Malmutate Discussion

[WalrusKing]

Hello there taverngoer,

In response to some of the discussion in the amulet reform thread, I felt it might be a decent idea to discuss Malmutate, especially in light of the recent amulet changes (removal of rMut).

My personal outlook is thus: While it's nice to say that mutators are easy to counter, which is a claim that some people have made, the truth of it is still that you could walk into LOS of a Shining Eye or something similarly uncomfortable and promptly receive Frail (-10% hp) or something equally shitty (say blurry vision) because you thought maybe you could hit it with your skill 18 throwing and turned out to be wrong, or didnt deal enough damage, or your summons appeared in the wrong places, etc. And this could all happen in a very short span of turns, as malmutation often does. (I've been malmutated turn 2 in LOS of a mutator, and I could swear I've seen t1, but am less sure on that)

So without some form of mutation resistance, for a lot of characters many encounters with mutators where you cant immediately duck behind a corner stand a good shot of you eating something that makes your character worse in a permanent way (frail being particularly bad).

Getting permanently mini-tormented for a situation where your call wasn't even that bad (try to kill it before it malmutates) which you don't even have to be particularly unlucky to get in feels spectacularly bad. With things as they are I feel discouraged to ever set foot in Slime or Extended, which is admittedly a good way to mitigate malmutation probably.

With rMut in the game, if your first action was to equip rMut you still had to deal with the mutator as a dangerous threat, but as long as you took care of it within a reasonable number of turns, spending a good damage option on it or taking a few steps around a corner or the like, you had a decent shot at not getting any mutations at all. Unideally, this could still fail you, but you had a greater timeframe with which to work with.

So, this is my problem with no rMut from a feelings point of view.

From a design point of view, the fundemental problem with Malmutate in particular: Malmutate shares a number of characteristics with the bygone Item Destruction

Both of them existed for the sake of damaging your strategic resources in a permanent way (Arguably not a problem, except for the following)
Both of them could arise in situations where there is no convenient way to solve them with positioning
Both of them result in tedious behavior: For item dest dropping your items, for malmutate amulet swapping/carrying (now removed), or not using autoexplore and spamming summons in mutator dense areas in order to maintain positioning
Both of them could still harm the player even if direct mitigatory action was taken: for item dest, not dropping all your items fast enough, for malmutate failed blocks with summons, insufficient ranged damage, or unlucky walk away
Both were patched with resistances that made the problem go away and was extremely desireable at the very least for convenience purposes (rMut, Conservation)

Both of them were often found on weak monsters which in themselves posed no threat to the player, but where tension was created from the shitty feeling of being afraid of having your good run screwed up by a orc wizard (itemdest) or neqoxec (malmutate).

Of the Mutators, with the exception of Orb of Fire which is a very scary monster even without Malmutate, most of the mutators are not threatening in the least aside from their signature ability.

Malmutate is less noticeably bad on some of these things because of its lesser presence in the game, but that does not make them less problematic. This is especially noticeable in areas with an increased density of mutators (Slime, ziggurats, Extended (note from hearsay, hitherto unvisited by me except vestibule and pan)).

Proposed solutions:

Pure Stopgap: increase spawn rate of Cure Mut. This allows the use of another strategic resource to reset the strategic harm of mutations. At the moment getting a game where no curemut spawns at all is very very easy.

Odd halfway solution: make malmutate a multi-turn channeled thing like word of entropy and convoker recall. Possibly don't have it interupt other actions. This gives players several turns to deal with the threat appropriately, and makes it much more their fault if they get malmutated anyways. If malmutate is deemed to be too weak with this addition, possibly have it cast several malmutations upon the player when the duration runs out, or have malmutate become smite-targeted instead.

