There are plenty of unique mushrooms you’ll forage and cultivate all over the various maps in Mudborne, especially if you’re looking under the right conditions and considering the current temperature outside, but what if you could push those genetic-modifying mushrooms even further? How many stats could you change?
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Once you’ve progressed through the Kindergarten map a bit, you’ll be able to unlock the ability to grow hybrid mushrooms in Mudborne. These new species you’re making carry on the A.N.O.U.R.E.S. modifiers from both parent mushrooms, meaning the possibility for combinations in your magic mud recipes will essentially be all but endless.
Unlock Spore Cultivating Machines And Breed New Mushrooms
Gain Access To Spore Hybridization
While you’ll gather plenty of practice working on gathering different mushrooms as you progress into the various areas off the Central Junction in Mudborne, you’ll eventually begin to master tinkering with the temperature and moisture levels near your cultivators to make all kinds of more advanced mushroom species. However, if you want to alter the highest number of traits at once using a single recipe for magic mud when you’re working on your next breeding project, you’ll want to begin using hybrid mushrooms sooner than later.
To begin, you’ll first need to gain access to the Kindergarten map, which is east from the Central Junction. Here, you’ll meet Ribbert, and he’ll give you a variety of tasks related to exploring the area. The main story progression goal here is to make your way over to the Seal Maker at the northernmost island and make one of three seals needed to reactivate the statue back in the Center Junction, but Ribbert has another mission for you regarding mushroom hybridization.
North of the stagnant water pools in the bottom left corner, to the right of the far Gateway Nexus portal, you’ll see the Spore Hybridization building, but unfortunately, it’s locked in the waking world. Ribbert has asked you to enter the building and bring back the research that’s inside, so to do so, you’ll need to gain access in the dream world.
There are a couple of ways you can do this. The Kindergarten map has a few Reflection Pools that you can activate for easier movement between the Kindergarten and the Future Farms map, but if you’ve been activating portals in the Gateway Nexus, you’ll be able to head into the Future Farms without activating one of the Reflection Pools on the Kindergarten map.
A good way to do this is to activate the portals both on the roof of the Carpenter’s Shop in the Spawning Pools and one of the portals on the Kindergarten map. If you enter the dream world on the Spawning Pools map and use the Gateway Nexus to make your way to the Kindergarten, provided those portals are active, you’ll step out onto the Future Farms map instead of the Kindergarten map, since you’re entering through the dream world.
Either way you get there, once you’ve made it to the Future Farms, you’ll need to navigate over to the Spore Hybridization Building, which will now be unlocked. You’ll need to clear out the algae bloom here, since your frog is unable to cross the greenery, so be sure to bring a Filter and a high-Edacity frog with you on the adventure.
Once inside, look inside the chest in the room to obtain the information Ribbert has asked for. You can give it back to him in either world, waking or dreaming, but once you return the research you find to Ribbert, he’ll be able to trade for you the various items you’ll need to create hybrid mushrooms in Mudborne.
These are:
- A Spore Net, which Ribbert will give you for one Dracofly. Not only can the Spore Net catch any critters your regular net can, but you can also use it to pluck mushroom spores before they grow into full-size mushrooms if you’re more interested in the spores than the end result for breeding purposes.
- Spore Paper, the item onto which you’ll press spores to grow into hybrid mushrooms. Ribbert will give you five sheets for one Flat Stinkhorn.
- A Spore Printer, which you’ll need a Stout Funnel, five Logs, and five Reeds to buy off Ribbert. This is the essential piece of machinery that prints special paper with mushroom spores on it that you’ll need to place to begin growing hybrid mushrooms in Mudborne.
- A Spore Cultivator, the special equipment that allows the growth of mushroom hybrids when you combine any compost recipe with a piece of Spore Paper onto which mushroom spores have been printed. You’ll get three Spore Cultivators from Ribbert in exchange for one Bothersome Fungus, one Log, and one Waterproof Coating.
With all of these items in hand, you’re free to set up shop wherever is most convenient for you to begin the process of making these hybrid mushrooms.
