I know how to be a cyborg, but I wanna be a mutant-cyborg-warrior! I have absolutely no clue how to get stuff to mutate me, other than failing on bionics... I am playing in the experimental version, one of the 'more recent' ones (kinda). And is there a way to get specific mutations, or do you just gotta wait?Look for mutagens which can easily be found in labs. If you have found a science ID card then you find one and explore. Different mutagens give different mutations but it is pretty much mostly random what you get.
Furthermore, labs usually have the books with recipes for making mutagen. They require a lot of skill to learn from, and aside from labs, you might find some of them in certain areas - some of them are rather well hidden since they have the same name as some useless books.
Along your quest for recipe book, you will find gallons of ammonia and bleach. Collect them, as making mutagen requires tonnes of them.
Make sure you have a high cooking skill and the corresponding mutagen recipe books from the labs if you want to create your own.
ALSO, as a tip, post in the “Tips, Tricks, and Newb Questions” thread on the top of this page if you have any questions, to avoid spamming the subfourm.
Get ready, because this is going to be somewhat long.
The first thing you should know is that mutations are a complete roulette right now. Generally, your mutations will gravitate toward categories that you already have mutations in. For example, if you have mutations in bird, then you’re more likely to get mutations, whether positive or negative, in the bird category. Taking the Robust Genetics (3 Points) trait at chargen dramatically increases the likelihood of acquiring positive mutations when you mutate.
Mutations can come from many sources in this game. The default is mutagen of course. The basic recipe can be found in Art and Science of Chemical Warfare, Best Practices for Compound Delivery, chemical reference-CLASSIFIED, lab journal-Dionne, and lab journal-x-lxp. A minimum of 8 Cooking skill is required to craft it. Best Practices for Compound Delivery, chemical reference-CLASSIFIED, lab journal-Smythe, lab journal-Dionne, and lab journal-x-|xp are all foud in labs and may sometimes spawn among the random piles of mangled human corpses that have the scientist theme. Be warned that if you find one though, you may have to fight off a mi-go to get to it.
Art and Science of Chemical Warfare raises Fabrication, and the other books either require very high Cooking just to read (to read for skill, not to skim for recipes) or require the same level of cooking that it raises the skill to, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for that. If all else fails you could always grind Cooking yourself, but it would probably take a while
The required tools for mutagen making are:
[ul][li]A tool with chemical making of 2 or more (so essentially only a basic chemistry set, chemistry set, or onboard chemistry lab can do this)[/li]
[li]A hotplate, or charcoal cooker, or chemistry set, or gasoline cooker, or mess kit, or lamp oil cooker, or soda can stove kit, or survivor mess kit, or integrated tool set, or nearby fire (so basically any source of heat. any one tool needs 25 charges per unit of mutagen except for the fire).[/li][/ul]
The required ingredients for mutagens are:
[ul][li]1 Unit of Ammonia (a gallon is the default occurrence and contains 30 units), or 100 Units of Lye Powder (a small bottle is the default occurrence and contains 200 units)[/li]
[li]2 Units of Bleach (Gallon = 30 Units), or 200 Oxidizer Powder (Small Bottle = 200 Units)[/li]
[li]2 Units Tainted Tallow, or 3 Units Tainted Meat, or 3 Units Dehydrated Tainted Meat, or 5 Units Tainted Veggy, or 5 Units Blob Glob, or 1 Unit Misshapen Fetus, or 2 Units Mutated Arm, or 2 Units Mutated Leg[/li][/ul]
Tainted meat comes from butchering zeds obviously. It can be dehydrated via Charcoal Smoker or Food Dehydrator but that takes longer than dehydrating normal meat.
Tainted Fat comes from a smaller pool of Zeds, such as Fat Zombies.
Tainted Veggy comes from some fungal monsters, possibly from Triffids.