Preferred solution: Make all malmutations temporary but xp-gated in the way of wretched stars. Remove cure mut. This means that they do not lose the entirety of their strategic impact but mitigate most of the issues listed above. If a player gets malmutated they still have to deal with the consequences of the mutations, but stand a chance of being free eventually. It is possible that malmutate would need to also give several mutations similar to wretched star version to make mutators still feel dangerous in this case. It is possible this is unneeded as wretched stars are supposed to be particularly nasty. In this system Zin's resistance to mutation could be lowered and the capstone could be changed to remove several malmutations instantly for some piety in a reusable fashion.

With all of these solutions, contam and the like could still probably give permanent mutations.

[KoboldLord]

Most malmutations don't really even do anything, particularly at the low levels that actually come up in normal play. There are a handful that are really bad, but something like -2 to dex is technically bad, but it's probably going to be at most 1 point of EV in the end. The impact of most malmutations on actual play will be almost imperceptible to the unspoiled player. Much more fun is a subset of the fully developed malmutations that have a noticeable gameplay effect, but you hardly ever see those unless you are deliberately farming mutations, possibly because you hate winning. Playing around uncontrolled teleportitis or berserkitis is fun and interesting, but it's a feature that has almost no chance of ever coming up in normal play.

Then there's the neqoxec. If you decide to go for the post-endgame, there will be approximately a billion of these out there, and every time you see one you will want to treat this utterly trivial non-threat with an extraordinary amount of tedious caution because it is clearly optimal to avoid stacking tons of permanent tiny penalties. Anti-mutation tactics aren't exactly difficult, but they do require some amount of care and at no part in the process will there be any tension or risk of death because neqoxecs stopped having the oomph to be lethal threats before the player entered Lair. If we need permanent malmutations on monsters, it should be on a monster that is actually dangerous by itself, like the orb of fire. Not on a chaff monster that only exists to make late-game levels seem more crowded without actually being more dangerous.

The wretched star mechanic was introduced as an experiment, but I'm of the opinion that it is a highly successful experiment that should be extended to more of the game. Dealing with fully-developed malmutations is fun, and there's more incentive to actually play through them if they time out on their own as you play.

[daggaz]

I definitely like the wretched star mechanic. Im not such a big fan of getting permanent malmutations (some of which really do hamstring your character) as this ruins player control and fun, and can introduce quite a bit of tedium as well (teleportitis, wtf really). If the amulet is gone and permanency is a thing, I would hope to see a greater increase in ways to cure mutations, for example fountains (!) of cleansing placed strategically in later branches.

Neqoxes (whatever) aren't a threat, but the positioning/turn choices they force on the player can be, especially when there are tier-1s and the like in LoS at the same time.

On a bit of a side-note, it would also be nice to see the beneficial mutations list cleaned up, as a good number of these can hardly be seen as beneficial and can even be downright harmful. Horns or hooves for example scarcely make up for losing an item slot, and wild magic is not exactly every spell user's dream come true.

[dynast]

The fact that nobody mentioned demonspawn corruptors, which are the only mob that gives threatening temporary mutations and is actually harder to defeat than a wretched star says a lot about how irrelevant temporary mutations are during the extended part of the game. So i dont know how getting rid of malmutators such as neqoxecs is gonna make things more interesting.

[kuniqs]

If you want to farm mutators, then change them so half the time they give you light contamination dose instead of a mutation.
This has some strategic effect if you're hasted for example.

[phloomp]

My understanding is that you are supposed to sometimes get things like blurry vision and not be able to get rid of them, since they make the game play differently and that is fun. I think slow healing 3 might be too extreme - you probably need to join Zin or Mak at that point - but that's the only real offender I think. Item destruction was unlikely to make the game play much differently (except when you lose your last blink scroll.

Anyway I think the "stopgap measure" is actually the best one.

[Floodkiller]

I'm of the opinion that performing strategic damage to a character for a tactical mistake is bad design, because it encourages players to treat such threats at the same level as something that could legitimately kill that character. If the design intent is to have the players experience different gameplay due to the mutations, if makes more sense to me to tie that mutation to a species instead; if that species is unfun to play as, then maybe the mutation is inherently flawed to begin with.

