Seventh Cross Evolution - Strategy Guide (Page 01)
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Seventh Cross Evolution: Basic FAQ and walkthrough (US version)
version 1.1 (1/8/01)
By Jeff Coleburn (vsp@unix3.netaxs.com) and contributors
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(The usual required legalese applies: this document is Copyright 2001
Jeff Coleburn. You can copy it, print it out, put it on your site,
stick it up your wazoo or do whatever else seems natural, as long as
you don't publish it in a for-profit medium without contacting me first
and providing attribution. Of course, what kind of magazine would
be releasing a walkthrough guide for THIS game at this point, much less
want it so badly that they'd rip this one off without asking?)
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//TABLE OF CONTENTS//
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0.0 Version History
0.1 Contributors
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Description of the game
1.1.1 The good
1.1.2 The bad
1.1.3 The ugly
1.1.4 Personal notes
1.2 Controls & movement
1.3 Menus
1.4 Stone Monuments (saving and other functions)
2.0 Getting Started
2.1 Beginning stage - survival in the pond
2.2 Protist problems
2.3 The Origin creature
3.0 Evolution: Building the Better Beast
3.1 Basic combat; obtaining EVPs
3.1 Building statistics through body part generation
3.2 The Evolution command
3.3 Body parts and nutrients
3.4 Equipping created body parts
3.4.1 "Pure" creatures
3.5 Recovering lost body parts after dying
3.6 Statistic gains from body part creation
3.7 Determining optimum grid patterns for generating body parts
3.7.1 Legs
3.7.2 Arms
3.7.3 Bodies
3.7.4 Heads
3.8 ExPower Abilities
3.8.1 Offensive Abilities
3.8.2 Defensive Abilities
3.8.3 Registering an ExPower ability
4.0 First Stage - The Pond
4.1 Becoming the baddest crab-killin' SOB in the whole damned pond
4.2 Preparations for the cave
4.3 First Stage Area Boss - The Worm
5.0 Second Stage - The Sea
5.1 Sloping cavern
5.2 Larger sea cavern
5.3 Second Stage Area Boss - The Big Ray
6.0 Third Stage - The Jungle
6.1 Entrance area
6.2 Second jungle area
6.3 Third Stage Area Boss - Twin Frogs
7.0 Fourth Stage - The Badlands
7.1 Badlands Area 1
7.2 Badlands Area 2
7.3 Badlands Area 3
7.4 Fourth Stage Area Boss - Fire-Breathing Dinosaur
8.0 Fifth Stage - The Pastoral Valley
8.1 Valley Area 1
8.2 Valley Area 2
8.3 Valley Area 3
8.4 Fifth Stage Area Boss - Giant Mecha-Bird
9.0 Sixth Stage - Barren Future
9.1 Future Grassy Area
9.2 Future Desert Area
9.3 Deserted Valley
9.4 Sixth Stage Area Boss - Twin Golems
9.4.1 Storyline turning point
9.5 Sixth Stage Boss #2 - Neo Bionoid
10.0 Side Quest - Giant Butterfly
10.1 Side Quest - Giant Crustacean
11.0 The Hidden Cave
11.1 Plot exposition
11.2 Inside the laboratory
11.2.1 Ending set 1 (Creature path)
11.2.2 Ending set 2 (Human path)
12.0 Appendices and tables
12.1 Nutrient values of non-creature edibles
12.2 Catalog of creatures
12.3 (partial) Catalog of body parts
12.4 Frequently Asked Questions
13.0 Spoilers
13.1 Storyline spoilers
13.1.1 Ending set 1 (Creature endings)
13.1.2 Ending set 2 (Human ending)
13.2 Small hints on evolution/body part generation
13.3 Unanswered questions (or: help me out here)
13.4 Closing thoughts
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0.0 Version History
Version 1.0 (1/4/01): This is the first release of this document,
based on my experiences in finishing this game for the first time.
Some details (such as complete lists of nutrient values for corpses,
complete body part lists, etc.) remain and will be added as I have
time. This document is intended as a general walkthrough, and
submissions are welcome if I've missed anything particularly
interesting (which is quite possible) or if anything's inaccurate.
Version 1.1 (1/7/01): Added the second (human) ending, and how to
get it. More ending details. More body parts and stats listed.
Information about bonuses for "pure" creatures. Corrections and
clarifications. Camera details. More info being added, slowly but
surely...