Blob Globs come from Blobs (no, really), the best place for those would be a slime pit. Don’t confuse Slime Pit (Green ~ on Overmap), with Sludge Pit (Grey ~ on overmap). When blobs of any variety are killed they splatter apart into blob globs. If you play with PK’s Rebalance the spawn rate of them is much lower though, and small blobs melt away instead of splattering apart. In PK’s Rebalance Zombie Necromancers also break apart into blobs and seem to spawn small blobs periodically.
Misshapen Fetuses, Mutated Arms, an Mutated Legs all spawn in Cloning Vats in Labs. I believe that you have to smash the vats to get at the parts. I don’t really know of any other places to get them, but it seems like the arms and legs should be something you can butcher some monsters for. If you find some Mutated Arms, Mutated Legs, or Misshapen Fetuses and don’t have the means to make mutagen, you can eat them to get some mutations, but there is a horrible morale penalty for it unless you have the Cannibal or Psychopath traits. Even with those traits you’ll still get a morale penalty (-20 for Arm, Leg, -60 for Fetus) for disliking it, but with Cannibal you’ll get a +10 for eating human flesh.
Basic mutagens can be consumed just like any other drink. Just remember that consuming them typically causes your character to black out, meaning that a random chunk of time passes during which you can’t do anything, so mutating mid-combat is not a good idea. It also adds hunger, thirst and fatigue. You can also concentrate two of them to a serum that is more potent if you have the recipe for it. Best Practices for Compound Delivery, chemical reference-CLASSIFIED both contain the Mutagenic Serum recipe. Once you have the recipe the only things required are the same as for the mutagen (a chemistry set, a heat source with 37 charges, or a fire and a container of at least 0.25L). The serum requires a syringe to inject instead of drinking it. When you have a syringe in your inventory (or possibly near you, I’m not sure about that) you can "a"ctivate, or "e"at the serum and get a lot of mutation. You’ll also get a lot of hunger, thirst and fatigue at the time, though.
Targeted mutagens give mutations geared toward a specific category. Best Practices for Compound Delivery, PE050 “Alpha”: Preliminary Report, PE070 “Raptor”: Proposal, lab journal-Dionne, lab journal-Smythe, and lab journal-x|xp all contain recipes for targeted mutagens, as well as a variant of the standpipe maintenance log. Targeted mutagens require extra components in addition to basic mutagens to craft them. For example: bird mutagen requires 1 mutagen, 1 bird egg, and 1 ammonia or 100 lye powder. Some targeted mutagens use other mutagens as components. Raptor mutagen requires 1 bird mutagen, 1 lizard mutagen, and 1 purifier.
What is purifier you may ask? It is the opposite of mutagen. It attempts to remove mutations and return your character to its natural state. Natural state being the innate traits selected at chargen. Much like mutagen, purifier can be concentrated into a serum. I don’t think purifiers and purifier serums give hunger, thirst, and fatigue, though. The tools for purifier are the same as mutagens.
The required components for purifier are as follows:
[ul][li]4 units Royal Jelly, or 2 units Mutagen[/li]
[li]3 units Bleach, or 300 units Oxidizer Powder[/li]
[li]2 units Ammonia, or 200 units Lye Powder[/li][/ul]
Finally, targeted mutagens can also be concentrated into serums. The process is the same as basic mutagenic serum, but is done with targeted mutagens instead of basic ones. Generally speaking, if a book contains a targeted mutagen recipe, it will also contain a targeted serum recipe. Targeted serums are a lot of work, they may not seem worth it, but they do have a point to their existence.
If you have nothing else, the you can always try to mutate via radiation, but that is much more likely to kill you. Mutations by radiation is on by default in the settings. Fortunately Cancer isn’t a mutation on this game. I hope that answered every question you have about mutation in the game, since that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge on the subject.
Another way to mutate in addition to thoseMentos just mentioned is finding a rat cave and getting infected by the Ratting disease. This lasts a short time but slowly starts turning your survivor more rat-like. My guy suffered from this early in my current game, but thanks to robust genetics came out of it pretty well off (High night vision ho!).