Mutations are an excellent way to customize your gameplay experience in Fallout 76. They provide positive and negative benefits for your characters but aren’t permanent without some work.

The best way to permanently keep your mutations in Fallout 76 is by investing two points into the Starched Genes perk card and equipping it. Starched Genes prevents RadAway or any other method of healing radiation damage from curing your mutations.

Why Do You Want to Keep Your Mutations?

It may seem at first that irradiating your body to become a mutant is a bad thing, but the reality is that it can be super helpful. Mutations are a system in Fallout 76 that allow you to customize your gameplay experience in pretty dramatic ways.

Each mutation will generally have positive and negative effects. The decision is yours to determine which ones are worth the downside. Using perk cards, you can reduce the adverse impact making mutations an excellent way to improve your character. 

So becoming a mutant is a good thing. Check. It can be a great thing even. I recommend checking out the list of mutations that I put together previously. It lists all the effects, bugs, and how the different perks can affect it. 

Methods To Keep Your Mutations

Nothing is more heartbreaking than getting that mutation that fits your build only to lose it just when you’re getting used to it. Regrettably, losing them is all too easy. They’re temporary unless you take steps to ensure they remain permanent.

The simple formula goes like this. You have a chance to get mutations when you take radiation damage. You may have guessed that when you cure that damage, you have a chance to lose it. 

Now armed with the knowledge that curing radiation damage is the key to losing your mutations. You might conclude that we should go through life and never heal that radiation damage. Simple right?

No. Not so simple. The more radiation damage you have, the fewer hit points you have available to live. So at some point, you’re going to want to cure that radiation damage. How do we accomplish that without the risk of losing our precious mutations?

Can I Keep My Mutations Using The Sun Kissed Perk?

Perk cards to the rescue! The Sun Kissed perk card is in the endurance tree and is available at level forty-five. It regenerates radiation damage during the hours of 6 am and 6 pm in-game time. So during daylight hours, your character can restore that radiation damage automatically.

In addition, your mutations are safe from being removed. So you can run around Appalachia all day without worrying about having to cure radiation damage. Sun Kissed will take care of it for you.

What happens if you want to go out at night and fight packs of feral ghouls with your bare hands? You’re going to take radiation damage. What then? Well, you could always bring some friends.

Will The Rad Sponge Perk Make Me Lose My Mutations?

Enter the Rad Sponge perk. Rad Sponge is a charisma perk available at level forty-four. It heals radiation damage on your teammates periodically when you are affected by radiation damage. 

That’s great for your teammates, but what about you? It’s not uncommon for multiple people to run this perk while grouped, so everyone heals rad damage continuously. 

Oh! Did I mention that Rad Sponge will also not cause you to lose your mutations? Awesome right? Ok so what if you have no friends and you only go out at night? Fine! I’ve got one more perk card up my irradiated sleeve.

How Does Starched Genes Work?

Starched Genes is one of the big daddies of mutation affecting perk cards. It is a luck perk that’s available at level thirty. With two points invested into Starched Genes, your character will never become mutated from radiation damage. You will also never cure any existing mutations through the use of RadAway or contamination arches.

Starched Genes will provide you with peace of mind that you’ll never lose any of your mutations. There is also the benefit or never gaining any others that you might not want for your build. So you’ll want this in place once you have all the mutations that are appropriate for your build.

Conclusion

Ok, let’s wrap this all up. Mutations are a good thing for the most part. Keeping the ones you want is not always easy. Especially at lower levels before you can get the higher level perk cards. Once you have Starched Genes available, you’re golden. Even if you don’t want to invest in Starched Genes, there are other perks available that can provide ways to keep your mutations if you’re careful.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short guide on how to keep your mutations in Fallout 76. If you enjoyed this guide, I have others that you’ll want to check out. I’ll see you in the next one.