Pro Tips for new players!

[Mike]

Reply with more tips please!

more up to date version is now a guide
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2910332100

Tip 0:
To win you need to multiply damage output. Often I have 6 copies of a turret that shoots out 6 copies of a missile that shoots 6 bullets.

1. Mutants are excellent turrets.
Mutants need 1.0 fertility to spawn, which means you need a slow spine or some other slow +power effect to spawn them.
You get an extra mutant at 2.0 fertility and at 3.0 fertility, and so on.
Put all your best guns on your mutants. It multiplies your DPS very easily.
Rather than putting that fire aura on your hero, spawn 6 mutants that each spawn 6 mutants that all have the fire aura (36 fire auras are sweet).

2. Make your guns into turrets
There are a few tentacles with a 3 second duration and infinite piercing.
These are excellent for putting fast spines, intestines, and lungs to make them into turrets.
You want high attack speed spines so they shoot a few times before the initial missile runs out of duration.

3. How to use Small Fast Attacks
A very fast spine attached to a very fast gun that fires many bullets will do very little damage, but if you add a nerve with "on hit" or "on crit" then the next weapon will not care about how little damage you were doing. It deals full damage.

4. Circle shaped Organs connect to diamond shaped Organs
In case you missed it in the tutorial - you always start with a circle, then diamond, then circle, then diamond, etc.

5. Click items to see where they go
Click any Organ or any Slot and it shows using green highlights where it fits.
Important: If the green highlight is just on the left side of the organ, then the right side isn't a match.

6. Healing = Root Organs
The minimum efficiency for a root organ is ~700%. That is barely enough to get one with a base regeneration value of .18 above 1 as the second in a chain.
This is very limited on where you can get it, but the right combination could be quite powerful. The most reliable way to use one is Heart of the Wolf, which is always over 1000%.

7. Poisoned Enemies are also Turrets!
If you poison an enemy and the poison gland has a spine + gun to the right of it then those enemies will shoot for you. I suggest very fast spines since poisoned enemies don't last long.

[E.I.G.]

The minimum efficiency for a root item is ~700%. That is barely enough to get one with a base regeneration value of .18 above 1 as the second in a chain.
This is very limited on where you can get it, but the right combination could be quite powerful. The most reliable way to use one is Heart of the Wolf, which is always over 1000%.

There are a few tentacles with a 3 second duration and infinite piercing. These are excellent for putting fast spines, intestines, and lungs to making moving turrets and AOE effects.
These can be particularly strong when combined with mutants to fire them.

[Mike]

I put this up on the guide page in case people look there.

I will keep adding to it, if anyone sees something wrong, or good clarifications feel free to help out.

[omechron]

Here's something I discovered through experimentation today that might be useful:

Activators linked to Poison Bags and Bellies are based off of enemies effected by the status effect that Poison Bag or Belly inflicts, NOT off of the AOE attack that any Intestine or Lung turns it into.

For example, if I have a setup of Intestine > Poison Bag > Spine > Tentacle: The intestine will spawn poison puddles on the ground, but the poison puddles will not fire the tentacles. Instead, once the poison puddles poison an enemy, that enemy will fire the tentacle.

[Mike]

That tip is already in at number 7.

[Teyar]

Can you elaborate a bit on what it means when a given organ is only half lit when reviewing things installed?

[Mike]

It means it will connect properly to one side but not the other.
If the left side it lit then the thing on the left has the correct keyword to support it, but the thing on the right does not match keywords so it will no longer be able to connect.

[Askyw]

Originally posted by Mike:

It means it will connect properly to one side but not the other.
If the left side it lit then the thing on the left has the correct keyword to support it, but the thing on the right does not match keywords so it will no longer be able to connect.

More specifically, if the right side is not lit then it cannot support one or more of the attached Organs. This can be for two reasons: If a used keyword isn't supported, or if the number of used slots is higher than the new organ can support.

