Nuclear Throne Wiki
Advertisement
Nuclear Throne Wiki
Lvl up

Mutations are extra abilities that are given to you at the end of a level if you have leveled up. To level up you need to get 60 Rads multiplied by your current level number, which means the amount of Rads required increases with the character's level (60, 120, 180, etc.). Each level up is signified by a white crown symbol, appearing above your character. Going over level 9 and essentially reaching level 10 (Level Ultra) allows you to choose one of the character-specific Ultra Mutations listed below the regular Mutations table.

Mutations table

Level 1

A list of all the mutations in alphabetical order. At the end of a level you can choose between 4 randomly rolled mutations per level up. Currently the game allows players to reach level 10, which means a total of 9 mutations. (Or 10 mutations if you take the Crown of Destiny, 11 if you also picked Patience)

In Co-op picked mutations will affect both characters.

Mutation Icon Description

Back Muscle

Back Muscle Icon HUD
BICEPS

Bullet capacity increases from 255 to 555 and all other ammunition's capacity increases from 55 to 99.

The game still uses normal capacity values to check how much ammo percentage you have and to calculate the pickup drop rate.

Bloodlust

Blood Lust Icon HUD
Bloodlust2

Gives you a 7.69% (1/13) chance of regenerating 1 HP when you kill an enemy.

Boiling Veins

Boiling Veins Icon HUD
Boiling veins

You take no damage from explosions or flames when at 4 or less HP.

To clarify; if you are damaged by an explosion at above 4 health, you will end up with no less than 4 health. (Explosions and fire cannot kill you.)

Boiling veins also makes explosions unable to damage the player during their hurt animation.  This basically means that you can't be hit by more than one explosion at once, and all explosion damage is essentially halved (Normal explosions deal 5-10 dmg, with Veins they can only hit for 5).

Melting will be immune on full 2/2 health with this mutation, but if you have Rhino Skin it will work like it does with the other characters.

Bolt Marrow

Bone Marrow Icon HUD
Arrow in the knee

Bolts and splinters seek enemies, changing the direction if close enough. Larger bolts from Heavy Crossbows will have a weaker homing effect.

Seekers will home from further away, and take much sharper angles.

Discs slightly attract toward enemies and slow down to hit an enemy multiple times.

Eagle Eyes

Eagle Eyes Icon HUD
Eagle Eyes Icon New

Increased accuracy/less shot spread. For example, SMG projectiles will fire in a near straight line.

Reduces fixed spread for weapons like the Triple Machinegun, Shotgun, Super Slugger, Super Crossbow, Splinter and Seeker weapons, and the Shovel. As a result, their projectiles are grouped tighter together.

Steroids' accuracy will be boosted to a level a bit beyond the other mutants' base accuracy, but it will still not be as much as the other mutants with Eagle Eyes.

Euphoria

Euphoria Icon HUD
Euphoria

20% slower enemy projectiles.

Synergizes well with Eyes's active ability.

Extra Feet

Extra Feet Icon HUD
Extra Feet2

Movement speed is increased.

Additionally makes you walk normally on all floor tiles, such as spider webs in Crystal Caves and ice in Frozen City.

Gamma Guts

Gamma Guts Icon HUD
Gamma Guts2

Touching enemies makes them take 6 damage for as long as your character is in contact with them. You will take no contact damage from enemies that have less than or equal to 12 HP at the moment of impact, but only while moving. Otherwise, you'll only be protected from enemies that have 6 or less HP.

If an enemy is killed by Gamma Guts, your character will create an area of effect blast which deals 8 damage to all nearby enemies.

Can also be used as a last resort if you run out of ammo and don't have a melee weapon.

Hammerhead

Hammerhead Icon HUD
Hammerhead

Pushing against a wall allows your character to break through them to create instant cover, or ambush enemies.  You can also break Fire Traps by walking into them.

You can only break 20 wall tiles at most per level, this limit is reset each time you go through a level ending portal.

Heavy Heart

Heavy Heart Icon HUD
Heavy Heart

Rate of weapon drops from enemies is increased by 210%.

The Maggot Nest for example has a 35% chance to spawn a weapon.  With Heavy Heart that becomes 73.5% (0.35 * 2.10 = 0.735).

Heavy Heart will only appear after you've picked your third "Weapon-Specific" mutation and won't appear again.  These mutations are Recycle Gland, Shotgun Shoulders, Bolt Marrow, Boiling Veins, Laser Brain, and Long Arms.

This mutation is not a part of the usual mutation pool.