I prefer the implementation of making mutators either cause temporary mutations (in which maybe the scaling on how long they last could be adjusted if it is determined that they are too little of a threat) or cause minor contamination (which would play into making Haste less of a no-brainer choice in areas with mutators). Permanent mutations can still remain and have a place in the game (god gifts/punishments, over contamination punishment, potions of mutation for gambling players), but not as a direct consequence to not responding immediately and properly to otherwise trivial threats.

If Malmutate is to continue to cause permanent mutations, then an alternative to reimplementing rMut could be to change Malmutate into a proper Hex AKA let the player resist the effect through magic resistance. At the very least, this would allow players to better weigh odds and plan around situations similar to what is already done with monsters with Paralyse or Banishment.

[njvack]

The fact that nobody mentioned demonspawn corruptors, which are the only mob that gives threatening temporary mutations and is actually harder to defeat than a wretched star says a lot about how irrelevant temporary mutations are during the extended part of the game.

To me, it more says there are like a hundred kinds of demonspawn in Pan and that they kind of blend together in an indistinct demonspawn soup. Wretched Stars are a lot more distinct as threats go.

Also, IIRC corruptors require line of fire whereas wretched stars zap you anywhere in LOS (and are more likely to mutate as well) so you'll notice temporary mutations from stars way more.

If anything, I think temporary mutations expire a tad too quickly.

[Siegurt]

On a bit of a side-note, it would also be nice to see the beneficial mutations list cleaned up, as a good number of these can hardly be seen as beneficial and can even be downright harmful. Horns or hooves for example scarcely make up for losing an item slot, and wild magic is not exactly every spell user's dream come true.

Technically "beneficial" is "not-always-strictly-bad" mutations, the list predates the potion, and the potion probably just needs a better name.

Both of the examples you mention are certainly mixed blessings, but definitely fall into the not always strictly bad category, personally, I often drink a potion of beneficial mutation when I would like some additional aux attack (on fast attacking melee chars with some slaying and above average str+dex, particularly when I can't use a lot of aux slots anyway) I wouldn't want that effect to be lost just because the mutations in question aren't very good for some chars.

[dynast]

I tend to notice more when i suddenly become vulnerable to fire instead of losing 6 dex, wretched stars are more stat draining tools than actual mutators and they are really squishy too, while corruptors usually hide behind a barrage of weird summons and approaching them can be tricky. I do agree that the temporary mutations expire too quicky, because making mutations temporary defeats the purpose of what mutations actually are. Its like item destruction on your flesh, if thats not the design goal just remove mutators* altogether.

[WalrusKing]

My understanding is that you are supposed to sometimes get things like blurry vision and not be able to get rid of them, since they make the game play differently and that is fun. I think slow healing 3 might be too extreme - you probably need to join Zin or Mak at that point - but that's the only real offender I think. Item destruction was unlikely to make the game play much differently (except when you lose your last blink scroll.

Anyway I think the "stopgap measure" is actually the best one.

But why are you supposed to sometimes get a change to your character you might've put hours into that does nothing except make you want to kite things EVEN MORE and play more tediously and not be able to do anything about it, or preempt it with anything except for some fairly boring and tedious counterplay that isn't always guaranteed to work?

And in what way is that fun?

Most malmutations don't really even do anything, particularly at the low levels that actually come up in normal play. There are a handful that are really bad, but something like -2 to dex is technically bad, but it's probably going to be at most 1 point of EV in the end. The impact of most malmutations on actual play will be almost imperceptible to the unspoiled player. Much more fun is a subset of the fully developed malmutations that have a noticeable gameplay effect, but you hardly ever see those unless you are deliberately farming mutations, possibly because you hate winning.

People actually do this? That's terrifying

If you want to farm mutators, then change them so half the time they give you light contamination dose instead of a mutation.
This has some strategic effect if you're hasted for example.

