Pathogen Mutations

This page is about discontinued content. The following information is not current. It is kept for historical purposes.

In an older iteration of pathology, pathogens had a chance to mutate upon infection based a stat called Mutativeness. The amount of mutations that could occur depended on another stat called Mutation Speed, and the type of mutations that took place depended on yet another stat called Maliciousness, usually changing up either attributes or symptoms.

Pathogen mutations and those three stats were removed during the rework that gave modern pathology because basically nothing good came out of them. If you wanted a benevolent pathogen, mutations might make randomly make it harmful, and you really couldn't do much about it. If you wanted a malevolent pathogen, it could give you an ungodly, overpowered spread of symptoms but could also swing the other way and give you something mediocre. Overall, it was a dull system that relied too much on RNG and worked against its users.

Not to be confused with any of the symptoms related to Genetics mutations.

Mutations

Mutation	Maliciousness Range Required	Favors Lower or Higher Maliciousness?	Other Conditions to Occur	Effect
Attribute Scramble	N/A	Unaffected	20% chance to occur each time a pathogen can mutate, at any Mutativeness level.	Each of the pathogen's Primary Attributes (Advance Speed, Mutation Speed, Maliciousness, Suppression Threshold, and Mutativeness) may increase or decrease by 0-8. Can occur up to 5 times per pathogen.
Lose All Attributes	N/A	Unaffected	8% chance to occur each time a pathogen can mutate, regardless of Mutativeness.	Each of the pathogen's Primary Attributes reset to 0. It will still show symptoms, so this doesn't necessarily make the pathogen completely harmless.
Increase Generation	N/A	Unaffected	None. Can occur at any Mutativeness value.	The pathogen's Generation increases by one, i.e. the pathogen becomes a different strain of the base pathogen. Again, higher generation pathogens will always overtake lower generation ones, and a person cannot have multiple strains/Generations of a pathogen at one time.
Become Asymptomatic	N/A	Unaffected	Pathogen is symptomatic (obviously). Flat 35% chance to occur every time a pathogen can mutate.	The pathogen shows no symptoms, and most symptoms are effectively disabled, but infection can still occur through direct contact. Strangely, the sweating symptom can still infect others with pathogen; the associated messages will simply be suppressed.
Become Symptomatic	N/A	Unaffected	Pathogen is asymptomatic (obviously). Independent of Mutativeness.	Pathogen begins showing symptoms again.
Maliciousness Boost	-25‒5	Lower	None	Pathogen's Maliciousness increases by 1-3.
Benevolence Boost	-25‒5	Higher	None	Pathogen's Maliciousness decreases by 1-3.
Advance Speed Boost	20 or lower	Lower	None	Pathogen's Advance Speed increases by 1-3.
Advance Speed Penalty	20 or lower	Higher	None	Pathogen's Advance Speed decreases by 1-3.
Mutation Speed Boost	-15 or higher	Lower	None	Pathogen's Mutation Speed increases by 1-3.
Mutation Speed Penalty	-15 or higher	Lower	None	Pathogen's Mutation Speed decreases by 1-3. If it was less than 0, it resets back to 0.
More Stages	-25 or lower	Unaffected	Pathogen has less than 5 stages. Straight 75% to occur it's within the Maliciousness range.	Pathogen gains an extra Stage. It doesn't necessarily progress into the next Stage.
Less Stages	-25 or lower	Unaffected	Pathogen has more than 3 stages. Flat 75% to occur once it's within the Maliciousness range.	Pathogen loses a Stage. If it's in the fourth or fifth stage when this happens, it'll go back to the third or fourth stage, respectively.
Gain Symptom	15‒30	Higher	None	Pathogen gains an additional symptom, with heavy leaning towards Very Common and Common symptoms. There is a 6% chance to gain Rare or Very Rare tier symptoms.
Gain More Symptoms	25‒70	Higher	None	Just like Gain Symptom, but pathogen has a random chance to gain an additional symptom or two.
Gain Strong Symptom	65‒150 (good luck with that)	Higher	None	Pathogen gains an additional symptom. There is still some heavy leaning towards Very Common and Common symptoms, but not as much as with Gain Symptom, and there is a 15% chance of gaining a Rare or Very Rare Symptom.
Gain More Strong Symptoms	125 or higher	Higher	None	Just like Gain Strong Symptom, but the pathogen has a random chance to also another symptom or two on top of the one already gained.
Lose Symptom	50 or higher	Higher	None	Pathogen loses a random symptom. It can potentially gain it back, whether from another mutation or symptom splicing.

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