Part 158: Abnormality Roundup 9

Abnormality Roundup 9

Our facility is remarkably stable despite the couple of very problematic Abnormalities we've taken, and we're almost out of the woods when it comes to our equipment crunch. I feel like we're going to have a relatively smooth endgame coming, so I'll probably pull a couple of Abnormalities that I think are particularly interesting.

Mountain of Smiling Bodies



Mountain of Smiling Bodies is one of the easier ALEPHs to handle as long as you stay on top of body management. When it breaches, its base form is incredibly weak so it tries to seek out bodies to eat while running quickly enough to get past most Agents. Once it has eaten bodies, it becomes a problem-the way to prevent this is to either clear Clerks out with Execution bullets (which actually stops it from escaping due to deaths altogether) or by using its E.G.O suit to consume the dead bodies beforehand. This makes it an excellent pick for the 3 ALEPHs mission if Apocalypse Bird seems too difficult. Trainingwise, it's an excellent finisher for either Instinct or Repression, but the real prize is its gear-0.2x Black resistance is amazing come lategame, since most of the biggest threats deal Black damage.


The Naked Nest



I had honestly forgotten Naked Nest's Attachment was that high, and Repression was that low.

Anyways, The Naked Nest is a strange one-its Instinct preference means it should be good for Instinct training, but its rules make using it for that a bad idea unless we can reliably hit Good results. It's also decent at Attachment training, but Attachment training is best left to Black damage Abnormalities due to how the damage works-and again, we don't want to take a lot of damage with it. Overall, I find it works best at training Justice for someone who's wearing Mimicry armor-it's reliable for it, though not the best. It's still a keeper because in the worst case we can safely ignore it without penalty, and its E.G.O weapon is the Red equivalent of the Spore spear, boosting Red damage by 50%. Because of that, it tends to wind up in my facility whenever I see it.


Melting Love



Melting Love is one of a couple of Abnormalities which requires a total shift in how things are handled in order to work with it-Parasite Tree would be another example of this. Her favored Agent needs to be kept alone, Clerks have to be dealt with or kept apart from all other Agents until they slime out and then die, and her QC needs to be carefully managed to avoid instantly losing an Agent. Still, she's actually probably the most forgiving of them because we can opt to ignore her gimmick entirely. On any day where we don't want to farm her for energy, we can ignore her safely and get away with doing only Repression work on her. This will keep us from having any infection to work with, and her suit is powerful enough against Black damage to make this pretty simple in any situation short of Chesed's core suppression.

Her equipment is powerful, with the suit being arguably the third most powerful in the game despite having an ability which rarely ever activates. The slime mug, meanwhile, functions as a cannon and hits incredibly hard as a result. Despite how easygoing she's been for me in this playthrough, though, I'd only recommend her for newer players as something to grab, get all the equipment from, and then send away with a Memory Repository to never work with again.


Behavior Adjustment


-10 Prudence, +15 Attack/Move Speed. If returned before 30 seconds have gone by, the Agent dies. If the Agent runs out of SP, the Agent dies instead of panics. It's really that simple. Put it on an agent who wants Move and Attack Speed, and forget about it. A good pick, if only because it's a nice simple tool Abnormality that doesn't blow up our Agent at random or anything ridiculous like that.