Are there any useless/noobtrap mutations?

[T1-M4T]

I've heard that there are things that don't synergize very well. However, are there mutations that you just straight up shouldn't pick?

[Pixel Peeper]

Some mutations are weaker than others considering their cost.

For example... Corrosive gas (3) will destroy enemy drops and nearby treasure before you have a chance to loot them. Horns (3) will monopolize your head slot and don't trigger very often. Photosynthetic skin (2) just doesn't do much for you. Regeneration (5) doesn't scale and is nearly worthless at higher levels. Wings (3) are useless most of the time and even when they aren't they'll cost you your back slot.

But that doesn't mean you should never pick any of those. You don't need a fully optimize build every single run.

[Aquillion]

Yes, several.

Double-muscled: There aren't many builds that want to pour absolutely everything into strength, and losing even a sliver of move speed hurts a lot. The chance to daze is not enough to be worth it. Maybe some sort of janky Shield Bash build...? But really, it's not a good idea.

Two-Hearted: Everything wrong with Double-Muscled applies here, too. Going for absurdly high toughness isn't usually a reasonable build, since there are too many dangers that can chew through even extremely high HP very fast. Sacrificing speed is even worse.

(Triple-Jointed isn't as bad as these two, since the all-or-nothing nature of DV makes going all-in on Agility a viable build, especially for a ranged attacker or someone who uses vibro / gaslight weapons. It's not as good as it was back when Shank gave you Agility to damage, but it's not a trap like the other two stat mutations.)

Regeneration: This one is controversial; I'm sure a lot of people will tell you they take regeneration on all their characters. But it is flatly not worth five points. The regen is mostly too slow to help you in combat; QUD is a fairly "rocket-tag" sort of game, making grindy strategies like this weak. And while growing back limbs is nice, it's not worth five points. I honestly feel that the "noob trap" nature of this mutation contributes a lot to new players struggling with Qud, because it looks like the sort of mutation you take as a new player to ease learning the game (in most other games, regeneration or regenerating races like trolls serve this purpose, but it generally isn't the case here - Qud's regeneration is too weak relative to the high burst damage available to enemies.)

Horns: As mentioned above, the relatively low, low-probability damage from this just isn't worth sacrificing your head slot. The stinger mutations are vastly superior at doing what this is supposed to do, even if they cost one more point, since they can be manually activated when you really need them.

Wings. Sort of. They're extremely powerful on the overworld map... but you're going to have to go indoors eventually. I'm not sure I'd call them a "noob trap", specifically, since the tradeoff is obvious - they're for people who just want to have fun doing stuff overland without really pursuing major quests or anything. Also, there's equipment that can replicate them without having to sacrifice a mutation and your back slot permanently.

Disintegration. Destroys loot, but more importantly, the fact that it leaves you paralyzed while destroying the walls (possibly letting more enemies in) makes this too dangerous to use in most builds. Also, enemies that fight at far range can easily kill you if you use this power while they're in the area.

Psychometry. This one is extremely controversial; a lot of people like this mutation. But at the end of the day my issue with it is that you can just buy the crafting recipes it gives you; and the valuable recipes are ones for stuff you don't already have. It does ease the early game a bit, but you're sacrificing long-term growth by taking it. In the long run you can get plenty of money (especially as a high-Ego esper) and buy all the craft recipes you want - you can't buy back the mutation points you spent on this. When you consider that you could have a powerful attack option like Lase or Sunder Mind for the same price... it's just not worth it.

Telepathy. Has exactly one noteworthy use, which can be handled in other ways. Usually I wouldn't highlight a one-point mutation as bad (usually you'd only take them if you had a stray point you couldn't spend elsewhere), but this one is virtually useless.

Stunning Force. It's just not good enough at what it does. The damage is low, the cooldown is too long, the stun isn't reliable and doesn't last long enough, and if you're an Esper you really want mutations that can kill things rather than disable them. If you want crowd control, take Force Wall, Confusion, Burgeoning, or Cryokinesis instead.

Corrosive gas (3) will destroy enemy drops and nearby treasure before you have a chance to loot them.

Corrosive gas is definitely annoying like that, but it's also extremely powerful against large groups of low-HP enemies (note that Qud has a lot of enemies which are very powerful but have low HP.) With a hit and run build it can get even nastier. Yes, you lose your loot, which is a major disadvantage, but at high levels it's a very effective "everything dies" panic button - losing a bit of loot is far better than dying. Also, you can often lure enemies into areas where there's not much loot, and many enemies don't drop valuable stuff anyway.

I don't personally use it much myself (for the exact reason you mentioned.) But every time I have tried it, I've found it to be very powerful. Note that unlike disintegration, it has a low cooldown and works well as a panic button or as part of a hit-and-run build rather than getting you killed.

