Mutagens
Yes, a guide to mutagens was started, late in T9. It hasn't been polished to the point of being readable. Please nag Peacefulness!
Here is a spreadsheet developed by Peacefulness, to assist with recording data. Feel free to copy and use it as you wish
Very brief outline:
Skills, Techs, and Materials needed
- Good progress made here, but its a really long list if you include everything. Needs trimming
Figuring out the recipe for a single mutagen
- Dig up a link to LB's spreadsheet and post a blank copy for T10
Figuring out what an individual mutagen does
- Feel free to make a copy of this tool to help track your work: https://tinyurl.com/2rdwkstz
Successfully utilizing mutagens
- A single mutagen does the same thing every time. It is a very predictable tool. More mutagens = more possibilities.
Mutagen Outline, based on T9 data
Like most “advanced” technologies in Tale, working with mutagens takes a lot of Stuff.
| Buildings | Building Mats |
| Toxin Kitchen | 2500 bricks, 1000 firebricks, 30 glass jars, 1 thermometer, 50 gold wire, 1 medium sapphire |
| Greenhouse | 32 sheet glass, 1 thermometer, 500 dirt, 6 canvas, 60 water |
| Vineyards | 40 boards, 12 rope, 25 nails |
| Mutagenics Lab | 120 clay, 6 mirrors, 1 6k distillation coil, 500 black Raeli tiles, 5k resin, 500 herb seeds, 3 thermometers |
| Fungus Farm | |
| Compost Mixer | |
| Crafting Bench |
| Technologies | Reason | Source | Research Demo Mats |
| Cross-Breeding | Allows building a toxin kitchen | University of Thought | Glass jar, gold wire, flax seed, distillation coil(s?), various sea lily bulbs (starters) |
| Fungiculture Skill and XP | Allows building a toxin kitchen | School of Body, 100 compost for level 0 | |
| Seed Registry | Renaming of any seeds in the player’s inventory | Learned at University of Natural Philosophy. Used at University of Worship. | Glass jar, clay, dirt, flax, rotten flax, papyrus paper |
| Molecular Balance | Compare lengths of two genomes, requires Crystal revelation solvents and blooded harebell | University of Thought | Florence flask(s?), fine glass rods, marble mortar, revelation solvents (glass, crystal, diamond), Nut’s Essence, King’s Coin, crater cut gem(s?) |
| Mutagenics | Allows building a mutagenics lab. Its use consumes mass quantities of mushrooms. | University of Thought | Clay, mirror, distillation coils, black Raeli tiles, dirt, perch meat, dung, cow milk, resin, thermometer, various herb seeds, various moss |
| Tools | Prerequisite | Mats | Yield |
| General Toxin Kitchen mats | Water, charcoal, cabbage juice, cactus sap | ||
| Nut’s Essence | Fungiculture level 1 | 3 Hairy Tooth | 1 drop |
| Milky Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 2 | 3 Sand Spore | 7 drops, 3 genes each |
| Clear Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 2 | 3 Slaves Bread | 3 drops, 4 genes each |
| Glass Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 2 | 3 Razor’s Edge | 1 drop, 5 genes |
| Crystal Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 3 | 6 Peasant’s Foot | 1 drop, 6 genes |
| Diamond Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 3 | 3 Scorpion’s Brood, 3 Heaven’s Torrent, 3 Heart of Ash | 1 drop, 7 genes |
| Minu’s Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 4 | 4 Salt Water Fungus, 4 Razor’s Edge, 4 Falcon’s Bait | 1 drop, 8 genes |
| Osiris Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 4 | 5 Beehive, 5 Eye of Osiris, 5 Dueling Serpents | 1 drop, 9 genes |
| Renenutet’s Revelation Solvent | Fungiculture level 5 | 6 Spiderling, 6 Sand Spore, 6 Sun Star | 1 drop, 10 genes |
Detecting Nut’s Essence mutations without Molecular Balance:
Plants with identical names cannot be crossbred.
Using Seed Registry, rename a copy of a known plant. i.e. Appreciation and Appreciation Clone
Apply Nut’s Essence to those two plants, in a greenhouse.
Plant and watch for differences in the child. Without a mutation, the child will be identical to both (identical) parents. If there is a change, there had to be a gene duplicated or deleted.
Keep meticulous records
Use crossbreeding simulators (from Ashen or Lazybum) to determine what changes will produce detectable results.
- Ashen's Crossbreeding Simulator: https://ashen.atitd.wiki/index.html
- Lazybum's Genome Sequencing Tool: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10RRLE0K9eGwtr02DAdAe77HLuH49RJm_INwB8aNozxU/edit#gid=227040732
Without Molecular Balance, some mutations will be missed because they do not affect “active” genomes.
