Mutations in Fallout 76 are a key component to customizing your character and gameplay in Fallout 76. The effects that they provide have a huge effect on what you’re capable of within the game.
Below I’ve gathered a list of all the mutations currently available in the game. I’ve included their effects and all the interactions with perks in the game. I’ve spent a lot of time with them all and also provide some insight into how you might best use them.
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| Mutation Name | Base Positive Effects | Grouped w/ Strange In Numbers | Base Negative Effects | Maxed Class Freak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adrenal Reaction | Weapon Dmg Inc With HP Loss | More Weapon Dmg At Each Tier | -50 Max HP | -12 Max HP |
| Bird Bones | Reduced Fall Speed Agility +4 | Agility +5 | Strength -4 | Strength -1 |
| Carnivore | 2x hunger and healing with no disease from meat | No Effect | No hunger or healing from plants | No Effect |
| Chameleon | Invisibility In Combat | No Effect | Can’t Wear Armor Must Remain Still | No Effect |
| Eagle Eyes | Crit Dmg +25% Perception +4 | Crit Dmg +33% Perception +5 | Strength -4 | Strength -1 |
| Egg Head | Intelligence +6 | Intelligence +8 | Endurance -3 Strength -3 | No Endurance Loss No Strength Loss |
| Electrically Charged | Chance to Shock melee attackers | More Dmg | You Take Shock Dmg | Less Dmg |
| Empath | Teammates Dmg Taken -25% | Teammates Dmg Taken -31% | Dmg Taken +25% | Dmg Taken 6% |
| Grounded | Energy Resist +100 | Energy Resist +125 | Energy Gun Dmg -50% | Energy Gun Dmg -12% |
| Healing Factor | Health Regen +300% | Health Regen +375% | Chem Effects -55% | Chem Effects -13% |
| Herbivore | 2x hunger and healing with no disease from plants | No Effect | No hunger or healing from meat | No Effect |
| Herd Mentality | Special Stats In Group +2 | Special Stats In Group -3 | Special Stats Solo -2 | Special Stats Solo -1 |
| Marsupial | Jump Height Inc Carry Weight +20 | Jump Height Inc More Carry Weight +25 | Intelligence -4 | Intelligence -1 |
| Plague Walker | Poison Aura Dmg | More Dmg | Must Have Diseases | No Effect |
| Scaly Skin | Energy Resist +50 Dmg Resist +50 | Energy Resist +62 Dmg Resist +62 | Action Points -50 | Action Points -12 |
| Speed Demon | Move Speed +20 Inc Reload Speed | Move Speed +25 More Reload Speed | Hunger and Thirst +50% While Moving | No Effect |
| Talons | Unarmed Dmg +25% Added Bleed Dmg | Unarmed Dmg +31% Inc Bleed Dmg | Agility -4 | Agility -1 |
| Twisted Muscles | Melee Dmg +25% Chance to Cripple | Melee Dmg +31% Greater Chance to Cripple | Gun Accuracy -50% | Gun Accuracy -12% |
| Unstable Isotope | Chance to irradiate melee attackers | More Dmg | You Take Radiation Dmg | Less Dmg |
Adrenal Reaction
Adrenal Reaction grants your character an increase to weapon damage the lower your hit points are. This comes at the cost of negative fifty hit points.
Class Freak lowers your negative hit point modifier for Adrenal Reaction by the following amounts:
- One Point: – 38 hitpoints
- Two Points: -25 hitpoints
- Three Points: -12 hitpoints
I’ve read a lot of opinions of people that use Adrenal Reaction with a lot of different builds, and the consensus is that this mutation is worth the loss of hit points. The damage that you do varies with varying levels of hit point loss. So even builds that wouldn’t be considered “low hit point” will benefit from it.
Bird Bones
The Bird Bones mutation reduces your fall speed, significantly reducing the amount of fall damage that your character takes. It also increases your agility by four points. The cost for these benefits is a substantial reduction in strength by four points.
Class freak changes the agility that you lose to the following amounts for each point invested:
- One Point: – 3 Agility
- Two Points: -2 Agility
- Three Points: -1 Agility
While you will still take fall damage if you fall from too high. It’s insignificant unless you fall from a great distance.