[flintfakeer]

Horns has a very high proc chance on charges, still not really worth it but acceptable on high strength characters for early burst damage with bleed.

I often take Photosenthetic skin and Regeneration but you need a way to reliable flee combat to make them viable. With photosenthetic skin you not only get a boost to regen & take care of hunger but you also get a speed boost which is nice.

as for regeneration it is too expensive for most builds but it does open some interesting playstyles with things like forcewall and meditate.

Adrenal control is finicky.

[EternalEllipsis]

You kinda need psychometry if you wanna play a pistol build to get that ammunition blueprint otherwise your pistol build will be a short sword build that occasionally uses pistols.

[Aquillion]

Originally posted by EternalEllipsis:

You kinda need psychometry if you wanna play a pistol build to get that ammunition blueprint otherwise your pistol build will be a short sword build that occasionally uses pistols.

With high ego, that blueprint costs ~ 64 drams when it shows up in shops; even with lower ego it's around a hundred. I just don't think it's reasonable to spend four mutation points on something you can eventually buy that cheaply. Not to mention that crafting bullets is pretty inefficient anyway - you should eventually aim to get a gun that uses power cells.

For four mutation points, you could get Light Manipulation or Sunder Mind, and use them to conserve ammo. Or, for one more point, you could get flaming / freezing hands. Or you could just rely on your presumably high agility to carry you to Grit Gate, where you can buy a ton of bullets. Or spend some time around there, the salt marshes, or the six-day stilt until the datadisk you need is available and you can buy it.

I mean, I get what you're saying? But it feels like spending four mutation points on roleplaying (you want to use guns all the time, no matter what, even at the start of the game!) If you're interested in a character who's strong in the long run, it's a terrible idea.

Originally posted by flintfakeer:

as for regeneration it is too expensive for most builds but it does open some interesting playstyles with things like forcewall and meditate.

If you have the high Ego to use Force Wall well, I would suggest taking Ego Projection instead - Ego Projection on Toughness gives you a bunch of temporary HP all at once, which is much more useful as an emergency option than Regeneration's slow recovery (it will never kill you when it wears off - at worst it leaves you with 1 HP.)

Plus, it costs 3 points less, and you get the option to use it on Strength and Agility, too. (Ego Projection on Strength is an excellent way to dig through walls if you have a high-quality weapon, say.)

[EternalEllipsis]

Originally posted by Aquillion:

Originally posted by EternalEllipsis:

You kinda need psychometry if you wanna play a pistol build to get that ammunition blueprint otherwise your pistol build will be a short sword build that occasionally uses pistols.

With high ego, That blue print costs ~ 64 drams when it shows up in shops; even with lower ego it's around a hundred. I just don't think it's reasonable to spend four mutation points on something you can eventually buy that cheaply. Not to mention that crafting bullets is pretty inefficient anyway - you should eventually aim to get a gun that uses power cells.

For four mutation points, you could get Light Manipulation or Sunder Mind, and use them to conserve ammo. Or, for one more point, you could get flaming / freezing hands. Or you could just rely on your presumably high agility to carry you to Grit Gate, where you can buy a ton of bullets. Or spend some time around there, the salt marshes, or the six-day stilt until the datadisk you need is available and you can buy it.

I mean, I get what you're saying? But it feels like spending four mutation points on roleplaying (you want to use guns all the time, no matter what, even at the start of the game!) If you're interested in a character who's strong in the long run, it's a terrible idea.

Nah man, it's not about roleplaying, pistols are extremely powerful both early and late game; you just don't understand how to take pistols into late game.

Energy pistols are a noob trap. You wanna go dual chain pistols despite their lower PV. Reason being is that critical hits bypass AV regardless, it's all about quantity over quality. Between the increased crit chance, passive chance to disarm, and firing speed boosts on chain pistol; every turn is a lead wall of death that can take on chrome pyramids.

And let me tell you something, YOU CANNOT BUY ENOUGH AMMO for this strategy. The blueprint rarely shows up even IF you get a schematics drafter over at the sixth day stilt. Why rely on RNG to get one of your win conditions when you can have it right out of the gate for both early and late gane.

Can your puny photons and electrons take on the might of a chrome pyramid? That's what I thought.

[Pixel Peeper]

Critical hits most definitely don't bypass AV. I've had five of my clones shooting at me with Carbines and critting me multiple times per turn and they never did any damage.

Now if pistols have some secret ability to bypass AV with crits, that's another matter. Never read anything about that or heard anyone mention that, though.

[EternalEllipsis]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Critical hits most definitely don't bypass AV. I've had five of my clones shooting at me with Carbines and critting me multiple times per turn and they never did any damage.

Now if pistols have some secret ability to bypass AV with crits, that's another matter. Never read anything about that or heard anyone mention that, though.

I don't know what it is then, all I know is go full chain pistol.