Impact Wrists

Impact wrists Icon HUD

Crystal SMASH

Makes corpses fly much farther and faster, and they do more damage on impact. 

Normally a corpse does 1 base damage on impact with an enemy, but with this mutation they deal 2 base damage.

Laser Brain

Laser Brain Icon HUD
Laser brain

Energy weapons have the size and/or duration of their attacks increased so they last longer, and can hit a target more times.

  • Lasers last longer by getting wider, dealing 2-14 damage.  Additionally, the Laser Cannon fires two more beams as the burst charge lasts longer.
  • Plasma balls get bigger and can hit 2 extra times.  Normal plasma deals 4-22 damage, big plasma (Plasma Cannon) deals 17-83 damage, and huge plasma (Super Plasma Cannon) deals 28-139 damage.
  • Plasma Explosion damage does't change, but the Devastator projectile travels 40% slower, letting it hit more often and create more plasma explosions.
  • Lightning rails last longer, dealing 7-21 damage. The Lightning Cannon projectile's impact damage is also upped to 50.
  • Energy Melee slashes and shanks last twice as long, so they can hit enemies twice. Energy melee can also travel farther due to it lasting longer.

Last Wish

Last Wish Icon HUD
Last Wish Icon New

Choosing this mutation will fully heal your character, give you 200 bullet ammo and 20 ammo for every other type.  It also fills Rogue's Portal Strike ammo.

Chicken will replenish all of her lost max HP when choosing this mutation.  You can also revive Chicken by picking Last Wish while she's headless inside a portal.

Taking the mutation while holding a Cursed Weapon removes the curse.

Entering the Jungle secret area will remove Last Wish from your character's mutations. You will instantly choose a mutation that replaces it, the mutations will be a completely fresh set as if you had taken patience. Last Wish will be put back into the pool of mutations you can choose from so it's possible to pick it again from this set.

Long Arms

Long Arms Icon HUD
Long Arms2

More melee range. Melee swings will spawn and travel further from the character.

Lucky Shot

Lucky Shot Icon HUD
Lucky shot

Killing an enemy has an 11.76% chance to give a random ammo type one Ammo Pickups-worth of ammo.  Due to this, Fish gets more ammo from Lucky Shot than other characters.

Open Mind

OpenMind Icon HUD
OpenMind

An extra Ammo Chest, Weapon Chest or Radiation Canister will spawn on every level, with equal chances of appearing.

Extra Chests/Canisters can appear in different forms, depending on the conditions and chances listed on the Pickups page. Chests that appear only in Secret Areas can also spawn as extras in those areas.

If two Weapon Chests spawn on the same level and you leave both unopened, both will count towards spawning a Large Weapon Chest.

If two Radiation Canisters spawn on the same level and you leave both unopened, they will count as one Big Radiation Canister.

Playing as Rogue changes the extra Radiation Canisters into Portal Strike Ammo Canisters.

Patience

Patience HUD1
Patience1
This acts as a re-roll for the current set of mutations. By itself it has no effects, but the next time you enter a portal you will get another set of four mutations to choose from.

Patience doesn't technically count towards the mutations cap, which means you can have 9 mutations at max level (10 with Crown of Destiny).

Patience actually skips to the next selection of mutations, meaning that no matter if you pick Patience or another mutation on offer, the next level-up has the same set of mutations. This only has a practical effect in seeded runs like the Daily, though.

Plutonium Hunger

Plutonium Hunger Icon HUD
Plutonium Hunger2
Increases the pick-up range for attractable pickups like Rads, Ammo Pickups, and HP Pickups.  Rads have a bigger increase in attraction range than other pickups do.

Since Cursed Mini Ammo Chests aren't attracted by default, they are unaffected.

Rabbit Paw

Rabbit Paw Icon HUD
Rabbit Paw2

Mini Ammo Chests and Mini Medkits drop from enemies 1.4 times as often.

Recycle Gland

Recycle Gland Icon HUD
Vomit

Each bullet that hits an enemy or prop has a 60% chance of giving you  +1 bullet type ammo back. Heavy bullets and Ultra bullets give +2 ammo back as they cost 2 ammo to fire.

This mutation does not work with Pop Bullet Weapons, even though they use bullet type ammo.

Rhino Skin

Rhino Skin Icon HUD
Rhino Skin2

Adds 4 max HP and heals your character for that 4 HP.

You can also revive Chicken by choosing Rhino Skin while she's headless inside a portal.

Scarier Face

Scary Face Icon HUD
Scarier Face2

Enemies spawn with 20% less HP, rounded to the nearest whole number.

This doesn't affect destructible objects.