I feel like this is a quality of life mutation that works in any build. You can feel free to take that leap off a bridge that your mother was always warning you about.
Carnivore
Carnivore doubles the hunger and healing benefit while removing any chance of contracting a disease from eating meat. You’re able to eat plants for the stat bonuses, but will no longer satiate hunger or provide healing. You are unable to gain the Herbivore mutation as they are mutually exclusive.
Class Freak doesn’t have any effect on Carnivore that I’ve been able to find. This is due to the nature of the adverse effects of this mutation. Eating fruits and veggies provides zero healing or satiation of your hunger. You can’t apply a percentage to zero.
In the same way, Herbivore works with plants, Carnivore works with meat. Meat is easily acquired while out trouncing the resident creatures of Appalachia and can even be eaten raw with Carnivore.
One specific type of meat that a lot of carnivores seem to choose in later levels is Ionized Meat. It never spoils and weighs 0.5 lbs while providing forty hunger.
Chameleon
Chameleon grants your character invisibility in a fight as long as you wear no armor and remain still. This requires that you have a weapon drawn to be considered in combat.
Chamelon’s harmful effects are such that Class Freak is unable to provide any benefit. You can’t apply a percentage to zero armor or zero movements.
You are still capable of wearing armor that has the Legendary Weightless effect. Some have reported the need to add the ultra-light mod to their weightless pieces to get Chameleon to work correctly.
Eagle Eyes
Eagle Eyes is a Fallout 76 mutation that increases your Perception stat by four points and gives you twenty-five percent increased critical hit damage. The negative aspect of this mutation is a loss of four points in strength.
The strength that you lose from the Eagle Eyes mutation is lessened to the following with Class Freak:
- One Point: – 3 Strength
- Two Points: -2 Strength
- Three Points: -1 Strength
This mutation is a must for any crit build regardless of whether it’s ranged or melee. It would, of course, be really effective in a crit/vats build where you’re storing up those crits for big monsters. The negative four strength is obviously not ideal, but Class Freak is great for mitigating the downside of this pretty impressive mutation.
Egg Head
The Egg Head mutation grants your Fallout 76 character a massive increase in intelligence by six points. The adverse side effects of this mutation are a three-point decrease in strength and a three-point reduction in endurance.
Class Freak mitigates the negative strength and endurance that come with Egg Head:
- One Point: – 2.25 Strength and -2.25 Endurance
- Two Points: -1.5 Strength and -1.5 Endurance
- Three Points: -.75 Strength and -.75 Endurance
I still need to do some research to determine if these values are rounded up or down.
Egg Head is probably only worth it if you’re running Class Freak in your perk cards. The upside of increased intelligence doesn’t seem like a reasonable trade-off when you consider what you actually lose from taking this mutation.
The reduction of three endurance and strength actually cost you carry weight, melee damage, hit points, disease resistance, and increased AP use while sprinting.
Those six intelligence net a better experience with hacking, better scrapping, and weapons of higher quality upon creation. Those are nice, but I’m going to argue that the strength and endurance provide a more tangible benefit in pretty much any build.
Electrically Charged
The Electrically Charged mutation grants a small chance to inflict energy damage on your melee attackers. When this effect goes off a small amount of damage is inflicted on the player as well.
It is unclear whether Class Freak has any effect on Electrically Charged. What is clear is that the damage that you receive from Electrically charged is minimal. So minimal that it probably doesn’t matter if it is affected by Class Freak.
In my tests running the Electrically Charged mutation, it just didn’t seem to proc enough to make it worth it. When it did proc, it was pretty underwhelming except for maybe the effect itself was kind of cool.
Empath
The Empath mutation grants your teammates protection from twenty-five percent of the damage that they would typically take. The downside to this mutation is that you will now take twenty-five percent more.
Class Freak should reduce the damage that you take due to Empath. There are a lot of reports on Reddit that indicate the Empath is unaffected by Class Freak. As of patch nine, Bethesda has fixed this.