[Aquillion]

The only thing a critical hit with a ranged weapon does is add 2 PV (or 4 with Deadshot.) That's it.

Your chance of a critical hit is 1/20 with just a Masterwork Weapon or Weakspotter, and 4/20 if you have both.

The effect of PV is to shift your damage multiplier by 1 for every two points you have.

An overloaded Laser Pistol is one shot at 10 PV for 1d10+2 (that is, 3-13 damage.)

A chain pistol is four shots at 8 PV for 1d6 damage.

So the "average damage" of these two weapons, without considering critical hits, is effectively:

4 hits at 1d6 for a chain pistol - that is, 4-24.

1 hit at 2 x (1d10+2) for the laser pistol - that is, 6-26 damage.

So overloaded laser pistols do slightly higher average damage. Now, what about critical hits? The average increase in damage from criticals is the same for each weapon - the chain pistol gets four hits, but each critical is worth far less because you only crit on one hit at a time. The laser pistol is slightly more random (but remember, it has +2 PV vs. the chain pistol in the first place, applying to every hit.)

But, there's another thing to consider. Each two points of penetration causes you to do your initial damage again. A Deadshot critical penetrates twice. And the Overloaded Laser Pistol has lower overall base damage - 3-13 vs. 4-24 across all hits (remember, the above math includes the fact that the Overloaded Laser Pistol gets an additional iteration of its base damage, on average, compared to the Chain Pistol due to its +2 PV. But that doesn't stack multiplicative with the increased PV from a crit.) So chain pistols recover a little bit here.

Let's calculate the average expected damage with criticals, assuming Deadshot and Weakspotter, and treating the damage you do with PV 8 as the "normal" damage, ie. increasing the multiplier by 1 for each 2 PV over 8.

Expected damage for each Masterwork Chain Pistol attack is:

1-6 = 3.5 base damage. 16/20 chance of no crit. 4/20 chance of a crit, which, when it happens, triples the damage (comparatively). And then four hits of this total.

This comes out to: ((3.5 * (16/20)) + (3.5 * 3 * (4/20))) * 4 = 19.6

Expected damage for each Masterwork Overloaded Laser Pistol attack is:

3-13 = 8 base damage, but with a * 2 multiplier (relative to the pistols) due to higher PV. 16/20 chance of no crit. 4/20 chance of a crit, which, when it happens, raises the multiplier from 2 to 4. One hit, of course.

This means the relative expected damage for each overloaded laser pistol attack is (8 * 2 * (16/20)) + (8 * 4 * (4/20)) = 19.2.

So chain pistols do slightly more damage, but the difference isn't very pronounced. And, of course, you have to reload them every six shots - that's hard to calculate for, since often you'll be able to reload after killing something, but in extended fights it drops your chain pistol DPS to, wait for it... 38.4.

So the answer is that there is very little difference in average damage between the two weapons.

Also note that this assumes all masterwork pistols. Masterwork weapons can sometimes be tricky to find! If you fail to find them, your crit rate drops catastrophically and the calculations change to:

((3.5 * (19/20)) + (3.5 * 3 * (1/20))) * 4 = 15.4

(8 * 2 * (19/20)) + (8 * 4 * (1/20)) = 16.8

...overloaded laser pistols are a bit better in that case, but the real takeaway is that you really, really, really want to use a masterwork pistol no matter what, since the way the crit code works means that you get four times as many crits if you combine it with Deadshot.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Aquillion:

The only thing a critical hit with a ranged weapon does is add 2 PV (or 4 with Deadshot.) That's it.

I've always wondered about that. Good to know.

Unfortunately this means that chain pistols can only reach a pitiful 12 PV, and even then that's only on a crit. Even the highest-PV pistol in the game can only reach 14 PV on a crit and that's on top of having its damage reduced or negated by heat resistance.

This means that pistols just aren't viable for the endgame. Anything decently armored won't take any damage from pistol shots.

At this point I'm not even sure Phase Cannons can damage powerful enemies.

[Aquillion]

Remember that with PV = AV you do 2-3 time your base damage; looking at the chart[tof.canardpc.com], you only start to frequently do zero damage if their AV exceeds your PV by more than 2, and it's only at 4 where things fall apart completely. That means that a crit with a chain pistol is sufficient to sometimes damage a Cragmensch, and a crit with an overloaded laser pistol will always damage them.

(It does mean that any pistol-wielder absolutely needs Deadshot + Weak Spotter, and you really really want that masterwork pistol, preferably one in each hand.)

Also, depending on how things stack, you could notionally reach 16 PV with a crit using the Ruin of House Isner, but its base numbers are too low to make this really work reliably, especially since it currently isn't even Masterwork (and there's no way to get or create a masterwork version.) I think that that might be an oversight, since its lore describes it as Masterwork, though.

