Plant is one of the initial unlocks of the game, but is very similar to Eyes in having more depth tech around them. Where Crystal has defensive measures around projectiles, Plant has defensive measures hindering the enemies around them from moving as freely. This gives Plant a very strategic position in defense, allowing them to have generally safer spawns and safer pushes into enemy crowds. However, they are often viewed as off-putting to newer players as their snare doesn't start off particularly powerful. Despite not standing out in preloop Plant is well worth the effort of learning the mechanics of as having one of the most unique playstyles, one can still put Plant on the back burner until they start looping.

Once Plant reaches ultra is where their character really starts to pick up, as they offer large growth in offensive and defensive situations. Having one of the best thronebutts in the game, paired with ultras and they can really become a strong, higher tier character. They are recommended in loop and meta for those willing to learn their mechanics, though as mentioned in preloop can be as easily ignored or enjoyed.

	Character Loadout
	Unlock	Reach 3-1
	B-Skin	Beat the throne in under 10 mins as Plant
	Weapon	Revolver
	Active	Snare Enemies
	Passive	Is Faster

Abilities

Active

- Plant can fire a small seed that becomes a sapling upon contact with any physical prop/enemy/wall. They can freely walk and shoot through this without any hinderance. The snare can be re-shot/spammed so long as it's already made contact with anything. It can function as a movable light source in dark levels.

- If holding down the active button while shooting, the snare will increase Plant's vision in the snares direction once it's made contact, it scales based on the distance it travels. This can be undone by simply letting go of the active button. During events(such as the Throne waking up or a portal being open), this effect will not work.

- This snare will slow any enemies that are in contact with its hitbox so long as they stay within it. How much an enemy is slowed is based on their size, with maggots being stopped completely and the Throne largely ignoring it. (This excludes vans which are sort of pseudo-enemies, they are stopped completely in snare)

- Snare does not interact with most projectiles, however it will stop enemy fire and slow toxic gas. (Mom's gas shot will pass right through it, until it hits an object/wall).

- Snare also immensely increases knockback on enemies on any non beta version of the game; on beta, it is severely nerfed. With the right weapons it can completely push enemies into walls, leading to hilarious situations such as Hyper Crystal being stuck in a wall, moving away from the player out of bounds and slowly dies to wall damage, while other bosses such as the Throne will break walls leading it to be extremely off-center. This can also work against the player, such as a van stuck in snare being pushed into the player by enemy bullets.

- If the seed is deflected by a shield, it will 'change teams' and can hit Plant, activating the snare. However, the snare will always remain on Plant's team as intended.

- If an Elite Shielder attempts to teleport where a snare currently is, it will flash there momentarily but return to its original positioning. If having Thronebutt, this will instantly kill the Elite Shielder if under the correct threshold of HP.

Passive

- Plant naturally has extra speed similar to the extra speed seen with extra feet. A normal mutant has a set speed of 4, while Plant has a set speed of 4.5.

- Extra feet adds +0.5 regardless, so if stacked Plant could have a speed of 5 which translates to being 20% faster than a normal walking mutant at maximum.

Thronebutt:

- Plant's snare will kill any enemies that are at 33% health or lower(u99r1 or earlier), or 33.33%(v9940/betas and forward), if they are touching the snare. This does not apply to props.

- This can be stacked with Scarier Face, which removes 20% of enemies health. This translates to about a 47.4% health reduction, NOT a flat 53% reduction as one would assume, as Face makes enemies start with reduced max HP, not start in a damaged state.

Ultra A: Trapper

- Plant will shoot its usual snare, but when making contact it will spawn an additional 5 snares surrounding one in the middle for a total of 6. If shot at a wall, they will instead crowd together. They all are mechanically the same otherwise.

Ultra B: Killer

- Upon killing an enemy within your snare, a sapling with 10 HP will spawn from their corpse that will circle widely around the player. This can be chained as saplings can cause more saplings to spawn, so long as the player lines up their snare shots correctly.

- Saplings will do 5 contact damage upon touching an enemy, and then will suicide into 3 blood explosions(or will explode if taking 10 damage/alive for ~13 seconds), this can delete normal enemy projectiles, though can also backfire on the player as it can also set off IDPD grenades if it's within the blood explosion radius.

- Saplings will drop 3 rads on death, but are unable to drop pickups and weapons(including with CoGuns). They can, however, be effected by some mutations similar to Rebel's allies. Killing enemies can proc Lucky Shot and Bloodlust for Plant, as well as kills reducing Trigger Fingers cooldown. Impact Wrists also applies to enemies killed by them.

