The Halloween content (along with the 4th of July content) will likely be making a return with the mod manager, defaulting to off of course, and possibly rarely spawning as easter eggs, but hidden behind a Crazy Cataclysm option. (Ninja'ed by GG
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The base stuck penalty is the attack cost of the weapon used. Cost scales with the *ratio* of cutting/bashing damage. There are attack type flags that heavily influence severity of sticking, ranging from none (improvised weapon, like a shovel, 2x multiplier), to chop (machete, 1x multiplier), stab (spear, dagger, 0.5x multiplier), and slice (katana or saber, 0.25x multiplier). We have a bug where a bunch of cutting weapons are missing their flags, and being counted as improvised. The appropriate skill (stab or cut) reduces stuck cost by an average of 10.5 moves per level. The additional penalty for weapon sticking is capped at 2x the move cost of the weapon. If the calculated penalty beats a strength check, the weapon is pulled out of your hands.
You get feedback on how long an action actually took in the number to the right of your speed display, and a log message indicating if it's slowing you down significantly. Suggestions on improving this feedback would be appreciated. Now that I look at it, the threshold for reporting that it's sticking is based on a number of turns (50), that should probably be based on percentage of weapon speed, fast weapons losing 20 move per attack is pretty significant.
One thing mentioned was that it happens every time. The penalty is intentionally not highly variable, because then it'd be even harder to predict, and if it had a very wide range it would be very difficult to establish that a particular strength/skill/weapon combination was relatively safe against being stuck and/or pulled from your hands.
I considered making pulling the weapon free or leaving it an option, but rejected it for the reason already given. Tons and tons of prompts would be even worse than a straight penalty. Although... a "stab and leave in" attack might be reasonable, especially since stuck in weapons slow monsters. Stabbing and leaving in weapons might be a viable strategy with light weapons.
Practical advice: Use a lighter/faster weapon, stuck penalty scales with weapon speed, but the reduction from skill is constant, so lighter weapons can have their penalty eliminated more easily. Also prefer stabbing weapons, they have a much lower penalty than chopping weapons. Machetes are some of the worst weapons for this, and they should be, they're terrible at being weapons. Also hybrid cutting/bashing weapons are less subject to the stuck penalty. Try out new weapons on weak enemies and pay attention to the actual move cost per attack. As your skill increases you can move to heavier weapons without suffering the penalties.
The main cause of the stuck penalty being totally out of controll previously was a bug where it was applied twice. When I fixed that I cleaned up the code a lot to where it's VERY clear how it works now.
Slime pits are pretty much totally useless unless you have a very recent build, and even then it's just that blobs now drop "scraps" that can be used in a handfull of crafting recipes. Still mulling over putting something at the bottom of the pit, possibly that would let you disable slime spawning.