This treasure trove requires 2 potions of cure mutation to enter! Give it the items?
Mmnope.

I really wouldn't mind a beneficial change to cMut in general. It's really silly looking at every melee character's lategame build and saying "well I'd put that amulet on but I need rMut for half the post-endgame instead so screw that" or "This wrath is manageable, right? Where's that Zin altar?" Mutations are basically the limiting factor in doing the end game content from what I can tell from my one 15 rune melee run. Damage to health can obviously be recovered after a fight. Damage to equipment is manageable via scrolls and just using artefacts to begin with. Uncurable mutations end the run outright.

I mean, is it supposed to be this way to prevent someone from like... farming Pan until they max 4-5 skills out?

No clue, but it definitely doesn't prevent farming Pan. So far the only time that rMut hasn't been a no brainer for me post endgame is on my current OpFE that found Wucad Mu (of course I still have yet to find a single SustAb, so the point is moot thus far). Sure I keep a Clarity and Stasis on me just in case, but for general wandering its the rMut.

[crate]

I love troves that ask for !cmut. They are some of the easiest to enter in most games and it is very rare I miss the potions.

[crate]

Well a lot of players are really bad at using LOS and blocking LOF to limit mutations, and in those cases rmut is pretty necessary in extended....

[Arkhan]

It's not always possible to immediately counteract those, and it only takes one. You can be the best player ever at avoiding them, and it might be unavoidable to begin with. You can't actually tell me it's ALWAYS avoidable. Come now. Then what? Teleporitis, your move. Plan on doing any -cTele content? Best hope you don't get sent to your death the moment you enter the floor. What, are you gonna lure the entire vault to a stairway?

Honestly, teleportitis is the only one that really bothers me that much. Berserk can be dealt with, stat loss can be stifled or dealt with, hunger can be an annoyance but it's not like it's impossible to win with it unless you actually have no food no sustenance and a cursed blunt weapon or something absurd like that. Teleport can be handled the ghetto way with Control until you hit a -cTele area in which case it turns into a die roll to see if you're not immediately landed in an area that resembles a two digit Ziggurat portal. Mutations in general are by far the most dangerous thing you can be hit with, because there's a few that -require- an answer or you die. If you don't want to fight something early on (let's say xl5 or so) you can walk away. But what happens at that low level if you get hit with say, stat loss 2? Something has a poly wand that you're not aware of until it's too late and it's too early to even have a stash let alone a cache of restore potions and a sustab ring. Didn't someone mention how the optimal strategy is to just avoid them altogether? It's because they might murder you. An early-ish mutation potion is basically the game asking if you want to roll the dice on something that might either give you a nice long term benefit or end the game.

[crate]

Teleportitis is really not that bad in most places. Random teleport is actually a good strategy for most characters in most hell endings (the only one I can think of where it is pretty much definitely bad is coc_islands) so having teleportitis doesn't do a lot there other than make you adjust a little; and most characters who have gone through extended are strong enough to ninja zot:5 as well. It is also good in Tomb:2, though it can be really bad in Tomb:3. Even without ctele teleportitis is rarely more than an annoyance in pan.

[Arkhan]

I give that the credits don't roll the moment you pick it up and it can in fact be twisted to help you in some situations, but the reverse is also true for some of them. And that's fine, but if cMut is too rare to reliably deal with the reverse it becomes a better strategy to avoid it altogether which is why you do so. And that's the case with all of them, really. Sometimes they're negligible, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they help, sometimes they don't. Eh. I'll just wear rMut instead because it reduces variance and reducing variance is how you increase your success rate at most games. What would also reduce variance is a little more control over mutations, even if that control is simply a +1% chance to get those cure mutations to begin with.

[rchandra]

Teleportitis can be controlled via amulet of stasis as well, I've had to do that a few times. It works ok but you need to play carefully as many emergency buttons will take 0.5 aut longer and require you to remember to remove the amulet. I'm unsure whether it's easier to adapt your playstyle (no relevant abilities) to teleportitis or to stasis.

[rebthor]

I don't understand the complaints about teleportitis. It's annoying and of course it can lead to a YASD, but so can all sorts of other things. It's also easily counteracted with a fairly common amulet and 90% of the time with a rare ring or uncommon spell. Of all the bad muts, I think that blurry vision, slowness and slow healing 3 are probably the most crippling right now. I suppose you could get some benefit out of slow movement with Che and switch to TSO or Makhleb for slow healing, but once you're switching gods, you may as well just choose Zin.

Having had a character recently with wild magic which is allegedly "good", I'd take most of the other "bad" mutations over it. It made all sorts of spells unusable even when I raised the necessary spell level to cast them, e.g. invisibility caused glow which caused more mutations.

[The Mantis]

One: the idea of Gain Attribute potions being poor... and the idea of replacing them.
Gain Attribute potions are largely poor because they are a mutation - meaning that they are removed as Polymorph Other comes into effect and they take the place of other mutations. They're only strictly positive if your mutations are static and you're not getting polymorphed. Since they are either transient or inefficient depending on the mechanic they are exposed to, they are certainly invalid in their present state. Either they should be rendered immune to change, have a larger effect or both.