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Print Spores Onto Spore Paper And Grow Them Into Mushrooms
Once you’ve obtained the items from Ribbert and have everything you need to get started, you’ll be able to use any mushroom spores in the printer with the specialized sheets of paper to create hybrids. Regular mushrooms and mushroom powder are separate items; you’ll specifically need mushroom spores for your hybrid mushroom project, so be sure to use your spore net on the mushrooms you want to use in hybridization. When you see them beginning to grow, swing your net to grab the spores before they become a full-size mushroom.
When making spore paper, you have two slots for spores that will carry over into the hybrid-making process, and how you use these slots is up to you. Hybrid mushrooms contain the trait alterations from both mushrooms that you used to create it. If you use two different species of mushroom spores, you’ll make a hybrid mushroom with every trait from the two parent mushrooms. If you use two spores of the same kind, you’ll receive a regular mushroom of that variety, so save your paper!
For example, the Compendium asks you to make a hybrid mushroom that’s equal parts Stout Funel (which raises Amplitude by one) and Flat Stinkhorn (which raises both Nobility and Odour by one), and the resulting hybrid mushroom is able to raise Amplitude, Nobility, and Odour by one using a single mushroom.
When you’ve got the spore paper with the right mushroom spores, you’ll want to place spore paper into a Spore Cultivator that’s been placed carefully where the mushroom will flourish. It’s important to remember that one parent mushroom will be more dominant, and the resulting mushroom that grows from the spores will be labeled as that variant with “hybrid” at the end. Continuing with the Compendium’s example hybrid, the mushroom you make is called the Stout Funnel Hybrid.
Consider the predominant mushroom when deciding where to place your Spore Cultivator, since hybrids grow in the environment that the more dominant parent mushroom would grow in. Using the Stout Funnel Hybrid example from above once again, these spores would grow in the waking world when the Spore Cultivator is placed in water that is Balmy and Drenched.
Conditions must remain the same the whole time the hybrid mushroom is growing before you can pick it. If you’re encountering issues with precipitation changing the environment you’ve carefully balanced your Heaters against a few Coolers with a Hydrator or Dehydrator nearby, there are certain compost recipes that ward off the effects of snow and rain, respectively, when mushrooms are growing in a Spore Cultivator that uses that compost.
Your mushrooms will not die if the conditions change before they grow in; their growth simply stalls out until the conditions are right again, provided there’s compost in the Spore Cultivator the whole time. Like regular Cultivators, even hybrid mushrooms will die if you run out of compost.
Grind any hybrid mushroom you’ve bred into mushroom powder using your Grinder as normal, and when using that powder to make your next magic mud recipe, you’ll be able to change multiple traits at once with one mushroom powder. Plenty of the rarest frogs in the Encyclopedia require quite a few genetic modifications to make, so the fewer mushrooms you need to make them, the better.
You’ll find, especially as you begin breeding more advanced frogs and discovering some of their more particular variants that you need to change more traits than you can with regular magic mud, even if you use the Cauldron upgrade you can buy from Annura in the Climate Control region, the Alchemist, for one Red Lotus, one Cherry Bomb, and one Cauldron. End-game frog breeding becomes much simpler with a wide variety of spores at your disposal for when you need to change multiple traits fairly dramatically in a single generation.
Use Projectors To Predict Hybrid Mushroom Effects
You met Hopert a long time ago back in the Spawning Pools, but he’s the carpenter frog in charge of building all kinds of things to help you progress through the story in Mudborne. Since he’s so particularly skilled in crafting, you can bring him any of the six missing blueprints scattered around the various areas of the pond! After he receives a blueprint, he’ll have the item in his trade shop the next time you chat.
One of the available blueprints is for a Projector, an item that allows you to predict the outcome of hybridizing any two mushrooms. While you’ll be able to guess at the effects of a hybrid mushroom fairly effectively by considering what changes to a frog’s A.N.O.U.R.E.S. both parent mushrooms make, this is a foolproof way to make sure you have the right spores before you begin the cultivation process. Save yourself the spore paper where you can!
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Power up the machine and use the right frogs to drain the water out of the Pumphouse.