It was never easy for me to find meat with Chimera. >.> Then again, I’ve never been in say, an Anthill. I also find it very annoying you can’t drink soda, because they’re a great source of aluminum cans for Plutonium Cells in Bright Nights.
At one point, I actually mutated myself to get those high maintenance mutations to actually stimulate my eating, because I had way too much food and needed more cans.
If your main interest is the cans can’t you just unload the soda onto the ground?
I mean, I could. But it feels so wasteful…
Unload it into a tank?
And Anthills and Spider Basements are probably my primary sources of food.
Do anthills respawn their units? Since I’ve gone relatively close by one, killed a bunch of them and when I returned later the army of them seem to have returned. They weren’t zombie ants (if that even exists) so they couldn’t have just risen back up.
Also, is there any footgear you can wear as a tree once you get to point of roots? Or are you just bare-rooted forever? Even though you get some more armor due to bark, I’d like a little more protection still.
Don’t think so. My previous character was a plant mutant, and being unable to wear footwear (without a severe morale penalty) was very irritating. Not because of defence, but because of the cold. Frostbite isn’t fun.
I’ve heard that Spider makes a great post-thresh mutation, and isn’t too crippling. I haven’t done it myself, though. I’ve done Slime, Medical (My longest lived character), and a bit of Plant. Of those three, Slime was very situational, but fun, Medical was extremely powerful but unstable, and Plant was very survivable.
From the wiki, it seems like spider and tree have some serious combining issues; From what I can tell they often have traits that will cancel eachother out. I was very disappointed by that, since I totally wanted to be part spider too 
Being unable to wear torso armor from the Cephalopod shell is one of the worst possible mutations. I’d rather have 3 layers of 95% coverage than 1 layer of 100% coverage, thank you very much.
You can keep cephalopod and ditch the shell if you are either lucky with purifier, or if you take enough spider (chitin is the only path that nullifies cephalopod shell. This will probably nullify a few other things, though).
IMO Troglobite is the very best path.
Upside: Quick, Regeneration, disease immune, str +4, full night vision, slimy (immune to DOT component of acid), light eater, and a few other perks.
Post Thresh: Eat corpses, happiness buff underground, str -2 dex +2 (not worth post thresh IMO, but it isn’t terrible either)
Downside: Albino, sun sensitivity.
No matter what category you go for, you can take Troglobite afterwards to cure ponderous, fast metabolism, and deterioration without risking cancelling any natural attacks.
Nonono, you got it wrong: combining Spider with Plant is one of the best ways to go about it. Plant has plenty of good mutations, but it also has the incredibly crippling Extremely Ponderous mutation. Spider gets Fleet-Footed, which cancels Extremely Ponderous and vice versa. So what you do is drink/inject Plant mutagen until you get Ponderous or any if its advanced versions, then drink/inject some Spider mutagen 'til you’re fast again. Then you can go back to consuming Plant mutagen if you still want more Plant mutations.
It works and it’s glorious being a Plant-Spider-Wolf-Cat-Fish-Insect-Octopus-Dwarf-Chimera, with minimal downsides.
You receive 14 cut protection, 6 bash protection from the shell naturally. And you’re still able to wear XL- and mutant-friendly gear. Playing as Cephalopod, I never had troubles with torso protection.
And the big one plus - it’s not munchkin. Of course, other bracnhes give you immunity to everything and bonuses to all stats making you even more unstoppable terminator than you already are.
Well, the question was what’s the best mutation path. “Cephalapod isn’t as optimal as others, making it better” doesn’t seem like a great argument.
Ok. Assuming “the best mutation tree is the one giving you the most bonuses with minimal drawbacks” the best trees are alpha, medical and troglobite.
Keep in mind, that if you use the StatsThroughSkills mod or any of its descendants, Alpha goes from “Freaking Awesome” to “Not worth it at all.”
Still hold my stance on Chimera. If you are dedicated, then the drawbacks will eventually cancel eachother out. Add hordes and you’ll never worry about food again.
If you add Troglo after finishing Chimera, you’ll get Light Eater, negating the biggest penalty of Chimera (well, aside from disintegrating and anything that prevents wearing helmets).
Also works if you get Enhanced Digestive System and Recycler Unit. Then you have both Hyper Metabolism, shit-tons of stamina AND dietary efficiency.