Chameleon whips

I just came across a bones file of a guy I killed by playing around with chameleon whips. Rather than learn from my mistakes I thought "hey why dont I try this chameleon whip again" .....dead in like 20 turns.

I think they're sort of like the armor of great health, attractive, but they do way more harm than good

Should we buff AoGH or just delete it? Seems dumb to have an item in the game that's strictly worse than alternatives that tries to trick new people. I mean, chameleon whips aren't fooling anyone that they're dangerous as hell.

They're great for a character that's broken the power curve. Mammoths and valpurium golems normally take a lot of hits before dying, but with a chameleon whip they get polymorphed into something with much less health first. Definitely something to avoid before at least the late mid-game, though.

I'm pretty ambivalent on this topic. It is pretty IVAN-esque.

I like it that there is a magical armor, plus in some rare cases AoGH can be useful (especially early game, +1 AoGH makes training with spider corpses easier while not changing much of the threat level).

I say buff. Maybe to chain mail levels, to give it at least some AV? It will always balance itself with the threat level spike.

Personally I'm of the opinion that there needs to be more questionably useful items.

Don't forget Sherru weilds one, so there's a chance the player character can be changed into a rodent and die hilariously.

Agreed

I used to play with Turox a lot. It often killed me through my own stupidity. Its also the only way I have successfully beat the shit out of all those smart ass mage fuckers in the mage room beyond the portal - a highly enchanted valpurium Turox.

Turox is a double edged sword

Chameleon whips too but I have never really seriously used them, just dabbled.

My last character used a Turox. It was great for the mage room, but even with practical fire immunity it caused problems because it some of its explosions were powerful enough to break wands inside chests.

Use a bigger chest. Or a lockbox. If I find a lockbox, I tend to put anything and everything fragile that I really don't want to have breaking/burning inside. Things like scrolls waiting to be cloned, wands of fireball, holy hand grenades, etc...

Bigger chests also provide more protection than small ones. If for any reason you are carrying around more than 6 small chests, you might as well dump them for a medium-sized one. More storage, more protection, same weight. Still, at that point, you're carrying 15kg around, of just chest, not even counting whats inside, so there's that...

If you're carrying around enough chests to where it would be more efficient to put everything in a large chest, you maybe should get rid of some stuff.

EDIT: I seem to be having trouble doing things today.

I don't think a single large chest spawned in that game. It was very late in the game when the only strongbox appeared. And I'm pretty sure some wands were broken even in the strongbox

Does it help if the strongbox material is changed/hardened?

Nope.
This came up in the shoutbox - each chest has a pre-set "item protection value" that isn't influenced by anything, including whatever material the chest is made from.
Changing the chest's material only increases the strength of the lock, making it harder to break. That's not particularly useful for the player, unfortunately.

I think it changes the chests weight as well correct? Not sure if weight management of chests is a good use of a SOCM though

A large chest made of air however...

I actually was just testing this. The lightest wishable materials (GEF and grass) have a density of 100, which reduces a 3000g small chest to a mere 500g. Unfortunately, large chests are obscenely large. Even made of grass, a large chest still ends up with a weight comparable to plate armor. However if you have a glut of SoCM, turning a normal-sized chest into grass (because GEF takes a lot of int, and grass doesn't) will still give you a lot of well-protected storage at a reasonable weight of 2500g.

Oh yeah, you're right the weight change is also a pretty significant factor in changing a chest's material.

I'm still not sure using an SoCM on a chest is ever a good use of the scroll, but keep in mind that if you're going to do it, some of the lightest materials are very flammable with the new fire system in place.

SoCMs and chests go pretty well together when you want a lot of ommel bone, blink dog flesh, or floating eye flesh (and have cloning charges to spare).

I don't think chests can catch fire at the moment, so we should still be safe.

I used to nest chests like russian dolls. I never was really sure if it helped protect things from explosions or elpuri. Anybody know if it helps? I figure things don't get broken 100% of time in chests so a chest in a chest in a chest would make a 0.5 probability of damage to a 0.125 probability.

Chests aside, Turox isn't compatible with having scrolls or wands of teleport in your inventory for immediate emergency use. I guess that's a point in favour of Sophos.

Fascinating strategy! I really don't know the answer to this...

Can you fit small chests inside small chests?