Introduction
This guide is meant to serve as a quick intro to botany and why you need to do it to be an efficient and capable researcher. Failing to perform botany tasks means losing out on many hard-level contracts.
These contracts are often quicker and easier to complete than medium-level contracts, while simultaneously offering higher compensation and better odds and traits.
You need to plant and mutate a total of 8 different plants to acquire 10 total reagents. As per KiVts, these are:
Atropine from Poppies
Psoralen from Cabbages
Coniine from Carrots
Phenol from Carrots
Digoxin from Messa’s Tears
Zygacine from Reshi
Amatoxin from Reshi
Thymol from death/poison berries
Urusiol from Deathnettles
Cyanide from Poison Apples
Of these plants, 4 are very easy to deal with and have the same procedure.
Basics
To access all the seeds for botany, you need to hack the botany vendor. The analyzer and screwdriver to do so are in the north of research and analyze the “Inventory Control Computer” in the seed vendor.
Tools of the Botanist:
Botanists need a grinder to put plant chems into a bottled form. Found in south research.
The rest of the tools are found in a cabinet in Botany
These tools are as follows:
Plant Analyzer: Allows determination of plant stats in full detail and any chems in the tray
Mini-Hoe: Removes weeds
Plant-Clipper: Allows for the duplication of seeds from a planted seed
Shovel: Deletes plants in a tray
Plant Bag: Bulk movement of plant products and seeds
Finally, any self-respecting researcher will always wear their reagent scanner HUD to tell what is in their solutions AND their plant products.
Solutions
We will also be working with several chemicals useful to botany at the start of the round. Those being:
Alksyine: Forces mutation to be only related to species
Mercury: Forces mutation to be unrelated to species
Iron: Allows for multiple clippings of the plant
Radium: Carcinogenic 2 and Hemoraging 1 (The former causes mutations and the latter increases the chance of mutation)
Unstable mutagen: Carcinogenic 1
Ammonia: Feeds plants, increases output, increases health
Diethylamine: Ammonia but better
Gene Editing
Growing plants without editing their genetics first is a sordid waste of time. To the right of the seed vendor are three machines.
Lysis-Isolation Centrifuge: Extracts useful genes from a seed packet and stores it on a disk
Bioballistic Delivery System: Applies useful genes from a disk onto a seed packet
Seed Extractor: Turns a plant product into a bunch of seeds
Philosophy is simple. We want to apply the vigour of wheat to all plants we grow. Then, we apply the products of lime or chili to all but the mutant apple trees to encourage those plants to yield repeatedly.
We apply these gene modifications before we even start mutating, in the hope of saving time and headaches down the road.
CRITICAL TO NOTE, ON SPECIES CHANGE, ALL GENE MODIFICATIONS ARE LOST
Plant Procedure
Normie Plants
As discussed earlier, 4 plants can be grown and mutated simply. These being:
Poppies, Messa’s Tears, Carrots, and Cabbage.
Plant these plants, save a spare packet incase something goes wrong via plant clipping with the plant-clippers, and mutate them with your choice of mutagen (radium or unstable mutagen). Generally 60-120 units of mutagenic chemical is sufficient.
Of the four remaining plants, there is one we do not want to mutate into another species. That being Reishi.
Reishi
For Reishi, go ahead and gene mod it in advance. Planting it like the above 4.
In this case. Apply 10 mercury quickly after planting and follow the rules for normies plants.
Plants from Precusor Plants
The final three plants:Deathnettles, Poison or Deathberries, and Mutant Apples, come from other species instead.
Those being nettles, berries, and apples.
Applying genemods prior to planting the precusor plants is pointless.
To quickly get the final isolate seeds from the precusor plants. Throw 120 units of 50:50 unstable mutagen/radium mix into a tray, alongside 60 units of alkysine.
This creates a tray that only causes species mutation.
Immediately plant apple or berry and take a clipping in-case you get the wrong species.
If you get golden apple or glowberry, dig up the tray with a shovel and plant your clipping you saved in the last sentence.
If you get “mutant apple” in the tray, or poison berry/death berry. Take a clipping of the plant to obtain the target seed, using iron if necessary to obtain extra clippings.
If you do this above process fast enough, you can obtain the seeds for death/poison berry, mutant apple, and deathnettle before this one tray runs out of chemicals.
For the berry and deathnettle variants, go ahead and follow the procedure for the “Normie Plants.” This includes gene modding in wheat vigour and chilli or lime products.
For the mutant apple, apply wheat vigour and plant. Mutant apples innately produce cyanide.
What Do I Do With These Chems?!
First and foremost, scan each of the 10 chems for RnD points.
Second, fill out your contracts and enjoy smooth sailing in research.