Mutation Category Guide - Complete but more input would be nice

[Elidor_VON]

Cephalopod.
Very high intelligence and dexterity, the ability to see in the dark, a good swimmer. Not bad in the melee because inflicts 9 attacks per round (default, beak-peck and 7x tentacle strikes(quite weak)).
There is ‘roomy shell’, but it’s absolutely useless garbage, because it provides tiny protection for a complete immobilization in return. You can shoot from one-handed weapons still.
The inability to put on armour - a complete mess. Even an ordinary zombie is able to cause significant damage, especially if they are many. To say nothing of the more powerful opponents.
Heat dependency is quite annoying as well.

[Chezzo]

Oh man, I didn’t know about roomy shell. I used the wiki to make my mutations tiles. What else, that you could see by looking at a body, is missing from the wiki?

What about plant?

[TheFlame52]

JNS was going to do it, but never actually did. It’s the only one I don’t have. The title is a lie.

[Elidor_VON]

What about plant?

I don’t know about the plant, because never used this one. But recently I discovered new mutation in slime category. It calls “Acidproof” and it makes you… acidproof. And it’s nothing about that on the wiki AFAIK.

[MrQwerty]

My friend once played plant - the good side of it is that you pretty much won’t have to eat post-tresh(just sleep on an open field and you’ll suck nutrients and water from the soil - seriously), but because of having roots you get slower.

[TheFlame52]

Alright, NOW it’s completed.

[Elidor_VON]

Here comes the Slime - the MMR arch-enemy.
waving with its pseudolimb. The gel-like mass on that place, where the face should be turns into a smile for a moment.
Incredibly cool, but really hard to maintain.
It makes you invulnerable to almost every common non-directional harm: acid, diseases, radiation (heals you), parasites, poison, wet (it even makes you happier), shocking from flashbang, being boomered, stunning (not really sure about this one, need to check) - only lesser beings suffer from this. Slimes are immune to all that stuff.
Stats become really high, except strength - it falls far way down. For example, before mutating my stats was: S-6, D-6, I-16, P-7. And now: S-2, D-12, I-32, P-12. Speed is increased by 20%. But your intelligence will drop by 1 for every pain point. ‘Chemical imbalance’ and ‘Sores’ will occasionally cause you to feel pain, so painkillers is your best friends now.
Oh, do you remember those fancy nice green Full and Slacked inscriptions? Well, you ain’t see 'em again ever. Every time ‘Hunger’ of ‘Thirst’ meters drop to a 0 character will split to create adorable 0 slimespring (not sure about their fighting skills, but they make you happier by morale supporting phrases), and ‘hunger’&‘thirst’ would be increased by 40.
Decreased strength and ‘Hollow bones’ makes you very bad carrier. You are also is quite frail, but 1) Slime is hard to hit due to its increased dexterity; 2) It regenerate fast and even more faster if irradiated.
Acid blood brings instant karma to all those fuckers, who dare to hit you. And you can move through the bars, this is just awesome

Almost forgot, Slime is also ugly as fuck, so NPC interactions would be tricky.

[Coolthulhu]

It makes you invulnerable to almost every common non-directional harm: acid, diseases, radiation (heals you), parasites, poison, wet (it even makes you happier), shocking from flashbang, being boomered, stunning (not really sure about this one, need to check) - only lesser beings suffer from this. Slimes are immune to all that stuff.

Parasites, disease and flashbangs aren’t really common. Pretty sure it won’t protect you from stunning, but stunning is rare (only NPCs inflict it).

[TheFlame52]

Updated Slime, thanks Elidor, I changed your phrasing though.

Does anyone know how to play Mycus? I feel like MMR is so beyond any other survivor that he isn’t a good gauge. What is Mycus good for? A near-infinite, healthy, compact food source? Fungal allies? Killing things with Sporogenesis? Fireproofing? Some combination of those?

[Logrin]

I would remind with drunken master or dragon style (the intelligence dependent martial arts) slime mutants can inflict very respectable melee damage.

[Shopkeeper]

Just throwing in my two cents here, trying to get back into CDDA again.

For an 8/8/8/8 survivor Alpha offers the best stat boosts out of all the post-threshold mutation trees with no appreciable drawbacks. Fast Metabolism won’t matter by the time you can make Alpha Mutagen with all the food you’ll have stockpiled, Nausea actually let’s you throw up on demand with no real drawback, and Weakening does literal scratch damage that sleeping regularly will have you not even notice. In exchange you get +7 ‘Prime’ versions of all four stats, which is equalvient to the ‘Insanely’ prefix most post-threshold mutants get for only one stat. You also get Good Hearing, Weak Scent, Pretty, Very Little Sleep and Robust Genetics along the way.

The only drawback is you don’t get any of the better extrasensory mutations like night or infrared vision. I’d recommend someone planning to go Alpha take some Troglobite mutagen first thing after you post-threshold. Ideally you’ll have gotten Robust Genetics either at char creation or due to shooting up for Alpha. Troglobite has some of the best pre-threshold mutations, several of which directly counter negative Alpha mutations and can give you both full night and infrared vision with minimal drawbacks. But it really isn’t worth going post-threshold with, so mutate and purify to your heart’s content because Troglobite mutagen only needs chunks of meat to make. Plus it has no stat changing mutations, so it won’t mess with your Prime mutations like most other trees.

[Artyom177]

I’ve played a Chimera mutant for so long I don’t even know other ones. The thing about Chimeras is that they are not as bad people might think they are. You have Eater of the Dead. It does exactly what it says. And you don’t need to boil water anymore. So you can literally just drink water out of a toilet like a dog.

