Oh no! You have been exposed to radiation, and a mutated hand has grown out of your stomach! What is the best course of treatment?
Sure, you could take a hit of purifier serum, but you might lose one of your useful mutations, or might not have any. So why take the risk of losing your superhuman abilities just to get rid of that wretched mutated tail or horns, when the most obvious option is available: cut it off. Either use a bone saw and anesthetic, or go jump in an autodoc and program it to amputate your extraneous limb or other mutated feature.
This would obviously not work to remove most mutations, but would be useful to remove some of the more noticeable ones, like tails, horns, etc. If cybernetic prosthetics ever get implemented, amputation and replacement of significantly mutated appendages (ex: tentacle legs) would be possible.
I couldnāt find a screenshot, but iirc, the answer to that question was āA bullet to the brainā.
Feel free to press āQā and take action.
Additionally, I do feel that a targetable alternative to purifier (whether that be a different substance or a surgery) would be a nice higher-tier (and sufficiently rare) option to add to the game. I donāt know what it would do to balance, but afaik purifier is RNG. Iād like there to be something that, at a cost (be that actual bartering or through rarity) allows you to remove a single mutation.
However, I also feel that this has probably been suggested in some form before, and I bet thereās a good reason why theyāve made things the way they are.
I actually have been thinking about the option of getting scientist party member NPCs to make more specific, rare mutagens/purifiers after a quest. Itās down the road a ways and my concept would require a lot of other stuff in between, but I think this would capture the idea that āpurifierā is a relatively blunt instrument, but perhaps with a full lab and a PhD in biochemistry, you might be able to make something more precise.
That looks like it would be really useful for getting rid of some of the nastier mutations, and reducing your chances of losing everything good. Havenāt seen one of them yet.
But it would still be nice to take a hacksaw to that stupid tail, or a bench grinder to some horns, hellboy style.
Maybe you could still count as āhavingā the mutation even if you cut it off, but for purposes of NPC mutant detection or armor fit it would be negated. Add some ugliness points for scarring maybe.
Just now found my first purifier smart shot. I donāt have anything negative worth risking my prime mutations on though, worst Iāve got is weakness, so Iām going to save it in case I develop the disintegration mutation.
Of course amputating your own body parts isnāt an easy thing. You ever carved a wart out of your hand with a pocket knife? I have, and trust me when I say that is NOT fun. So I would imagine having to actually sever something major or otherwise mutilate yourself would be a thousand times worse.
You would also likely suffer major ongoing pain (your missing tail hurts!)
and maybe some depression (you miss your tail!)
But it probably beats being lynched by that mob of survivors, or a hostile security system classifying you as a test subject or alien lifeform or something.
Iāve actually done a number of self-excisions, but Iām a weird one to ask since Iām trained in that sort of thing and have easy access to scalpels and freezing materials
Shit, no scalpels or freezing for me, just a plantar wart and a sterilized pocket knife. It was really deep, getting it all out took forever and hurt like a bitch. Iāve still got a faint little crater in one of my fingers to this day.
Yeah the fusion blaster arm cbm amputates the right arm.
Trust me, I didnāt like the idea either, but there was no other alternative at the time. Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and do what must be done. I heated and poured alcohol on the knife, amd kept the wound carefully sterilized and bandaged afterward, so it was fine, but the entire experience was extremely unpleasant.
Stories of self surgery aside, performing some degree of amputation/extraneous feature removal would by necessity not be an easy or pretty thing, and carry consequences, but I would argue it should be an option.
Looking at it from a nitty gritty perspective, I can see how items could be set up to remove one trait and replace it with anotherā¦ But how would this interact with purifier? If you cut off your extra limb and get the āPhantom limb painā mutation in return, do we let that be purifiable? Or do you now have a horrible scar for good? What if you cut off an unpurifiable mutation?
You would lose the mutation itself, the gene coding saying you should have that part, the ātraitā, but the side effects of its removal, such as scarring would be permanent unless you got say, the pretty mutation which might get rid of scarring.
Phantom limb pain would go away if the limb comes back, is replaced with a sophisticated prosthetic, or the mutation is removed (the nerves changed when your genes changed).
Ex: your tentacle legs are amputated and replaced with cybernetic prosthetics. The phantom pain would disappear because the brain is now able to receive input it was missing.
If you did cut off an unpurifiable mutation, it is still only a physical change, your genes still have the mutation. No getting out of it that way.
Are there any unpurifiable limb or extraneous mutations that arenāt vital or inaccessible? I was thinking this would be for small or extra stuff like claws, horns, tails, etc. Unless prosthetic limbs get implemented, cutting off those hooves or tentacle legs would not be possible.
Iām a random pleb but cutting off extra limbs with hacksaws sounds like a FUN way to fix your problems. Be that permanently or āpermanently.ā
Because I donāt think an autodoc is programmed to know how to remove extra limbsā¦ and doing surgery on yourself might be ratherā¦ shall we say painful. And difficult. And really difficult when you are at 200ish pain, and hardly know what an antiseptic is.
Ooooooh, the possibilities of death are already enticing!
An autodoc is able to install a fusion blaster arm CBM, it knows how to perform amputations. Also, its supposed to be a robotic surgery unit, amputations are a surgical procedure which would definitely be part of its repertoire, like any human surgeon. You might have to tweak the routine parameters a bit to get exactly what you want cut off, but I donāt see that as being unlikely. An automated surgeon program would almost certainly be designed to allow the input of custom procedures and be able to adapt to different patients. You wouldnāt want to have an appendectomy program that works on little 8 year old sally accidentally remove 55 year old Bobs right testicle because it couldnāt adapt to the differences in body size and layout.
Oh yeah, its not going to be fun, pretty, or healthy, but people did this for centuries before the invention of anesthesia. There are also plenty of cases of people being trapped and cutting their own hand/arm/leg off to escape.
It would definitely be easier with assistance though. Something to consider as well.
I more mean that, assuming the autodoc was set up pre-Cataclysm and pre-mutations, it doesnāt have experience dealing with human tails. Human arms, sure, but not tails!
You could program it thoughā¦ assuming you could figure out your own body makeup and where the tail started growing, where to cut without destroying your spine, all that fun jazz!
Mmmmmmm, does this make me evil that I enjoy this prospect? Iām even so evil I once reloaded a save file where I killed my character off on accident from drug overdose.
Actually, even a pre-cataclysm autodoc would probably be able to remove small tails. Vestigial tails are a well documented but rare birth defect in humans. You might need to tweak the program to remove larger ones, but I donāt see that as being an impossible hurdle.
Since it would have a basic framework to work with, I donāt think the autodoc would be as difficult to adjust or as likely to damage your spine as you might think.