This feels like a weird half and half approach. I'd say that if you want people to be able to farm mutators for some reason, have things drop more mutagenic chunks instead. Those seem like a much much better way to both mutation roullette and to enable playing mutation roullette

[Hurricos]

Malmutate should be MRable. It's a hex; there's really no reason it shouldn't be. It'd make it significantly less annoying for higher-XL characters while still conserving how it operates - just like Paralysis or Petrification, bad mutations can kill you, and the earlier you find the paralyser / petrifier / mutator, the more cautious you need to be. Furthermore, most players already use MR equipment, and (besides =MR, which is generally less relied upon), no MR can be switched quickly.

Also, the seriously-already-dangerous sources of malmutation (OOFs) have terrifying HD and speed, so you'll need plenty of MR to deal with them anyways.

It can get a power enhancer like Tukima's or Sentinel's Mark does if need be.

[dynast]

But why are you supposed to sometimes get a change to your character you might've put hours into that does nothing except make you want to kite things EVEN MORE and play more tediously and not be able to do anything about it, or preempt it with anything except for some fairly boring and tedious counterplay that isn't always guaranteed to work?

Sometimes life ***** a huge ****.

And in what way is that fun?

Its pretty fun when your strategies to deal with different situations work, unless your definition of fun consists of only 2 keypresses, which is subjective.

[Aethrus]

I think that mutation and contamination and hunger all could use reworking, and ideally I'd like to see a system where they're all reworked together.

My personal preferred vision would be some system where malmutate is replaced with contaminate, spell hunger is reworked into contamination, and contamination itself is reworked into a more engaging and tactical problem. I don't have a clear idea how this all would work together, but that would be the ideal to me.

[ydeve]

No, definitely do not rework spell hunger to contamination. I don't want my FE and Cj characters having to choose between (being felid or spriggan and) kiting things with lvl one spells (which doesn't even work on D1-5 as even my lvl1 spells have some spell hunger) and being non-felid and getting yellow contam after every fight.

[Aethrus]

No, definitely do not rework spell hunger to contamination. I don't want my FE and Cj characters having to choose between (being felid or spriggan and) kiting things with lvl one spells (which doesn't even work on D1-5 as even my lvl1 spells have some spell hunger) and being non-felid and getting yellow contam after every fight.

I'd only want this as part of an ideal systemic redesign of all three systems. Contamination from spellcasting wouldn't work the way contamination currently works of course. Though I think Dj had that as a mechanic and it wasn't too bad. Though of course they had other systemic problems.

[Kaelii]

I'm not sure if malmutate needs a complete redesign with the removal of rMut.
[quote=WalrusKing]Both of them were often found on weak monsters which in themselves posed no threat to the player, but where tension was created from the shitty feeling of being afraid of having your good run screwed up by a orc wizard (itemdest) or neqoxec (malmutate).

Of the Mutators, with the exception of Orb of Fire which is a very scary monster even without Malmutate, most of the mutators are not threatening in the least aside from their signature ability.

Malmutate is less noticeably bad on some of these things because of its lesser presence in the game, but that does not make them less problematic. This is especially noticeable in areas with an increased density of mutators (Slime, ziggurats, Extended (note from hearsay, hitherto unvisited by me except vestibule and pan)).[/quote]

The mutation list is designed to have a range of effects, from minor boons and losses to major modifications.
Malmutate exists to make use of that range, because it contains several interesting effects and can change how the player needs to approach the game.
Currently there is no correlation between the late-game threat of a malmutator, and their malmutate ability.
Orb of Fire is one of the most dangerous enemies in the game for someone doing 3 runes and they can even threaten a 15 rune character. Their Malmutate however is 'just' as threatening as a Neqoxec's, something that is a threat to early and mid game characters but much less of a threat to a 15 rune character.
In short, malmutate is an arbitrary threat - it doesn't matter what presents that threat, or when it shows up, it is always roughly the same threat to a character.

