ANNO: Mutationem is an exciting new cyberpunk-themed action-RPG. It utilizes a captivating HD-2D style and has fast and fluid combat. However, before you get started wandering the streets of Noctis City, you should prepare yourself with a few quick hints to make sure your stay is a pleasant one.
There are a number of things that you should keep in mind if you want to have the smoothest experience possible, so we've laid out some of our best tricks to help you get started. Simply follow these tips and prepare to conquer this dark, cyberpunk dystopia.
Search Everything
Check everything. There is stuff everywhere in this game. The best way to efficiently locate the junk is to just tap your scan button every time you enter a room. Doing this will make every container that holds an item glow.
On that note, there are three types of items you will obtain, consumables, junk, and collectables.
Whenever you get to a store, sell the junk. The collectibles, however, should be kept. That stuff will be able to be broken down into valuable items. Though some of it is worth a lot of cash, so if you are super hard up, you can sell the collectibles for a quick dollar.
Input Lag And V-Sync
If you find that there is a tremendous amount of lag when you are trying to do anything, you should ensure that the V-Sync setting is turned off. While V-Sync will help with screen tearing, it will also make the game feel cumbersome and awkward. You can do this from the options menu.
Manage Your Inventory
You will be using a number of consumables throughout the game, some of these are far more valuable than others. You can only carry five items in your backpack at the beginning of the game. You can stack five of one item in a single slot, but after that, you will need to take up another slot for another stack. Stim Shots are going to be the most important item for the first half of the game (eventually they will be supplanted by the more potent Digitalin).
Corn Juice is another important item. Erythropoietin and 654-2 will increase your damage output and decrease the damage you receive respectively. FM HE Grenades freeze your opponent and are great, but you don’t start running into them until you are in the second half of the game (at which point you will probably have increased your backpack’s capacity at least one time).
Since you encounter a number of items as you go, in the early game you should be prioritizing what is important. Don’t fill your slots with Burgers, Onion Piquants, Arc Draughts, or packs of Lightning Gum. You don’t have the room to spare. Grenades are also of dubious use, but your mileage may vary with them.
Do Every Side Mission
One thing that we encourage you to do is to complete all the side missions you encounter. The side missions aren’t particularly tough in ANNO: Mutationem. They also tend to be easy to complete pretty quickly, so you won't have to be too concerned about getting overly bogged down. Moreover, if you accept them passively, you may just find that you end up completing them completely accidentally.
Some of these side missions even provide you with grom points (these are distinct from grombits, which you get for defeating foes), which are what you use to upgrade your primary stats. There are exactly enough grom points in the game to level up every stat in your talent tree. So, if you encounter a side mission, take it. They are always worth your while.
Bartending For Money
Early in the Mutationem, you will unlock the ability to play a mini-game at your family's bar. This minigame pays out a ton of money in the early game. The object is to mix the drinks that the patrons request (they will be a mixture of red, blue, and green liquids). You will then have to stop the indicator on the highlighted section of a meter. You can hammer the L1 and R1 buttons to slow the indicator down and make this easier.
In order to get the highest payout, you need to get 700 points (or seven perfectly prepared drinks). There is more than enough time to do this, so you are best off being patient and deliberate. If these types of minigames aren't your thing, you can just move on and not bother. However, it is unquestionably a great source of some quick credits.
Grinding Grombits
While it is never necessary to grind in Mutationem, if you are looking to, there are a number of areas that you can run. The Underground Water Channel Base is an area that opens up in the first third of the game. You can always return here via one of the teleportation spots (the area just before you fight Absalom has a bunch of enemies to fight).
These robotic foes will respawn every time you teleport back in. This means you can cycle through them for some quick grombits. Better yet, since each teleporting spring will heal you, this won't affect your resources.
Utilize The Map
ANNO: Mutationem really nails the map. It tells you where you have been, what rooms you have yet to enter, where active side missions are located (marked with a question mark), and where there are NPCs waiting to receive an item (marked with a star). The map is invaluable if you are at the end of the game and looking for things you may have missed.
Upgrade Your Chips!
This is a function that can be easily missed, but it will make your life a whole lot easier. You can purchase chips from vendors, but you can also remodel chips. These remodeled chips are substantially more potent than the standard ones for sale. They can really supercharge your weapons and are worth investing in.
The place to remodel your chips is FT Chip Shop Headquarters, which is located in Noctis City on the main stretch of shops. It is demarcated by a chip insignia on the map.
Upgrade Tree Priorities
If you are suffering from analysis paralysis, here is a helpful guide to choosing which attacks are worth picking up. Does it look like an attack that will have a huge amount of commitment, locking you into place for an extended period of time? Well, then it will only ever be useful in occasional circumstances. Focus on quick attacks, attacks that give you mobility, abilities that make things quicker, or the parry improving skills. Those will have much more applicability
As for the Grom using stat-boosters, focus on attack power, defense, and health. Put a single point into luck and inventory, as that is good value, but after that, they should be pretty low priority. Unfortunately, you will get most of your Grom points in the last quarter of the game; ANNO: Mutationem is slow to hand them out for the first two-thirds of the game.
Hacking Locks
While hacking starts off being pretty simple, it can quickly get trickier as certain cylinders will begin to shift as you shift others. However, there is a pretty simple trick that will defeat most of these locks. Starting from the bottom and moving up will trivialize most of these locks right until you hit the end of the game. Sometimes you may have to cycle through them twice, but typically, this will do the trick.