Mutations Intro

Page Contents

A set with meta mutations will be referred to as a 'Perfect X', where X is the number of mutations that are optimal. This is commonly used for a P7, P8 and P9 to signify how good a mutation build is. The best possible set will be a P9 and the longer a run goes, the more necessary it may become for survival. In the early meta loops a P7 is perfectly servicable.

The setup page briefs over the methods of obtaining mutations. This page will focus solely on the mutations themselves.

Meta Mutations


The Core 4 Part of P7 Damage Muts Healing Muts Situational Meta

Core 4 are the mutations considered the most essential to have a run work in deeploop and usually have the highest priority for most characters sets. Runs lacking any of these mutations may be particularly more difficult.


Strong Spirit

Makes the game far more forgiving by avoiding one lethal hit per level. There are a few damage sources (commonly IDPD explosions and Vans) that are capable of instantly killing the player so this is particularly useful in making it so there is always room for some error.



Trigger Fingers

Super Plasma Cannon has a reload time of 8.67 seconds, so Trigger Fingers is necessary in order to make this weapon meta viable. SPC is capable of getting a vast amount of kills in a single shot meaning that any crowded area can be cleared with ease.



Long Arms

Greatly benefits using the Ultra Shovel as range is increased to give far more coverage to use both offensively and defensively.



Rhino Skin

As the player is only ever a few hits away from death a +4 boost to max HP makes lethal encounters less common.
Going from 8 HP to 12 HP reduces the pool of insta-kill potential as well, 10 HP damage sources commonly including normal explosions (not IDPD), Mom's contact damage or Big Bandit's charge attack.
Crystal sets commonly skip Rhino Skin in favor of another mutation as she gets +6 max HP from Fortress.


Perfect 7 mutations are more the baseline of a 'functional' set in deeploop. These all particularly make deeploop survival a lot easier.


Plutonium Hunger

Increased pickup range makes the player need to exert less focus on getting pickups, just needing to walk in the general direction of them. Better survivability with health drops, more frequent SPC shots with ammo drops, and eaiser to stay at full rads for Ultra Shovel.
Some sets as Eyes will pass up on Plutonium Hunger, particularly for Thronebutt. This is up to player preferece.


Stress

The closer the player is at to dying, the better they can defend themselves with Ultra Shovel. Infrequently there can be too many bullets to perfectly be avoided with Ultra Shovel's base swing time making it a clutch mutation.
YV sets commonly skip Stress in favor of other mutations such as Back Muscle or Rabbit Paw as he gets a high reload speed from Imma Gun God.

Damage mutations where one can be picked for a p7, or both can be picked for a p8. If only one has to be picked Scarier Face is the more popular option and is more recommended to anyone learning deeplooping.


Scarier Face

20% off of all enemy health makes both weapons more effective at killing. Particularly useful in making Popo Freaks take only one Ultra Shovel swing in L3-L5, though is useful across the entire run.


Laser Brain

Helps make the SPC deal even more damage taking down bosses much more swiftly and trivializing tanky enemies. (Add specific numbers later?)

Healing mutations where one is picked in order to make either a p8 or a p9. Bloodlust has always been the more popular pick, but Rabbit Paw saw recent popularity for helping speed up runs.


Bloodlust

Passively helps keep HP levels higher throughout the level. Particularly useful if Strong Spirit is dropped to help regain HP in a manner that requires less risk taking.


Rabbit Paw

Allows the SPC to be spammed much more frequently with a general boost to health drops. However due to the max ammo of 55 increased ammo drops may not be utilized as well, meaning it particularly suits sets with Back Muscle and/or YV.

Situation mutations can be suitable 9th mutations but are not meta defining as much as the mutations above, each has their own niche.


Back Muscle

Allows for multiple extra SPC shots which generally makes ammo drops used more efficiently. The extra shots are particularly useful in the Throne 2 fight.
Most commonly used as a 9th mutation as Crystal or YV as they can drop Rhino and Stress respectively.


Second Stomach

Twice the health from HP drops makes Second Stomach still really helpful, but falls short of the other healing mutations in effectiveness.
Most commonly used as a 9th mutation for Crystal as she has particularly high health making the mutation more effective. Sometimes seen in Rebel sets as it directly translates into more ally spawning potential.