- One Point: 18.75 percent more damage taken
- Two Points: 12.5 percent more damage taken
- Three Points: 6.25 percent more damage taken
If you regularly run in a group, Empath is a no-brainer. You will want at least one person in the group to invest in this perk. That selfless person should also run Class Freak to reduce the damage they take down to 7%.
Grounded
The Grounded mutation gives your character an additional one hundred energy resistance. Unfortunately Grounded also lowers the amount of energy damage that you do by fifty percent.
Class Freak lessens the negative energy damage effect caused by the Grounded mutation based on your point investment to the following amounts:
- One Point: 37% less energy damage done by the player
- Two Points: 25% less energy damage done by the player
- Three Points: 12% less energy damage done by the player
There was a bug that was preventing Class Freak from working correctly with Grounded. As of patch nine on May 7th, 2019, this has been fixed.
If you aren’t using energy weapons, then there is no downside to this mutation and a pretty significant upside. This mutation is excellent for anyone running a melee build or a ranged ballistic build.
The most common ways of generating energy damage are Plasma and Laser weapons. Other sources are fire, pulse grenades, pulse mines, and the alien blaster. Obviously, if you are running a build that uses any of these weapons, then stay away from Grounded unless you’re running Class Freak.
Healing Factor
Healing Factor grants the player a vast three hundred percent increase to health regeneration outside of combat. The negative effect of Healing Factor is that it lessens the impact of all chems that the character takes including Stim Packs.
Healing Factor’s reduction of chem effects is lessened by Class Freak to the following amounts:
- One Point: 41% reduced chem effects
- Two Points: 27% reduced chem effects
- Three Points: 13% reduced chem effects
Most consider this as the most useful mutation in the game. My own experience with this mutation is that you effectively heal to full health within a couple seconds of leaving combat. I didn’t really notice the ill effects of this while I was running Class Freak.
It should be noted again that this effect is only useful outside of combat and doesn’t affect other healing methods. You will still need to use Stim Packs while engaged in a fight.
I feel like there really aren’t any builds that this wouldn’t provide significant benefit. The three hundred percent health regeneration is pretty amazing. If nothing else as a quality of life improvement.
Herbivore
Herbivore grants your Fallout 76 character double the healing and hunger benefit of eating plants without fear of contracting diseases. The downside to Herbivore is that you will no longer heal or satiate hunger by eating meat, but can still gain other stat increases.
Class Freak has no effects on the Herbivore mutation. Due to there being no way to lessen zero mathematically by applying a percentage. Seventy-five percent of zero hunger satiation is still zero.
Herbivore is effectively the plant-based opposite of Carnivore. You gain double the hunger and healing benefit from eating veggies, but none from meat.
You still gain stat bonuses from meat exact the same as you would if you had neither Herbivore or Carnivore mutations. An example that I see often is eating Grilled Radstag for that sweet carry weight bonus. Regardless of whether you are Carnivore or Herbivore you still receive +20 carry weight from eating Grilled Radstag.
Herd Mentality
Herd Mentality is a group focused mutation in Fallout 76 that grants your character two points to all of your stats while grouped. It also reduces all your stats by two points when you are not in a group.
Class Freak lowers your special loss from Herd Mentality when running solo to the following:
- One Point: -1.5 to all stats when solo (Nothing?)
- Two Points: -1 to all stats when solo (-1 to stats?)
- Three Points: -.5 to all stats when solo (Negates adverse effects entirely?)
It’s difficult to test this one. There’s a bug that prevents you from being able to see the Herd Mentality effect in your pip-boy. My best guesses are in parentheses. More research needed on this one.
This mutation is excellent for those that roll in a group the majority of the time. What if you want to go it alone for a while? Well, it has been reported that the Class Freak perk card when maxed out completely eliminates the downside to this mutation. See above in the Class Freak section.
Marsupial
The Marsupial mutation gives the character an increased carry weight of twenty with a significant increase in jump height. The negative effect of the Marsupial mutation is decreased intelligence by four points.