Preloop Guide

Snare is a tool that has limited usage initially. It's two strongest usages is keeping bosses more stationary while lining up shots or making a temporary retreat; the other being that in areas with longer halls Plant can create their own choke points. This works very well in a more defensive playstyle, if the player doesn't mind going a bit slower. However the crowning achievement that must be mentioned is thronebutt, killing any enemies within the snare under 33% of their HP. This is the only thing that makes Plant really stand out in preloop. Any enemies with higher health values & bosses only need to have 2/3rds of their normal health removed in order to be killed. If playing preloop this is easily one of the strongest mutations that trivializes quite a few boss fights. Less chances of death, and less ammo usage overall. It can also stack well with Scarier Face to make enemies take just nearly half their original HP taken away to work. If thronebutt is in the mutation pool, 9 out of 10 times it's going to be your best call.

Plant's passive is easily overlooked as just providing a little bit of extra speed. Unlike extra feet it doesn't allow you to negate webs or ice hinderance to the player, however it's still nice to have as it's easier to escape danger(stacked with snare to slow enemies), and dodging a bit quicker. This can also have the reverse effect of walking into bullets if the player is not used to the extra speed though, so try to get accustomed to it by doing a few runs in a row.

Mutations largely do not differ for Plant in the early part of the game. There is an exception though, as Thronebutt is one of the strongest mutations at this point of the game. There's been debates plenty of times on if Plant's TB should be swapped with one of Plant's Ultras. Bosses and tanky enemies are usually the biggest threats to newer players, so being able to quickly brush them aside(and in some cases even one shotting), this ability should never be underestimated. Otherwise, much of this is up to player preference, though it goes without saying that extra feet is especially lower priority as Plant's build in speed more than enough makes up for the difference between other mutants base speed.

Loop Guide

As for Killer, it holds up decently well in loop play. It's possible to chain sapling spawns in snare by lining up kills in areas with many low HP enemies(Desert, Sewers, Labs). However, the player constantly has to be shooting snare at where they're shooting their weapons at, which requires more focus. Killer is a mutation that also has a higher skill level in terms of using it more productively. For any plant player it's worth trying a few times, or even preferring if the goal is just L1-2. Boiling Veins is recommended if going this route though, to prevent situations where saplings set off enemy explosions in close proximity.

As for Trapper, anything from preloop is rapidly multiplied in viability. Snare covers a huge portion of the screen meaning that even in open levels, Plant can constantly control which directions enemies are able to push from with their own custom choke points. This means that the player can defend themselves from enemies that may aggressively push, or keep enemies at bay that may otherwise push further back in the level to properly snipe. This stacks very well with heavy hitting weapons, as enemies can stay more clustered together making bigger shots hit more enemies at once. This works well into trigger fingers, and even running without it, big snare gives Plant more breathing room constantly and have a more safe waiting period until they're able to shoot again.

A crowning achievement for Plant though is the ability to stop vans completely with snare. In simpler terms, vans are stationary enemies that are forced to move upon spawning. So when touching snare, their speed is read as 0 and kept still. Though the player should be aware that vans in pre-beta versions can take heavy knockback from enemy projectiles too, leading to potentially hurting the character from vans they would have been safe from otherwise. This especially works great for making it easier to enter/leave IDPD HQ, however one of the biggest perks in loop is that Plant can put their snare at the back of the van, and all the IDPD that spawn will be stuck in the snare instead of rolling out in all directions making them easy targets. This makes van spawns far easier/safer to deal with, especially in cases of Elite Grunts who have massively reduced mobility in snares, and Elite Inspectors who have a harder time to get Plant in range due to being stuck in a snare as well, stacked with Plant having extra speed to stay just barely out of reach of their attack.

In terms of mutations, it should go without saying at this point to take Thronebutt. HP scaling is laughable when any enemy in a large entrapment of snare only needs 2/3rds of their health removed in order to be killed. Otherwise, the usual survival mutations do very well for Plant. Having a short range weapon(melee) and a long range weapon is generally recommended to get the best benefits of handling enemies entrapped in snare, however there is a lot to experiment with Plant and worth trying out.

Meta Guide

While being very viable in late game, Plant is oft-ignored by deeploop players. While this varies as deeploopers are a small sample size, a lot of it can come down to Plant being heavy on the technical side like Eyes, but unlike Eyes moreso fits a weird niche. For this reason it's recommended that Plant is best for the first run of a play session, or doing multiple runs as Plant in a row, as it's the best way to play the character with a fresh mindset and focus on their specific gameplay perks.

