Potion of mutation

Version 0.13: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A potion which does very strange things to you.

Type	Potion
Name	Potion of Mutation
Icon

A surprise in every bottle! Potions of mutation give you up to 3 random mutations with equal odds of them being good or bad. Followers of Zin incur a piety loss and a penance if they knowingly drink this potion.

Note that undead characters cannot mutate and will rot instead, reducing maximum health and possibly taking a temporary hit to stats as well.

Tips & Tricks

• Most players generally avoid drinking potions of mutation. Although it's possible to acquire useful resistances and abilities this way, these benefits will likely get wiped out when you need to cure bad mutations later on, and some possible results can doom a promising young character. That being said, it's advisable that you either quaff them early on, before you're really attached to your character and don't mind it dying horribly, or that you wait until you've also found a potion of cure mutation (though wasting these is never a good idea).
• Jiyva followers can quaff these with significantly less fear of permanent disability.
• Heavily malmuated characters who have no potions of cure mutation and aren't willing to switch to Zin or Jiyva might consider drinking all the potions of mutation they can find. When you have many mutations, random mutations, such as from potions, have a good chance of removing mutations instead of adding to them. Only do this if you're character has some crippling mutation set (e.g. teleportitis or unnerfable slowness before Zot:5), since it can sometimes leave you worse off, even if on average it will leave you better off.