Most of the proposed changes to Malmutate are to leave it as an arbitrary threat, and change the scale of that threat. Make it a temporary threat, make them a non-immediate threat, but still an arbitrary threat of the same mutations.
While these are simpler changes, I don't think they address the problem that I think should be addressed -- why should the mutation threat of a neqoxec be the same arbitrary amount as an Orb of Fire when the two are obviously not meant to be the same category of threat enemy?
Proposal:
Split malmutate into multiple abilities; lesser malmutate, malmutate and greater malmutate. Each ability can then draw from different sets of mutations to influct - a shining eye might have malmutate while Neqoxec has lesser malmutate and orb of fire gets the big daddy greater malmutate that inflicts two lesser mutations and one greater mutation. It would be more work than simply replacing malmutate with contam or making them all temporary, but it would allow different malmutators to actually feel like different threats in late to extended gameplay.
This change would not preclude other changes such as temporary mutations or such if deemed necessary.

[phloomp]

Whatever happens, I hope that permanent mutations caused by monsters stays in. This is a game with permadeath - we have already accepted permanent damage to the player character. I particularly like malmutations that can suddenly make a character much weaker semi-permanently.

No one wants malmutations that make the game less fun, but I'm not convinced that any of the current bad mutations actually do this. (Including blurry vision. Its main effect is with blink scrolls, and I enjoy playing formicids anyway.)

[bananaken]

No one wants malmutations that make the game less fun, but I'm not convinced that any of the current bad mutations actually do this. (Including blurry vision. Its main effect is with blink scrolls, and I enjoy playing formicids anyway.)

Blurry vision affects every single panic button.. which includes but is not limited to: fog, fear, holy word, summoning, etc.

Possibly unpopular opinion: Malmutations like frail are not fun on already fragile species, they're already balanced to be fun and interesting with the restrictions they begin with. I hate getting Frail mutation on a Felid unless I'm nearly maxed out on XL and Fighting, it just forces me to play even more cautious to the point it quickly wears out its welcome and just wish I could find a cure mutation already. As a temporary curveball I could tolerate it, but as something possibly semi-permanent and without rMut to help me prevent it I would just.. find rMut anyway (play undead, worship Zin, etc.).

[Floodkiller]

No one wants malmutations that make the game less fun, but I'm not convinced that any of the current bad mutations actually do this. (Including blurry vision. Its main effect is with blink scrolls, and I enjoy playing formicids anyway.)

Blurry vision affects every single panic button.. which includes but is not limited to: fog, fear, holy word, summoning, etc.

Possibly unpopular opinion: Malmutations like frail are not fun on already fragile species, they're already balanced to be fun and interesting with the restrictions they begin with. I hate getting Frail mutation on a Felid unless I'm nearly maxed out on XL and Fighting, it just forces me to play even more cautious to the point it quickly wears out its welcome and just wish I could find a cure mutation already. As a temporary curveball I could tolerate it, but as something possibly semi-permanent and without rMut to help me prevent it I would just.. find rMut anyway (play undead, worship Zin, etc.).

I'm kind of in the same boat as well. If I get an extremely inconvenient mutation early on and I can't cure it, I get tired too quickly of trying to play around it. I'll just quaff every source of mutation I have to make it go away; if it doesn't, I'll just splat myself instead of bothering to play carefully, since I'll have more fun playing up to that point again.

If Malmutate is left as is while in an rMut-less scenario, I'll just consider undead species, Necromutation, or Jiyva/Zin a requirement to playing Extended instead of a convenience option. Despite how ridiculous that sounds, I would rather deal with losing characters to god wrath or terrible skill point distribution than have to deal with mutators without passive protection.

[edgefigaro]

Malmutate would be less irritating if it had a shorter range.

[Sprucery]

How do you get mutations early on? I honestly don't remember ever getting a bad mutation early on. I guess if you're banished that can happen but otherwise mutations just basically don't exist in the early game. (Unless you're deliberately mutating yourself, in which case you shuoldn't complain...) Of course you can get a summoned neqoxec in Orc.

