Biomutant guide: Character creation, attributes, and stats, explained

Right at the beginning of Biomutant, you’re asked to make a lot of decisions about your character. You’ll need to pick a breed, assign attribute points and resistances, and select a class. So early in the game, though, it’s hard to know what to choose.

In this Biomutant character creation guide, we’ll teach you all about the various attributes and stats you’ll be choosing, explain why you don’t have to worry too much about them, and detail Biomutant’s classes. Throughout, we’ll give you suggestions for a very simple first character build.

Your breed, class, and attributes aren’t permanent

We’ll go into all of the attributes and stats below, but before we get there, it’s important to understand that none of the choices you make here are really permanent and don’t lock you out of other choices later.

As you level up, you’ll be able to increase any attribute (and their associated stats — more on this below). You’ll also learn new skills — and those skills aren’t class-specific.

All of which is to say: Character creation feels like you’re making huge, weighty choices, but you’re really not. All you’re choosing here is appearance and some (minor) boosts to your starting stats. As you progress through the game, you’ll be able to mold your character in whatever direction you want.

Biomutant attributes and stats, explained

Instead of just listing Biomutant’s attributes and stats, let’s talk about them in terms of how you’ll be interacting with Biomutant’s world. Your character is defined by six role-playing game standard attributes (Vitality, Strength, Intellect, Agility, Charisma, and Luck) and 10 additional stats derived from them.

Agility

Out in Biomutant’s world, you’ll be running around. This is obvious, but we bring it up because how fast you move around is tied to an attribute — Agility and the Move Speed stat derived from it.

Strength

Beyond that, every character has three offensive options: Melee, Ranged, and magic — Biomutant’s Psi-Powers and Mutations. Melee damage is tied to your Strength attribute (like you’d probably expect) and its Melee Damage stat that gets added to your weapon’s base damage. Ranged Damage, on the other hand, is determined only by the weapon you have — there are no attribute modifiers.

Intellect

Psi-Powers and Mutation (magic or casting) damage is determined by your Intellect attribute and the Power stat.

Unlike other action RPGs, you don’t have a traditional stamina bar in Biomutant. Instead, you have a Ki Energy pool tied to your Intellect attribute. Your Ki Energy pool is like a stamina bar for everything from dodging to Special Attacks to using your Psi-Powers and Mutations. Doing those things drains the bar, and your Energy Regen stat (also derived from the Intellect attribute) determines how fast it refills.

Vitality

Dodging doesn’t have anything to do with your Agility attribute. Instead, the cost of dodging — how much of your Ki Energy pool it takes to dodge — is determined by your Vitality attribute. Vitality also figures into your Health stat (along with your level).

Luck

The last combat-related attribute is Luck. This increases (or decreases) your chances of landing extra damage with a Critical Hit. When you defeat enemies, Luck determines your chances of picking up better or rarer loot with the Loot Chance stat.

Charisma

Charisma changes your dialogue options when speaking with NPCs. At merchants, your Charisma attribute determines you Barter stat that increases the Green (currency) you get from selling items and lowers the cost of buying items.

Choose breed

Now that we know what the numbers we’re going to be choosing here mean, let’s step into Biomutant’s character creation.

Image: Experiment 101/THQ Nordic via Polygon

Breed is vaguely analogous to race in other RPGs. Breed really just gives you a bonus to certain stats (but doesn’t effect your attributes).

• Primal is your generalized choice. We’ll treat is as the baseline and compare the other breeds to Primal.
• Dumdon slightly decreases Energy Regen, and increases Ki Energy and Melee Damage.
• Rex slightly decreases Critical Chance, and increases Health, Power, Ki Energy, and Energy Regen.
• Hyla slightly decreases Energy Regen and Critical Chance, but increases Health, Armor, Power (slightly), and Ki Energy.
• Fip slightly decreases Critical Chance, and increases Power, Ki Energy, and Energy Regen.
• Murgel slightly decreases Energy Regen, slightly increases Power and Ki Energy, and greatly increases your Barter and Loot Chance stats.

Until you get a better feel for how Biomutant’s systems work and how you’ll play it, Primal (baseline), Dumdon (slight advantage to melee and dodging), Rex (slight advantage toward casting), and Hyla (slightly better armored and favoring casting) are good choices to start.

If you tend to play casters and magic users, Fip is for you.

Murgel is a charisma-heavy breed that emphasizes interacting with NPCs over specialized combat.

Mutate Character

Once you have a Breed selected, you’ll get the choice to Mutate your character and change their attributes. You have a total of 140 points to move around here — between 10 and 100. By default, all five stats are set to 28, and Luck always stays at 10.

You can only increase one or two attributes — two that are next to each other on the outside of the circle — at a time. Just remember that increasing any attribute means you’ll be decreasing three or four others.

For your first character, stay relatively close to the middle — moving all the way to the edge reduces your other stats by way too much. Emphasizing Strength or Strength and Vitality is a good start for a melee character. Emphasizing Intellect or Intellect and Charisma is good for a caster.

Choose Resistance

There are four types of elemental damage in Biomutant — Heat, Biohazard, Cold, and Radioactivity.

You’ll assign your resistance in a similar way as you did your attributes. All resistances start out at 6%. As you move the cursor around inside the circle, you’ll rearrange those 24 points.

Like everything else in Biomutant’s character creation, these are just your starting resistances. As you collect Bio Points, you’ll be able to increase any resistance, regardless of what you started with.

Class

Biomutant’s classes aren’t as strict or even really as permanent as you might expect from other RPGs. What you’re really selecting are starting skills and equipment. You’ll be able to change these — swap out for different equipment and acquire new skills — as you play. The skills you get from your class are not exclusive to that class.

• Dead-Eye comes with the Perfect Reload skill. Ranged weapons get reloaded instantly, and your next magazine gets extra damage.
• Commando gets you the Fury skill that increases Ranged weapon damage.
• Psi-Freak comes with both the Spark Ball and Megamind skills. Spark Ball is a Psi-Power that fires a ball of electricity. Megamind increase your Energy Regen stat.
• Saboteur gets you the Twin Silver Grip skill that lets you dual wield melee weapons and the Hypergenetic skill that reduces the Ki Energy cost to dodge.
• Sentinel comes with Toughness that increases your Armor by 10.

The most straightforward class is Saboteur. The dual weapons are fun, and the reduced dodge cost is nice to have while you get used to Biomutant’s combat. The Sentinel class is similarly straightforward, but the bonus is Armor isn’t quite as useful.

If you want to play something closer to a caster-type, pick Psi-Freak.