This mod adds three new mutation branches: Crab, Snake and Rabbit, with some very minor changes to existing ones. Their respective mutagens and serums spawn in labs, and recipies can be learned from books that are already in the core game. They should be fairly balanced and tresholds are quite easy to reach (which is an issue common among other mutations mods). However, I’m always interested in your feedback.
Short summary:
Crab - A very ugly and slow, heavy tank. Your chitinous carapace offers fantastic potection, encumbering you greatly, while your arm mutates into a giant pincer which allows you to occasionally launch a powerful pinching attack. You can also eat almost anything. What is more, you may shed your carapace to obtain chitin chunks, useful for crafting.
Snake - A silent predator. Your legs degrade into useless stumps and you develop a serpentine body. You move slower, but you also become extremely dextrous and can inject venom or crush zombies with your coils.
Rabbit - A mobile, dextrous and perceptive herbivore. It’s a mix between Bird and Mouse mutations, but less extreme and not as restrictive. Your metabolism is fast, but you can eat grass to compensate this. NPCs also want to pet you.
DOWNLOAD HERE
To install, simply unzip and put the folder into /Data/Mods directory. Compatible with the experimental build (last checked #8505).
Detailed mutations list
Crab
Trait-like:
Fast Healer
Terrifying
Clumsy
Poor Hearing
Normal:
Bulging Eyes
Smelly
Heat Dependent
Badly Deformed
Very Thirsty
Gills
Extremely Strong
Chitinous Carapace - “Your body is covered with a thick, impenetrable red carapace. It provides unmatched physical protection and even some protection from corrosive chemicals, but reduces your dexterity by 3 and severely encumbers all body parts but your eyes. Greatly reduces wet effects.” //Evolution of Spider’s Chitinous Plate.
Post-threshold:
Eater Of The Dead
Solidly Built
Huge
Giant Pincer - “Instead of your right hand, you now have a giant crab claw. It encumbers you greatly, but you can occasionally use it in melee combat to deal massive damage.” //Permanent 40 right hand encumbrance, some armor. 22% chance to launch a powerful, strength based cut and bash attack.
Ecdysis - “If you feel like your exoskeleton is getting too tight, you may choose to shed it. Doing so will produce chitin chunks, useful for crafting. Activate to shed your carapace.”
Snake
Trait-like:
Skilled Liar
Glass Jaw
Normal:
Slit Nostrils
Reptilian Eyes
Reptilian IR
Hissing Voice
Sleek Scales
Carnivore
Poison Resistant
Forked Tongue
Extremely Dextrous
Long Neck - “Your neck is unusually elongated. This has no effect.” //Mostly cosmetic, helps to balance achieving tresholds. Makes the character a little bit uglier.
Cobra’s Hood - “You have a hood on your neck, like a cobra’s. It looks striking, but makes you better at intimidating. Adds a slight head encumbrance.”
Deformed Legs - “Your legs are badly deformed. Permanent leg encumbrance.” //40 encumbrance. Changes into Serpentine Tail after treshold.
Post-threshold:
Ectothermic
Strongly Venomous
Predator
Sapiovore
Viper Fangs - “Your teeth have grown into two-inch-long fangs, perfect for injecting venom. They allow you to make extra attacks when your mouth is uncovered.” //Evolution of Fangs
Serpentine Tail - “A massive serpentine tail extends for some body lengths behind you, and your legs and feet transformed into useless stumps, hanging off your sides. You can use your tail to crush your enemies, when conditions favor it. Prevents wearing pants and footgear.” // Adds 50 encumbrance to legs and feet. 10% chance to launch a strength based attack, dealing moderate amount of bash damage.
Silent Movement - “You know how to move completely silently.” //Does exactly what it says. You no longer make sound when you move.
Rabbit
Trait-like:
Good Hearing
Optimist
Quick
Light Step
Indefatigable
Forgetful
Jittery
Normal:
Stubby Tail
Rodent Ears
Wiry Whiskers
Beautiful
Very Fast Metabolism
Prey Animal
Padded Feet
Very Perceptive
Road-Runner
Very Weak - “You are weaker. Strength -2” // Changes from str -1 variant.