For the record, non-Masterwork Ruin:

(5.5 * (19/20)) + (5.5 * 5 * (1/20)) = 6.6. Yes, really. That's excluding the final-shot guaranteed crit, but normal attacks with the Ruin of House Isner suuuck, at least compared to top-tier pistols.

Its final hit has an expected damage of (5.5 * 5) = 27.5, which is above the damage for the other two, but you can't get that on every attack.

Heck, even if it were masterwork:

(5.5 * (16/20)) + (5.5 * 5 * (4/20)) = 9.9

It still sucks. It needs higher base damage, higher base PV, or both (or some other advantage, like even higher bonuses on a crit.)

...that said, the final part might not be a totally fair comparison (Masterwork Chain Pistols or Masterwork Overpowered Laser Pistols are not easy to get.) If we disregard that, then it does have some value for its final shot, though its average damage is still terrible.

[Pixel Peeper]

Indeed, now that there are Glittermensch that have who-knows-how-much-AV and enemies that spawn multiple clones of you (around 25 AV), I don't think pistols can cut it anymore.

14 PV just isn't anywhere near enough.

[Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant]

Originally posted by Aquillion:

Remember that with PV = AV you do 2-3 time your base damage; looking at the chart[tof.canardpc.com], you only start to frequently do zero damage if their AV exceeds your PV by more than 2, and it's only at 4 where things fall apart completely. That means that a crit with a chain pistol is sufficient to sometimes damage a Cragmensch, and a crit with an overloaded laser pistol will always damage them.

(It does mean that any pistol-wielder absolutely needs Deadshot + Weak Spotter, and you really really want that masterwork pistol, preferably one in each hand.)

Also, depending on how things stack, you could notionally reach 16 PV with a crit using the Ruin of House Isner, but its base numbers are too low to make this really work reliably, especially since it currently isn't even Masterwork (and there's no way to get or create a masterwork version.) I think that that might be an oversight, since its lore describes it as Masterwork, though.

For the record, non-Masterwork Ruin:

(5.5 * (19/20)) + (5.5 * 5 * (1/20)) = 6.6. Yes, really. That's excluding the final-shot guaranteed crit, but normal attacks with the Ruin of House Isner suuuck, at least compared to top-tier pistols.

Its final hit has an expected damage of (5.5 * 5) = 27.5, which is still below the average for a peak masterwork of either of the other two types! Its problem is that it has a lower base PV and base damage than the overloaded laser pistol, and lacks the four hits of the chain pistol; +4 PV on a crit isn't worth enough to make up for this, even with a guaranteed crit. That is to say, even if it crit on every single shot, it would still do less damage than the Masterwork Overloaded Laser Pistol and Masterwork Chain Pistol, on average.

Heck, even if it were masterwork:

(5.5 * (16/20)) + (5.5 * 5 * (4/20)) = 9.9

It still sucks. It needs higher base damage, higher base PV, or both (or some other advantage, like even higher bonuses on a crit.)

...that said, the final part might not be a totally fair comparison (Masterwork Chain Pistols or Masterwork Overpowered Laser Pistols are not easy to get.) If we disregard that, then it does have some value for its final shot, though its average damage is still terrible.

To be fair, the Ruin of House Isner isn't the only relic item/weapon that's actually kinda garbo. I forget the name (it's 'the Brine' of something or other) but it's a bracelet that just gives you +1 Int and nothing else, despite being heavily guarded by an entire cult of Naphtaali. Another is some artifact that's a one time use "instantly kill every member of a particular faction that's in vision", which is probably nice as a 'cheat death' tool in the deathlands but is really just dead weight everywhere else.
I don't necessarily mind this being the case (the Ruin of House Isner is just a pistol, do we really expect that to be able to outclass ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ laser rifles and other high tech gizmos?), though it would be nice if relics received enough of a buff to be at least on par with their stronger and more "common" counterparts so that it feels like it was worth mowing down cultist after cultist to find the treasure at the bottom of the dungeon (and possibly forever ruining our faction reps in the process).

[Aquillion]

Mmm. I feel it should at least actually be Masterwork (it's unclear whether it's supposed to be one or not.) It would still be inferior to non-Masterwork top-tier pistols, let alone Masterwork ones. Like, yeah, it doesn't have to completely dominate endgame gear, but right now it becomes obsolete too fast.

[DuckBoy]

As a True Kin Tinker player, I guarantee you can make an endgame out of zero mutations. If you can get additional slots out of mutations, I would recommend grabbing an extra head to prevent insta death by beheadings and extra legs for speed. Extra arms are available through certain equipment, though you get slightly better advantages out of real extra arms imo.

I'd find it extremely difficult to give up any slot other than face in anything non esper, and extremely difficult to sacrifice movement speed or quickness.

On pistols, phase cannons etc, there is only really one end game ascension kit to shoot for:

*Massive, massive spoilers*

Tinker Endgame[imgur.com]