Phaser

*teleports behind u*

Phaser is analogous to "mark and recall" spells from other games. Once a spot is marked with memorize, phaser mutants can phase to teleport back using the focus skill.

Phaser is a movement mutation. Its upgrade is Blink, and taking Phaser will bar you from taking Clairvoyance, Leapfrog and their associated upgrades.

Location

Phaser is located to the far south of the Wasteland, in an isolated tile at the eastern end of the southern edge.

Advantages

• Low focus cost. Phaser only requires about 17 focus to use consistently, and for occasional use, even just 15 is acceptable.
• Safety button. Phaser can be used as an emergency escape from dangerous situations - so long as your memorized spot is somewhere safe and you can get out of combat, you can phase to safety in seconds.
• Big time-saver. More aggressive use of phaser is also possible. By memorizing tiles on or near a parked mosquito, or even in places you're planning on returning to in the near future, phaser can afford tons of mobility. This is especially true when used in conjunction with Blink.
• +1 focus. A small but helpful bonus.

Disadvantages

• Restricted zone use. Some zones cannot be phased into or out of, such as the Crater Forest. Unless a phaser can make their way to an adjacent zone that is not phase-blocked, they might as well be on foot.
• Only works outside. Only exterior tiles can memorized and phased to; indoor tiles won't work.
• Requires careful memorization. If phaser mutants choose the wrong spot to memorize, they may find their memorization spot unexpectedly blocked by a wandering NPC right when they need it most.

Abilities

Phaser adds two new abilities: memorize and phase.

Memorize

Using memorize will mark a tile, to be returned to later via phase. Using memorize on an indoor tile will automatically fail; otherwise, it will always succeed, even if the memorized tile isn't actually a viable phasing target, so care must be taken to memorize the right tiles. Only one tile can be memorized at a time.

Memorize costs no stress and has no cooldown, and requires no focus to use. Phase's cooldown scales very well with focus. When used at 40 focus, its cooldown is just 12 seconds.

Memorize produces a yes/no prompt every time it's used to confirm that the user wishes to memorize that particular tile. Mutants who are planning on using Phaser aggressively would be well-advised to make a trigger that automatically replies "yes" to this line to save some time.

Phase

Using phase successfully will teleport the user to a previously memorized tile. About 17 focus will yield consistent success. If phase fails due to insufficient focus, the user will gain stress and phase will go on cooldown. If phase fails for other reasons (see below), there is no stress cost or cooldown. Phase has a moderate stress cost, as well as a moderate cooldown.

Aside from insufficient focus, there are several reasons that phase can fail:

• An NPC or player is on the memorized tile. To avoid this, always memorize spots that NPCs do not path to if you can; this relies on your game knowledge of NPC paths. Memorizing NPC-pathable tiles for short-term use is an aggressive gamble that can sometimes pay off.
• A player is on your tile. Phase won't initiate if someone is standing on the tile when it is used, but it will continue to cast if someone enters the tile while it is winding up.
• The tile you're in is phase-blocked. To avoid this, move to tiles that are not phase-blocked; this relies on your game knowledge. If you're in Crater Forest, for example, you can move into the adjacent Subterranean Colony or Mountain Pass to phase.
• The memorized tile is phase-blocked. You can't phase into the Crater Forest, for instance.
• You're in combat. Phase never works in combat.
• The memorized tile is psi-blocked. This can come from a clairvoyant lingering on the tile in projection form a clever player using a psyflare on your memorized, or most commonly, blinking or phasing too much from/to one tile. To prevent this, never blink from your phase tile if you can help it - the interference might stop you from blinking back later.
• Mysterious events. In some fringe cases, unusual quest events can temporarily prevent a tile from being phaseable. This is very rare, and usually only lasts a few minutes.

All uses of phase will leave psi shimmers at both the tile phase is used from and the tile that the mutant teleports to. Too many of these can disrupt phasing or blinking. Clairvoyants and people with the PsychoSight implant can see these shimmers.

Synergies

Phaser has two notable synergy cases:

Litho-Hooligan

Brawny builds (particularly Fists and Spears) frequently take Hooligan in conjunction with Lithodermis for the great resistances and headbutts, but Hooligan bars Blink, Lithodermis bars Leapfrog. These builds also rarely have the focus required to be good Mediums, so taking Phaser and simply never getting Blink can be a good option for increased mobility. On the other hand, Clairvoyance is extraordinarily powerful on its own; the choice between the two comes down to your playstyle.

Blink

Taking Blink is the natural upgrade to Phaser, but this comes with an extra cost. Using phase as a blink mutant will sometimes result in randomly using blink instead. Most blink players make a trigger out of the following line, which returns stop, to prevent randomly blinking to the sky when trying to return home:

  You concentrate on going somewhere else, but your mind can't decide where it wants to go...

Whether stopped or not, this hiccup will automatically place blink on cooldown if it is not on cooldown already (if it is, nothing changes). Phaser's cooldown is not affected.

As mentioned in the Mechanics section above, blink mutants should also be careful not to accidentally block themselves with psi shimmers.

Blink and phase cooldowns are notable for not being shared, despite them both being teleportation abilities. When the two are used together with aggressive use of memorize, blinkers can reach mobility speeds that leave Flight and Medium users weeping in their skies/planes, especially if the phaser has good focus for low cooldowns.

Appearance

Phaser doesn't change bodily appearance, but it does produce messages when players happen to witness another player teleporting.

Upon seeing a player complete a phase:

  You're sure <person> wasn't here a moment ago, but somehow s/he's standing in front of you now.

Upon seeing a player begin to cast phase:

  <Person>'s eyes roll back and his/her face contorts silently.