0.1 Contributors
The following have been quite helpful in debugging and enhancing this
walkthrough:
* Kendrick Chua (kendrick@io.com), for general advice, tips on the
Human ending, and the concept of bonuses for pure creatures.
* Weasel Despair (wdespair@yahoo.com), for lots of info on the ending
branch structure and storyline.
* (your name here: just send me something!)
1.0 Introduction
Where to begin? Seventh Cross Evolution is one of those games that defies
easy description (and most attempts at FAQs).
1.1 Description of the game
The plot of the game is simple at its core. A new life is born in a pond
in some faraway place, in the form of a protist. A protist is a very
primitive organism without limbs or defenses of any kind, making its life
expectancy rather low without some guidance from you. Your creature's
task is simply to survive, growing and evolving with your aid from a
helpless blob to a fearsome predator that can conquer all that would
devour it.
You guide the creature's evolution through direct manipulation of its DNA,
in a rather complex system that simultaneously builds the creature's stats
and forms new body parts for it to use. Slowly but surely, you turn the
predators around you into your prey, modifying your body as needed to
bypass all obstacles and prove yourself fittest to survive.
1.1.1 The good
Some positive things about this game:
* It's certainly a unique title in the Dreamcast library, in that there's
not anything else quite like it out there.
* Once you get the hang of the evolution system, tinkering with DNA grids
and figuring out how to obtain needed body parts can be an entertaining
little puzzle.
* With the variety of parts available (30 different heads, arms, legs and
bodies that can be mixed & matched as needed, ranging from primitive
organisms to man to futuristic/fantasy designs), you can tailor your
creature to whatever its specific needs (or your whims) dictate.
* The graphics are pretty, if not groundbreaking.
* A well-hidden plotline. You begin with the mere task of survival, and
have no other purpose or goal than that for a long, long time. After a
while, you get occasional FMV clips of mysterious events, but other than
that, you're on your own until near the very end of the game. Life comes
with no instruction manuals. For all intents and purposes, neither does
this game. Working out how the world works can give you a nice sense of
discovery...
1.1.2 The bad
Some negatives:
* The manual is intentionally vague, to the point of being annoying.
There are a TON of things you will discover by trial-and-error, and only
those who pay attention to detail (or read this FAQ, perhaps) will succeed
in a reasonable amount of time.
* The combat system is aggravating at best. You flail away at opponents
or zap them with distance attacks, they do it to you, somebody falls over.
It grows extremely one-dimensional over time.
* Likewise, there are no clues at all as to what new enemies are like,
what they can do, how hard they hit, what effects their attacks will have,
or even what their names are. Not that you can go out in the woods and
find animals wearing nametags and HP meters in real life, mind you, but
this IS a game.
* There's not a lot of variety to gameplay. You kill, you eat, you repeat.
The enemies aren't particularly distinctive -- more like generic piles of
HPs and attacks in differing shapes, and the bosses are (for the most part)
just bigger piles. You travel to a few different areas, but the terrain is
generic at best almost everywhere.
* There are two extremely powerful side-quest bosses. The bad part is that
it's extremely easy to stumble into either one of them, or mistake them
for the "actual" end-of-level boss and thus get extremely frustrated from
one-hit kills.
1.1.3 The ugly
Some things that'll make you cringe:
* This game SCREAMS out "first-generation console game." There is slowdown
when multiple enemies approach in the water -- and sometimes when ONE enemy
approaches, if you're in polygon-heavy terrain. This can be a useful
early-warning system for you, in a way -- if the screen starts shuddering,
start looking for what's gaining on you -- but it's still annoying.
* The savefile is a whopping 170 blocks. That's almost a whole card for
one game! From NFL2K, I expect this. From a simple explore-and-beat-on-
things game, I don't... especially when the areas reset when reentered.
It's not as if the game's keeping track of an entire world (ala Diablo)
in its savefile...
* Again, there is no score, no ranking, no communication with anyone else,
and no easily-decipherable way of knowing how well you're doing, other than
the sense of accomplishment when Boss X falls over dead and a new area is
unlocked. This is both good and bad, depending on your outlook.
* The manual states that "there is no point at which the game is over."
Without giving away too much this early, they are LYING TO YOU. LYING
LYING LYING. While you can die a thousand deaths and not run out of lives,
and thus cannot _lose_ the game... there are a handful of final "winning"
endings. If you last that long looking for them, that is.
