The characters I clear the bug temple with generally have significantly more willpower than 25, meaning I would have to sacrifice part of my willpower for non-guaranteed effects. Add to that the fact that the corpses can still rot and not all PC's are able to preserve food all that well, I don't think this really is an issue that needs to be fixed.

How much higher than 25? And to be honest this is not about YOUR characters.... it's about lack of balance once certain treshold is reached. This is how players abuse game mechanics. Take into account that you can go even further with this, as bugs are breeders and IIRC upper level of bug cave is area without corruption. So you can breed them for as long as you want to, to get your speed above 200. Gets even easier if you have food preservation and weapon of hunting.

Also past 22 I do not care about Willpower - why? Once you put Water Orb in your slot you get 32 willpower, which is basically all any character needs.
Now in terms of speed increase there is no limit to it's usefulness. Any character benefits from it.

I also do not understand the comment about food preservation. You eat corpses on site. Why would you need to stack them? If you get close to bloated, eat stomacemptia. Any player reaching bug cave can have access to this herb.

Aren't stat increase by corpses already limited by potentials/hard caps? I've never been able to get much more Dx out of bug corpses than I can out of moss, even in 1.1.1. It's more efficient to do it with corpses, I guess, but then you've got to train your Wi back up, so you don't really gain there.

Speed is more of an issue, I suppose, since you can scum speed up to 150+ with bug corpses with some patience as long as you're strong enough to kill the bugs. Then again, you can do the same with quicklings once you're above level 25. It just takes longer.

Okay. So solutions.
1a. Make the cutoff for speed growth from bug corpses sharper. Reducing the potential gains to a maximum of 130 speed wouldn't be so bad.
1b. Make speed increases from corpses based on base speed rather than current speed (dunno if this is already the case in 1.2.0), so that you can't use slow monster/encumbrance exploitation/moloch armor to get more increases. This should really be done anyway even if the RFE is rejected otherwise, IMHO, for consistency's sake.
2. Make bug corpses (or speed increasing corpses more generally) have nastier side effects. Reduced lifespan, permanent decrease to PV, HP or PP, maybe?
3. Decrease bug corpse drop rate to the point where it just isn't productive to do this and leave everything else as-is.
4. Like bug corpses to a different stat. People would probably be much more squeamish about this if bug corpses were reducing the comparatively-hard-to-train St or Le.

Weren't the changes to stat potentials meant to deal with this kind of thing anyway? Once your Dx and speed are at a certain point, you should get no yields from the corpses but Willpower always drops.

I don't think speed has a potential in the same way as other stats (1b in my list).

1b is already the case, i think.

Actually as far as quicklings are concerned this is a little more balanced. First of all getting to the tree is even harder than it used to be. It might even not be possible at all for some players.
As you also mentioned you loose TIME while in quickling tree, and in 1.2 it's more painful than it used to be due to change in 90 days mechanic.
However, if bugs are changed it might also be reasonable to tone down quicklings a little bit as well. Not as much as bugs but...

I was more thinking that there is an unlimited supply of quicklings available from wilderness encounters. The 90+ day limit is an issue, but if you are doomed and have 7lbs and food preservation, you can probably generate a lot of quicklings in 90 days game time.

I would say that this is awfully lot of requirements ... but my mist elven thief just found 7lb, ring of doom and got food preservation from scroll of education.... lol :D

Are you seriously going to remove all ways of acquiring high stats? Bugs never gave much Dx. You can hope to get, like, 30-40. You _can_ get 150 speed, but... seriously, is it that much? And you lose Willpower severely, which means that spellcasters and mindcrafters will most likely not waste time eating bugs. Don't forget that for others bugs are truly dangerous opponents. And you want to leave us without rewards? I am totally sick of all that "abuses fixing", it's getting insane.
In reality, a man can train to lift several hundreds kilos. Is this an abuse too? The only thing you spend and the only reason why not everyone lifts as much is time. Same thing here, in ADOM. Cutting a mere possibility of getting high stats is just bullshit. Someone who truly wants it can just grind for PoGA. Maybe remove them? Or make them only rise stats up to potential? Maybe remove wishes as well? Because I surely can kill mobs on D:8 until I get a wish. Why don't I do it? The same reason I don't lift 200 kilos. I have other things to do.
Bugs are challenging opponents. They can kill a melee character in one turn. If you get extremely unlucky, ranged characters will share this fate. Killing each bug is a challege. And challenge should be rewarded. And it's not like they drop much corpses, while uberjackal effect has a very high impact on them.
So get your hands away from killer bugs. I've finished.

Seriously... mindcrafters and wizards are like very last on the list of classes that would have to worry about this thing being changed.

The change is to implement some kind of risk/reward system to bug eating. Right now once you are at Wi1 there are no further risks involved and you can munch them in unlimited quantities. Getting Wi to 1 is seriosuly no punishment at all as it can be easily brought back to 25 and as I mentioned Wi at 22 is all any char need for majority of the end game.

I....don't see this as a problem at all. There's a very large risk involved and by the time you can do this, you can easily beat the game without minimaxing (though this does make it a little more fun to shred things). I don't think all methods of character improvement (even what some might call overpowered methods) should be removed.

(in essence, I largely agree with Spellweaver. There is such a thing as fixing things that aren't broken, and I believe there's diminishing returns on the speed you can gain...)

You do not take into account that some classes CAN do it sooner than other. Find some improoved fireball book get your piety high for multiple PP recharge and your life get's much easier in Bug Cave etc.