Use revelation solvents to look for changes and track the genetics of child plants, as needed. When it comes to mushroom cost, this can get very expensive, and quickly
Rambling thoughts:
Mutagens. There is a table of very specific percentages. The range that each mutagen has been calculated to hit, expressed as a percentage. How do you begin to figure that out? What “tools” do you need? How do you narrow down the gene hit until you can pinpoint exactly which gene is affected by a mutagen?
Since I began understanding genetics from the standpoint of vines, I used them to help me pick apart mutagens. Any plant that can be crossbred can be used, and each choice has its advantages. The player who taught me preferred to use flowers. My examples will use vines, because that is what is most familiar to me.
The first thing I really did was create some tools to help me see what was happening. A few tables were my own work. Much of my knowledge is based on the research of players before me. Building those tools helped me understand the genetics better and internalize the language that we have developed to describe what we are seeing. Some tools were created collaboratively, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with players who are more skilled than I am, picking their brains, asking what is possible, and prodding them to modify their creations to be more useful for my goals.
I built a very rough spreadsheet, with many tabs. I have learned to make “blank copies” and may be able to adapt them to the next Tale, when we start all over.
It started out as a way to visualize what was happening. Unlike the works of my more skilled friends, it does not DO anything automatically. It doesn’t have any formulas, unless I copied them from somebody else’s sheet. It is colorful, because I organize things visually. Colors help me see patterns. My spreadsheets have evolved into color-coded problem solving and documentation, so that if I make a mistake (and I have made Many mistakes) I might have a chance of digging it out and repairing the damage. Coding is a mysterious and magical thing to me. I am a user of final products, not a builder of them.
Nut’s Essence. I make and use it very frequently. Its key ingredient is Hairy Tooth Mushrooms It is an early genetics tool which gives a wide variety of unpredictable results. There are patterns and statistical chances of certain results. A tool which has helped me understand Nut’s Essence better is Ashen’s Crossbreeding Simulator, https://ashen.atitd.wiki/index.html You tell it what plant (or string of genes) is being put in the Left and Right Splints. It tells you ALL the possible results, and how to distinguish one from another. It is up to you to determine what your child plant is and isn’t.
One attribute of Nut’s Essence which I ignored for a long time is its ability to lengthen or shorten a string of genes. When two plants are crossbred with Nut’s, there is a splice point, where the child’s genetics change from one parent to the other. The left portion of the child is from the left splint. The right portion of the child is from the right splint. Notice that I very carefully did Not say “Half”. That implies an equal portion from each parent. The splice point can be anywhere along the line. In T10, a flax was crossbred and the child plant included None of the genes from the shorter parent. The only predictable part is the length of the child. If one parent is 10 genes and the other parent is 20 genes, then the child will be 15 genes long. Unless there is a mutation….
Nut’s Essence Mutations. Approximately 50% of the time, it will be as stated above. 10 gene parent crossed with 20 gene parent produces 15 gene child. 25% of the time, at the splice point, a gene will be deleted, and the child will be 14 genes long. 25% of the time, at the splice point, one gene will be duplicated, and the child will be 16 genes long. Vine crossbreeders use this to their advantage to create high-sugar vines. The more genes a vine has, the more likely it is that we will stumble across a genome that “does more” than its parent vines, due to the presence of another string of “useful” genes. Gene duplication mutations are popular.
To create a useful tool for picking at mutagens, I do the opposite. I watch for the mutations that delete a gene at the splice point. I “breed down” the vines to make one that is as short as possible. You can throw a revelation solvent at a very short vine and see the entire string of genes. This is quite useful, when it comes to figuring out what happened
How do I know if a gene was deleted? The easiest high-tech way is by using Molecular Balance. It compares two plants of the same species and tells you if they are the same length, or if one is longer than the other. Before it is researched, I use Ashen’s Crossbreeding Simulator and watch for tendings or hue results that can only occur because a gene is deleted.
So, I’m looking to breed down to a very short vine. In the end, I want one vine that is all one gene, Y, and another vine that does not have any Y genes. That way, when I put the two in a greenhouse and apply a mutagen, I know that a Y will be pulled out of the first plant and inserted into the second plant. When I use revelation solvents on the children, I can see the presence or absence of that Y and know that is the gene that was hit. The revelation solvents which show the longest strings of genes are also the most expensive.
For fun, I kept going with the Nut’s Essence until I had a vine that was one single gene. Same principle. I could put a long genome on one side and the single gene on the other side. Using a revelation solvent on the single-gene-child told me what kind of gene was pulled out of the long string, and that helped narrow down the possibilities.
For sheer entertainment and experimentation, I Did create a zero-gene vine. It “pulled a gene out” of the long string and became a one-gene vine. On the other side, the vine lost that gene. There was nothing to replace it with. However, it did not cause error messages. It merely deleted a gene.