Mutation Station

How to brew a mix, finish it with powders, what an unfinished brew does, and how to make craft pills.

The mutation station is a mad-science lab bench that rises out of its own floor hatch, off the left end of the habitat. Point at the hatch and pull the trigger (or press MUTATE on the console) and it telescopes up and turns to face you. It is free to use, and it sinks back into the floor after a while with nobody using it.

What is on the bench

On the left side is a big lever, like a slot machine's. Behind everything, the back panel has a scope, dials, a pressure gauge, a gear, chasing lights, steam vents and sparking coils. It ticks over quietly, and goes wild while brewing.

With help text on, a line over the bench always tells you the next step.

Brewing a mix

1. Pick the colors. Press a vial's button. Its arrow lights up and the vial fills from the bottom up in that color. Press again for the next color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. A vial can only be taken once it is full to the top.
2. Pour the vials into the retort. Take a vial, pull the trigger to pop its cap off, and tip it over the retort's funnel. Do the same with the other vial. Let go of a vial and it floats back to the rack and fills up again.
3. Pull the lever. Grab the red knob and pull it down toward you (or point at it and pull the trigger). The burner lights, the retort boils, the panel goes wild, and the brew runs down the neck into the flask. Then the bell dings.
4. Shake the flask. The brew comes out in two layers. Take the flask and give it a good shake to mix the colors into one. You do not have to, but it changes what happens next.

What to do with the brew

Over your human, as it is

Pour the flask straight over your human (or into the water cooler for them to drink) and the unfinished brew only swells them up. They puff up and mope for about a minute, sitting on the floor and refusing to do anything. Then they go back to normal. No mutation.

Into the beaker, then a powder

Pour the flask into the beaker. If you never shook it, the two colors stay in layers. Then tip a powder box over the beaker:

Either way it ends as one even color: a finished mix.

Giving the finished mix

Take the beaker by its handle and pour it like the water pitcher:

• Over your human. They shout and stand there dripping and protesting. That is a dose.
• Into the water cooler's jug. The water takes on the mix's color, and their next drink is the dose.
• Anywhere else it spills, and the dose is wasted.

A dose brings one to three mutations, each showing up 30 to 60 seconds later. See Mutations.

A finished mix left in the beaker is saved and waits for you next time the station comes up.

The pill press

Tip the powder boxes over both of the pill press's bowls until each one is full. They click twice, swing up and snap together into a tiny two-tone craft pill, which drops into the dish. Every pill comes out in its own colors.

Hold a pill up to your human's face (or leave it in the habitat for them to find) and:

1. They calm right down.
2. They go straight to the craft table and make two crafts in a row, whatever their hunger, thirst, energy or mood.
3. Then they lie down wherever they are and sleep for a minute. Nothing wakes them. Picked up, dropped, or thrown out of bed, their eyes stay shut and all they say is "Zzz..."

They need a craft table in the habitat for the crafting part. Without one, they go straight to sleep.

Quick reference