Ighalli wrote
Personally, I never drink from them. Is this common? If most players avoid it, we should probably tweak them to be less character-ruining. If I'm an outlier, I should probably start drinking more.
I also generally avoid them. The chances of gaining stats seem about equal to those of losing stats; the benefit of temporarily gaining ESP, haste, or control is fairly well-balanced by the chance of gaining slow, polymorph/teleport, etc; and suddenly gaining a herd of rats or snakes doesn't compare to suddenly being surrounded by foot-sticking, gear-wrecking mommo slimes. Add into this the chance to be dumped somewhere else on the level (or, worse, sucked down to a deeper one) and I typically only use them for filling bottles with water (to put out fires).
Ighalli wrote
Either way, what should we do with dipping? Chance to dry the fountain? Track how much water it has so that it dries after so many dips? Should dipping stuff happen when you dip, or should it remain safe?
I think a dip should work like a sip, in regards to drying up the fountain. I like the idea of dip-made bottled water being safe, though; I don't think we should change that.