Mutations Intro
A normal run will consist of 8 mutations, though a 9th can be gained through Crown of Destiny. Each meta mutation while not vital on its own to a successful run, each addition to a build can be seen as giving further odds to succeed while never guaranteeing it.
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 a P9 to signify how good a mutation build is. The best possible set will be a perfect 9 and the further a run goes, the more necessary it may become. However for early meta loops a perfect 7 is perfectly servicable.
The setup page briefs over the methods of obtaining mutations. This guide will focus on the mutations themselves.
Meta Mutations
| The Core 4 | Part of P7 | Damage Muts | Healing Muts | ||||||
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These mutations are considered the central parts to meta, as they all either improve weapon viability or character survivability.
The first group of mutations is considered the 'Core 4' which are essentially the bare minimum mutations needed in order for a meta set to work. These generally have the highest priority and runs without them will be the most difficult.
- Strong Spirit: This makes the game far more forgiving as lethal hits become recoverable. Some sources of damage can instantly kill even at full health such as Vans and IDPD explosions.
- Trigger Fingers: Necessary to making Super Plasma Cannon viable, as it by far has the slowest reload time in the game taking over 8 seconds.
- Long Arms: Necessary to making Ultra Shovel efficient, as the extra range helps better avoid taking damage and gives more optimal rad usage.
- Rhino Skin: Any 8 HP character is given a 150% increase to their health. 12 HP is not only very useful with death only being a few hits away at all times, but allows to survive certain damage sources to without dropping Spirit.
- 8 HP damage sources include Elite Inspectors melee damage (L1-L2) and taking just one frame of damage from any IDPD explosion.
- 10 HP damage sources include taking full normal explosion damage, Big Bandit's charge attack, and contact damage from Mom, The Throne and Throne II.
A perfect 7 can be considered the bare minimum of a workable set for deeploop. The 7th mutation choice is between one of two 'damage' mutations. These mutations are still high priority, but if any one is missing from a set then deeploop is still manageable for a decent while.
- Plutonium Hunger: Increased pickup range makes ammo drops for SPC, rads for ushov and health drops for the player all much easier to pick up requiring less focus and effort.
- Stress: The lower on health the player has, the faster ushov can be swung to protect the player. Some damage is very difficult to avoid without Stress, making it a clutch mutation.
- Scarier Face: Popo Freaks will die in one hit in Loops 3-5 while using ushov, making these loops especially low effort. A general 20% off of enemy health will benefit both meta weapons well throughout the entire run.
- Laser Brain: Only benefits SPC but makes it slice through enemy hordes even easier and decimates bosses.
Scarier Face and Laser Brain are both viable for a p7, though Face is far preferred by the community if only one can be taken. Face is recommended if new to L3+ as it makes Popo Freaks easy to manage while learning how to properly manage rads.
A p8 can include the other damage mutation missing from the set, or a healing mutation.
- Bloodlust: Constantly comes into effect while clearing levels keeping HP levels naturally higher. Especially useful for when Strong Spirit is lost as regaining max HP is much less risky.
- Rabbit Paw: Allows for SPC to be spammed more frequently with a general boost to the amount of health seen.
A p9 will normally include two damage mutations and either healing mutation. Bloodlust has historically been the go-to pick as it's particularly helpful in low HP moments, while Rabbit Paw has gained more recent popularity due to it making runs go by quicker and being a good substitute.
Lower Meta Viability
| Situational Viability | |||
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A p9 being the best set is a generalization, as some mutations can fit into specific character metas.
- Back Muscle:
- Second Stomach:
- Boiling Veins:
- Thronebutt is character dependent and thus varies wildly. They are gone in-depth on each character page. A rough consensus of them being:
- Skeleton's TB falls into his meta set.
- Eyes and Plant have really good TB's, though a standard p9 can still function better.
- Rebel's TB is also fairly good, but has more mutations to compete with as a 9th slot.
- Melting and Rogue have decent TB's while not game changers.
- Robot's TB is marginally useful while Steroids has zero benefit in his standard meta.
- YV's TB in order to be compatible with SPC also needs Back Muscle, and isn't very ammo efficient.
- Crystal's TB has niche usage but isn't particularly useful in meta, and can lead to easy mistakes.
- Horror's TB can be considered the worst as the benefit is not worth the tradeoff, especially in meta.
- (Do testing on Chicken later and figure out Frog)