I really like the idea of an enemy that changes your body materials. However, that could probably be a way to change your head/torso/groin material, which in the case of having them turn to stone would give you a metric asston of HP with little downsides if any since DEX and AGI are only determined by your limbs and bodypart weight is not factored iirc.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmn

Yes I do imagine smashing a bottle of water against the nearest wall to extinguish yourself looks a bit silly.

So does this change the material of the character's affected limb to "Burnt Flesh" and also that is a horrible, horrible thing.

//You hear a faint thump.
//You look down and see an active big mine.
//The big mine explodes!

YOUR HEAD IS ON FIRE!
YOUR TORSO IS ON FIRE!
YOUR GROIN IS ON FIRE!
YOUR LEFT LEG IS ON FIRE!
YOUR LEFT LEG IS SEVERED OFF!

I had amused myself with the idea of just making the character carry the entire altar on his back (i.e. make a "dirty/ancient altar of Silva" item that weighs a ton) so the main difficulties of the quest are both beating spider momma AND figuring out how to carry the damn thing home.

Also, if you can carry it that means you can also use it as a weapon!

Upon looking through the source and script files trying to work out an appropriate weight for an altar I found that Petrus is actually rather large for a human (size 225), and only a little smaller than a Golem (size 250).
Of course, Golems are denser and hit like trucks anyway.

For comparison the player has a default size of 175, which means Petrus is the equivalent of a giant spider, skunk, adult male carnivorous bunny, or mystic frog's worth bigger than you.
However both Petrus and the player share the same volume so I guess that means he's some kind of sponge-being.

It occurs to me there's no solid numbers on just how big an altar is, just that it's made of granite.

Easy. You pick the altar up and carry it all the way back home.
Or we could just make a broken altar of Silva spawn down there and the priestess fixes it when you bring it back. Perhaps multiple pieces.

I definitely agree with WIL being used for magic resistance. As it stands currently your ability to not get ganked by mages rests solely on the RNG's decision to drop the right items.
Also, how about making WIL have a very small chance (like 0.001% per level) to prevent death, leaving your character with 1hp? (i.e. a "guts" ability common in other games)

Oh my god that would've been great to know a forever ago.