1.1.4 Personal notes
Still here? Good. If all of that didn't scare you off, you may be the
rare type of gamer who appreciates games with odd perspectives and
storylines, who doesn't mind long stretches of gameplay and trial-and-error
without obvious gains or rewards, and who enjoys having to figure out
what's going on without having a walkthrough in your lap. Then again,
you're reading this, so perhaps walkthroughs have their benefits after all.
Did you have the patience for Elite, back when your C64 or Apple II was
hot stuff? Ever hack Monster Rancher games in a major way, doping out
what the optimum raising methods were? Can you play games that are
extremely repetitive, that others may call dull? You'll be at home here.
Those looking for fast-paced action should go get Crazy Taxi instead --
and that's not putting down Crazy Taxi one bit, either. This is simply a
different breed of cat altogether.
Seventh Cross Evolution is a Dreamcast game whose concept intrigued
me from the first time I heard about it, but whose price tag and middling
reviews scared me off for a long while. At long last, it turned up at
$9.99 in a Boscov's clearance rack (who'd have ever thought that Boscov's
would ever have a gaming bargain?) and I took the plunge. While the other
$9.99 special I took a chance on (Soul Fighter) was a steaming heap of
dung, Seventh Cross Evolution has a certain charm to it, and will reward
those who have the patience to sit through its tedious aspects. This is
a classic love it/hate it experience; there is no middle ground here.
To give this some further perspective, I _hated_ the original Resident
Evil. I saw some good points about it, but thought "Hey, that's a nice
graphic engine for its time. I wish they'd put an actual GAME in with
it." In a way, this is a similar case -- it's obviously a good starting
point for a game, an excellent concept, but it's also visibly flawed and
incomplete in many ways. And yet I found myself drawn to this game
despite its flaws, because the concept _is_ that interesting in and of
itself. A lot of people also felt that way; a lot more saw the flaws and
immediately traded it in for store credit. Your mileage may vary.
I went looking for a FAQ to compensate for the intentionally vague manual,
found NOTHING online, and started writing so that the next poor sod who
picks this title up doesn't spend three hours getting kacked by crabs and
throw the game through their third-floor window in utter disgust.
(Personally, though, I did start some serious crab-killin' at about the
twenty-minute mark. I'm a fast learner sometimes.)
1.2 Controls & movement
Movement is very simple: forward and back on the D-Pad to walk, left and
right to rotate in place, diagonals to walk while turning. One drawback
of this is that you can't walk sideways (strafe-walk, for Quake players),
so if you're in a tight place you may end up doing funky three-point turns
to get out, which is no fun when there's a crab about to rip your legs off.
Your creature does move and turn smoothly, at least.
There are six types of terrain: Plain, Sea, Swamp, Float, Ford, Slope.
Generally speaking, your ability to travel on each depends on your leg
type. The basic (Origin) leg type can handle Fords (shallow water) and
that's about all. Crab legs can walk (albeit somewhat slowly and noisily)
over land and along sea floors. Fish fins work great in water but can't
go over land. The higher level ones can do just about anything, but come
at a high cost in nutrients. Movement speed is dependent on your leg
and body types.
A good rule of thumb throughout the game is to keep moving and KEEP TURNING
at all times -- you can sometimes hear monsters coming from behind you,
but the racket you make when moving (water splashing, legs clicking,
etc.) often drowns that out. If you're standing still and hear noises,
something's coming after you, so turn and find it quickly before you start
taking hits.
The A button is for hand-to-hand attacks when enemies are close enough.
(When an enemy is within a reasonable distance, "lock on" brackets will
surround it. The arrow indicates how close the enemy is; green is within
ExPower attack range, yellow is within range of certain projectile weapons,
red is within hand-to-hand range.) If you see a red arrow, press A to
whomp your enemy.
The B button calls up the menu, whenever possible.
The X button activates a (natural) projectile weapon, if you have one
equipped. (Only certain Arm types have these; there are no objects or
weapons that can be picked up and used in Seventh Cross Evolution.)
The Y button activates your currently registered ExPower ability, if you
have one registered.
The Start button pauses your game.
L and R shift your attention from one creature to another when more than
one is within combat range.
The analog joypad is not used.
