Crown of Destiny
Area Preloop
Pro: Free Mutation
Con: Narrow Future


Tech



Strategies


Crown of Destiny is a unique crown as the bonus mutation is kept even while taking off the crown, while the bonus effects from the other 11 crowns is lost upon switching crowns during a run. Because of this the most optimal way to use destiny is by taking the crown early and swapping it off as soon as possible without leveling up at all to avoid the downside, a strategy commonly known as radstarving. This adds quite a bit more time to a run and is moreso recommended for runs going much further (preferably L2+), and will be listed in the section below.

The downside of Crown of Destiny severely outweighs the upside if continually leveling up. Mutations are usually taken to compliment a character's abilities and their weapons as well as other mutations, but taken at random some mutations in a set will barely help during the course of a run, especially if ending up with multiple different weapon-specific mutations.

If trying to unlock the crown then it's better to take it on 5-2 rather than 3-2, as it reduces the amount of sets that are seen at random.

For weekly runs as a build is severely limited, it's recommended to lean into whichever weapons drop that benefits from any useful mutation that happens to appear. Otherwise, it's best to take any generalized weapon that has a decent firerate without high ammo consumption as these are much less reliant on good mutations.


Radstarving Guide


There are multiple methods in which Crown of Destiny is taken to minimize mutation rng. This is covered in-depth by the meta guide for set grinding. Rather, this section will focus on avoiding leveling up to avoid the downside of the crown.