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A Calculated Risk
Throughout your journey so far, you have encountered many living things: some tame, some out for your blood, and others very different from you. You seem to be able to absorb these creature's essence into your form when killing them, allowing you to change your body into something else: Perhaps a pig, or a skeleton, or a squid. Unfortunately, you are unable to become another human, or any creature whose power is significantly greater than your own. Most forms you acquire can be used to prevent monsters from attacking you, although some creatures have natural enemies of their own.
You can, in principle, stay in your new form forever, but staying in the same form for too long will have consequences. As your current body familiarizes itself with more forms, you start to feel more comfortable with your shapeshifting abilities, and are able to stay in an inhuman form for longer without potential consequences.
It is only a basic theory at this point, but you suspect the resistance you feel when shapeshifting between forms is due to different types of magic interfering with each other. Your shapeshifting ability is body-based or life-based magic, whereas the magic you use for your day-to-day spell or alchemy recipe is mind-based magic. The body and mind are, of course, closely linked, so ultimately one form of magic has to win in the end. You have drafted a recipe for a Potion of Unhindered Magic, in an attempt to deal with the interference. However, as far as you are aware, the potion seems to have no effect when you are in your human form...
While experimenting with your new forms, you have discovered you can use many of the same abilities you have observed in the creatures themselves. As a bat you can fly, as an enderman you can teleport, and as a creeper... well, best not to go there. [check your Changeling action keybind] You have also discovered a way to utilize your squid form which is not seen in nature: you can utilize the squid's hunting instinct to find resources in the water, much the same way as you would with a fishing rod.
Unfortunately, after staying in an inhuman form for too long, your worst fear becomes true: Your humanity itself drains away. You become stuck as that creature, and you must pay the price. In the confines of the body you are left with, your ability to use human magic is severely limited. Luckily, the Potion of Unhindered Magic seems to temporarily restore your magic.
But the new issues with your magic are not the end of your woes. Your new form has made irreversible changes to both your body and your mind. You may become repulsed at the sight of meat, or discover your newfound sensitivity to sunlight or water is suddenly permanent. A helmet can temporarily protect from sunlight, while a Potion of Water Resistance or Air Breathing can stave off other hazards. Whatever form you may have been stuck with, it is clear you must adapt.
Worst of all, your permanent inhuman form may afflict you with strange new foreign thoughts and desires which erode away at your willpower. If you disobey these instincts, bad things may happen...
Of all the urges you have encountered so far, one is the strongest of all: the urge to kill your natural prey. If the creature you have become yearns to hunt, and you resist, the urge may overpower your mind until killing is the only thing you are capable of doing. But it may be best to resist the urge as long as possible. Once you have killed your prey for the first time, killing anything which is not your prey will only strengthen your desire to kill your prey again. Should the urge overcome you, it may be wise to seek out a more efficient way to acquire your prey.
Even with your humanity gone, you still retain your human memories. This is a very good thing, but has a few unfortunate side-effects. Even as an animal, water cannot be consumed directly from a lake, and as a grazing animal like a sheep or a cow, grass is still inedible. But if you are hungry or thirsty enough, you seem to be able to overcome this weakness, and are able to drink directly from the water without harm, or graze on grass as the case may be. On the other hand, drinking the same water from a bottle or canteen will still poison you, perhaps because they remind you too much of being human. Magic can be weird sometimes. This ability very well could mean the difference between life and death for you during a harsh winter with limited supplies. However, its limited effectiveness will greatly limit your mobility, and it would be wise of you to return to a more human diet as soon as supplies allow. [check your Changeling action keybind]
If you find yourself in the body of an animal, your instincts will urge you to travel to your form's natural habitat. In many cases, you merely need sunlit grass beneath your feet and can terraform your base to match. In other cases, your form may demand a different climate, leaving you with no choice but to relocate your base. If you ignore your yearning for your instinctive home for too long, you fear your scent will stand out, and curious predators will stalk and hunt you.
Should you become stuck in a form from a more infernal realm, it may be wise to keep a Nether portal close at hand. Without the heat of the Nether, your body will begin to cool, and sources of cold will increasingly weaken you and slow you down. Fire or lava from the overworld may restore your warmth at first, but you will eventually lose control over your newly restored flame, and find yourself setting things on fire that you didn't intend to. Accidental pyromancy can be very destructive, but on the other hand, the Nether is very dangerous, even to a creature native to it. An occasional visit to the nether should be enough to stabilize the flame.