Second Stomach

Second Stomach Icon HUD
Eyes is pregnant

Doubles the health received from HP Pickups, making them give 4 HP instead of 2 HP. Medkits give 8 HP instead of 4 HP.

This also affects Robot, with eaten guns giving 4 HP instead of 2 HP.

Bloodlust isn't affected by this mutation.

The double multiplier is added before the Crown of Haste effect.  With the crown HP Pickups will heal for 5 HP instead of the expected 4 HP.  Stationary Medkits are unaffected by the crown and will heal for 8 HP.

Sharp Teeth

Sharpteeth HUD

Sharpteeth

Taking damage deals 2.5x the amount of HP you lost, to all enemies currently on the screen.

Especially useful for self damaging characters like Rebel and Skeleton .

Damage prevented by Boiling Veins, Strong Spirit, or taking more damage than your remaining HP will not count for the damage dealt to enemies.

Fun fact, this is one of the only ways that enemies can take decimal damage.

Shotgun Shoulders

Shotgun Fingers Icon HUD
Shotgun fingers

Shell Weapons projectiles bounce further and travel faster after hitting a wall. Normally shell weapons deal more damage up close. With this mutation their projectiles also deal that increased damage right after bouncing off of walls (for two frames after bouncing, check the weapons page for the increased damage values).

While this mutation does work with Flame Pellets, they can only bounce once and not as far as normal Pellets.

Also works on Pop and Flame Pop Bullet Weapons, although they use bullet type ammo.

Stress

StressHUD
Stress

Increases rate of fire in relation to the amount of missing health.

The fire-rate buff provided by Stress is inversely proportional to the percentage remaining of max HP, giving up to 200% rate of fire. (Normal 100% + Stress's extra 100% fire rate at 0 HP)

You can calculate your reload speed with (1 + (1 - (HP / Max HP))) * 100, so for example if you're at 4 / 8 HP you would have 150% reload.

Rhino Skin and Crystal synergize with Stress as having higher maximum HP will allow safer thresholds of HP to rest at for better reload.  Having Low HP such as in Melting is also a benefit, as less HP is needed to be lost for better reload. However this would also cause a lower maximum use as well as being harder to obtain without dying.

Having Strong Spirit also synergises well as it allows characters to achieve their maximum effect for Stress in more senarios.

The only character that can reach 200% and not die is Chicken without her head.  Even if you have 20 max health as Crystal the highest reload speed you can have without dying is 195% on 1 HP.

Strong Spirit

Strong Spirit HUD
Strong Spirit

When charged, Strong Spirit activates upon death and revives you with 1 HP. It can be recharged once per level after you have reached max health. If the mutation is charged a halo will appear above your character's head.

Death is prevented for 5 frames (1/6 of a second) right after Strong Spirit has been activated. To be clear, you can still get hit during this time but you cannot go below 1 HP. This is especially useful to protect you from things that ignore normal i-frames, like explosions and Gator shells.

Having 1 max health as Chicken or Melting will limit this mutation to save you from death only once. It can't be recharged afterwards.

Throne Butt

Throne Butt Icon HUD
Throne Butt2

Upgrades your character's special ability.

  • Fish: Roll for as long as the active button is held and can change direction while rolling.
  • Crystal: Shortens shielding time and allows Crystal to teleport at the cursor's location after her shield disappears.
  • Eyes: Doubles Telekinesis' pull and push speeds.
  • Melting: Explodes all corpses into 3 blood explosions, instead of just big ones.
  • Plant: Snare kills enemies under 33% health.
  • Y.V.: Upgrades Pop Pop into Brrrap, shooting your weapon 4 times with 3x reload.
  • Steroids: Firing one weapon has a chance to add a small amount of ammo for the other weapon. This is more likely to occur when both weapons are being fired at once.
  • Robot: Gives 1 extra ammo pickup to each weapon eat.
  • Chicken: Thrown weapons pierce through targets.
  • Rebel: Gives allies a better weapon which increases their fire rate by 60%.
  • Horror: Every second using Horror's beam heals 1 HP.  The beam also gets wider twice as fast.
  • Rogue: Makes Rogue's Portal Strike explosions much bigger.
  • Skeleton: Adds a 1/3 chance that Skeleton won't take damage with Blood Gamble.
  • Frog: Causes all toxic gas to spread further and faster.

Trigger Fingers

Racingmind icon
Racing Mind2
Each enemy killed reduces your remaining reload time on both equipped weapons by 40%.

This only affects the current reload; it is not a permanent reduction.

Great for the Nuke Launcher, Heavy Crossbow, Plasma Cannon or any other weapon with long reload time and high damage.

