World Variants and Mutations

World Variants and Boss Mutations

Choosing a variant

A Seed or a rite site (see The way into each world) hatches into a variant of its world. The variant is decided at the moment it becomes a World Block, from three things:

1. The planter's karma. At +100 the world is Hallowed, at -100 it is Cursed. Karma overrides everything else.
2. What it was fed. Use an item on the planted Seed or the rite site while it waits or hatches. Each offering moves its lean by one (the action bar shows it):
   • calm: any flower, Honey Bottle, Sweet Berries, Glow Berries, Moss Block
   • wild: Gunpowder, Blaze Powder, Rotten Flesh, Bone, Spider Eye, Magma Cream
3. What lies within 3 blocks of it. Flowers, leaves, moss and water lean it calm (up to 3 points); fire, soul fire, soul sand or soil, wither roses and lava lean it wild (up to 3 points).

A total lean of 2 or more towards one side gives the Calm or Wild variant; anything less leaves the world Plain. Only the planter's group can feed its Seed or rite site. A Storm Essence given to the Storm Rod opens World 4 rather than counting as an offering.

What a variant changes

A variant never changes the terrain. It changes the creatures, the rule and the drops of that group's world.

Variant	Rule strength	Creature health and damage	Extra drop chance	Natural spawns
Plain	x1	x1	none	x1
Calm	x0.75	x0.85	none	x0.7
Wild	x1.25	x1.25	50%	x1.5
Hallowed (karma +100)	x0.8	x1	35%	x0.85
Cursed (karma -100)	x1.3	x1.4	100%	x1.6

Rule strength scales the toxin, heat, noise and oxygen gauges and the strength of the gusts. The extra drop chance is a second roll of a creature's common drop and a better chance at its rare one. Bosses take the variant's danger too.

Each world has its own names for its calm and wild variants:

World	Calm	Wild
1	Withered Jungle	Overgrown Jungle
2	Cooling Veins	Erupting Veins
3	Drowsy Dungeon	Grinding Dungeon
4	Becalmed Archipelago	Thundering Archipelago
5	Glimmering Deep	Starving Deep
6	Steady Realm	Spinning Realm
7	Slack-Tide Ocean	Crushing Ocean
8	Lingering Seasons	Racing Seasons
9	Dozing Ground	Heaving Ground
10	Tidy Workshop	Cluttered Workshop

The Journal's Worlds tab marks every world that has a variant with a small seal (green for calm and hallowed, red for wild and cursed); hover the line to read it.

Boss mutations

From World 6 on, the boss of a wild, hallowed or cursed world wakes mutated. A mutation adds to the fight without replacing it, and its name follows the boss's in the boss bar.

Mutation	Comes from	Effect
Echoing	Wild World 6 and 9	Every big attack is followed by a second shockwave a moment later
Frenzied	Wild World 7 and 10	Below half health it heals a little, then moves and attacks faster
Searing	Wild World 8	Its attacks set you on fire; a ring of flames follows every big attack
Radiant	Hallowed worlds	Every 15 seconds a pulse of light blinds, slows and outlines those around it
Hollow	Cursed worlds	Every 20 seconds two creatures of its world come out of its shell

In a New Cycle every boss wakes mutated, from the Block Guardian on, even in a calm world: the mutation turns with the cycle and the world (cycle 2 does not give the same boss the same mutation as cycle 3).

A mutated boss drops one or two Mutated Scales (an epic gem worth 30 souls at the Altar) and two more Shell Shards.