[bcadren]

How do you get mutations early on? I honestly don't remember ever getting a bad mutation early on. I guess if you're banished that can happen but otherwise mutations just basically don't exist in the early game. (Unless you're deliberately mutating yourself, in which case you shouldn't complain...) Of course you can get a summoned neqoxec in Orc.

Ring of Invis abuse has given me bad mutations early before. But, yea, mostly you don't. Orcs and Kobold Demonologists can summon Neqoxecs and Deep Elf Demonologists can summon Neqoxecs and Cacodemons; those are the earliest, generally.

[NessOnett]

Somehow I don't think the removal of rMut from the game can occur without some change to malmutation. But as much as I hate being malmutated(doesn't everyone?) I'd hate to see it effectively removed from the game through the wretched stars approach or any similar extreme remake.

The problem is that there is no "reliable" way to deal with mutators. Sure I can summon butterflies, but there's gonna be a decent percentage time where they spawn in the wrong spots. Sure I can shoot a crossbow bolt, but there's gonna be a percentage time when I miss. And when that happens BAM. Now you can say all you want about how "most mutations aren't that bad" but this lack of legitimate counterplay is in my mind the antithesis of what we want from this game.

So what we need, at the core, is a chance to counterplay. Because I think that's what a lot of players are worried about with this thread. People advocating to effectively trivialize malmutate so you won't have to counterplay it, when its whole purpose is to force a change in approach. Now there's two primary approaches I can think of to take in terms of adding counterplay:

1. Time. I think this is the simplest way to approach the problem. Often players will have one chance(or sometimes none) to counter malmutate. And in a game this heavily dice-based, that one chance happening over and over again(as mutators eventually get fairly common) is going to fail eventually. Probably repeatedly. We've got a few ways to deal with this. We could make malmutate have a shorter range so you can see your threat for at least 1 turn longer and have a greater chance to deal with him. We could make "malmutate" merely provide you with magical contamination. This would limit your ability to spam haste, would require you be hit at least twice(unless you're taking the haste risk), and would give potions of cancellation a bit more value. The third would be to make malmutate a channel, which I think is odd and clunky, because once the channel starts, things like summon Bfly that are supposed to be helpful here stop being helpful. And then we get this awkward disconnect on how we're supposed to deal with them because theres one set of tools for preventing the channel, and another once its started. And there's probably many others I didn't think of. Feel free to add to this list.

2. Strategy. This game comes down to 2 components. Tactics and Strategy. In-combat decision making and long-term decision making. Previously, rMut served this point by giving you a way to itemize against malmutate and work it into your build. With this gone, we could use another way to build in malmutate blocks. Obviously we still have Zin, and he's great, but niche. The standard approach would be to have malmutate be checked against MR. That's how we deal with the similar problem that is banishment(something else that isn't always death but is downright inconvenient for quite a while).

All that being said. i do want to make one separate point regarding orbs of fire. Orbs of fire are extremely dangerous, and extremely limited. I'm perfectly fine with them being "unfair" because they are supposed to be the final guardians. I don't want anything I've said or suggested to apply to them. I'm merely talking about the shining eyes, cacodemons, etc. that you find by the hundreds.

[asdu]

The fact that nobody mentioned demonspawn corruptors, which are the only mob that gives threatening temporary mutations and is actually harder to defeat than a wretched star says a lot about how irrelevant temporary mutations are during the extended part of the game. So i dont know how getting rid of malmutators such as neqoxecs is gonna make things more interesting.

The fact that nobody mentioned demonspawn corruptors IMO means more that nobody knows exactly what all those DS monsters do. At least that's how I feel about them. I know that one of them has wretched stars temporary mutations and another one has a -wiz thing that can be dangerous if I need to use spells, and another had that melee battlesphere that was removed because literally nobody knew what it did, they have good weapons and come in multicoloured groups that need to be checked with xv individually to make any sense of. Also corruptors aren't anywhere as common as wretched stars are in Abyss, nor is going to Pan in the first place.

