Ideas on How to Improve Regeneration Mutation?

[The_MixMaster™]

Been thinking of ways to give regeneration a more direct (Defensive/offense) use other than pure utility. Had a few ideas like a defect that makes dismemberment occur more often, an active ability portion that acts as a mini/reusable salve injector (Period of heightened regeneration), or a separate mutation that lets you detach limbs limbs on the fly and in conjunction with regeneration would let you regenerate from those limbs and give you a bodily clone or two, or let you throw your own head then regen a new body to escape.

Those are just a few of my ideas, have any others?

[The_MixMaster™]

For context, I'm coming up with ideas for a possible mod. So something simple also wouldn't be bad since it'd be easy to add.

[Bwixie]

Meditation is a skill that already makes Regeneration Salve-like with high enough Willpower or AV to tank hits, I've used it on a Quills build to soak up surprising amounts of damage.

It would be funny if Regeneration allowed the use of your own body as an ingredient in cooking, like Photosynthetic Skin, it would be a jerky that increases your max hp by base 10% and 3% per mutation rank.

[The_MixMaster™]

Originally posted by Bwixie:

Meditation is a skill that already makes Regeneration Salve-like with high enough Willpower or AV to tank hits, I've used it on a Quills build to soak up surprising amounts of damage.

It would be funny if Regeneration allowed the use of your own body as an ingredient in cooking, like Photosynthetic Skin, it would be a jerky that increases your max hp by base 10% and 3% per mutation rank.

Can't you already amputate your own body parts and cook with/eat them?

[Bwixie]

Originally posted by The_MixMaster™:

Can't you already amputate your own body parts and cook with/eat them?

Yes, but body parts produce weak cooking effects and are heavy. Regeneration's self-jerky could function much like Photosynthetic Skin's ingredients already do, being available to use on cooldown and giving only a single effect. This also allows stacking the max hp bonus with normal jerky items for even more hp or those triggered effects.

[The_MixMaster™]

That's possible, adding a new food item like that wouldn't be particularly hard either.

[Pizzarugi]

I got one idea on how to make Regeneration mutation better: Add active ability that gives the old removed healing skill which restores a percentage of your max life for a few turns. Perhaps give it a generous cooldown so it doesn't become impossible to fight chrome pyramids, star krakens, or girsh nephilim without needing corrosive gas generation or hand-e-nukes.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Bwixie:

Meditation is a skill that already makes Regeneration Salve-like with high enough Willpower or AV to tank hits, I've used it on a Quills build to soak up surprising amounts of damage.

That is only true in very early game, since salves scale very strongly with levels and Willpower barely boost regeneration (mod 10 adds the same that you have as base). On level 30 with Regeneration 16 (max you can have at that point) and 32 Willpower + 32 Toughness (they both add the same to reg) you reg a bit more than 4.2HP per turn during while salve injectors heal more than that at level 8.

Regeneration is currently a good source of reputation neutral faces and those scale with your level. You can wear your own +3 ego faces if you hug a Madpole hald naked for a few turns (run when you get low though). I think you need to be level 35 for +3 and level 20 for +2, but not sure.

Would maybe be cool if you could infuse your dismembered limbs with life and make them allies for a while. Regeneration is imo too expensive for what it does right now and seems for the most part to be a new player mutation to deal with Golgotha and the likes. It costing 5 is harsh. A mutation only giving utility is fine (especially physical mutations like to give passive stuff), but the utility just becomes so easy little as you progress and get access to other options. Infinite limb reg is kind of nice, but it happens too rarely to not just use the other options.

[The_MixMaster™]

Also had the idea that you could use flesh-based abilities at the cost of a little HP, something like rapidly generating cells so you can stretch out your arm to attack an enemy with a melee weapon from several tiles away (The excess flesh then shedding after), making regeneration more of a flesh-manipulation based mutation instead of just regrowing limbs.

[Detective Costeau]

The really simple solution that seems obvious to me: if Regeneration is too expensive for what it does, maybe it should just cost a point or two less.
Though I do like the idea of having a 'super-tonic' healing ability on a long-ish cooldown as well.

