Abomination

Sometimes, me eat whole. Sometimes, me chew.

Abomination is an unusual racial mutation with a number of unique mechanics, and has the dual distinction of having the highest number of prerequisite mutations of any mutation in the game (three), and being the only mutation in the game to require another racial mutation as a prerequisite. It is an unpopular mutation; HellMOO's metagame and general climate have left it out of favor for many years, and it has also been indirectly nerfed relative to other classes several times. Abomination requires Hideous Freak, Ripper and Fuck Machine.

Location

Abomination is located deep in the Sealab, where spoilers abound!

Effects

Abomination has the following effects:

   Passive: +1 Endurance
   Passive: +1 Brawn
   Passive: -2 Brains
   Passive: -2 Cool
   Passive: +3 Fish
   Passive: -2 Pistols
   Passive: -2 Rifles
   Passive: -4 Focus
   Passive: -6 Persuade
   Passive: +4 - 10 beat resistance
   Passive: +6 - 9 slash resistance
   Passive: +4 - 10 stab resistance
   Passive: +8 - 10 bullet resistance
   Passive: +1 - 4 acid resistance
   Passive: +100% strung resistance
   Passive: Cannot overdose on most drugs
   Passive: +100% radiation sickness resistance
   Passive: +100% suffocation resistance
   Passive: +80% nutrition resistance
   Passive: +60% nanite resistance
   Passive: Armor thickness capped to 4
   Passive: Ripper claws replace with Abom claws
   Passive: Semen becomes acidic, and can impregnate with chestbursters
   Passive: Constantly irradiate other mobs/players on one's tile
   Passive: Cannot be defibbed. Corpse will explode after death
   Passive: Cannot be medically treated by anyone besides freaks and Empath soothe
   Passive: Paging/chatting is a queued action and takes time to perform
   burrow ability: Log off safely in any outdoor tile with soft ground.
   devour ability: Cannibalize humanoid corpses for healing and nutrition.
   Hunted by Hawthorn

There is also an Abomination killing contract sold in Rough Trade that rewards the killing of player aboms. This sounds like a downside, but is totally negligible; Abomination is so unpopular that many people don't even realize that the contract exists.

Advantages

• Generalist soaks. Abom soaks are roughly equivalent to wearing early mid-game armor, for free, at all times, with no dodge penalty. This is very convenient.
• +1 Brawn, +1 Endurance. These buffs are small, but they lend themselves to abom's two most popular weapon choices: Brawn-Spears and Fists.
• +3 Fish. An entirely useless buff that's just for flavor (since Ripper allows fishing with one's claws).
• Can't overdose. With a few exceptions (like catfish sandwiches), aboms will never OD on drugs, no matter how high they get. This makes drugging easier, and allows aboms to safely access higher drug buffs that other classes can't.
• Can't get strung. In other words, aboms cannot get drug-induced heart attacks. This makes most drugs totally safe to use, which is something that non-aboms can never be sure of.
• Immune to radiation. Aboms can move through radioactive zones without having to worry about radiation suits; this is convenient. As a side effect, this bars aboms from radmuts.
• Suffocation immunity. Underwater areas are rare in HellMOO, and the ones that do exist aren't very important, so this is a negligible upside. Most aboms also have excellent swim anyway.
• Abom claws and fangs. For a weapon that is free and always available, these are strong. They scale with brawn for respectable slash damage, are easy to speedcap, get a +1 to-hit modifier, and are PC0. They also have exotic irradiation damage attached.
• Acidic/Chestburster semen. Farming chestbursters is a utility that crafters appreciate (they are guaranteed to drop a rare craft part).
• Constant AoE radiation. This is usually a hindrance, but is sometimes useful for shenanigans, such as slowly irradiating problematic mobs to death.
• Burrowing. Another convenience ability; Abominations can log off almost anywhere, at any time. They are never too far from safety in this regard.
• Devour. This is a good source of healing that is often quite available. Anywhere that there are humanoid corpses, an abomination can heal very quickly. This makes up for an abom's healing restrictions and bad medic.

