Brainslug

I went down to the piercing parlor, said "please pierce my brain".They said I won't survive it, so it had to be prepaid.

Brainslug is a mutation that gives +3 Brains and +25 stun resistance in exchange for -2 Brawn and -1 Reflexes, and several other downsides. This is one of the most difficult to obtain mutations, on account of its high-security location. This mutation previously drained 1-5% of your money each heartbeat, however this has been removed in Samsara.

Location

Brainslug can be found underneath the Radome in Star Field. To enter, you must wear mormon undergarments (found in Birchwood) and possess no drugs or porn. You also must pass multiple high tier Voxguard locks, which can be difficult to pick through without 25~ hack and 25~ locksmith skill. More is better, and may be necessary depending on how lucky you are and how many electromag inductors you bring with you. If you cannot do this yourself, it may be wise to bring a friend who can.

1. Go to the Radome in Star Field. Navigate to the first VoxGuard Platinum, and bypass it.
2. Search the side rooms of this area until you find a post-it note. Alternatively, you may skip this step if you wish to simply pick through the next door, or wait for an NPC to open it, but this may be slower.
3. Once the post-it is acquired, go all the way south in this area, and open the door with the combination on the note.
4. Go all the way south to the stairwell, then go two floors down to Level B3. Then, head north-west and locate the second VoxGuard Platinum. Bypass it.
5. This small area contains two tiles; the southern tile contains the brainslug mutation, but much like Vampire, it is not possible to mutate Brainslug without full progression of the larva.
6. Retrieve the larva from its container and hold it until it takes effect. Then, wait a few heartbeats until it reaches full progression. This is much faster than Vampire's infection; full infection takes about ten real-life minutes. Full progression will show a -3 debuff to Brains on @buffs.
7. Walk south, and mutate.

Effects

   Passive: +3 Brains
   Passive: +25 Stun resistance
   Passive: -2 Brawn
   Passive: -1 Reflexes
   Passive: Periodic stress when horny.
   Passive: Allergic to bleach.
   Passive: Cannot attack other Brainslug mutants
   Passive: Slugnet notifications

Advantages

• +3 Brains. This is a huge upside that opens the door to extreme Brains minmaxing, whether used for dedicated brains-max builds or combined with other potent mutations, such as Vampire. As an example, Brainslug mutants can feasibly pick VoxGuard Diamonds before they even drop N-tag.
• +25 stun resistance. This is one of only two sources of flat stun resist in the game, paired with Hooligan (which Brainslug can synergize with). Just as with Hooligan, this is a very powerful advantage in combat.
• Slug minions. Brainslug mutants can (allegedly, please confirm) infect NPCs with brainslugs, and then have them as minions. Beware that this has been nerfed into oblivion on other shards, and is liable to be likewise nerfed if one does problematic shenanigans with it. Also, minion lifetime scales with their brains stat.

Disadvantages

Deathgear and Brainslug

Deathgear infects wearers with ATP, a disease which (at higher levels of progression), causes the infected to randomly attack targets on their tile. Unfortunately, as with Stench, the game considers the player's own mob as a viable target. While brainslugs will never properly queue attacks against themselves, much less cause harm, they will take substantial, periodic stress if heavily infected with ATP, especially if alone in a tile, because the game thinks that they are trying to cause harm to "one of slug".

• -2 Brawn. Even for builds that dump brawn, this is a significant hit to carry capacity, and builds that do intend to use brawn will have to build around this.
• -1 Reflexes. This is a hit to one of the most generally-important stats in the game. Fortunately, it's a pretty small negative, and depending on the build this is used with, it can end up being negligible.
• Periodic stress when horny. This can be confusing at first. There is no flavor message to inform the player that something is amiss; they simply gain stress for no apparent reason, in large doses. You can avoid this with a libido suppressor implant.
• Allergic to bleach. Brainslugs cannot pick up any container that has bleach in it. Drinking bleach at any time (from a container on the ground) will permanently remove this mutation. The larval stage of Brainslug can also be used this way. This is an issue for freakslugs, who are thus unable to use bleach for maintaining quadruple implants.
• Cannot attack other Brainslug mutants. In theory, this is almost always a non-problem, since brainslug is such a rare mutation.

Appearance

This mutation adds the following line to a character's description:

   An unnatural lump protrudes from the side of his/her head.