Popo Freaks are the first notable thing on this list. While Ultra Shovel can only one shot them up to Loop 5 with Scarier Face, with Thronebutt alone popo freaks can be one tapped by ushov up to Loop 9(or Loop 10 on betas). TB and Face stacked means Popo Freaks in snare can be one-shot up to Loop 17! This is extraordinarily powerful and makes rad & freak management a breeze. Vans being completely stopped by snare can make Plant's survivability go up by quite a bit too, as the player can quickly react to a van suddenly in close proximity. However, if on Non-Beta, because projectiles can push vans it sometimes has the opposite effect where vans can be pushed into Plant completely. This is especially notable on areas such as 1-2 and 1-3, where Golden Scorpions can push vans with their high volume of fast moving projectiles, which can have the reverse effect of instead putting Plant in more danger than they originally would have.

The other large part to note is how much Trapper can help with enemy management. As mentioned in the Loop guide, Plant can make custom choke points with snare to push enemies through. Plant can heavily lean on Ultra Shovel because of this, as enemies will always be much more grouped together. With thronebutt this is furthered as most enemies will be dying in one or two swings for far longer than for any other character. Snare has a very high skill level, so a lot of practice may be needed to know when it's good to constantly use it, and when it's good to keep it stationary to help keep some enemies at bay while focusing on others. By the much later loops though, it's biggest utilization is helping kill tanky enemies quicker. This especially shows in Palace, as even without Thronebutt, Dog Guardians can be melee abused by ushov much easier and safer. This makes even unfortunate spawns a lot more bearable. Plant dying in Palace should be an extremely rare circumstance, as Plant can come back from even bad spawns far easier than most other characters when running meta.

This brings into the big question of what mutations Plant should take. Triple damage is an extremely powerful option (TB + Face + Brain), however one may opt to trade off a damage mutation for a healing one. Being an absolute DPS cannon is great if one is very used to Plant's mechanics, but recovery during boss fights may see Plant struggle without healing muts. So one must consider which damage mutation to drop. Running Face + Brain puts a de-emphasis on using snare, but is reliable across the board for surviving. Face + Butt makes IDPD Freak management free for an incredibly long time, and lets Plant lean into being a melee character. Brain + Butt is amazing for slaying bosses very quickly, though many top level players are biased towards always taking Face. This means that what it comes down to ultimately is player preference, because no matter what two very viable damage mutations are still being run.

Big Bandits
Plant's Bandit game is fairly strong when compared to the other mutants. This is shown through the utility that snare provides, as it is an important tool to ensure Plant's survival. While running Trapper being able to shoot a snare at a wall, and then hiding behind that wall, allows Plant to create a bit of a safety net. This makes it so any Bandits that charge will move much slower, allowing for melee charge abuse to be much easier to react to, and puts Plant at a significantly lower risk of taking charge damage on error of the player. Snares can also be put inside of walls where Plant is hiding to help minimize risk of being charged as well, though less useful than if it was outside of said wall. The extra speed can shine here sometimes too, as when scouting for Bandits good reaction time is sometimes necessary to avoid taking damage, which can really come in handy to avoid wasting ultra shovel swings.

Mom
In the early loops Plant's snare completely trivializes Mom. Her walking speed is very slow to start out with, which is largely negated by snare allowing Plant to control where she is standing. The player should be aware that Mom's toxic gas shot can freely pass through snare though, meaning that it cannot protect Plant from the incoming damage; only when coming into contact with a wall/melee swing will the normal gas clouds be effected by snare. Once in later loops snare cannot properly hold mom in one position because of her increased speed, however it shouldn't be understated on its usefulness. While sitting in a corner with a snare as a buffer this can give often necessary reaction time to dodge Mom from flinging herself at the player, coupled with Plant's own extra speed to try to circumvent her. This can make times between freak respawns and having better chances of getting weapon hits in much more reliable.

Throne II
Of the three big bosses, T2 definitely gives Plant the hardest time. Getting perfect shots with SPC is the primary form of damage in this fight, however it is less reliable to get these shots in when T2 is under the effects of snare. This means that snare is often best reserved for activating Thronebutt if running it, otherwise it is mostly just useful as a buffer during freak respawns. If snare is missed, the seed will fly all the way to the edge of the arena and until that point snare cannot be shot again. While this is only a few seconds, this can sometimes be crucial for Plant's survival. Overall T2 plays largely the same to other players compared to the other bosses on Plant.

Overall Plant has a very strong toolkit for deeploop play. Snare can be off-putting for those who have not used it very much, however the reward for learning its proper usage can be very high. For that reason Plant is considered a higher tier for meta. While not absolutely busted, they have high potential for making boss fights extremely easier with specific good sets. The only reason their records have fallen behind other characters, is a lack of interest from the meta community. However, that can be changed with a bit of dedication and a lot of knowledge and skill.