Cure Mutation

[snow]

This should really cure a single selected mutation instead of a few random ones.

In all honesty with the current system even "good" mutations are considered bad since they make bad ones harder to cure. The end result is the the mutation system basically doesn't exist except for a few minor annoyances between cure mutation sips. I guess the theory behind the current system is that sipping cure mutation or not should be an "interesting choice" but in practice it's anything but and players just aim to have no mutations at all.

Now having cure mutation only cure a single selected mutation may seem harsh at first but honestly most mutations aren't THAT bad and you can live with them all game. Furthermore you'll actually retain some good mutations which in turn would make every character you play a bit more unique. If this proves too harsh then sources of stasis and such could be added or made more common.

[yogaFLAME]

There are only a small handful of truly debilitating bad mutations, the rest you can live with with little to no problem. This means that if you have a guaranteed way of removing the one or two really bad ones you'll get, you can scum !mutation and mut chunks quite easily.

[ebarrett]

This should really cure a single selected mutation instead of a few random ones.

This not only makes the game easier in general but also makes a couple variants of reckless dumb stupid play less automatically punishable in particular, so obviously no.

[Psieye]

Before we can decide whether the current mutation/cMut system needs this specific tweak, we need to first ascertain what we want the purpose of the mutation system to be. I spot a few things it's trying to do:

1) Let certain monsters do something extra horrible to you besides shave off some HP.
2) Make the player feel awesome by making their character some buffed up mutant.
3) Let certain races and gods make you feel awesome via #2

Currently, mutations outside of racial/god_gift sources are skewed towards bad - the good mutations are outweighed by the bad mutations. That's both in frequency and in severity. In the latter's case: a lot of good mutations are merely 'cool toys' or the equivalent of some minor trinket. There are some excellent ones but they can be made redundant with a piece of jewellery swapped in when necessary (except Speed, but there's a spell for that). Similarly, a lot of bad mutations are tolerable nuisances but there's a few which scream "fix me or die". That is: the best case good mutations don't offset the worst case bad mutations.

In frequency: there are no 'get good mutation' sources besides the extremely rare "gain X" potions and the extremely rare "Evolution" mutation. There are many 'neutral' mutation sources where you have a 50:50 chance of getting a good mutation. You have a 90% chance of getting a bad mutation from the most common sources of mutation: polymorph beams. Now that may change when the bad_forms branch gets merged into trunk but for now you're stuck with "you are quite likely to end up with a bad mutation rather than a good mutation". Furthermore, there's an absolute limit to the number of mutations you can have at a time, so the good mutations will eventually get removed even if no cMut happens (which is why Evolution isn't that great).

Thus the current system points towards: "don't play with mutations outside of Objective #3, the odds are badly stacked against you". Newbies will hit the roulette because they haven't experienced it enough or they like taking the risk and maybe the flavour as well. Veterans know they don't need any mutations to win so if they want to use Objective #2, they do it through #3.

Do we want to change this status quo? Or maybe, do we want to further enforce it? The latter would be simple: just say every non-racial, non-god-given mutation has a 100% chance to be bad. Then cMut could be buffed in some way (more frequent and/or more potent).


Incidentally, the history of mutations goes like this: some major versions ago cMut was all but irrelevant because you drank 80 mutation potions until you had the ideal mutation set you wanted then ran around with rMut for a double layer of mutation preservation. Even further back, you just scummed the "alter self" spell to effectively have unlimited mutation potions to do exactly the above.

[njvack]

I, too, wish the mutation game were a little more compelling.

My favorite mutation proposal I'd heard here (I think KL had it) was essentially: most mutations are temporary and will expire after a couple levels' XP gain. Mutations are biased towards giving you more levels in mutations you already have. cMut is replaced by "Gain Good Mutation" which grants a couple good mutations, which will time out normally.

[ebarrett]

Newbies will hit the roulette because they haven't experienced it enough or they like taking the risk and maybe the flavour as well. Veterans know they don't need any mutations to win so if they want to use Objective #2, they do it through #3.

Actually, a lot of good players do play mutation roulette later in the game, but they know what they're doing and they have a backup plan or three in case it goes wrong.

Furthermore, there's an absolute limit to the number of mutations you can have at a time, so the good mutations will eventually get removed even if no cMut happens (which is why Evolution isn't that great).

The cap is so ridiculously high it isn't a factor, ever. I know this because once I had an "accident" in the eye room in sprint I and honestly, I don't think anyone will ever hit the mutation cap in a regular game, because you can have basically a billion mutations at once anyway.

Do we want to change this status quo? Or maybe, do we want to further enforce it? The latter would be simple: just say every non-racial, non-god-given mutation has a 100% chance to be bad. Then cMut could be buffed in some way (more frequent and/or more potent).

