Berserk Strength bug in 3.1.2

[paboperfecto]

I quaffed a potion of Berserk Strength in 3.1.2 and it permanently dropped my strength from 18/50 to 14. I was hit by a Nexus hound's breath just afterwords but don't think that had anything to do with it. Let me know if the save file would be useful or not or if you need more information. I rarely drink these potions so don't know if it happens all the time.

[Pete Mack]

Nexus hound breath scrambles stats. That's certainly the reason you dropped your strength. Check your other stats to see where it all went.

[paboperfecto]

Thanks...didn't know about that effect from Nexus breath, never had it happen before. That just about kills this character! Guess I'll need to focus more on resist nexus for the next one.

[Derakon]

Nexus breath is very rare; the only breathers of note are nexus hounds, nexus vortices, greater basilisks, and dracolisks (and the latter two almost always have something better to do with their time). You'd be better served by just learning to avoid nexus hounds/vortices; they're among the monsters that just aren't worth fighting.

[paboperfecto]

All my strength and a few points from other stats went into Charisma, at least I can get some cheaper items now. I might try to hang around that Nexus hound pack and see if they will rescramble my stats for me before they teleport me off the level.

[paboperfecto]

"You'd be better served by just learning to avoid nexus hounds/vortices; they're among the monsters that just aren't worth fighting."

Yeah, I'd come to that conclusion after this incident. I've mostly played TOME and recently branched out. I'm pretty sure nexus breath doesn't scramble stats over there and so thought the worst they would do to me is teleport me off the level. You live and you learn (or in this case you die and you learn). In trying to get my stats rescrambled I got teleported down a level and was killed by a basilisk pretty quick (-5 to speed because my strength was so low).

[dhegler]

I have never experienced this either and I have been hit by Nexus so many times before. Maybe I always had boots of stability... But nexus is not one of the resists I typically try to go after...

[Derakon]

I'm pretty sure nexus attacks have scrambled stats ever since 2.4 frog-knows (i.e. the very first version of Angband). However, scrambling is not particularly likely. For an unresisted nexus attack:

3 in 7: teleport the player (range 200)
2 in 7: teleport the player to the monster
1 in 7: give a saving throw, then teleport the player off the level if failed
1 in 7: give a saving throw, then swap two stats if failed

So you have to be unlucky to pull the "scramble stats" effect, then further unlucky to fail the saving throw afterwards.

I'm almost certain that ToME nexus attacks can scramble your stats. I don't have the source to check, but I see no reason why the ToME developers would have removed such an effect when they tend to favor adding similar wild effects to the game. However, resistances are far easier to come by in ToME than they are in Vanilla, so you're much less likely to encounter nexus scrambling.

[Pete Mack]

Still, that's pretty bad odds. Assuming a 1/7*1/2*1/3 chance of a bad stat swap, that's a 1/42 chance of, if not death, a really miserable character.
Given the rarity of stat potions in 3.1.x, it's not a risk you can afford to ignore. You can take that kind of risk a few times in a game, but if you take them habitually, you will never win.

[paboperfecto]

Checked the TOME wiki and those effects are indeed still part of the game. I must play smarter in TOME and avoid those nexus hound packs. This game I just looked, was diving and they were around 200xp each and I though hey, fairly easy experience at the cost of being blasted across the dungeon a few times....might as well go for it. Lesson learned.