The interval between swings with a melee weapon is also greatly reduced with this mutation.

Ultra Mutations table

Level Ultra

Going over level 9 and essentially reaching level 10 (Level Ultra) allows you to choose one of the character-specific Ultra Mutations. On the experience bar the number 10 is replaced by a crown icon, indicating that your character reached its full potential. This adds 1 extra mutation to the max that your character can have. That's a total of 9 mutations, 10 with Crown of Destiny, 11 if you also picked Patience and 14 if you play as Melting with his second Ultra Mutation.

Character Ultra Mutation Icon Description
Fish icon1

Fish

Confiscate

Fish A
Fish Ultra 1

Enemies have a 20% chance to drop an Ammo Chest (which can also be a Present Chest or an I.D.P.D. Chest) or a Medkit instead of regular mini pickups.

They can also drop regular Weapon Chests instead of weapons. Not opening the Weapon Chests counts towards a Large Weapon Chest spawn. If you have a Crown, enemies can rarely drop a Cursed Chest.

Gun Warrant

Fish B
Fish Ultra 2

Weapons don't consume ammo for 7 seconds after exiting a level ending portal.

Crystal icon1

Crystal

Fortress

Crystal A
Crystal Ultra 1

Adds 6 max HP. Crystal will instantly get healed for 6 HP.

Can be stacked with Rhino Skin for a max of 20 HP.

Juggernaut

Crystal B
Crystal Ultra 2

Enables slowed movement while shielding.

Eyes icon1

Eyes

Projectile Style

Eyes A
Eyes Ultra 1

While using Telekinesis, your projectiles will be frozen in a stationary position on top of Eyes, in the direction of where you shot your gun. Upon deactivating Telekinesis, all projectiles will continue to travel their initial destination and behave as normal.

Melee weapons will have less range while using Telekinesis.

Monster Style

Eyes B
Eyes Ultra 2

Push away nearby enemies.

Enemies will be pushed passively when not using Telekinesis.

Melting icon1

Melting

Brain Capacity

Melting A
Melting Ultra 1

Enemies at 5 hp or less will blow up along with corpses upon using your active ability. That includes undamaged enemies.

Detachment

Melting B
Melting Ultra 2

Lose half of your maximum HP to immediately get 3 more mutation choices.

Plant icon1

Plant

Trapper

Plant A
Plant Ultra 1

6 Snare Growth vines appear instead of 1, covering a much larger area.

Killer

Plant B2
Plant Ultra 2
Sapling idle
Each enemy killed while snared will spawn deadly Saplings, which fly around and will home towards other enemies dealing 5 impact damage and afterwards causing 3 closely packed Blood Explosions. Each Sapling has 10 HP and can explode upon taking 10 or more damage.

Each blood explosion deals 4-12 damage and destroys any projectiles in the blast radius. Blood explosions don't destroy walls and do no damage to the player.

Yv icon1

Y.V. (Yung Venuz)

Ima Gun God

YV A
YV Ultra 1

+ 40% higher rate of fire.

With Y.V's passive that makes 60% higher rate of fire for all weapons (weapons have 40% of their regular reload time).

It also affects how fast a weapon reloads after using Y.V's active ability. After using Pop Pop the weapon will have 80% of its regular reload time. With Throne Butt that's 120%.

Sends you to Y.V's Crib.

Back 2 Bizniz

YV B
YV Ultra 2

Pop Pop will fire off 50% extra trigger pulls that won't consume ammo and won't affect the reload time. Which means a total of 3 trigger pulls with a cost of 2 and 160% of the weapon's regular reload time.

With Throne Butt, Pop Pop will fire a total of 6 trigger pulls with a cost of 4 and 240% reload time.

Sends you to Y.V's Crib.

Steroids icon1

Steroids

Ambidextrous

Steroids A
Steroids Ultra 1
Medium Weapon Chests
Regular Weapon Chests and Cursed Weapon Chests increase in size and drop two of the same weapons.

Large Weapon Chests drop four random weapons instead of three.

Get Loaded

Steroids B
Steroids Ultra 2
Medium Ammo Chest
Regular Ammo Chests increase in size and have 10 Mini Ammo Chests inside, giving two for each type (bullet, shell, bolt, explosive and energy).
Robot icon1

Robot

Refined Taste

Robot A
Robot Ultra 1

Only higher tier weapons will drop from Weapon Chests and enemies. Meaning that Robot won't find weapons which normally (without Robot's passive) start dropping from chests in area 3-1 and below (check the Weapon Chest drops table).