Now this is just plain dumb. Random mutation risk/reward is an interesting mechanic and something that tells apart good players and bad players, and so is the limited availability (and in some cases, reliability) of means to get rid of bad mutations.

[Psieye]

Furthermore, there's an absolute limit to the number of mutations you can have at a time, so the good mutations will eventually get removed even if no cMut happens (which is why Evolution isn't that great).

The cap is so ridiculously high it isn't a factor, ever. I know this because once I had an "accident" in the eye room in sprint I and honestly, I don't think anyone will ever hit the mutation cap in a regular game, because you can have basically a billion mutations at once anyway.

I was thinking of the chance a mutation attempt will fail when you have lots of mutations. Way back in the days of Fulsome Distillation on plentiful mutagenic corpses, I sometimes solely relied on having 10+ mutations as my defence against mutations. Not a good way to play, but the 'softcap' was there.

[galehar]

You have a 90% chance of getting a bad mutation from the most common sources of mutation: polymorph beams. Now that may change when the bad_forms branch gets merged into trunk but for now you're stuck with "you are quite likely to end up with a bad mutation rather than a good mutation".

Note that the goal of the bad_forms branch isn't to remove sources of bad mutations. Most (all?) monsters have their polymorph other spell replaced by a malmutate spell. It's just poly other wand and transmut miscasts which will do bad forms instead of mutations.

most mutations are temporary and will expire after a couple levels' XP gain.

I don't think it's planned to replace most sources of permanent mutations by temporary ones. Maybe a few ones, or not.

Mutations are biased towards giving you more levels in mutations you already have.

Yes, that could be nice.

cMut is replaced by "Gain Good Mutation" which grants a couple good mutations, which will time out normally.

I thought the proposal (from minmay?) was to replace gain foo potions by a beneficial mutation potion which gives something like 1-3 random good mutations.

[ebarrett]

I was thinking of the chance a mutation attempt will fail when you have lots of mutations. Way back in the days of Fulsome Distillation on plentiful mutagenic corpses, I sometimes solely relied on having 10+ mutations as my defence against mutations. Not a good way to play, but the 'softcap' was there.

Mutation resistance/immunity is itself a mutation, not some mystic thing that just happens after a magical number of mutations. There might be a hard cap but you're probably hallucinating that "soft cap".

Also, if someone comes here and proves me wrong, I'll just argue in advance that I don't go around merrily mutating myself all the time, how would I know how the game behaves when you do stupid things. :v

[njvack]

most mutations are temporary and will expire after a couple levels' XP gain.

I don't think it's planned to replace most sources of permanent mutations by temporary ones. Maybe a few ones, or not.

Oh, I didn't think it was actual plan. It just sounded like a good idea to me

[Galefury]

A "soft cap" exists, AFAIK. Mutation attempts have a chance to do nothing or remove a mutation instead of adding a mutation, depending on the number of mutations you already have.

Ah, no proof, but a bot entry:
When being mutated (not by a god), you have a (current mutations)/15 chance of: (2/3 of the time): cancel the mutation, (1/3 of the time): remove a random mutation.

[ebarrett]

Well, shows you how much I know about the game's innards.

[Psieye]

These days, I see newbies scratching the "omg must try out every mutation ever" itch and I think 'back when I had that itch, I had 60+ !mutation to play with in every non-Trog game. Sucks to have that itch now when there's much fewer neutral mutagens'. Then SchwaWarrior posted his dump of a DS that slept in Cigotuvi's mutagen fog generator room. I had to salute that for the sheer insanity (and the result).

You have a 90% chance of getting a bad mutation from the most common sources of mutation: polymorph beams. Now that may change when the bad_forms branch gets merged into trunk but for now you're stuck with "you are quite likely to end up with a bad mutation rather than a good mutation".

Note that the goal of the bad_forms branch isn't to remove sources of bad mutations. Most (all?) monsters have their polymorph other spell replaced by a malmutate spell. It's just poly other wand and transmut miscasts which will do bad forms instead of mutations.

That's what I had thought, thanks for the confirmation. All the malmutate casters come later in the game and so the only real need for cMut before then is because something went wild with the polymorph wand on you. Well, that or you quaffID'd !mutation, you ate mutagenic meat or you went into glow but that's mutation roulette.

[Steel Neuron]

Sorry for going completely off topic but what are the odds on mutagenic meat? Is it neutral? I say this because it has almost always turned out positive for me, which led me to believe the odds are stacked in the player's favour (for sky beast meat at least)

[njvack]

Neutral.

[Stormfox]

There are more good mutations than bad ones, so doing a completely random (neutral) pick is more likely to get you a good one. Doesn't make it a wise game to play under most circumstances.