most effective powers for cleaning up infinite recursions

[anaris]

a cloneling and a twinning lamprey met on the first level of bethesda susa and it's enough havoc that my computer stutters lol

what's the highest damage-over-area mutant power against enemies that are getting out of hand?

[Pixel Peeper]

Um... for optimized area + damage, probably Disintegration? At level 10 it deals around 75 damage to every creature in a radius of 7 around yourself.

[Lanceps]

That is tricky, for twinning something like flaming ray is good enough, though you should really try to get and hang onto useful grenades. If you were higher level, then a two headed mutant with solid light manipulation can blast many enemies in a single turn.

Disintegration has good numbers, but is extremely punishing to use and has some rng in its targeting. Burgeoning is also really rng but is pretty amazing combined with its low cooldown.

Pyrokinesis never will do enough damage, but cryokinesis atleast has a chance to freeze them to easily stop them from splitting.

If none of that is helpful, you can use normality. Easiest way is to aquire an ontological anchor early on from putus or quest rewards, then just power it on and put it on the ground. Lead twinning/tripling lamprey over and it makes things much simpler.

[glass zebra]

Are you looking for something to get on your character to battle them or just want to wish for something to make them gone? (since you can't really get mutations at will otherwise so easily)

Electrical generation is pretty good too and can be combo'd from food to ignore the "CD", but does not have the radius of disintegration, though the chaining might be even better.

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

Um... for optimized area + damage, probably Disintegration? At level 10 it deals around 75 damage to every creature in a radius of 7 around yourself.

It is a 7x7 square, not radius 7 (which would be pretty massive).

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

It is a 7x7 square, not radius 7 (which would be pretty massive).

Ah, right... I tend to forget that some abilities work in a square instead of a more logical circle.

7 radius would be pretty huge, but then again, it's an ability that stuns you for three full rounds after you use it. Thinking back, the disappointing range is probably why I stopped ever taking this mutation.

[anaris]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Are you looking for something to get on your character to battle them or just want to wish for something to make them gone? (since you can't really get mutations at will otherwise so easily)

i've had a few runs that have had real problems with snails in bethesda susa before, and this one has a 5x5 block of twinning lampreys on the first level and the alchemist's level is all baby snails now lol.

thinking both of what to look out for when buying mutations and potential answers to this problem in future builds - stuff that can clear out large blocks of enemies, ideally simultaneously and at range but allowances can be made

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by anaris:

i've had a few runs that have had real problems with snails in bethesda susa before, and this one has a 5x5 block of twinning lampreys on the first level and the alchemist's level is all baby snails now lol.

thinking both of what to look out for when buying mutations and potential answers to this problem in future builds - stuff that can clear out large blocks of enemies, ideally simultaneously and at range but allowances can be made

The game generally doesn't have many great reusable AoEs.

Mark III High-Explosive grenades are pretty solid, and they're not expensive to craft. Like pretty much all grenades it only requires Tinker I to craft.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by anaris:

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Are you looking for something to get on your character to battle them or just want to wish for something to make them gone? (since you can't really get mutations at will otherwise so easily)

i've had a few runs that have had real problems with snails in bethesda susa before, and this one has a 5x5 block of twinning lampreys on the first level and the alchemist's level is all baby snails now lol.

thinking both of what to look out for when buying mutations and potential answers to this problem in future builds - stuff that can clear out large blocks of enemies, ideally simultaneously and at range but allowances can be made

Snails are usually different problem. since the mother has rather high AV and the snails themselves are rather squishy. Any gun can basically kill them while they approach, but you still need to kill the mother and can also destroy the eggs before they hatch.

The lampreys have the special of the cloning, but AOE is not the only way to go about that as pointed out earlier with cryokinesis. Almost any kind of CC and also normality will keep them from cloning and that is usually more accessible than AOEs that deal enough damage to kill both of them in the same turn, unless you prepare them down to low HP before you use it.

The game really does have much AOE spam outside of grenades and some weapons (e.g. arc-winders, eigen-weapons) that can just kill lots of not-that-weak enemies. For mutants specifically there is also acid gas generation, but that might not be the thing you are asking for. The damage can ramp up petty high and it forms a protective layer around you though. Personally I just kill the lampreys with some freezing or the carbine gotten from the Golgotha quest, since that has multishot.

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That said you can make AOE spam with food triggers, but for that you need to do some combo stuff that might be more accessible when you've experimented with it a bit. You can get multiple AOE effects from a single trigger try (like an attack that causes 5 instances of electrical damage) and can nuke targets with that.. but afterwards the enemies get a turns for each of those actions you did. It can help a lot, but also kill you if something survives the nuke and gets multiple free attacks on you. If those actions were multiple cryo-/pyrokinesis casts though and you've shielded yourself with the AOE, that can be less of an issue. Lampreys are too dumb to get CC'd by fire though.