Mutation Category Guide - Complete but more input would be nice

[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…

[nekojusan]

my oldest char is also still one of my favorite; is basically a chimera, genetic chaos isnt as bad as you’d explect, for the most part it tends to bounce around between slight variations (i think the way mutations have been coded) so you may end up with a thick tail, club tail or stinger, it usually doesnt stray to far from that.

the other thing is Hyper-metabolism; this beauty basically converts any excess nutrition into hp, so any fight is not only going to fill you up, you can actively heal even severe damage in a few seconds (provided you have been butchering those zombies)

basically you lend yourself very well to fighting by the end of the tree and the resulting mess basically sustains you.

it does bring up an interesting point; is there going to be any revision on the less interesting mutation trees?

troggs, a while back i stumbled upon this thread on reddit, never even considered troggs till then:

Troglobite => best pre-threshold mutations, bar none • r/cataclysmdda

basically the best pre threshold mutations and is a good secondary once you have made post on the one you want.

as for rat, while i cant talk about post threshold mutations i can honestly say its a really good beginner tree pre, it shares a lot of the good trog mutations; NV, substance tolerance, poison resist, saprovore disease immune; basically a bunch of really useful traits for a starting character.

negative ones such as troglobite and solar sensitivity are good re-enforcers for good practice at the start of the game; ie only going out at night.

rapid meta; you need to eat more but it also heals you faster

others such as near sighted can be countered by a pair of glasses, or are minor annoyances at best

imho the only big dent in this is carnivore; which sucks

on the two characters i have with these mutations the only one on both that prohibits normal gear is the paws mutation.

the best part of this is most if not all of these are easily attainable right at the start, just find a cave with a rat king and hang out with him for a while, the rat king never really seems to want to attack you, food isnt hard to come by while waiting in here; munching on the meat supplied by the rat population you murdered to get into the cave.

[TheFlame52]

[quote=“multimark, post:29, topic:11548”]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.[/quote]
That fireproof thing sucks, but the kill with spores/generate fruit powers are Blossoms and Sporogenesis. If a tree is caught in a burst of fine spores, it turns into a marloss tree that can be harvested for fruits. If you use Sporogenesis when a hulk is on the tile next to you, it turns into a fungal zombie.

By “compact food source” I meant the fact that with mycus fruits, 80 nutrition and 80 quench only take up one volume. Ususally you’d need like 4 volume for that much food and drink. This frees up bag space.

Also, the two mutations switching is intentional. I wish you could either have both or stop them switching, though.

[multimark]

What I meant is that I could get sporogenesis for example, but it immediatly mutated from the step before.
So i could not ever try it (or the other one)
But yes, having to only hold a couple fruit on my character allowed me to go with low volume equipement (such as power armor without hauling frames)

[Logrin]

I’ve no way to test this as the @ menu doesn’t let you know how many stacks of a MA on-hit buff you’ve got under your belt. That being said if the 8 tentacles mutation’s extra slaps trigger the attack speed reduction of centipede Kung Fu or extra damage of Tiger Kung Fu than it would be the strongest martial arts mutation by far. Granting the maximum eight stacks on the first strike.

[Rot]

As fun as it sounds, I would never mutate towards a mycus branch.

I dunno, being a walking cauliflower person doesn’t really appeal to me.

[Logrin]

You know what appeals to me? Imagining bulging eyes and mouth tentacles wearing a ski mask.

[Ragno]

Sorry for the necro…
Im here to give info about the spider mutation (in the latest version)

1. it has conditional sleeping (like the plant variant) you have to make a thick web to be able to sleep, the pro is that you can make a thick web nest and and hide in it since it stops visibility (both from insede and out), but for some reason any mob has priority on destroying it
   2.is fast and good at escaping, you can activate the web mutation and run, for some reason anyone following you gives priority to destroy the webs you leave (unless they are directly next to you)
2. webs as you know are pretty flameable (so they are a pyro dream), you can activate them turn them on, and leave a trace of fire and destruction (and it burns buildings fast) so anyone following can be burned to dead

The cons are you can get light sensitive and carnivore, if you get to full chitin mutations(armor, plate etc) you cant use any kind of head gear (unless is XL gear) you get torso and eye encumbrance, and said chiting can reduce DEX by 4 points.

[Rot]

I missed this thread.

I can seriously vouch for chimera, as long as you’re lucky to not get tail, muzzle or paw mutations plus with both CBM’s to do with making your food/water intake more efficient, even with hyper metabolism it’s still really manageable.

My character has carnivore but since I’m a post thresh I can just eat zombie corpses and heal whatever damage. No tail/paw/hoof/muzzle/antler mutations and I’m able to use RM13 combat armor.

All in all, with good luck, certain CBM’s and some tolerance to certain mutations you can definitely make a really good long-term character.

[TheFlame52]

Replaced spider with Ragno’s summary.