Boiling Veins

Reduces the amount explosions can damage a player and makes them invulnerable at 4 HP and below. Due to how common explosions are this is always helpful in a run especially to newer players to meta, but not necessary to survive in deeploop. Particularly more useful in u99r1 (Non-Beta) due to the frequency of chain explosions, which are largely less common in beta versions.
Rogue's blast armor commonly sets off explosions especially with Super Blast Armor so is commonly a part of her p9 set, usually swapping out Brain or Bloodlust.


Thronebutt

Heavily depends on character and is explored thoroughly on each characters' page. A rough consensus within meta is as follows:

Characters

Now that the foundation is laid to understand how meta works (survival and mutations), the discussion of characters can finally come up. This is a rough ranking of where characters stand in terms of viability, which may be different than the order of character world records. The best way to use this section is to learn which characters can excel and why, and which characters are held back and why.

These are all summaries of each character's meta page. Any character can be clicked to see their full guide, which explains the reasoning in full detail as well as other tips in meta loops. All character pages & Thronebutts include a rating explained on the main character page.

Character Viability Reasoning Suggested Ultra Thronebutt Rating
Crystal
 Highest Tier Crystal holds the global world record and is considered the best character in meta as she gets 16 max HP with Fortress, which allows her to drop Rhino Skin for the sake of another mutation in her p9. She has some of the best survivability in the game. Fortress
 Neutral
Y.V.
 High Tier Y.V. is a very offensive character who is very efficient at pushing and handling bosses. Ima Gun God lets him drop Stress in favor of another mutation for another mutation in his p9. Ima Gun God
 Detrimental
Eyes
 High Tier Eyes can easily swap between offense (using telekinesis) and defense (using Monster Style) which lets him react to many different difficult situations giving him high flexibility. He has a very high skill ceiling especially if running his Thronebutt, meaning more time must be committed to understand. Monster Style
 Very Useful
Chicken
 High Tier Chicken's passive allows her to recover from situations that are an instant game over for other characters, which makes meta loops far more forgiving to learn/play. In much later loops it may become too difficult to recover max HP which bars her from higher positions, but is a strong contender early on. Determination
 Neutral
Rebel
 Mid-High Tier Rebel is able to spam allies which lets her handle harder bosses with ease. Spamming allies does have the drawback of having lower HP, making her susceptible to misplays but is otherwise great. Riot
 Useful
Fish
 Mid Tier Fish has two fantastic ultras which lets him lean into a heavy DPS-oriented build, furthered by his passive. This makes him a really strong choice, even if not pushing the game quite as far as the top tiers. Gun Warrant
 Neutral
Plant
 Mid Tier Plant's big snare gives them a lot of control over their surrounding area in regards to pushing and giving more reaction time, especially for Palace and some boss fights. Their Thronebutt also decimates bosses while arguably not a part of their p9, is undoubtedly still a good pick. Trapper
 Very Useful
Horror
 Mid Tier Horror does not have any exceptional skills in meta, but has usefulness around meta. Their passive makes finding perfect sets far more likely if not playing Grillskills (such as dailies). Any of their ultras is suggested based on preference as all have their reasoning to benefit the run. Any Detrimental
Rogue
 Mid Tier Rogue is best played on any beta version due to blast armor change. She has modest utility with portal strikes digging into walls, and blast armor preventing multi-hits. Super Blast Armor (Betas)
 Neutral
Robot
 Mid-Low Tier Robot is usually considered to be the most 'vanilla' character as their active/ultra has a small impact on gameplay. Any character rated above them have abilities that are useful to the run, while characters rated below them have significant drawbacks. Refined Taste
 Neutral
Frog
 Low Tier Frog is constantly on the move which isn't a big deal in some areas, but during key boss fights he struggles with positioning which makes him far more difficult. His abilities similarly to Robot have less of an impact on gameplay. Distance
 Neutral
Melting
 Low Tier Detachment
Steroids
 Low Tier Full meta guide will be written at a later date.