Absent Minded - “You are not too bright, and you get distracted easily. Intelligence - 2”
Soft Fur - “You’ve got an incredibly soft fur, and it’s very pleasant to touch. It provides some protection from cold, and makes persuading other survivors easier.” //A better variant of Lightly Furred.
Rabbit Feet - “Your feet have grown really big, and look exactly like a rabbit’s. Prevents wearing shoes.” //Warning: will destroy your footgear on tansformation.
Mostly really minor stuff, for example changing the description of Rodent Ears so that it doesn’t state that your ears are round, in order to make it fit for Rabbit branch. The biggest change is probably allowing post-threshold Insect an Spider mutants to shed their carapace too, just like Crab.
That being said these mutations actually look interesting. Kinda nice to see another ruminant type animal, and the exact opposite of the bovine tree basically.
Also snakes don’t have useless stumps… their entire body is just vertebraes and ribs. So the description for the snake mutation sounds funny… “Your legs degrade into useless stumps” yeah… weird.
“Both families share a number of primitive characteristics. Nearly all have a relatively rigid lower jaw with a coronoid element, as well as a vestigial pelvic girdle with hind limbs that are partially visible as a pair of spurs, one on either side of the vent.”
Something you might find interesting about snakes and legs.
It’s more like a ‘leggy snek’. It’s hard to describe how I imagined snake mutants, so I’ll use a picture. Something like this:
https://i.imgur.com/FisKCza.png
Art by dragonpunk
In my opinion, design like this is the one that makes the most sense in the current bodyparts system. Removing bodyparts isn’t possible, and just completely ignoring the fact that you have no legs (if you are a true snek) while they can still take damage is silly.
It’s weird, but mutagens aren’t perfect and using them often results in some body horror.
I saw your thread, and it seems like a lot of C++ code would be needed, which I can’t do yet. My aim was only to add new branches with unique playstyles, and to not change existing branches too much. If you want to add support to my mod, feel free to do so, however I don’t think my mod is ready to be mainlined yet, mostly because it’s purely in json, and some of the features I had planned would require some things jsonized or hardcoded in the core game. I’d also want to get some feedback first.
I still have Chameleon branch mostly done, but I have problems with making it actually good without C++. Many existing negative mutations fit it perfectly (for example Fragile, Extremely Ponderous), but there are no major positive mutations suitable for this branch. The only thing I could do to make it viable is adding a ton of perception, but that’s pretty boring.
I have a bunch of really cool ideas for Frog branch, but it would require even more jsonized/hardcoded stuff (leaping, long reach attacks, spitting acid etc.).
The only thing I can think of is that it is a reference to “Absent-Minded Mr. Rabbit.” Other than that, I don’t know about reptiles, but insects tend to operate on stimulus-response or due to more complex reaction-chains. Spiders, for example, in the 1974 skylab experiment, showed an awareness that their environment isn’t like their previous biome and, over a few days, adapted in iterations.
Slimes, at least in Cataclysm, both have a lot of mutagenic properties that they seem to be able to call upon in relation to their environment (see swimmer zombies being much more adapted to aquatic movement) and, if masters are any indication, capable of remembering and planning for things.
A lot of domesticated animals, by contrast, lose a lot of their adaptive instinct and are instead entirely reliant on external support to react to their world. I’d imagine bunnies sort of are in that gray area, since there are plenty of wild (it feels weird to call a rabbit feral) rabbits and plenty of pet rabbits.
Some rabbits can be as smart as cats, it’s just that most domestic varieties of rabbit are kinda dumb since they were essentially bred as easy to keep livestock with large litters and short generation sizes. So it would be like saying all birds are stupid because chickens are too dumb to live. I assume absent minded might have to do with the fact that rabbits get distracted quite easily since they have incredibly short attention spans and get bored very easily.
As for reptiles most are smarter than we give them credit for, but their brains are arranged much differently to a mammalian brain and as such their process differs.
Wish I’d seen this before 