1.3 Menus
The Start menu is very simple: New Game, Continue Game (which calls up
the memory-card manager screen, from which you can load and save multiple
games), and Options, which lets you select Mono or Stereo sound and select
desired camera angles.
Within the game, you can call up a menu at almost any time via the B button.
The menu contains the following options:
1.3.1 ExPower
This option allows you to view the special abilities your creature is
capable of using (see section 4.3, ExPower attacks), and register one
as your default special ability.
1.3.2 Mutations
This option allows you to equip body parts you have generated
(see section 3.0, Evolution), provided that you have sufficient
nutrients to complete the process.
1.3.3 Status
This screen gives you a one-page overview of your creature's stats,
available ExPowers and similar updates.
1.3.4 Options Menu
You may select Mono or Stereo sound here, and select which type of
camera you want to use for moving, melee combat and missile combat.
For movement, the cameras represent different angles from which to
view your character. (All are behind-the-head cameras and are
reasonably similar.)
The Melee and Missile cameras have seven options each:
Melee A: Rotating, close-in Missile A: Isometric (left)
Melee B: Isometric overhead (left) Missile B: Isometric (right)
Melee C: Isometric (right) Missile C: Overhead, steady
Melee D: Overhead, steady Missile D: Rotating, overhead
Melee E: Rotating, overhead Missile E: Extreme close-up
Melee F: Extreme close-up Missile F: Overhead
Melee Random: any of the above Missile Random: any of the above
I recommend any of the rotating or overhead cameras, just because
they'll give you a good view of what else is around you. In a game
where creatures can sneak up on you easily, this is a big benefit.
1.4 Stone Monoliths (saving and other functions)
At various points in the game (like at the very beginning, for example),
you will encounter large stone monoliths. The first one is reddish-orange;
later ones vary in color. These have several functions:
SAVE lets you save your game in progress. Note that you have a whopping
170+ save block requirement -- this game really needs its own memory card.
You probably don't need an LCD-screen VMU, however; a generic will do,
since about the only thing the VMU screen does during gameplay is keep
a running tally of your EVPs.
EVOLUTION lets you tinker with your own DNA, if you have earned enough
EVPs through killing other creatures. This will be dealt with in-depth
in a later section.
TELEPORT becomes available at later monoliths once you've defeated
a "boss" creature. Again, this will be dealt with when it's available.
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2.0 Getting Started
The first thing you will be presented with is a set of floating slabs,
each representing one statistic (attack power, e-attack power,
defense, intelligence, healing and dexterity). You will be asked to
assign a color to each slab. These colors will be associated with the
stats you assign them to throughout the game.
ATTACK power represents your fighting ability. There are two blocks
for this on the Status screen, one of which will usually be empty. The
top one is for hand-to-hand combat (available when an enemy has a red
arrow in its lock-on grid), while the bottom one is for projectile weapons
built into your Arms (available when you see a yellow arrow). Different
Arm types may change your attack forms, but in general you get one or
the other, not both.
E-ATTACK power represents your skill with ExPower abilities. These
offensive abilities are roughly akin to elemental magic, and do more
damage as this stat increases.
DEFENSE measures your resistance to injury. This is an important stat
to increase, as you're very vulnerable to attacks (read as: crab claws)
at the beginning of the game.
INTELLIGENCE measures your learning ability. Higher intelligence leads
to a wider variety of ExPower abilities (you don't need to learn them by
any method, they just pop right into your head, and disappear if your
intelligence drops later on).
HEALING represents your recovery rate from injury, along with how quickly
you will recover spent EPs (used by ExPower abilities).
DEXTERITY represents... well, I'll just say that I haven't found Dex to
affect gameplay much (if at all). If there's something I'm missing
here, please let me know.
(It is uncertain for now whether certain colors affect your starting
stats, or whether some colors are more prone to stat increases later on
than others. For now, I'm assuming that it's just a color preference, but
more research is called for. The starting numbers always seem to be
identical so far.)
A flurry of DNA construction occurs, and before you know it, you appear...
2.1 Beginning stage - survival in the pond
As previously stated, you begin life as a protist, floating around in
a tranquil little pond. It's tranquil until the crabs get hungry, that is.
Your task is to bypass the usual centuries-long process of evolution and
bulk up in a hurry, growing from a little floating blob into something
that can take out anything in the pond on its own terms.
The pond is full of rocks, coral and other stationary objects that must
be maneuvered around, as well as various shallow and deep pockets.