Disadvantages

• 4 thickness cap. Despite the mutation's intimidating appearance, this trivializes abominations out of many fights; even with optimized mutations, abom soaks simply cannot keep up with many damage outputs in PvE, and get locked out by guns in PvP.
• Exploding corpse. Another hefty downside; aboms get the worst of both worlds here. On the one hand, this prevents defibbing, and also destroys any implants that the abom may have been using. On the other hand, this is also useless as an ace-in-the-hole in PvP: The explosion has a delay before it takes place, in which enemies can freely butcher an abom's corpse, and when the explosion does fire, it is weak.
• -2 Brains. This adds some trouble with feint, but most abom builds already have poor brains and brainy skills anyway, especially because of Ripper. Aboms must rely on Screech or frenzy to avoid feints, while using focus aids such as Salamander to replace brainy skills.
• -2 Cool. This can be problematic for long climbs. NPC conversations can also be confusing with the low-cool speech filter; nod meatwad and shake work for yes and no.
• -6 Persuade. This means nothing to abominations, who never have good persuade anyway.
• -4 Focus. This negates the +4 from Hideous Freak, but aboms still get a good focus boost from Endurance and Senses bonuses, which works out to +3 Focus (as opposed to Freak's +6.5).
• -2 Pistols/Rifles. While there are some exotic freak guns builds, abom has nothing to offer a guns build, so the penalty of -2 to gun skills means very little to the mutation.
• 80% nutrition resistance. This means that food is only 20% as filling as it is for a non-abom, but fortunately devour is easy to use and very filling.
• 60% nanite resistance. This locks out nanite spam, but since most aboms take Hyperimmune anyway, it's generally not a problem.
• Freak-only medical. This sounds worse than it is. Aboms can maintain their own health well with devour and mend; only severe brain damage is an issue.
• Queued paging/chatting. An abom must stop everything they are doing just to send a quick page. Pages and chats from an abom are also rendered in a garbled filter, and anything beyond very simple messages is difficult to read. This is quite obnoxious.
• Constant AoE radiation. This makes aboms naturally anti-social, which is very bad for high-end PvE that requires parties. In these circumstances, an abom will slowly irradiate their entire party by simply existing.
• Hawthorn. Abomination is one of two racials in the game that has a hunter. Depending on how far an abom has progressed in the game, Hawthorn can be a mortal danger or a trivial nuisance, but he is certainly never helpful.

Mechanics

Abomination has a lot of mechanical changes attached to it. Here are some overviews of those changes.

Drug Effects

Probably the simplest of the big changes, this works as described above: Aboms will never get strung out (meaning they will never get heart attacks from drugs), and they cannot overdose. This is particularly useful for cocaine, which has an extra tier of buffs at 5mg dosages that no other class can access. Only abominations can safely reach this threshold, thanks to their overdose immunity.

Drugs and drug meals have been the target of several serious nerfs, which in turn, nerfed abominations, but aboms can still max out on cocaine and speed very quickly before each fight for an edge. The fastest way to do this is to cut cocaine with a baggie of cocaine, then do line to dose with the cocaine; this is almost instantaneous. The fastest way to use speed is with speed hypos. You may be able to find custom drug meals, but that aspect of chemistry has been nerfed extremely heavily and is now rarely used.

Chestbursters

These are created through rape. The abom must fuck, facefuck or assfuck a humanoid to impregnate it; the gender of the humanoid doesn't matter. After orgasm, the target will be "pregnant" and have a unique status effect for a short time (one or two heartbeats). After this short gestation period, the chestburster will erupt from the target, inflicting critical damage and a large bleed, and the chestburster will appear.

Chestbursters are notable for having a unique kill journal attached to them and always dropping a corroded green gland on death. This is a useful crafting part, used for making powerful freakbile powersquirt clips for pistoleros and corrosive pikes for spearmen.

Carebear abominations are completely unable to use this ability; their orgasms will never generate a chestburster.

Burrow

Burrowing is an easy path to a safe log-out. It works in any outdoor tile that has fairly soft ground; dirt is OK, but asphalt is not. Burrow is not instantaneous, however, and has a considerable casting time before it completes; click "Expand" on the right to see it in action.

