Mutation Menu? WHAT and HOW?

[Secret Foxfire]

I've read several "guides" supposedly explaining how this works, yet I still haven't the foggiest idea, because the explanations never make any sense whatsoever. Can someone please explain it in plain English for me? (Also, WHY ON EARTH is this not in the tutorial, as it is clearly such an essential part of the game?)

Specifically: If a creature, let's go with "Adam", has a normal eye gene and a shortsightedness gene, and I use the mutation menu to give him normal eyes, is there a chance his shortsightedness gene will disappear? Or that he'll mutate a completely different eye gene to replace one of the ones he has now? Does this affect Adam, or is the effect not seen until Adam's children? Does it mean he has a higher chance of passing the "good" normal eye gene on to his offspring? Or does it mean one of his children might mutate a different type of eye gene entirely?

Please, before I rip my hair out in frustration, can someone give me a CLEAR example of how the mutation menu works? And game devs, you've made a cool game here, but you can't advertise the heck out of how your game is based in real genetics and then provide ZERO documentation on how the genetics work or how to manipulate them (or even that you CAN manipulate them - even that's never stated in the tutorial!). PLEASE, I am BEGGING you, update the tutorial with explanations on how to use the part of the game most of us wanted it for - the genetics!

[A Random Person]

The genes you place in the mutation menu will not affect Adam, but it will give his offspring a chance to gain that gene.
If I put normal eyes in his mutation slot, his offspring are more likely to get it.

[fern]

So, if you for example have a completely blind creature(2 blindness genes), let's name him Taduk and you put a normal eye gene in there, he himself will not be affected, he'll stay blind.

Now, let's say he breeds with Anarasi, who has both shortsighted genes and nothing in her mutation menu.

If the menu was not used, the baby would always be short sighted [blind]. But, because we placed normal eyes in Taduk's slot, he now has a 50% chance to pass on a normal eyes gene. That means the baby now can either be short sighted [blind] OR normal[short sighted].

If you put in a normal eyes gene in the mutation menu on a creature with normal eyes in dominant and short sighted in recessive, or your Adam, you will not see any different effects. His children will not receive a special mutated kind of eye, as you suggested yourself, he will juist have a higher chance to pass on normal eyes.


I hope this helps you, if you have any questions, just ask!

[Fortuna]

The mutation menu basically gives a chance for Adam's children to 'inherit' the mutated gene instead of one of the ones that Adam actually has.

So it basically follows these steps:
- Adam has Normal Eyes and Short-sighted Eyes
- Adam has child
- Child can normally inherit either a Normal Eyes or a Short-sighted Eyes from Adam
- Mutation menu has a 50% chance to kick in and override all normal inheritance to give the Normal Eyes

It's how you can get genes that normally don't show at all in your breeding pairs to show up. For example:
- Adam has Runner Leg x2 and Eve has Nimble Fingers and Runner Leg
- Child can either normally inherit Runner Leg x2 or Nimble Fingers and Runner Leg
- Both parents have Claw in the mutation menu
- Child can have any of the following: Runner Leg x2, Nimble Fingers and Runner Leg, Runner Leg and Claw, Nimble Fingers and Claw, Claw x2

Basically, the mutation menu gives you a third gene that your babies can inherit, but it's a chance rather than the guarenteed genes it gets from the parents.

[Secret Foxfire]

Thank you all so much for the explanations. Sorry if I came off a bit brusque, I was just getting frustrated. :P These explanations make sense. Someone has posted a guide in the Steam community guides section which seems to suggest that it does NOT work this way, that it's actually a change that happens to the parent, not the child, at the end of the day, rather than when the parent breeds. So I was REALLY confused. You guys' explanations make a lot more sense.

I still say this really, REALLY needs to be added to the tutorial. I hope they add more to the tutorial soon. Right now it basically teaches the interface and nothing else.

[Chief Kay Strongbow]

You probably got confused by an outdated guide, this 50% mutation menu where each creature gets 2 slots is a new concept only added in the last update.

Although the mutation menu has never (to my knowledge) affected the parent, it has always affected the offspring.

[fern]

You're welcome! And yes, I agree, it needs to be added to the tutorial, I had to figure it out too in the beginning