[dynast]

That is true and it just pulls back to how braindead the extended part(pan at least) of the game is, and removing malmutators only makes it even more. Yeah you know what wretched stars do, so you also know that normally the best course of action is to punch them in the eye.

[njvack]

I have a hard time imagining how reworking Neqoxecs (which is the biggest malmutator by far) would make Pan worse in any way.

[dynast]

I guess we are just going to disagree since i think that turning a monster with a insteresting mechanic into another punchbag is bad.

[WalrusKing]

Whatever happens, I hope that permanent mutations caused by monsters stays in. This is a game with permadeath - we have already accepted permanent damage to the player character. I particularly like malmutations that can suddenly make a character much weaker semi-permanently.

No one wants malmutations that make the game less fun, but I'm not convinced that any of the current bad mutations actually do this. (Including blurry vision. Its main effect is with blink scrolls, and I enjoy playing formicids anyway.)

I would very much rather die to a threat in the battle with it or in a limited time afterwards that I can mitigate (temp mutations), instead of potentially hours later because I had no way of curing berserkitis, or I was a spellcaster and got placid magic and didn't have the damage output later on, or I got blurry vision and didn't want to kite things back to the stairs every fight.

As for formicids, I like them well enough too. But I like to know that I'm playing them in advance and not hours after starting a game with little chance of ever going back to playing whatever race I was playing before.

The mutation list is designed to have a range of effects, from minor boons and losses to major modifications.
Malmutate exists to make use of that range, because it contains several interesting effects and can change how the player needs to approach the game.

The chances of getting a boon are actually quite low. Malmutate is 80% chance of a bad mutation, 20% chance of a random one. Factor in that a number of good mutation are sort of on the bad side for a character on average (horns, talons, claws).

Proposal:
Split malmutate into multiple abilities; lesser malmutate, malmutate and greater malmutate. Each ability can then draw from different sets of mutations to influct - a shining eye might have malmutate while Neqoxec has lesser malmutate and orb of fire gets the big daddy greater malmutate that inflicts two lesser mutations and one greater mutation. It would be more work than simply replacing malmutate with contam or making them all temporary, but it would allow different malmutators to actually feel like different threats in late to extended gameplay.
This change would not preclude other changes such as temporary mutations or such if deemed necessary.

This requires throwing the mutations in tiers, which would work oddly on some of them.

[dynast]

I would very much rather die to a threat in the battle with it or in a limited time afterwards that I can mitigate (temp mutations)

How is that related to mutations? a wretched star flashes a few times giving you slow healing 3 instead of blasting you to death then leave you to die on the hand of another monster sortly after, thats more like a villain in a movie.

instead of potentially hours later because I had no way of curing berserkitis, or I was a spellcaster and got placid magic and didn't have the damage output later on, or I got blurry vision and didn't want to kite things back to the stairs every fight.

This situation happens very often? Also, thats like saying "i died because i couldnt find a staff of conjurations or ran out of blink scrolls". Also, mutation is still a game, if you cannot cure you at least can drown yourself even more.

[lethediver]

Hi, new account here. I created it just to post about this issue.

Mutation is already one of the most annoying parts of crawl , and with no rMut ammy, suddenly it just got even more annoying.

If they change this, they better do at least one of the suggestions in this thread:

1) More cure mutation potions

2) Malmutate is temporary (except from orb of fire and maybe cacodemons)

3) Malmutate causes contamination instead of mutation... at least i can quaff cancellation then.

4) Malmutate has to be checked against player MR

There's no 100% reliable way to avoid being mutated through good play and mutations are permanent..... maybe that's bad design, maybe not. What I do know is: IT'S ANNOYING.

Swapping amulets may be annoying in itself, but it's like 1% of the annoyingness of accumulating bad mutations like teleportitis or blurry vision and have to change my whole playstyle because a neqoxec show up and my butterflies didn't spawn right or I walk backwards but experience 1 turn delay.