I have no comment on your idea. Replacing the potions with a potion of beneficial mutation seems odd when you can have both simply sharing a probability.

[dd]

Or they should be more common. In most games I've only found 1 gain x potion, maybe 2 if I'm really lucky - even then it's not said the potion is useful to me... getting gain str for a conjurer or int for a berserker just feels like a waste.

[The Mantis]

Or they should be more common.

Yup. If they were a bit more common, people wouldn't care.

[danharaj]

What about !experience? Don't think about it as a decision to make, think of it as a reward to the player.

[jejorda2]

What if stat gain potions lasted until you gained enough experience to gain three level? Then you could go ahead and wear that armour without penalty or hungerlessly cast that spell, and the next stat gain prompt would let you do it permanently, then the potion would wear off.

[danharaj]

Really? Oh well. I don't think anyone would be mad if it was removed.

[Galefury]

It's cool in Zigs. Other than that, whatever.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Experience would be better if it didn't drop randomly, but rather only appeared as a reward in dangerous vaults. An idea for one comes to mind where you walk in and see a potion of experience sitting in a room surrounded by indestructible glass walls, only accessible by a door you can't reach without going through the vault itself, which would be tricky and dangerous. Also, no cTele into the room with the potion.

[cerebovssquire]

Potions of experience are basically the same as scrolls as acquirement. It's a no-brainer to quaff the former/read the latter, but that is followed by an interesting decision - "where do I put my skills" and "what do I acquire", respectively. Of course the acquirement decision is a little more interesting, but all in all !experience is ok and I enjoy finding them. At any rate "no-brainer" is inaccurate.

[galehar]

This idea was brought to ##crawl-dev yesterday by dpeg and it was well received by all the persons present at the time. A patch is quite likely to be accepted. The potion of good mutation would replace potions of gain foo.
The name problem came back too. Evolution and augmentation have been suggested again, but they are not good since they are already the names of specific mutations. It would be good if it had "mutation" or "mutagenic" in its name. Here are my suggestions in decreasing order of preference:

potion of good mutation
potion of mutagenic gain
potion of mutagenic improvement

[XuaXua]

P o...

[Genetic / Natural / Self / Body / Ability] [Enhancement / Enhancing / Manipulation]
Gain Ability

[roctavian]

Potion of Eutation?

[Galefury]

Potion of Eutation?

What's eutation?

[tcjsavannah]

potion of advantageous mutation
stimulating potion of mutation
potion of propituous mutation (had to look up that word myself)

[nicolae]

Potion of Eutation?

What's eutation?

The eu- prefix means "good", though the combo would be Eumutation.

I like Potion of Genetic Improvement, but "Potion of Good Mutation" is probably fine.

(In a similar vein, now that temporary mutations are a thing, a while back I was wondering about a "potion of demon ichor" or somesuch that would temporarily give you demonspawn mutations.)

[Lasty]

Just spitballing. [genetic] in the names below can be omitted or replaced with a similar adjective.

Blessed potion of mutation
Greater potion of mutation
Potion of Jiyva's favor
Potion of [genetic] improvement
Potion of [genetic] reconstruction
Potion of [genetic] progress
Potion of [genetic] refinement

I also like the suggestion by roctavian for potion of eumutation.

[BlackSheep]

Potion of good mutation is probably fine. It's replacing potions of gain strength/dex/int, after all, and those were quite basic names.

[yogaFLAME]

Should potion of mutation change to ..of random mutation then, for symmetry?

[varsovie]

! of improvement
! of betterment
! of development
can have mutagenic before.

But my favorite would be ! of favorable or good mutation. It's simpler, but the ! of mut would have to be renamed bad or random mutation.

[Wahaha]

Potion of beneficial mutation

[varsovie]

Potion of beneficial mutation

XD

It's a good one, PLUS it's in the title of this thread.

[caleb]

What if !Gain Foo was changed from stats to resistances, with the according susceptability to harden the choice perhaps.

[brendan]

Done.

[BlackSheep]

boo bad name

[Mankeli]

"Potion of pick up a dictionary".

[nicolae]

"Potion of pick up a dictionary".

crawl secretly builds your vocabulary as you play

[Lasty]

vi·cis·si·tude
/vəˈsisəˌt(y)o͞od/
Noun

1) A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.
2) Alternation between opposite or contrasting things: "the vicissitude of the seasons".

This seems like a better name for a standard mutation potion. Why was it chosen?

[tcjsavannah]

potion of evisceration

[galehar]

potion of mutation was named back when item names told you what the item does

You mean back when the potion that cure things was named potion of healing?

I'm pretty sure brendan didn't want to get involved in the naming debate and purposefully chose a bad name as a placeholder until someone changes it to a better one. Sounds to me like this will end up being name potion of beneficial mutation, like it was originally suggested. It might be slightly misleading because of double edged mutations, but it still sounds better than anything else that has been proposed.