[3.4] The gold potion of speed {squelch} was really a monster!

[PowerWyrm]

Funny to see a potion mimic appear from nowhere...

[buzzkill]

Who squelches potions of speed?

[Timo Pietilä]

Who squelches potions of speed?

A high-level mage that can't be confused, stunned or blinded maybe. Haste for mages is cheap, and that extra slot in inventory full of books is quite valuable.

[debo]

Who squelches potions of speed?

I used to do that with my Rogues when I hit speed 20+

[Derakon]

I'll reiterate the offhanded suggestion I made awhile back that mimics should scale the native depth of the item they pretend to be so that they're more tempting targets as you get deeper. Maybe treat them as 5-10 levels OOD when deciding what type they are. This makes thematic sense (after all, they feed by luring adventurers in too close) and also reduces the odds that the player will encounter a squelched mimic.

Of course, potions of speed are native everywhere so that wouldn't help much in this particular situation...

[fizzix]

I'll reiterate the offhanded suggestion I made awhile back that mimics should scale the native depth of the item they pretend to be so that they're more tempting targets as you get deeper. Maybe treat them as 5-10 levels OOD when deciding what type they are. This makes thematic sense (after all, they feed by luring adventurers in too close) and also reduces the odds that the player will encounter a squelched mimic.

Of course, potions of speed are native everywhere so that wouldn't help much in this particular situation...

Mimics only pretend to be desirable flavors. I think for potions it's Speed, Healing, *Healing, !EXP, Life, and *Enlightenment.

[Derakon]

Mimics only pretend to be desirable flavors. I think for potions it's Speed, Healing, *Healing, !EXP, Life, and *Enlightenment.

On the one hand, GMTA.

On the other hand, that's kind of a small selection of flavors, isn't it? Toss in Augmentation and the stat-gain potions at least IMO. If mimics can pretend to be stacks of potions, then CSW and CCW should be valid targets as well.

[kaypy]

I think we're hitting the limits of what it is feasible to deal with here. I cant see any way to guarantee non-squelched mimics in all cases.

What if the player squelches *all* potions? (Ok, unlikely, but given some of the folks around here I could well imagine someone squelching all scrolls as part of an 'illiterate' run)
What if the player squelches the mimics specific flavor after detecting it?

Hmm. Apparently if you see a mimic as opposed to detecting it, and you duck out of sight and squelch its object type, it will immediately vanish. Whereas if you do the same thing with an actual object it will wait until you get into LOS again.

So if you really really really try hard (and swear off using detect objects), you can detect mimics by abusing squelch settings.

[Derakon]

I think we're hitting the limits of what it is feasible to deal with here. I cant see any way to guarantee non-squelched mimics in all cases.

Certainly not, and that wasn't the goal.

Hmm. Apparently if you see a mimic as opposed to detecting it, and you duck out of sight and squelch its object type, it will immediately vanish. Whereas if you do the same thing with an actual object it will wait until you get into LOS again.

Ugh. Okay, another squelch bug then, I guess.

[debo]

On the one hand, GMTA.

On the other hand, that's kind of a small selection of flavors, isn't it? Toss in Augmentation and the stat-gain potions at least IMO. If mimics can pretend to be stacks of potions, then CSW and CCW should be valid targets as well.

This may be faulty memory, but I seem to remembering screaming in anguish whenever an !Augmentation turned out to be a mimic. Are we sure they're not already doing this?

[fizzix]

This may be faulty memory, but I seem to remembering screaming in anguish whenever an !Augmentation turned out to be a mimic. Are we sure they're not already doing this?

Yeah, I screwed up, it's Augmentation, not *enlightenment. The monster.txt edit files has the mimicable types. It's trivial to change.

In case you're wondering rings can mimic:
Speed, slaying, constitution, resist poison, free action and see invisible.

scrolls can mimic:
banishment, mass banishment, teleport level, acquirement, *acquirement* and *destruction*.

[Zyphyr]

On the one hand, GMTA.

On the other hand, that's kind of a small selection of flavors, isn't it? Toss in Augmentation and the stat-gain potions at least IMO. If mimics can pretend to be stacks of potions, then CSW and CCW should be valid targets as well.

Evil thought of the day - Mimic Swarms. They look like a stack of potions, but when you trigger them they spread out to be a number of Mimics equal to the stack size filling nearby spaces in a manner like that of summons.

[Philip]

Does this mean that if I spot an unknown flavor of potion/scroll/ring and it turns out to be a mimic, it will most likely be valuable or does it just choose a random flacor in that case?

[Antoine]

Mimics only pretend to be desirable flavors. I think for potions it's Speed, Healing, *Healing, !EXP, Life, and *Enlightenment.

That's super cool.

A.

[fizzix]

Does this mean that if I spot an unknown flavor of potion/scroll/ring and it turns out to be a mimic, it will most likely be valuable or does it just choose a random flacor in that case?

Yes, you can use the mimic flavor knowledge to meta-game what unknown potion flavors actually are. Then again, usually almost all unknown flavors of that level are useful. I guess the most obvious possibility is using it to ID rings of speed.