Class Freak reduces your intelligence loss from Marsupial down to the following amounts:
- One Point: – 3 Intelligence
- Two Points: -2 Intelligence
- Three Points: -1 Intelligence
Once you acquire Marsupial, it changes the way you play the game. You’re now able to easily get to the tops of houses in a single bound that you would have walked around before. Honestly, regardless of the negative four intelligence, this mutation is such a quality of life enhancement that it’s hard to imagine playing the game without it now.
To really take this to the next level get Speed Demon and Bird Bones to go with it.
Plague Walker
Plague Walker mutation gives your Fallout 76 character a poison aura that scales with the number of diseases that you currently have. As you contract more, the damage of your poison aura increases.
There is no specific downside to the Plague Walker mutation other than the diseases themselves. Because of this Class Freak has no effect on Plague Walker.
A few things to consider with Plague Walker. If you are a stealthy build, you may want to avoid this mutation. This will aggro unfriendly mobs when you’re hidden if they’re in range. Through my own testing, I can verify that it will not drop stealth just by having it with no diseases active. It also does not seem to affect friendly or neutral NPCs in any way.
Scaly Skin
Scaly Skin is a Fallout 76 mutation that grants the character a bonus of fifty points to energy resistance and fifty points to damage resistance. The protection provides by Scaly Skin costs fifty action points.
Class Freak lowers your negative action point modifier for Scaly Skin to the following amounts:
- One Point: – 38 hitpoints
- Two Points: -25 hitpoints
- Three Points: -13 hitpoints
Most builds will benefit from this mutation, especially if they’re running Class Freak to reduce the action point loss down to twelve points. If your build is super dependant on AP, then I might recommend skipping this mutation, but with the right perks, this is definitely a keeper.
Speed Demon
Speed Demon is a Fallout 76 mutation that gives your character a bonus of twenty to movement speed and also increases the speed that you’re able to reload weapons. The downside of Speed Demon is that your Hunger and Thirst will drain fifty percent faster while moving.
It would make sense that Class Freak would lower the hunger and thirst requirements that Speed Demon brings. The reality is that it doesn’t. This may be a bug, but I feel like this is intended.
If you enjoy running around the map super fast, then this mutation is most definitely for you. If you also run with some of the other physical movement mutations like Marsupial and Bird Bones, this can provide a pretty awesome gameplay experience. Well worth the additional Hunger and Thirst in my experience.
Talons
The Talons mutation gives your character a twenty-five percent bonus to punching attacks while also adding bleed damage. All of this at the cost of negative four points in agility. These bonuses apply to unarmed punching as well as fist weapons, meat hooks, and other unarmed weapons.
Class Freak reduces your agility loss from Talons down to the following amounts:
- One Point: – 3 Agility
- Two Points: -2 Agility
- Three Points: -1 Agility
An absolute no-brainer for anyone running an unarmed weapon build. The increased unarmed damage and bleed effect are awesome. It should be noted that this stacks with Twisted Muscles for a ridiculous damage bonus.
Twisted Muscles
Twisted Muscles grants your character a bonus of twenty-five percent to your melee damage and an increased chance to cripple the limbs of your target. The downside is a severe fifty percent reduction in gun accuracy.
Class Freak lessens the negative gun accuracy effect caused by Twisted Muscles based on your point investment to the following amounts:
- One Point: 37% less gun accuracy
- Two Points: 25% less gun accuracy
- Three Points: 12% less gun accuracy
If your build focuses on melee, this might be a great choice of mutations. If you run this with Class Freak, then it drops the gun accuracy reduction down to twelves percent. A much more manageable number.
Unstable Isotope
Unstable Isotope gives your Fallout 76 character a chance to irradiate attackers who hit you. The drawback of this mutation is the small amount of radiation damage that you take when this effect goes off.
As with Electrically Charged, it is unclear if Class Freak has any effect on Unstable Isotope, but if it does, then it is negligible at best.
Similar in function to Electrically charged, but with radiation damage instead of energy damage.
That’s it! The full list of mutations in Fallout 76. I hope the information you found here was useful. Be sure and bookmark this page to use as a reference. I’ll continue to update this page when the data changes.