[The_MixMaster™]

Yesterday I discovered that regeneration lets you apply your natural healing rate during combat, I thought before that it only increased your natural healing rate. I honestly think it's in a pretty decent spot now outside of maybe dropping the cost to 3 or something. Might just want to add some synergies for it like being able to amputate a limb, imbue it, then use it like a snare grenade or something (The limb generates new cells to tangle an enemy it hits).

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by The_MixMaster™:

Yesterday I discovered that regeneration lets you apply your natural healing rate during combat, I thought before that it only increased your natural healing rate. I honestly think it's in a pretty decent spot now outside of maybe dropping the cost to 3 or something.

It does state that in the description. Without heavy investment in willpower/toughness and outside of meditate that is still only doing something like 1HP/turn vs 0.2/HP per turn in reg, which is not that noticeable when you are in the 100HP+ range. The big part of regeneration later on is really the debuff removal (but you can eat food for that with like 10 times the chance per turn) and the decapitation immunity/limb reg (usually too rare).

With the extreme buff for single weapon fighting, getting decapitated can not be safely avoided with AV/MA anymore due to penetrating strikes. You can now die even with super high stats from a single hit from an axe arcdervish without reg/precog (which is not a fun change I'd say).

I'd say just buffing HP reg a bit over level would already do a lot. It is a bit sad that unless you boost willpower and toughness a lot, you are hardly getting much more HP per turn on level 30 vs level 1 and even if you do boost them, the change is too little to matter against the max HP/damage numbers and healing items that you usually have at that point. I think that is a general issue that could be changed, which would buff regeneration too. Even if that gets changed, I'd say taking it down to 3 does not sound unreasonable.

[The_MixMaster™]

A constant HP regen was what my final plan for a first go was going to be, might still be worth doing. My idea was that it'd be a percentage based gain per turn, starting low at around .16% a turn at mutation lvl 1 (or maybe setting a lower bound it can't heal less than too) then scaling up to 5% health a turn at lvl 20 or so.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by The_MixMaster™:

A constant HP regen was what my final plan for a first go was going to be, might still be worth doing. My idea was that it'd be a percentage based gain per turn, starting low at around .16% a turn at mutation lvl 1 (or maybe setting a lower bound it can't heal less than too) then scaling up to 5% health a turn at lvl 20 or so.

The issue with that is some non-player creature HP though. E.g. chrome pyramids have 4000HP and regeneration 10.

[The_MixMaster™]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by The_MixMaster™:

A constant HP regen was what my final plan for a first go was going to be, might still be worth doing. My idea was that it'd be a percentage based gain per turn, starting low at around .16% a turn at mutation lvl 1 (or maybe setting a lower bound it can't heal less than too) then scaling up to 5% health a turn at lvl 20 or so.

The issue with that is some non-player creature HP though. E.g. chrome pyramids have 4000HP and regeneration 10.

That's true, but could add a check so that the HP regen effect only applies to the player, or that it's significantly weaker for NPCs.

[Dr.Desty Nova]

I think the usefulness of regeneration is mostly mileage based.

The more you know about the game the more you find it to be expensive for what it does.

But for a brand new player I reckon it's probably one of the best choice for a much easier start.
At low level it let you heal to full hp by just resting a bit.
If you put some level into it, lets say till lvl5, you're safe from fungus, glotrot,... all of which are notoriously deadly / run ending for new players. Let you focus on other stuff.
As of now, I reckon it work as intended, new or lazy player don't mind the cost for it's usefulness. More experienced player or more motivted player prefer to focus on something more cost efficient.


So instead of reducing it's cost or plain buffing it's effect from lvl1, I think it would make more sense to work on the scalling.
You gain 10% flat increase in hp regen per lvl for a max of 310% at lvl30, this is silly. Make it exponential past lvl5 and add like a flat +10hp/lvl flat recovery.

Same with the limb regen chance, you reach 100% at lvl10 then it keep going up, why ? You still can't regrow more than a limb per round. If you loose an arm you still need at least 2 round to regrow it fully even with like 300%regen chance and as far as I'm aware, nothing can reduce your chance of regrowing stuff so...
I say, lets apply the above 100% for a second limb and above 200% for a third !