(Summary for now) While Steroids is considered high tier early on, his inaccuracy is largely incompatible with meta as Ultra Shovel's spread is awful. Steroids' meta is an ongoing situation as multiple different sets are being tried. 		Get Loaded
 Neutral
Skeleton
 Lowest Tier Full meta guide will be written at a later date.

(Summary for now) Skeleton is considered to be the worst as he has 3 debilitating passives that constantly holds him back. He does have an amazing ultra & Thronebutt that would make him high tier otherwise, but his passives just make key parts of the game too difficult. Skeleton's meta is an ongoing situation as multiple different sets are being tried.		 Damnation
 Meta Defining

Playable Big Dog is a different case as his build sort of 'breaks the game' but also plays at a snails pace. His character page has a completely in-depth guide on what his meta is, and why it is so effective.

Non-Meta Mutations

This is not required reading for understanding meta, it just explains why mutations are not considered good.

Mid Viaibility Low Viability Marginal Gains Situational Drawbacks The Worst

Mid Viability mutations just fall short to be considered in any p9 set, but still have noticable upsides that help a run.


Lucky Shot

Every successful proc only has a 1 in 5 chance of granting energy ammo as its random making it a less reliable source of ammunition making it fall short of a p9, but still outright useful to any run.


Euphoria

Allows for better reaction time to enemy bullets which can reduce how frequent damage is taken, however expedites the issues with lag in deeploop the further the run goes.

Low Viability mutations are still beneficial to take in a meta run but are far more situational in their usefulness.


Gamma Guts

Due to the nature of meta there are less frequent situations where contact damage can come in handy due to enemy projectile spam.
Rare situations can harm the player if a Sniper gets iframed and the player ends up killing them directly with gamma guts, so be mindful.


Hammerhead

Only allows for a limited amount of wall breaking while SPC is great at quickly digging into walls making this mutation easily overlooked, but can come in clutch on rare moments of being trapped in a bad Van spawn without any energy ammo to dig.


Bolt Marrow

Most of the run relies on Ultra Shovel and SPC making other weapon mutations not very useful, however Bolt Marrow is slightly above the others as bolt weapons are commonly picked up temporarily during boss fights (particularly against Mom) making it situationally helpful for any time a bolt weapon happens to drop.

Marginal Gains are mutations that can help the run in very narrow ways.


Heavy Heart

The issue of taking Heavy Heart is it requires 3 weapon mutations just to get it to appear meaning a set will already be limited by its inclusion. The mutations effect itself makes weapon drops over twice as common from enemies that can drop weapons, which means that energy weapons that give an ammo boost will be somewhat more frequent.


Open Mind

Gives one extra chest a level which at best can be a normal ammo chest to gain one extra SPC shot making the mutation fairly useless overall.


Recycle Gland

Similarly useless as a weapon mutation when melee and energy are being used, there are rare times that a bullet weapon could be used in a run and this just extends its usage by a bit.


Shotgun Shoulders

Similarly useless as a weapon mutation as there will hardly be situations that warrants using shell weapons that can also benefit from bouncing far.

Situational Drawbacks can commonly cause situations where the player gets harmed which can make them a detriment to the set.


Extra Feet

Motor memory can judge how to stay a safe distance from the player and nearby hazards such as exploding enemies, however the extra speed can effect this causing unintentional damage to be taken. This can also effect walking on cobwebs not being adjusted to simply walking over them.
This only situationally effects the player, if accustomed to playing with the extra speed then this mutation can be considered to be a low viability mutation.


Sharp Teeth

Can cause enemy iframes which can turn around and hurt the player, and otherwise only provides a slight increase to damage.


Impact Wrists

Can cause enemy iframes which can turn around and hurt the player, and otherwise does not provide a significant bonus to damage.

The Worst actively hurts meta runs and should never be taken within the context of running Ultra Shovel and SPC.


Eagle Eyes

The spread from Ultra Shovel is effected making the swings much more tight losing the benefit of wide coverage, severely limiting how viable the weapon is at defense.
Due to Steroids inaccuracy debuff the improvement from Eagle Eyes can fit into his meta, while not perfect for Ultra Shovel.