Any weapons left behind when leaving a level will be automatically eaten.

Regurgitate

Robot B
Robot Ultra 2

43% chance to burp out a random stationary pickup (Ammo Chest, Weapon Chest, Medkit or a Radiation Canister) after eating a weapon. Pickups will spawn on top of Robot and instantly open.

Ammo Chests have a chance to spawn as I.D.P.D. Chests. Weapon Chests can spawn as Cursed Weapon Chests if you have a Crown.

Any weapons left behind when leaving a level will be automatically eaten.

Chicken icon2

Chicken

Harder to kill

Chicken A
Chicken Ultra 1

Each enemy killed by Chicken adds 1 second to the time she can survive while headless. The timer won't go above 5 seconds.

Determination

Chicken B
Chicken Ultra 2

Thrown weapons teleport to your secondary weapon slot after being thrown. Weapons thrown inside a portal are not affected.

Rebel icon1

Rebel

Personal Guard

Rebel A
Rebel Ultra 1

Rebel starts each level with two allies. All allies will also have 30 HP instead of 12, which in addition lengthens their lifespan.

Riot

Rebel B
Rebel Ultra 2
Every time Rebel uses her active, she spawns two allies instead of one. Each spawn will cost 2HP.
Horror icon1

Horror

Stalker

Horror A
Horror Ultra 1

Enemies that normally drop rads and Rad Canisters explode into radiation beam pellets upon death/when destroyed. The projectiles shoot out in all directions and otherwise act like parts of Horror's radiation beam dealing 1 damage each. Exploding doesn't reduce the amount of rads they will drop.

The amount of beam pellets each enemy/Rad Canister explodes into is 60% of the amount of rads it drops. That includes radiation added from other Horror's beam pellets hitting the enemy before it dies.

Enemies that don't drop rads (like the I.D.P.D. or Small Green Rats) and Destructible Objects are not affected by this mutation, unless they are hit with Horror's beam pellets.

I.D.P.D grenades are detonated if collided with rad pellets, which is especially dangerous when fighting I.D.P.D Freaks at close range.

Anomaly

Horror B
Horror Ultra 2

Level ending portals appear slightly before you have killed all enemies in that level. The portal opens when their combined health is equal or below 140. All remaining enemies are killed in the process.

Meltdown

Horror C
Horror Ultra 3

Doubles your Radiation capacity, increasing the amount of rads Horror can use for its active ability and Ultra Weapons.

Rogue icon2

Rogue

Super Portal Strike

Rogue A
Rogue Ultra 1
Portal Strike UI Ultra
Doubles Portal Strike ammo capacity.

Portal Strike Ammo Canisters will give two ammo instead of one.

Super Blast Armor

Rogue B
Rogue Ultra 2

Upgrades Blast Armor. When Rogue gets hit, it creates four individual explosions in a triangular formation.


Character Ultra Mutation Icon Description
Skelly Icon

Skeleton

Redemption

Skeleton A
SkellyIcon2

Turns Skeleton back into Melting. Every mutation you picked while playing as Skeleton will be removed. You'll be able to pick nine new ones (standard eight and one extra) and one of Melting's ultra mutations instead.

Melting will have base 2 HP as opposed to Skeleton's 4 HP.

Damnation

Skelly B
SkellyIcon1
Firing a weapon with Blood Gamble will reduce that weapon's reload time by 80%. This only affects the current reload; it is not a permanent reduction.
Frog Icon

Frog

Distance

Frog A
Frog Ultra 2

Causes rads dropped by enemies and Radiation Canisters to emit toxic gas. Each Rad has a 1/3 chance to create one toxic gas cloud. Radiation Chunks are guaranteed to create 4 toxic clouds.

Intimacy

Frog B
Frog Ultra 1
Frog continuously spreads toxic gas as it moves.

This also affects Frog's active ability, which instead of charging a big cloud of gas, will release it as you hold down the button.

Co-op Ultra Mutations table

Going over level 9 when playing in Co-op and essentially reaching level 10 (Level Ultra) allows you to choose an Ultra Mutation unique to Co-op which will affect both characters. You will pick it instead of the character-specific Ultra Mutations listed above, which are unavailable in Co-op.

Mutation Description
Blood Bond

Blood Bond

Health pickups are shared. Picking up a Mini Medkit will restore 2 HP of both players simultaneously.

Gun Bond

Gun Bond

Ammo pickups are shared. Picking up a Mini Ammo Chest/Cursed Mini Ammo Chest will give its full amount of ammo to both players simultaneously.

Mutations
Advertisement