[Aaron]

In number 3 "on hit" nerves as far as I've seen never do full damage. Also, obviously, the "on crit" ones only fire if the left organ crits, which probably isn't very often on a fast organ.

[A.C.Guernica]

Would be pretty cool to put a save in in case you have to leave. spend so much time setting up the specimen, then I've got to run an errand and don't want to leave PC running with game. Like a save/exit would be cool.

[Jeanean]

Tip 1: Higher Brain capacity is allways more effective than more Brains (If you have the Materials at least to take advantage of it, at least)

Tip 2: The easiest combination by far is to simply chain [Limb of the Germ Rat] and [nerves of the Boxer], then Increase the AoE size in the Cellshop. It doesn't matter that the damage is small, due to the Nerves low efficiency. You only need to hit one enemy in any group and the chain effect muliplies to such a degree that basically anything dies.
WARNING: big enemy groups cause a lot of Lag!

Tip 3: Stackable effects are the ABSOLUTE best Damage source you can find.
(There are other ways to cause enough damage, but these are the most accessible and effective.)
> Fire is for early game.
It causes the most direct damage, and another AoE if the enemy dies or the effect runs out. Combined with intestines, its very effective to clear out large enemy groups at the beginning.
> Poison is midgame. (The Poison that can be stacked should have a green Icon)
It deals less Damage than Fire, but while in effect, it causes its damage repeatedly. But more importantly, you can stack the same effect multiplle times on the same enemy, vastly increasing the damage.
There are many ways to do this, of course, but one effective way to apply the effect to all enemies before they can get to you is to use this combination.
Spine of the Jackal > Tentacle of the Dragon > Lung of the Bullfrog > Poison
Basicaly gurantees that any enemy gets multiple stacks of Poison before reaching while greatly extending the range of the Aoe while still having it move with you..
> Blood Coral is the late game KING!
Sure, it deals the lowest damage. But even if it only deals 1 point, its enough. The great thing about it is, the ACTUAL damage it causes depends on how many stacks of the effect an enemy already has, and the damage is applied EVERY TIME another stack is added on top. You need to reach a point where you can apply Trauma (thats the actual name of the effect) stacks faster than the Poison would activate on its own, but at that point, you simply shred through anything and even Bosses wont get very far, because the longer they stand in your Area of effect, the higher the damage scales.
(by the way, my favorite way of doing this is to chain Dragon Tentacles and Jackal Spines, finishing off with Bullfrog Lungs and the effect of choice. It applies the effect nice and often, while als keeping it contained to a relatively small are, thus causing little lag.)

WARNING: Tip 3 is my personal opinion and not entirely based on pure facts.

[Lilbabycat]

How does a spine down a chain work? Does it just go by its frequency or is locked to the frequency of the organ(s) previous to it?

[Mike]

It goes by its own frequency.
It is important that the thing that the spine is on lives long enough to actually fire off the spine. So if you have a bullet with a 1 second lifetime, you need to put a spine on it that fires in less than a second or it won't fire at all. And if that bullet dies after hitting an enemy, it might not live long enough to fire the spine.
If the bullet has infinite piercing then it will live for the whole lifespan listed.

[somoto the wolf]

You can leave cells on the floor to add to the bonus counter for the next wave.
I don't even bother to get any on the first 2 waves.
Use this to boost your bonus until you want to cash it in.

[Porzellan Legionär]

Originally posted by Jeanean:

Tip 1: Higher Brain capacity is allways more effective than more Brains (If you have the Materials at least to take advantage of it, at least)
...

Not fully true, as you cant stack that many mutants (offspring) into one brain due decay.
- First Brain intestine>dmg wings>intestine>blood coral
- all next brains spine>3x mutant>anything
no point here in getting capacity up first.. every mutant gets dmg buff and therfore a blood field in addition

[Slaanesh]

You don't need tentacles, limbs or horns to kill everything if you have one brain with the right setup ^^#