   With preternatural strength, and the drive of animal instinct, you begin hurling clods of earth behind you in a frenzy of burrowing.  Must...hide...
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   Something tells you this burrow is just the right size.  You curl up inside and pull the dirt in over you, cocooning yourself in the warm safe earth.

Combat alone does not interrupt a burrow, but it's quite possible to be killed mid-burrow. It also makes a lot of noise, which can be heard from several tiles away, and after burrowing, there will be a visible marker on the tile indicating that an abom is burrowed there. Nevertheless, this is the best safety position in the game when logged off; aboms can access it at almost any time, for free, from almost any location they wish, and become completely invulnerable after using it. The only thing better is cube hotels, which have several restrictions that burrow does not. In an ironic twist, the class that tends to value its individual lives the least also has the best individual safety when logged off.

Unfortunately, none of this stops an abom from getting blown up as soon as they log in, unless they log off in an exotic location where they are unlikely to be found.

Devour

Devour works on any human or humanoid corpse. The exact definition of "humanoid" is very vague; some things that behave like normal humans in every other respect will be refused by devour, while some creatures that seem quite far from being human are accepted. When used on a viable corpse, the abomination will begin using devour, which will rapidly restore nutrition. This nutrition will heal the abomination quickly; the more food is consumed, the bigger the heals. The heals work somewhat similarly to nanites, beginning at a high number and then petering down very quickly.

The amount of nutrition that each corpse offers (and the amount of time that it takes to devour one) scales with the number of body parts that it has. An intact human female corpse, for example, will have one head, two boobs, one butt, one skin, and one raw meat. Each of these must be devoured individually (accompanied with a gory message), and each will add nutrition to the abomination.

In addition, any other mobs on the abomination's tile have a chance to be inflicted with fear at each message of the devour. This is largely a flavor mechanic; abominations already have scare from freak if they want to inflict fear.

Which Weapon?

Abominations are most definitely encouraged to be Fists users, due to constantly having Claws and Fangs. Because of this, an Abomination should almost always have maxed out Brawn, as Fists weapons, bar Tesla or Edison Gauntlets, all scale in maximum damage based on Brawn. However, don't neglect technology! While Abominations spawn with a good weapon already, having a non-Freak buy you Jawbreakers can make you even more lethal, as many a victim of these relatively easy to get but powerful weapons will attest to. For PvE it is also possible to have Tesla Gauntlets or Edison Gauntlets crafted for your use; these weapons are slow but deal the rare Electricity damage type in high amounts. Other Fists weapons tend to pale in comparison to your natural one, however. Fists have the advantage of often being one-handed, despite having no parry class, making them an extremely good class for grabbing someone and beating them down.

Should you be planning to make it into the endgame, or even just survive the random attack from Hawthorn, a secondary weapon type is encouraged as an Abomination. The most popular choice is Spears, as having a parry class of ** is extremely useful in combating Hawthorn and other players. For the uninitiated: each weapon has a parry class and may parry weapons of the same class or below it. Thus, a Chainsaw lance wielding Abomination has a parry class of **, allowing it to parry the Shiver Sword, also **, as well as the Crime Stick, which has a parry class of *, and Jawbreakers, which have a parry class of 0. However, the Crime Stick can only parry weapons with the same class or below, meaning they will rely on Dodge when fighting against the Shiver Sword or Assegai user. All weapon choices here were generic, but they serve to illustrate a point: the parry class on a weapon is important, and Spears happen to be ** all around the board. In addition, Spears scale with Brawn as well, being very useful in that regard as an Abomination will have a higher maximum damage than many other Spears users. You may ask yourself- why not just use Spears then? As has been stated, you are preparing for a multitude of situations. Fists weapons have the advantage of, for the most part, being one-handed, especially the ubiquitous Jawbreaker. You will have to unwield your spear of choice to grab, lowering your damage potential which, in a PvP situation, may not be enough to get past armor. For this reason, opponents you wish to grab you will often use Fists against, while opponents you want to parry you will often use Spears against. It pays to be prepared!