There is a beach area surrounding it and a couple of little islands,
which you can't climb onto (yet). Be aware of the rocks and watch out
for places that LOOK like they're passable, but aren't. It's quite easy
to get stuck in a tight place and get eaten before you realize you
can't get through.
2.2 Protist problems
This stage is very simple -- keep eating and you'll grow, get eaten and
you start over. The tricky bit, for some, is to figure out what's
edible.
For all intents and purposes, treat anything that's moving as a danger.
This means you're stuck with the local plant life. You will find what
look like small strands of seaweed floating around, as well as small
green microorganisms that look sort of like floating eyes. Swim into
these repeatedly, and keep moving -- a stationary protist will be some
crab's lunch in short order. I recommend taking laps of the section of
the pond you can access, not stopping for anything (lest something catch
you from behind), and steering into anything that even looks like food.
As you eat, you will grow in size; first to a slug-like organism, then to
one a little bigger than that. (It may take more than one snack to grow.)
The third time you grow will provide you with your first working sets of
limbs; this new body is known as the Origin creature.
(This may seem like an overly brief summary of the protist stage, but it
CAN be blasted through in two minutes or less. If you are eaten, you
revert to the smallest protist size and start again, but it's really
not at all difficult to finish this once you know what to look for.)
2.3 The Origin creature
From here, the real fun begins. Your creature now has a functional head,
arms and legs, and can swat small creatures in its path. Note that
"small creatures" does not equal "crabs" yet, as they can kill you with
one well-aimed claw swipe. And they will, if they get near you.
Repeatedly. On the plus side, dying at this point does NOT penalize you
in any appreciable way, as you have no mutations yet to lose and rebuild.
Go to the menu and select MUTATIONS to view your Origin in all its glory.
Notice that the Head, Body, Arm and Leg parts are all "1 - Origin." This
is the most primitive state you will exist at from this point forward, and
is the state you will reassume when you're killed. Obviously, it would
be a good thing to move up the evolutionary chain and get some more
capable body parts. You need EVPs (Evolution Value Points, I guess) to
do this. See where it says "EVP 0/2" at the top right of the screen?
This means you don't have any yet, and you need two or more to start
tinkering with your DNA. (You can collect far more than the minimum
requirement, two in this case. As you evolve repeatedly, the requirement
will increase.)
Once you've exited the menus, your task is to go forth and find things
that are moving but look harmless. Small and brown are your watchwords
here -- some look sort of like pitcher-plants or sea cucumbers, some
more like crawling four-armed slugs, but both of these are helpless before
the wrath of your mighty arm-stubs. Smack them and watch them suffer.
With each creature you slay, you earn EVPs. For small fry like you're
hunting now, you'll get one apiece. Crabs are worth two. If you are killed,
you keep your EVPs and return to the starting monolith, so don't fear the
crabs TOO much (it's inconvenient and annoying, but not truly detrimental
yet). Build up some EVPs, head for the monolith, and select EVOLUTION -- and,
with any luck, become a little more prepared against the crabs.
(You only need two EVPs at the beginning of the game to build a new part,
so you can either make a beeline for the monolith after every two kills
or build up some points and do several at once. Given the stat boosts from
part generation, I recommend going for new parts ASAP.)
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3.0 Evolution - Building the Better Beast The Charles
Atlas^H^H^H^H^HDarwin Way in Twelve Short Days!
This is the most intricate part of the game, and certainly the most
frustrating. The manual is very little help (and intentionally so) --
you're on your own when it comes to solving the evolutionary puzzle.
On the other hand, that's what we're here for.
3.1 Basic combat; obtaining EVPs
The combat system is painfully simple in Seventh Cross Evolution --
when you get close, you whack them with the A button, and they whack back
until one of you dies. (It is possible to retreat if you're not actively
attacking, or if a creature surprises you from behind, but they'll
certainly get a shot or two in first.) Some opponents can zap you from
afar, but you won't encounter them for a while yet. You also can get
distance weapons of your own in the form of ExPowers, but they'll be
covered later on.
DO NOT BUTTON-MASH unless you're dead sure of what you're doing, or you'll
be dead, period. The game seems to buffer your button presses during combat,
so if you've pressed A a dozen times trying to get the jump on an enemy
and suddenly realize "Hey, that last hit hurt, I'd better use a Heal
ability," you're out of luck, because it won't let you do anything until
your next eleven attacks all register. By that time, either you or
it (likely you, if you needed to Heal that badly) will be toast. (If you
hit the B button for the Menu JUST AS you're hit by an attack, it seems to
break the logjam.)