[WalrusKing]

As a bit of a case study, I walked around a corner today on my HoFi, and found myself face to face with a neqoxec. Given that I was already in melee range I decided that the optimal play was probably to just kill it in melee. This seems like good malmutate mitigation strategy.

With a character with 16 or something fighting at the time, 27 axes, and a +9 exec axe of chopping, it took 4 hits to kill it.

In this time, it successfully fired off a malmutate attempt. Now, I was with zin, so this didn't matter. But the point is that I took a very reasonable strategy to counterplay the malmutate (I'd argue there was no better counterplay in that situation, and aside from summon spam to kill it, it doesn't seem like there even is a particularly more effective strategy against a mutator than hitting it in the face with +9 exec axe without giving it time to close distance in the game as a whole, even outside this situation.), and I still would have gotten hit with malmutate. The situation felt unpleasant, and I was very glad I was with zin. But not every character should have to go with zin to prevent this sort of thing.

(As a side note, I feel like mutations becoming temporary, on a larger xp timer than wretched star would lend itself to interesting decisions on its own. If you get something nasty you could go to a different branch to try to cure it off, where you expect the drawback of the mutation to matter less)

[Pollen_Golem]

You can have a bit of best of both worlds if potions of cure mutations are made more common and if they turn permanent mutations into temporary ones instead of just insta-erasing them.

[dynast]

Playing a HoFi of Zin is some deep research on the matters of mutations that you are doing. Have you tried evocables? invisibility? God abilities?

In the end i guess you are right, they removed Rmut to incentivate players to come up with interesting strategies and all we got so far was tavern *****ing.

[WalrusKing]

Playing a HoFi of Zin is some deep research on the matters of mutations that you are doing. Have you tried evocables? invisibility? God abilities?

In the end i guess you are right, they removed Rmut to incentivate players to come up with interesting strategies and all we got so far was tavern *****ing.

What would you have done on a HoFi adjacent on a mutator? Ignoring the permanence of mutations, which is a separate debate, I'm saying that the counterplay should maybe have a higher likelihood of succeeding instead of "oh yeah, you've got endgame-grade damage output in melee with one of the better weapons you could possibly have, so you'll only get one mutation maybe"

That is true and it just pulls back to how braindead the extended part(pan at least) of the game is, and removing malmutators only makes it even more. Yeah you know what wretched stars do, so you also know that normally the best course of action is to punch them in the eye.

[dynast]

Considering i had beogh, Smite, if not, Phial, if not, invis potion, if not, confusion/para wand, if not, blink scroll. But taking the real scenario in consideration in which case i am a badass melee orc who gives no **** about optimal play to carry or use such things i would just grab me some mutations.

[phloomp]

Possibly unpopular opinion: Malmutations like frail are not fun on already fragile species, they're already balanced to be fun and interesting with the restrictions they begin with. I hate getting Frail mutation on a Felid unless I'm nearly maxed out on XL and Fighting, it just forces me to play even more cautious to the point it quickly wears out its welcome and just wish I could find a cure mutation already. As a temporary curveball I could tolerate it, but as something possibly semi-permanent and without rMut to help me prevent it I would just.. find rMut anyway (play undead, worship Zin, etc.).

This is a good point. Maybe some of the species maluses that overlap with mutations should just be made non-removable mutations of that type, so they don't stack? Sort of like how vinestalkers can't get another level of regeneration mutation. Frail seems like a straightforward one.

I would very much rather die to a threat in the battle with it or in a limited time afterwards that I can mitigate (temp mutations), instead of potentially hours later because I had no way of curing berserkitis, or I was a spellcaster and got placid magic and didn't have the damage output later on, or I got blurry vision and didn't want to kite things back to the stairs every fight.

Under your stopgap measure you would have a way to cure berserkitis: survive until you find a potion of cure mutation. (I guess this is also true under the status quo).

In your example with the halfling you are assuming that there should be a way to reliably prevent getting mutations by playing well enough, but I disagree with that. Malmutators should incentivize good tactics, but late-game characters are so strong that malmutations are probably needed for balance.