Chimera also gives you the acid proof and acid blood that you can get from the slime. So your basically a badass killing machine with really easy maintenance requirements that might seem big, but are extremely easy to someone who knows what they are doing. Chimeras also don’t really need gloves, shoes, or hats. Because your going to be dealing so much damage from all your offensive mutations you will be killing them faster then they can get hits in.

The most glaring problem with Chimera is that he usually requires some serious luck or a shit ton of purifier to get right. Genetic Chaos can cause you to mutate two to three times a day. And change a lot about your character. They are also a hassle to keep happy. Hell I can see their pain. You can’t wear shoes; that fucking sucks…

Another problem is NPC interactions. They almost always either run away or just start shooting. And guns are still a problem with the Chimera. A couple good hits by a turret or NPC can take you out. But if your a Tailor Chimera you can fix that pretty easily. Like Kevlar-lined fur-wraps. Protection and warmth!

In conclusion: You smell like shit, look like some weird cat, lizard, goat thing with a club tail, and eat thirty times a day. But can clear entire cities in at least a week. What more do you want?

[Logrin]

I wonder if eater of the dead stacks with gourmand?

[Litppunk]

I don’t see any reason for them to be exclusive from each other, and the way mutations are, unless they have a reason to be, such as the impossibility of having stubs for horns and full fledged horns… they are allowed to stack.

[Logrin]

I actually really like stacking alcohol metabolism with substance tolerance/addiction resistant and gourmand for some reason…

[Shopkeeper]

Oh, maybe this was fixed already… But when I last played a prospective Ursine mutant Freakishly Huge/Huge didn’t give the +4 Strength quoted by its description. Also, my survivor was getting raptor dreams in his sleep for some reason. I’ll debug test it after work/sleep with the latest experimental to see if this persists.

Edit: Disregard that, trait Strength bonuses work fine. Raptor dreams are an issue for Ursine mutants though.

[Peregrin-E]

About bird postthresh:
Actually the hummingbird beak doesn’t only suck. It actually allows the eating of normal food. It wrecks the mouth slot and gives up the pecking attack though, but it’s a far lower price than being unable to actually eat.
Speaking of pecking, the woodpecker beak is a very powerful natural weapon with a high base damage and an insane armor piercing, great for a combat-inclined mutant, whereas the hummingbird beak is more suitable for a survival-inclined one.
Nevertheless, the gizzard mutation is total junk, try not getting it.

[Aesop]

Currently playing post-threshold Plant. Being an ent is a pretty good life.

Pros:
-No more worrying about food and water
-Very Strong
-Picks up Very Fast Healer
-Bark gives some damage resist
-No more diseases
-Up to 3x vine lashes in unarmed combat. Beat your enemies down like you’re the Whomping Willow.
-Ropes forever (meh)

Cons:
-Moves slowly.
-Deformed. You’re not pretty like the elves.
-Morale penalties for wearing anything that covers head or feet.
-Saprophage. Post-thresh you won’t need to eat anything, but Saprophage will make most “non-aged” foods unpleasant for you. Say goodbye to morale bonuses from cooking.
-You effectively lose the ability to sleep on anything but diggable terrain ie: dirt, grass, mounds.
-Sunlight Dependent. I managed to avoid it with robust genetics, purifier, and luck.
-You move slowly. Depending on how many ranks of Ponderous you mutate, you may move very slowly.

Very Fast Healer in conjunction with post-thresh traits like Chloromorphosis, Rooter, and Leaves make long voyages and scavenging trips very low maintenance. Plants don’t have to worry about bringing food and water. If Old Man Willow becomes grievously injured in a fight, crash, or explosion, he can find some tasty dirt to sink his roots into and sleep it off in a few hours instead of having to slink back to home base. The downside is no more of those sweet, sweet frosted toast 'ems.

You can still armor your head and feet for lab dives and other dangerous excursions, but Plants don’t like jamming their roots and flowers into human clothes. XL/mutant-friendly gear doesn’t prevent this. Hoods on non-head clothing items don’t seem to trigger this currently. Old Man Willow can still wear RM-13 Combat Armor for a while, but he’ll be terribly unhappy about it, and you won’t get the benefits of having roots while they’re roots in boots.

The sleep issue is pretty inconsequential. As a Plant you probably wouldn’t want to sleep indoors, but it’s worth mentioning that you lose the ability to do so. This led me to convert my vehicle bed into a vehicle “planter” by completely removing the roof, bed, and frame that used to be there. I like the log messages and RP here of sleeping on soil.

I am such a good tree.

[multimark]

I’ve tried mycus and while I was not OP, it was still an end-game run.
My biggest problem with mycus was the bug ( I wonder if it was fixed) that made sporogenesis and blossoms switch from one to the other: since I was only getting mutations from these two branches, I never got mycus fireproofing and the power to generate fruit or kill hulks with spores.
With none of the end-game mycus power, my playthrough was altered - it wasn’t as enjoyable as it should have been.
For the compact food source: It didn’t change much, since my modified fire-truck was packed full of cargo space with food, I just added some mycus fruits in one. It deleted the need to cook, but it wasn’t a problem since mycus fruit gives morale bonus (It is maybe less fun for the player)
Mycus feeder didn’t work well with the CBM that reduce food consumption though: I had to eat mycus fruits anyway to reduce my thirst, so it was necessary to convert hunger into energy via CBMs.
But being able to sleep in peace protected by fungaloid and spores is very sweet.

[Logrin]

Now that you can dose NPCs with mutagen via the latest experimental I’m thinking that any of the low hunger/thirst mutation trees would be ideal for one’s companions, as it cuts down on hand-feeding them.

Though I wonder if a full chimera NPC would eat zombies…