Hideous freak

So, you chose to take on the mantle of a Hideous Freak. Good for you! Hideous Freaks present a different way of playing HellMOO. You will not have the same accessibility to advanced weapons and equipment and the penalties will make you approach the entire game in a different way. As such, this guide had been created to detail the mutation and the problems it can pose to unwary players.

Basics

Statwise, Hideous Freak gives the following bonuses:

  * +4 to Senses
  * +1 to Endurance
  * +3 to Sneak (skill)
  * +4 to Focus (skill)

However, Hideous Freak also affects some stats negatively:

  * -3 to Cool
  * -2 to Persuade (skill)

Hideous Freak also provides some other modifiers not covered by pure stat changes.

  * Stress and de-stress are reversed. For example, you will become de-stressed from killing, grabbing, and using focus abilities, with the exception of Scare. THC gives stress and so does sitting in a chill room.
  * You become resistant to eating raw flesh, so you will not acquire worms.
  * Necropolis Junkers and Spectres will not attack you without provocation. Zombies, however, still will. Necropolis basically becomes a safe haven where you can grind and do zomibe and ghostbusting contracts in safety.
  * You can enter into Necropolis without fighting the DeadBots.
  * You gain acid blood. Your blood will damage health and armor if it gets on anybody, including yourself. This means vampires cannot feed from you.
  * You also gain the scare command.
  * You cannot use most conventional shops.
  * You must pay fees to use the chat networks. There is a $1 charge on chatnet and zotnet. blurrnet is free, and tradenet costs $50 per message. Freaks are also charged $1 per page, which can be avoided by simply using the MOO mail system.
  * You will be given an instant 0 stars upon sighting in Freedom City, Corpclave, Burbclave, Jack Schitt, and Halliburton Arms. While you have the 0 stars, you will have either C3-50s, Spiderlings, or CSS Guards that will hunt you in any of their areas of jurisdiction until the 0 stars expire. However, you cannot spawn in Panopticon Prison or the Cube.
  * You also cannot become a Vampire. The mutations are mutually exclusive and Hideous Freaks have as of recently been forbidden from acquiring temporary Vampirism.
  * Every time you clone, you have a chance of acquiring one or more mental illnesses.

Scare

Scare is an exclusive Freak ability. While not terribly powerful, it can be useful in certain situations. In most situations, it gives those who hear it a dose of fear, impairing their stats. And for every person who gets fear, you gain a dose of fren zy adding +1 to brawn and senses, up to a max of +4 each. Frenzy does, however, lower your focus more for every dose you get.

In Necropolis, Scare takes on another role. Scare summons Spectres, Zombies and any awakened Junkers to your location. This, in essence, gives Freaks a massive homeground advantage. It also allows for an easy way to make money from, say, zombie contracts. Bringing down a good dozen or so NPCs onto someone in Necropolis can really ruin their day, especially if they have no way to deal with Spectres.

Strategy

The loss of cool makes it hard to become proficient at blades and guns. However, non-cool-based weapon classes are perfectly reasonable to utilize, such as spears, whips, fists, and clubs. Bling can also be worn to give you up to +4 cool. Cool can be ground up, although it will probably be a long and slow process.

The easiest way to deal with police is by not going to Freedom City, Corpclave, Burbclave, Jack Schitt, or Halliburton Arms. If you're speedy enough you can make quick runs into Freedom City, and for Freaks, that's usually just to install implants, because Dr. Nick is the only implant installer in the game.

Hideous Freaks can benefit from grinding their Sneak skill. If your Sneak is high enough, you can avoid being seen by the cameras, and thus avoid the 0 stars that mean hunting you. In fact, if you aren't seen by a camera, you can even chill with the law enforcement in the same square as you.

Every now and again your cloning location, no matter where you set it, will reset to the clone tank in the Necropolis, usually after you've run out or acquired police stars.

Use other players to buy things for you, or just take them from other players who cannot defend themselves. If you're in a corporation you can just have corpmates buy and sell for you.

In Slagtown alone, Freaks can buy freely from Sargo at his discount warehouse of random crap. Freaks wishing to sip on some sweet delicious bugshit can stop by Round Corner and hit up Rayray. Those who prefer more pedestrian cocktails can get them from Heath at the Wide Stance. Freaks can also purchase goods from the player-run Slagtown Galleria. Camp Benjamin in Necropolis also sells to Freaks, as does Furst in Luskentyre.