Besides you are probably talking about diminishing returns for NORMAL endings. High speed is still very important for Ultra Endings. Besides, I do not want to removal of the speed increase from eating corpses. All I am asking is that there is some kind of limitation once your Wi is at 1. I believe in such cases there should be no more speed increase. If the player wants to benefit more he would have to train his WI back to at least 7. The feature would still be there but the player would have to sacrifice time to really abuse it.

Another option would be to add slightly corrupting effect of the corpses. Not much but still .... i.e. 5 corpses = 1 corruption.

So, that's what you offer? Instead of eat bugs -> Wi 1 -> retrain with morgia and Garth you want: Eat bug -> retrain with morgia -> eat bug -> retrain with morgia -> eat bug -> etc
More grinding is surely a good way to fix abuses, oh yeah.
Bugs were an abuse when stats and speed increase were not capped at all. That days you could get 99 Dx from bugs. Now, though caps are kind of soft, they definitely have an effect.
Also, characters that can easily beat bugs are, again, the ones who care about each point of their willpower. Even archers are at great risk compared to them. And this risk is totally enough payment for what stat increase you can get.

Also, you reminded me about one of my characters who liked the taste of bugs.
http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread...ighter-(1-1-1)
I want you to know that the only point in the game when she was at the edge of death was in the bug temple. Multiple times.
Would she risk going to place where lots of characters lie dead already if not for tasty corpses? I doubt it.
Would she win the game without going to bug temple? I am 100 percent positive.

I think you are missing a point. This is not only about MORE GRINDING. This is about the fact the it takes TIME. Time = corruption through 90 days mechanism.
You want more speed? No problem... you will loose 50 ingame days getting it. Your char will be stronger this way, but you will have to hurry or die from corruption...

You are free to make other suggestions. One thing is clear to me. Once your Wi gets to 1, there should be some kind of mechanism that would preventing you from eating infinite amounts of bug corpses to get more speed.

BTW.
90 days clock mechanism is the next RFE I will make. In some discussion someone pointed out correctly that to make endgame more interesting there should be more time pressure.... And I definitely agree with that. Right now endgame is a joke.

First off, when making an RFE, I'd suggest making it a 'feature' rather than a 'bug report'.

Secondly, priority 4? Hardly. Even if I agreed with this, this isn't remotely a priority that should be that high. This is not a game-breaking bug, nor a game-breaking unbalance. At *most*, I would think this is a 6 if you feel that the stat unbalance is fairly severe. There's no way, IMO, this should be higher priority in fixing/adjusting than the Garth quest situation.

Finally, I am with the other people here as well: this is hardly game-breaking. Bug Temple is a scary place to be, and yet people go there for the scrolls, and for the chance at bug corpses. Caps keep things from getting ridiculously high, and the risk vs. reward seems about right to me. The only reason I've never lost a character to Bug Temple *ever* is because I have gone into it all of three times. And all three times I had invisibility. Bugtown. Is. Scary. :D

This is neither bug fix nor feature. Should be separate section for things like this. There isn't.
Priority? Subjective thing. No idea how people are rating this in general. Maybe 6 maybe 4 maybe whatever.

Is this game breaking? No, this is just one of the pieces of the puzzle that make end-game a joke. Once all pieces are put together this will make sense in as a part of larger "plan". IMO accessibility of controlled teleportation is much bigger of an issue than speed. But I see no reason why a player should have a source of infinite speed for free, without any consequences. All I am asking for is that one should make a decision whether the gain is worth the sacrifice. Right now it is mindless scumming. The only question you ask yourself is: "Am I ready to kill the bugs?". If the anwser is yes, then the player tells to himself "OK, let's get boost my speed" ... that's the whole mindless thinking process.

I believe people are also too accustomed to ADOM where the easiest way of getting by was exploiting game mechanics. To me there should be more decisions that the player should make in the game about the price of the path he chooses. i.e. you want speed? ok... but the price is corruption or whatever...
Thankfully recent adjustments to the game have been going in this direction. I love the fact that Casino money are now burdened with corruption in my recent playthgough I really had to think whether all the junk from the casino is worth me being corrupted. I love the change to 90 days system, that makes me think whether the trip with guardian corpse through the wilderness is really worth it etc.

From what you are saying, you are not *that* experienced in the game, so you might have difficulty in grasping the above. Once you reach certain treshold of experience and you "get this game" it becomes a series of easy steps to follow. You do not have to think about them cause you know them all. I want to add those decisions back to the game.

The price right now is a chance of death.

For most players, I don't honestly think this is the thought process at all. I don't play as much as I used to, but I can't remember the last time I bothered to clear the Bug Temple. And, most likely, I was probably looking for extra SoCR or SoMM rather than extra speed. By the time my characters are typically strong enough to clear the Bug Temple, I don't really need an extra ~30 points of speed badly enough to have to waste the time and extra turns retraining my Wi back up from zero. For a lot of characters (and a lot of players), the Bug Temple is, in fact, quite a high risk venture. Level 50 PCs can get mauled there if they aren't careful.

Moreover, speed is already partly a self-correcting attribute due to the loss in experience. I'm not going to deny that having high speed is pretty amazing, but a lot of people--especially prospective ultras who need to hit level 45 without visiting D:50--are leery about exchanging speed for experience. It may be a no-brainer decision for you personally, but I think if you look at the community as a whole, more players rather than not opt out of visiting the Bug Temple.

This isn't a situation like herbs where the vast majority of (spoiled) winners have probably partaken, and it's considered a challenge to skip them.