Monsters that attack you do damage, naturally. Certain monster types
can also poison you, which (unlike typical RPG poisons) neither kills
you outright nor makes your health drain away. Instead, it acts as a
temporary freeze on healing; your natural healing ability stops working,
and ExPower Heal abilities won't function either. The simplest cure for
Poison is time; eventually, it'll wear off, but it can be dangerous if
you're being attacked steadily and need a Healing ability badly.
Toxin works similarly, but affects both your HPs and EPs.
An ExPower ability called Purification knocks out poisons and toxins,
but it's an out-of-combat ability at best -- if you're trading hits
with an enemy that poisons, you won't have time to act after Purification
before you're repoisoned by another hit.
At any rate, when you defeat an enemy, you obtain EVPs. A running tally
of these points appears on your VMU, if you're not using a cheapo memory
card without an LCD screen. (It's also visible when you select Evolution
from a monolith.)
3.2 The EVOLUTION command
When you select EVOLUTION from a monolith, you are presented with a
10x10 grid to draw in and six colors to choose from. Not surprisingly,
these are the same six colors you assigned before your protist was born,
and correspond to the same stats.
Your task is to draw whatever designs seem appropriate, then to click
"Send" to send your creation to your DNA structure. If you have enough
EVPs for the operation, the end result will be a new body part of some
sort (head, body, arms or legs), which can be equipped later on to make
your creature more formidable in some way.
The number of EVPs required is listed at the upper right of this screen,
in an X/Y format. X is the number of EVPs you have; Y is the number
required for a DNA submission. As you create more and more body parts,
the number of EVPs required will slowly and steadily increase, but so
will the quality of the parts that you generate.
The game uses its own algorithms to determine what type of body part is
created, and what level that body part will be at. (For example,
"Leg 3" is a typical creation, the legs of a Blade Crab. The Origin state
contains Head 1, Leg 1, Arm 1 and Body 1, so anything else can likely be
viewed as an upgrade.) The parts get more complex (and require more
nutrients to equip) as the numbers go up, and the statistic gains from
generating body parts also increase with higher-level parts.
Imagine that the game has a "perfect" design in mind for Level 30 parts,
and that the closer you get to that design, the better your parts will be.
By modifying your design slightly, you can often shift the level upwards
or downwards as needed. On the other hand, sometimes you can go from a
Leg 27 to a Head 2 with one extra dot... Your success also depends
heavily on your maturity level, so to speak -- don't expect anything in
double-digits right off the bat, and the same design that gives you
a Level 10 part in your first handful of attempts may give you a Level
25+ part once you've generated a few dozen parts. Practice makes perfect,
and even your "failures" (generating parts you already had) raise your
statistics in the process. EVPs are easy to come by, so keep trying.
3.3 Body parts and nutrients
When you slay enemies, their corpses are left behind. Move over these to
eat them, along with anything else that isn't nailed down on the map.
(There are occasional items that may prove poisonous, but the poison is
of a similar nature to combat poisons, i.e. it won't kill you.)
With every part you eat, you gain nutrients of various types.
Common nutrients:
WA = Water PROT = Protein CA = Calcium FI = Fiber
These nutrients are found in nearly every corpse in varying amounts.
Some enemies are richer in one area than others, and many have only
one nutrient that they supplement. Keep a balanced diet to keep everything
high; you'll need them later.
Rare nutrients:
HC = Hard Cell NB = Neuro-Bio
These nutrients are extremely hard to come by for quite some time.
Naturally, they're needed when equipping most of the more powerful
body parts. By the time you'll need these, they'll start turning up,
but don't expect to find them until you've offed a handful of bosses.
When you equip new body parts, you use up nutrients. Each body part
will have a list of what nutrients it requires on the MUTATIONS screen,
and more powerful body parts require more nutrients to be used.
Keep in mind that when your body is healing (recovering lost HPs or EPs),
you are using up nutrients in the process. Healing HPs uses Protein
(and Water), and recovering EPs uses Fiber (and Calcium). Therefore, if
you're fighting a lot and eating tons of corpses but your nutrients keep
going down, the game's not broken, it's supposed to happen that way...
you only gain nutrients when you're not exerting yourself to the max
in the process.