When you clone, you're likely to wind up with at least one kind of mental problem. The effects of these are many, varied, and occasionally annoying. You can counter this problem by partnering up with someone brainy, who can analyze you, to potentially cure your mental problem. There is a cooldown independent of psychoanalyst, so be sure the psychoanalyst you choose is actually competent.

Abomination

Basics

Abomination is a different kind of Hideous Freak. Compared to the typical freak, they have many new quirks. To become an Abomination, you must have the mutations Hideous Freak, Ripper, and Fuck Machine.

It's important to note that Abomination is a sort of lifestyle choice. It is encouraged to hunt abominations, and there is even an Abomination killing contract available at Rough Trade (KH) in Slagtown. If you're an Abomination, you can't complain much about griefing, unless it's something like spawn camping. You should be in a respected, powerful corporation, or you may be steamrolled by roleplayers.

You gain the following natural resistances:

  * 4-10 beat
  * 6-9 slash
  * 4-10 stab
  * 8-10 bullet
  * 1-4 acid

The following modifiers are also given:

  * -2 brains
  * -2 cool
  * +1 endurance
  * +1 brawn
  * +3 fish
  * -1 pistols
  * -1 rifles
  * -6 persuade
  * -4 focus

Unique quirks also exist:

  * Your claws are upgraded, giving them much higher potential damage and adding irradiation damage.
  * You acquire an inability to wear thick armor. Your thickness limit is 3. However, you can stack these articles up to the usual 15 thickness. Leather armors, Robes of the Lamb, and deathsheads are among the choice armor for Abominations, if they are going to wear any. 
  * You acquire the ability devour, which allows you to eat a human corpse, healing you.
  * You acquire the burrow command, allowing you to safely log out in outdoor type rooms.
  * Your semen also becomes acidic like your blood, allowing you to wank on players or NPCs to weaken them. If you facefuck someone, they will get a chestburster, which will burrow out of the stomach, doing massive damage.
  * Anyone in the same room as you who does not have radiation immunity will be irradiated, at about the same rate as a Plutonium Rod, which is relatively slow.
  * You cannot get irradiated, and so you cannot get radiation mutations.
  * You can breathe underwater. You still cannot breathe in acidic environments such as the Toxic Dump or in parts of the sewers, and the only protective equipment for that is too thick for an Abomination to wear.
  * Drugs do not give you addiction, enabling you to push them to the limit of your endurance, which, if you're an Abomination, should be very high. Coke and crank both give addiction, so as an abomination you can safely be on the max dose of each at all times with no complications.
  * Nanite healers are only 40% as effective, and food will only fill you 20% as much as it did. Most Abominations go Hyperimmune, which would then render nanite healers completely useless. Healing must be done by devouring humans, or by using trauma kits, which is hard enough with the medic and brains penalties of Ripper and Abomination.
  *If you die, your corpse will explode shortly after, causing damage to anyone in the room, as well as covering them in acid blood. Any implants you were wearing will be gone unless you have someone to cut them out immediately on the scene. You cannot be defibbed even if someone is right by you when you die.

Strategy

An abomination is best outfitted to be a fists user, by nature of the readily available powerful claws. This doesn't mean an abomination can't use other weapons. An abomination is well suited to be a powerful clubber or spear user, but accessibility to these weapons will be less than the standard claws.

The additional cool penalty means that you would have to work harder to get a good Sneak score. An abomination is less likely to be able to hang around Freedom City than a normal Freak.

The focus penalty nullifies the direct bonus given by Hideous Freak. However, you still have more focus than normal humans by the fact that you have an additional 4 senses and 2 endurance. That works out to +3 focus as opposed to the +6.5 of a Hideous Freak.

The lesser Brains of an Abomination are made even bigger of a problem by the requirement of Ripper. You will not be competent at many if any Brains-based skills. Feinting can also be a problem for Abominations in both PvE and PvP. If you have high focus, you can utilize Screech to lower your opponent's Brains, or you can take the Hooligan mutation. It should be noted, however, that Hooligan renders the focus penalty of Abominations even worse.

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 can be expensive. Money not spent on recloning could be spent towards buying contracts as well as weapons, if you do not specialize in fists.

A lesser known quirk about Abomination is that you cannot be medically treated by anyone besides other Hideous Freaks. The Salmaander mutation will help a lot with broken bones. Hyperimmune helps with most else. The only times you'd actually need a player to treat you is brain damage or mental illness, and you only need another Freak to treat the brain damage. Since there are a scarcity of freak medics, suicide may be the only solution the majority of the time.