Fungal Reality Shift
Consuming Fungus, Fungus Blood, Frog Meat, or Glue gives you a 
Tripping status effect. If a large enough quantity of these materials are consumed, it causes the reality within the game world to shift in strange ways.
Extra Fungus can be carried with you in a Powder Pouch; pouring the Pouch from a greater height will cause more of it to grow.
Behaviour
Once the tripping effect reaches Tripping balls (180s), Fungal Shifts can be experienced, accompanied by an audio cue and one of six prominently displayed game messages. The resulting effect causes the targeted material(s) to forever be transformed into a new target material, determined at the event of the fungal shift, and persists for the remaining duration of the run.
| Your reality is shaken you hear the word "MATERIAL" echoing and shifting in colours | You sense things are no longer what they used to be you hear the word "MATERIAL" echoing and shifting in colours |
| You feel something has changed you hear the word "MATERIAL" echoing and shifting in colours | You feel the rules of the cosmos have shifted you hear the word "MATERIAL" echoing and shifting in colours |
| You sense the reality has shifted you hear the word "MATERIAL" echoing and shifting in colours | The reality has shifted you hear the word "MATERIAL" echoing and shifting in colours |
After experiencing a shift, the visual effects will rapidly fade, but further shifts cannot occur for the next 5 minutes, and there is a maximum total of 20 shifts that can occur within a single run. Shifting affected material again is possible, if RNG gods allow.
Shifts apply to materials based on their original identity; that is, shifting a water to lava and then shifting lava to acid will result either in all original water or lava being replaced by acid (but not both). A flask of shifted material improves the likelihood of shifting that material again. If the source material of a shift was previously a result material, the messages above will refer to its shifted name rather than its original name.
There is no in-game way to reverse or remove the effect of a fungal shift, other than attempting to override the effect with more fungal shifts. Because this change is both permanent and potentially quite hazardous, (for example, all the water in your world may forever become acid, or lava, or polymorphine...) fungal shifts should be approached with caution.
Fungal Shifts will carry over into New Game Plus.
Holding a flask
If you are holding a flask in your hand when the shift occurs, there is a 75% chance that one of the materials in the shift will be the main material in the flask, if any. If the flask material is selected to be used, one of two things will happen:
- If the flask is selected as the from material, the shift will consist of (flask material) => (to material). Or,
- If the flask is selected as the to material, the shift will consist of (from material(s)) => (flask material).
Even if the material is not present in either of the tables below, it can still be chosen as either the from or the to material if you are holding a flask of it.
If the material in the flask was a transformed one, the original material will be used instead of the one it transformed into. This allows materials made "extinct" by a shift to be reintroduced into the world, or for a harmful shift to be overwritten with something more desirable, with enough luck.
Be careful when shifting certain materials, especially Teleportatium. Shifting Teleportatium into another material will cause all portals to the Holy Mountains to deactivate, leaving you with no way of progressing to the next area without matter eating spells like Black Hole or Luminous Drill.
Shiftable Materials
Any of the following materials can be selected, although some materials are more commonly selected than others. Note also that if a row with multiple materials is chosen, all of the materials in that row will be affected.
As mentioned above, holding a flask can alter which materials are selected for both initial and resulting materials.
| Probability | % Chance | Initial Material(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Water, Brine, Chilly Water, Water (Static) |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Lava |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Toxic Sludge, Poison, Ominous Liquid |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Oil, Swamp, Peat |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Blood |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Fungus Blood, Weird Fungus, Fungal Soil |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Freezing Liquid, Worm Blood |
| 1.0 | 9.319% | Acid |
| 0.6 | 5.592% | Diamond |
| 0.6 | 5.592% | Silver, Brass, Copper |
| 0.4 | 3.728% | Flammable Gas, Flammable Gas (Static), Poison Gas, Fungal Gas, Toxic Gas, Toxic Gas (Static) |
| 0.4 | 3.728% | Polymorphine, Unstable Polymorphine |
| 0.4 | 3.728% | Berserkium, Pheromone, Invisiblium |
| 0.2 | 1.864% | Steam, Smoke |
| 0.05 | 0.466% | Rock (Mossy) |
| 0.04 | 0.378% | Sand |
| 0.04 | 0.378% | Packed Snow |
| 0.0003 | 0.0028% | Gold (incl. gold nuggets) |
| Probability | % Chance | Result Material |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Water |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Lava |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Toxic Sludge |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Oil |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Blood |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Fungus Blood |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Acid |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Swamp (water) |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Whiskey |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Sima |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Worm Blood |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Poison |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Vomit |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Pea Soup |
| 1.0 | 4.847% | Weird Fungus |
| 0.80 | 3.878% | Sand |
| 0.80 | 3.878% | Diamond |
| 0.80 | 3.878% | Silver |
| 0.80 | 3.878% | Steam |
| 0.50 | 2.424% | Rock |
| 0.50 | 2.424% | Gunpowder |
| 0.50 | 2.424% | Ominous Liquid |
| 0.50 | 2.424% | Flummoxium |
| 0.20 | 0.969% | Toxic Rock |
| 0.15 | 0.727% | Teleportatium |
| 0.02 | 0.0969% | Polymorphine |
| 0.02 | 0.0969% | Chaotic Polymorphine |
| 0.01 | 0.0485% | Urine |
| 0.01 | 0.0485% | Excrement |
| 0.01 | 0.0485% | Void Liquid |
| 0.01 | 0.0485% | Cheese |
Determining the Shifted Materials
It's sometimes possible to infer which materials were shifted at the moment the shift happens. One of the shifted materials will always be mentioned in the game message that appears (see above). It's not deterministic whether the "from" or "to" material happens to be mentioned in the message[1], but there are some pieces of information that can help:
- The material mentioned in the message given when the fungal shift occurs
- The small amounts of material that are scattered near you when the shift occurs will always be the resulting material from the shift
With this information you can determine always at least one of the materials by inspecting any newly created dregs of material around you after the shift happens — look for materials with (Transformed) in their tooltip. If this material is the one mentioned in the shift message, the original material may be hard to determine. However, if this is not the material mentioned in the shift message, the shift message should indicate the original material that was shifted.
Additionally, if you're holding a flask for the shift, and the flask is shifted to the new material, you know without a doubt what the fungal shift was.
Inspecting Save Data
It is also possible to see the list of shifted materials by inspecting your save data. After closing the game, open your /save00/world_state.xml[2] file in a text editor. Within this file will be a section of <changed_materials> string pairs, listing each shift as a sequence of [from] -> [to] pairs. For example:
<changed_materials>
<string>
silver
</string>
<string>
magic_liquid_random_polymorph
</string>
<string>
acid
</string>
<string>
vomit
</string>
</changed_materials>
In this example, there are two separate fungal shifts: Silver -> Chaotic Polymorphine, and Acid -> Vomit.
Specially, if a converted material becomes the target material in the new "Fungal Reality Shift", the source material in new shift will becomes to that converted material.
The result will be Water -> Steam
Changing the Permanent Shield's color
It is possible to change the color of your Permanent Shield perk, via shifting Magical Liquid. This video explains the details and results for each material.