3.4 Equipping created body parts
Once you've created some body parts that look useful, you'll need to
equip them onto your spindly little body. Go to the menu and select
MUTATIONS to do so.
Select a body section to change (Head, Arm, Body, Leg) to view a list of
available parts. Highlighting a body part will list its nutrient
requirements; your available nutrients are in the boxes at the top of
this screen. More advanced parts require more nutrients (and more
advanced nutrients in many cases) than others.
Highlighting a body part will also show its effects on your statistics
in the upper left. Take a careful look at its effects, as some body
parts have both beneficial and detrimental effects. Parts may raise
one stat and lower others, may change your attack values dramatically,
or even change your form of attack.
(For example, in the upper left of this screen, you'll notice two entries
for attack power; one with your hand-to-hand strength, one blank beneath
it. The reason for this is because the second entry is for your X-button
attack power, i.e. for built-in projectile weapons that don't use EPs.
Some arms have projectile attacks, some don't -- but most have only
one or the other. Don't get caught pounding the wrong button while a
crab's clawing your legs off, because you didn't realize your newly-
equipped Sea Worm arms have projectiles instead of bludgeoning power.)
You will notice right away that any high-level body parts you have created
will be difficult or impossible to use yet. This is intentional. Ever
played an RPG where you could use Excalibur, Slayer of All Evil from
the beginning instead of being stuck with a dagger, cloth armor and
a sack of rice as starting equipment? Not too likely. All will become
available with patience, diligence and mind-numbing repetition of effort.
If you have sufficient nutrients to swap body parts, you will see your
new part replace the old on your pictured creature. Congratulations,
you've upgraded your body and become a more dangerous opponent. Good luck
trying to stay that way...
3.4.1 "Pure" creatures
If you equip all four parts for one creature, you may find some
secret abilities that would otherwise be unavailable. For example, pure
Metal creatures get a free projectile weapon; pure Evil Wises fire four
energy bolts instead of one (though the difference in damage doesn't seem
that different). Get all four Man parts and... well, let's just say the
ending you get largely depends on whether you get these parts or not by
a certain point in the game.
3.5 Recovering lost body parts after dying
Sooner or later, you're going to get whacked. Probably quite often.
When you do, you wake up next to the initial monolith, back in the
Origin stage of development. Once you stop screaming, you can relax a bit,
as all the body parts you were wearing are not lost permanently.
The problem is that the nutrients you used to create them _are_ lost.
These are easily recouped by chomping down on the local denizens.
Something to keep in mind, however, is that healing HPs uses up
Protein and Water and recovering EPs uses up Fiber and Calcium. Therefore,
going into dangerous areas makes nutrient-building nearly impossible;
either you'll be blasting enemies with ExPowers from a safe distance
(using EPs, thus using up Fiber) or you'll be taking damage in
hand-to-hand combat (using HPs, thus using up Protein). Stick to
areas where you can beat on creatures hand-to-hand and inflict one-hit
kills regularly, thus building up all your nutrient pools. HardCell and
NeuroBio are hard enough to come by that you can worry about them later.
If you have sufficient nutrients, you can go straight to the MUTATIONS
screen and put your lost body parts back on. If you don't, start
whacking creatures until your nutrient count is high enough.
3.6 Statistic gains from body part creation
The color of your design is largely irrelevant when it comes to what
TYPE of body part is generated; you can draw the same design in as many
colors as you like and it will generally create the same part. Where the
colors are important is that evolving body parts increases your stats,
_even if you're creating a body part you already have_.
Each statistic is related to the color you assigned to it in the beginning
of the game. Whenever you submit DNA containing a stat's color, that stat
will gain points based on the level of the body part created and what
percentage of your design is of that color. (If you draw designs in
multiple colors, the stat gains will be divided between the stat-colors
you use. If you stick to mainly monochrome designs, the gains will be
focused on that one stat. The choice is yours.)
If you are drawing in one color, the stat gain will generally be one-half
(rounded down) of the level of the generated part. Gains for multicolor
designs may vary.
These stat bonuses take place even if you cannot currently use the body
part you've generated -- a newborn Origin can't possibly have enough
of the advanced nutrients to use a Metal Head, for example, but the
creature gets the big stat boost from evolving it anyway.
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