Nimble Fingers

Nimble Fingers is a mutation that gives a player extremely agile fingers that are good for fine tool work at the cost of their toughness in a fight. It is mutually exclusive with Ripper.

Location

Nimble Fingers is located in the Sub-Sewers beneath Freedom city. You cannot reach the mutation site without first defeating the bug queen, so find some help or be prepared to defeat her yourself. So long as you're over 5k XP and don't have a terrible build, you shouldn't have any trouble beating her, but be ready for her special attack! You must also be ready to kill/run past the many arachnos that live in the Sub-Sewers.

Effects

This mutation grants:

    +1 to Locksmith
    +1 to Craft
    +2 to Reflexes
    -2 to Endurance
    - 2-4 to beat protection
    The massage ability

Advantages

• +2 Reflexes. Reflexes is an extremely important stat, and having 2 more points of it is a really good thing. This translates to +1 dodge and (for many but not all builds) +1 to your weapon skill, and contributes to melee weapon speed.
• Direct buffs to brainy skills. Crafting and picking are both really handy abilities that most brainies will want in their arsenal, and Nimble gives a +1 to both, which is a no-brainer.
• Gives the ability to massage without a massage table or getting Empath, which means you can cleanse some stress from your friends with good medic skill.

Disadvantages

• Negative 2-4 beat soak is a real kick in the teeth, especially since beat is both a very common and very nasty damtype. You'll also shit your pants every time you see a junker. Many nimble-fingered players take High Density to offset this.
• -2 Endurance is really lame because Endurance is a really useful stat. This reduces your ability to use drugs safely, swim well, use focus, and resist everything from radiation poisoning to knockouts. This also means it's a more contentious pick for Fists and Spears; the former will lose a point of skill and the latter will get a zero net gain, though both will find it easier to speedcap their weapons.
• Can't take Ripper, but this isn't the end of the world. Only fists min-maxers care about Ripper, and even some of them shy away because the sole real upside of the mutation stacks up dubiously against its long list of downsides. This also means that Nimble Fingers is incompatible with Abomination, but that mutation's even less popular than Ripper, so nobody really cares.

Massage

Massage lets the user massage other players in order to reduce their stress levels. This is done by using massage <name>, or possibly massage <name>'s <bodypart> for more specific treatment. Massaging will also give the user Medic IP for massaging players with stress.