Another thing that gives mimics away are predefined items that they mimic. They are generated the same way traps used to be, making tension rooms extremely obvious - I doubt even a beginner would get tricked into thinking it's an abandoned shop and not mimics with all those neat diagonal lines of the same items.

I have a question. What type of behavior from the player are mimics supposed to elicit? I mean, assuming this problem was fixed and mimics were indistinguishable from items, to really deal with them effectively it seems like you would need to 'test' every new item lying on the ground with a missile attack or equip an amulet of free action before they moved adjacent to said item to avoid sudden random death.

It's kind of like insta-kills from invisible traps in the early game. The problem obviously isn't that early game deaths should never happen, the problem is that there should be a meaningful conversation between the developer and the player that is being carried out through in game events and the player's reaction to them. So, if something bad happens to the pc, the developer is saying "don't do that again, do something else next time instead." But in these sorts of cases there is no longer any meaningful message being communicated to the player, because the previous statement becomes "don't do that again, do something else next time instead (oh wait, you can't)."

And I think that when that meaningful conversation breaks down, that is when players start to go to the FAQ's, or scum for herbs, or whatever.

mimics are not even remotely that dangerous if you are not doomed

Even greater mimics? Maybe you are right, I may not have a great feel for mimics, but I'm skeptical that varieties past just the normal mimic can be disregarded that easily.

One of those deaths you never forget was to a mimic hivemind in the sinister library. Insta-paralyzed and drained ~300 health all by itself. This was over a decade ago though, heck it might have even been in my save-scumming phase, and I didn't pay as much attention to my defensive stats.

But I'm curious to know your opinion on this, Auric. I guess in general, do you feel like game design should be based on the player's expected response to situations?

I employ the same logic as meleeing a titan or greater moloch. What's my health at, my dv at? Ok, I'm 'safe enough'. The game is too laden with risk to take too many precautions or you'd never get anywhere. You could be wandering around the lower CoC and get 1-shotted by an off-screen emperor lich because you didn't have death resistance equipped, it's a similar thing here.

I do believe with certain special attacks, that you become immune or highly resistant to them based off of some number, maybe a stat or a level. I've seen mimics punch through my armour while doomed and I had no resistance and still didn't get paralysed. Really you just need a feel for the game and how safe you are. Mimics of a certain kind tend to spawn on danger levels where by the time you reach those places, you have them covered by defensive stats (if they can't pass your pv they can't paralyse you) so you just need game familiarity, not necessarily resistance.

I'd remove paralyze attacks from mimics completely. If you're unprepared you'll receive instant kill (I lost several characters this way). Being prepared to received instant kill from an item every time... Well, I just don't like it. I'd love to see paralyze replaced by anything else rather than sleep, petrification or death ray. Mimics still would be great danger but won't likely instant kill you.

I always am in coward mode unless i'm specifically attacking something, for a number of reasons - offscreen missile projectiles for example, and just generally it's safer in case i make a mistake walking forward too much or whatever. Mimic to hit is pretty damn low, even with the 5% chance of auto hit it's incredibly unlikely they will chain paralyze you to death unless you are doomed (that's a whole nother story). I literally can't remember the last time i died to a mimic in the past few years - obviously i play very safe when facing mimic hiveminds and stay out of melee as much as possible once they're identified, but being under attack for a single turn is pretty unlikely to do anything to you. So yeah, outside of early game when my equipment is garbage and i haven't trained shield dv up very high, mimics are somewhat of a threat, otherwise not really.

And hell, half the time it's obvious it's a mimic anyway because of the weird item + color arrangement. I also very often identify mimics by how other monsters will not move over it, or if there are many intelligent monsters in the vicinity it is unlikely that they havne't picked it up (in cavernous levels). This drops the danger significantly as well.

Perhaps if you play a true berserking barbarian or something I can see where it could be dangerous, but it's honestly not that much of a threat with some proper caution, outside of insanely bad luck. But I think it's a given insanely bad luck can kill you. I've had more deaths from a titan or moloch randomly critting me several times in a row than I have from getting perma paralyzed to death... it's simply so unlikely with good dv and pv.