However, do not discount the usefulness of clubs! Clubs have their own two-handed weapons with a ** parry class, namely the Combustor Hammer and Piston Hammer, as well as Crime Sticks, which allow you to grab in a similar fashion to Fists, but also have a parry class of *! In addition, unlike Spears, Clubs can break bones, lowering their Brawn and Reflexes. While not many Abominations choose to take this path, clubs should still be considered for its versatility weaponry-wise, and also just for fun!

Hawthorn

The hunter of Abominations, Hawthorn is a Chainsaw Lance wielding maniac who chases down Abominations wherever they may go. Hawthorn is characterized as having decent health, good soaks, and a extremely damaging weapon that is liable to kill you in two or three hits, if not in one hit outright if you suck complete ass. For this reason, many Abominations take Spears as a secondary weapon class to aid them in their fight against Hawthorn, as the Chainsaw Lance has low Hit in comparison to other weapons, making it a bit a lot easier to dodge or parry. However, Hawthorn has a funny tendency to ambush players while they are gymming, fighting against other monsters, or just idling. It is not uncommon for an abom to come back from idling with a broken wristpad at his feet.

His ability to one-shot players has been noted hilariously exaggerated, as has his high capacity for punishment strength in general. Should you choose to fight him although the Chainsaw Lance is supposed to be slow (it has a very high speedcap dunkass) Hawthorn swings it surprisingly quickly. He also has decently-high skill, enough to parry most some of the attacks you throw at him, so the fight may stall out. Hawthorn does not receive stun from a powerattack very well (you know, like nearly every other NPC), so landing one can easily turn the tide in your favor. His Brawn makes grabbing a risky proposition at best, as he will break out instantly, and you cannot afford to be stunned and unable to parry. Should you win, his Chainsaw Lance may drop for your own use! It is a great weapon that scales extremely well with high Brawn and when you're on enough drugs (which you should be) it gets insanely fast. Clubboms will usually not mind Hawthorn, because he is knocked out rather easily, and they can take his chainsaw lance from him. Whipboms will laugh in Hawthorn's face because his shitty tohit means nothing when you have decent dodge.

Necropolis

While Necropolis becomes a safe haven for regular freaks, it is even more awesome for abominations. You can buy crank from Drucilla in the drug hut, and cocaine from Basil. The sky pirates in northeast Necropolis drop assegais, which are extremely useful for most abominations. The best part about Necropolis is that health almost rains from the sky. The only things that aggro you are the FCEF and sky raiders, so you are safe from most creatures, and zombies are everywhere. What's so special about zombies, you ask? Well, as an abomination, they can't even hurt you, and you can devour them by the truckload. Also, Hawthorn does not enter Necropolis because he is a pansy.

Others

Money for an Abomination is mostly spent on recloning. They aren't going to need to spend as much money on armor like a typical Hideous Freak, but Deathsheads are expensive, should you want them. Money not spent on recloning could be spent towards buying contracts as well as weapons, if you do not specialize in fists. The newer breeds of Abomination, however, tend to actually need money to support their secondary weapon type of choice. Still, Abomination is a great mutation for hoarding money as it is often worry free in regards to thirst, hunger, and stress.

With the limitations on skin mutations, it is generally recommended that you take High Density or Snakeskin in tandem with Firewalker and Rubberskin, as Abomination does not provide soaks for non-physical damage.

Mutations
Racial Mutations	Abomination • Chromemouth • Chud • Empath • Genetic Purity • Hideous Freak • Vampire • Zombie
Focus Mutations	Carrie • Chiller • Fuck Machine • Salamander • Screech • Writhing Smoke
Movement Mutations	Leapfrog • Phaser • Clairvoyance
	Flight • Blink • Medium
Soak Mutations	High Density • Firewalker • Rubberskin • Snakeskin • Yeti Skin
	Lithodermis • Solar Sponge • Silicone Skin • Eelskin • Yeti Fur
Miscellaneous Mutations	Billygoat • Bleeder • Bloodhound • Brainslug • Brute Strength • Camelfat • Enigma • Fibrocartilage • Hooligan • Hyperimmune • Iron Liver • Junkrat • Mule • Nimble Fingers • Plant Whisperer • Ripper • Stench • Twitchy Nerves • Superclot • Xray Vision
Joke Mutations	Cat Ears • Caucasian • Third Nipple
Defunct Mutations	Jammer