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 bonuses 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 contracts (if you have them) 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 which will be covered in more detail.

Hideous Freak also makes you unable to trade with most people in the world of Hell. You're simply too disgusting to look at, too inhuman, or whatever. People do not want to deal with you. This extends to the police. You will be given an instant 0 stars upon sighting in Freedom City, Corpclave, Burbclave, and Halliburton Arms. While you have the 0 stars, you will have either C3s or Spiderlings that will hunt you in any of their patrolled areas. This includes C3-50s going to Gangland, Slagtown, and Shoreline while you have 0 stars. Unless you are extremely powerful you will be hunted down and put to death like the disgusting irradiated thing you are. Good riddance.

Clothing cannot disguise what you are. Whatever it is that makes up a Freak, it is quite obvious to people.

Hideous Freak also imposes a $1 charge on chatnet and zotnet. blurrnet is free and tradenet costs a whopping $50 per message. Freaks are also charged $1 per page, which can be avoided by simply using the MOO mail system.

Freak does not provide any inherent advantages in regards to radiation. You can still suffer from radiation poisoning. Neither does it improve your natural weapons (fists or claws) or provide any enhanced damage soaks. You do not gain any other inherent abilities other then Scare. You will also be attacked by the creatures located in Necropolis' Heart and they will make short work of you. You can still die, and you will probably die often.

A Freak can still lockpick, hack, etc. There are no penalties associated with brains or the skills that depend on it. Lockpicking is, of course, made less practical because of the police forces that hunt you.

You also cannot become a Vampire. The mutations are mutually exclusive and Hideous Freaks have as of recently been forbidden from acquiring temporary Vampirism.

Scare

Scare is a neat Freak ability. While not terribly powerful, it can be very useful in certain situations and is invaluable in Necropolis. 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.

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.

Dealing with Weaknesses

Reduction in Cool

Cool can be ground up, although it will probably be a long and slow process. This 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.

Hunting by Law Enforcement

The easiest way to deal with this problem is by not going to Freedom City, Corpclave, Burbclave, or Halliburton Arms. C3-50s will undoubtedly have a good time pounding your skull in with their shock batons, and so will Spiderlings, with their debilitating stingers. If you're quick enough you can make quick runs into Freedom City, and for Freaks, that's usually just to install implants.

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.

It should be noted that, although the cops will always be happy to kill you on sight, you will not spend a second in jail as a Freak. This goes for Panopticon and the dreaded Cube as well.

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.

Buying/Selling

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 then this can be easily rectified by getting corp mates to buy/sell for you. There are certain NPCs, such as Furst in Lurleen and those in Camp Benjamin near Necropolis that will still deal with you. However, unless you utilize caution you will find yourself running out of weapons and armor. Focusing on Dodge and Fists (with the Ripper mutation) can offset this weakness.

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 my main man 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.

Mental Problems

When you clone, you're likely to wind up with some 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.

Abomination

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.

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

As can be expected from the decent soaks, 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 also 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 with you will be irradiated. You cannot get irradiated, and so you cannot get radiation mutations.

You can breathe underwater, but you still cannot breathe in acidic environments such as the Toxic Dump or in parts of the sewers. The only protective equipment 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.

An abomination is best outfitted to be a fists user, as it upgrades the claws bestowed by Ripper, giving them irradiation damage and even higher damage overall. 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 ready than the standard claws.

The weaknesses with an abomination are mostly that of the cool penalty and that of the focus penalty. If you went abomination, it is pretty much a given that you want to be a melee powerhouse. The cool penalty means you would need even higher sneak to be able to walk around Freedom City without a ruckus. With the focus penalty, you will have less effective focus abilities and higher cooldowns.

Money for an abomination is mostly spent on recloning. They aren't going to need to spend money on armor like a typical Hideous Freak. Money not spent on recloning could be spent towards buying contracts or armor that is abomination accessible, as well as weapons, if you do not specialize in fists. Of course, you still cannot buy things generally.

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, mental illness, and the occasional trauma kit.