After years of anticipation and more than a few delays, Experiment 101’s Biomutant is finally out, and it’s fair to say that it hasn’t been received as well as the developers would have been hoping. Impressions seem to be all over the place, and it’s clear that this is a pretty divisive game. If, however, you’re giving it a shot nonetheless and are preparing to jump into its post-apocalyptic open world, these handy pointers we’ve compiled for you might be useful, especially seeing just how much there’s going on in Biomutant at all times, mechanically speaking.
CHARACTER CREATION
Biomutant has a pretty unique and interesting character creator when your adventure kicks off, and from your stats to your class to various aspects of your physical appearance, you decide various things about your character at the outset. And while these are obviously important early decisions, you shouldn’t sweat them too much. Deciding the class based on which perks seem the best to you is obviously important, but keep in mind that as you progress through the game, you’ll actually have plenty of room to experiment in terms of progression, and won’t be too restricted by the choices you made early on.
AIRGLIDER
Biomutant keeps on giving you new ways to traverse its open world as it progresses, but the one that you should be on the lookout for early on is the Airglider, which, as its name suggests, allows you to glide over the game’s world. You can unlock this Automaton upgrade by finishing mirage quests, so just make sure to seek out one of these mirage locations in the world as early as you can, and make sure that once you finish the quest, that you select the Airglider upgrade. There’s a mirage quest location not far from Bircktown to its north-east, which is pretty close to where you start the game, so you can get the Airglider pretty early on.
TURTELFORM
The Turtleform ability isn’t as robust and as consistently useful as something like the aforementioned glider, but it’s still pretty useful, and quite a bit of fun as well. What does it do? Well, it allows you to take on the form of a turtle, as the name suggests, and lets you slide down slops and steep inclines at much faster speeds. It’s a Biogenetic, which means you can unlock it with your Bio Points, so make sure you save up for it. It’s not essential, so don’t make it your absolute top priority, but do keep it in mind and keep working toward it.
ELEMENTAL RESISTANCES
So what exactly should take precedence when it comes to spending Bio Points? Well, there’s plenty of useful mutations that you can unlock (vile bile, for instance, can be rather useful), but the one thing that you shouldn’t ignore is elemental resistances. There’s a lot of obvious reasons for that, of course, but one crucial one is the fact that there are parts of the game’s world that are highly toxic, and the less resistant you are to that, the less time you can spend in that area without taking damage- which, in turn, means you might be forced to rush through those area. So build up your resistances and allow yourself to take it slow in these areas and explore them properly.
DON’T PULL TOO FAR BACK AGAINST ENEMIES
There are a few ways Biomutant encourages you to approach combat aggressively. One of these is that enemies have regenerating health- well, sort of. They don’t constantly keep regenerating health, but if you pull too far back away from them, they will begin to get back some of the health that you’ve chipped away from their health bar. So, you know, make sure you don’t do that. Rely on dodges and parries and counters if you want to play things more defensively.
Speaking of which…
PARRIES AND COUNTERS
Biomutant teaches you pretty early on that parrying incoming blows and countering enemy attacks is an important part of the game’s combat, so it should go without saying that you should get used to these mechanics as quickly as you can. Parries and counters, especially the latter, are useful in several situations- but they’re especially useful when you’re fighting against larger groups of enemies, seeing as they help you keep more mobile and, as such, harder to hit. You will need to keep an eye out for on-screen prompts though, so keep that in mind.
WEAPON TYPES
Appropriately enough for an open world action RPG, Biomutant has quite a few different kinds of weapons for players to use in combat. Each comes with its own unique strengths and weaknesses, of coruse, from ranged weapons to massive hammers to weapons that you can dual wield. As you’d expect, it’s a good idea to experiment with as many weapon types as you can (or even all of them) to see which ones you like best. Given the sheer number of options available, you’re guaranteed to find a fair few that you’ll find suits your play style, so don’t just stick with whichever weapon type seems decent in the early goings.
TRIBAL QUESTS
There’s six different tribes in the world of Biomutant, and uniting them or destroying them (depending on which morality you align with) will be one of your overarching goals in the game. But each tribe also has tribal quests, and finishing these rewards you with a special weapon exclusive to that particular tribe. As you’d imagine, these weapons are more powerful than most of the ordinary stuff you’ll find in the game, so if you’re looking to snag powerful weapons for your arsenal, the tribal quests are one way to do that.
CRAFT, DON’T BUY
Of course, Biomutant gives you several options when it comes to progression through gear and equipment- you can find stuff out in the open world, you can craft and upgrade your own loot, or you can buy new gear from vendors. The last option is generally the least useful. Why spend money on buying stuff when you can just as easily craft your own things and save your money for other stuff? Upgrading options also ensure that you can keep the gear you have on you at a respectable level without too much hassle, especially early on, so purchasing more powerful gear is a bit of a waste of money.
DISASSEMBLING GEAR
Speaking of upgrades- you’ll need a resource called scrap to be able to upgrade your gear through upgrade benches you find out in the open world. With that in mind, as you begin accumulating gear that is no longer useful to you, don’t sell it off to vendors- it is much better if you disassemble all of that gear and build up your reserves of scraps to then use on upgrading your new gear.