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When you first start playingMudborne, a cryptic frog in your dreams tasks you with helping to repopulate what seems to be a decimated ecosystem, beginning your journey of breeding assorted tadpoles to grow into frogs with just the right stats to help you progress through the story.
There’s plenty of work to be done in Mudborne, though, even outside of the basic breeding of frogs. You’ll need to trade with others, explore a secondary dream world, collect dozens of resources, and keep tons of statistics straight, so here are a few things we wish we knew before we began.
Eat Bugs To Establish Their Flavor Profile
You’re a frog trying tobreed and raise frogs, so who better toknow what a frog might like to eatthan a frog themselves? In Mudborne, you’ll findseven unique flavorsof bugs(sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy, slimy, and umami) as you run around sampling the local selections, and not only does eating bugs make you move faster through the waters of your current map, but you’ll also be able to assess how each bug tastes.
This is critical becausetadpoles need the right flavor bug to grow up, and they’re particular little pals. Every kind of tadpole you place into a nursery will ask for acertain flavor of critterto eat, so its up to your frog to know just what to recommend. By default, when you catch bugs, their flavor profiles are listed as unknown, so you’ll need tobalance eating and catching bugsto ensure everything is available for your tadpoles.
Once discovered,a bug’s flavoris logged in your encyclopedia (along withtheir climate of choice), and you’ll see its flavor when you hover over it in your inventory or hot bar. For helpful hints before you wander out swinging your net aimlessly at swarms you sew, trytalking to the other frogsto see what they’ve been eating lately – they’ve got a good handle on the local cuisine, so they’ll have hints on which bugs carry which flavor profile.
Learn Better Composting Recipes Early
It’s not long into following the in-game Compendium progression that you’ll learn everything there is to know about compost. There areeight unique kinds of compostin Mudborne, andeach variation has a different effecton the mushrooms that grow in the cultivators you’ve placed. After you’ve discoveredone of the compost recipesfor the first time, it’s logged in the composter menu for easy access to subsequent batches.
Most of the time, you’ll make Leafy Compost, which is the run-of-the-mill compost option in Mudborne. If you don’t follow the recipes for the specific variants of compost, each of which only have one potential recipe, you’ll end up with Leafy Compost. It’s not a bad thing, per se, but it’s also nothing special.
Mushroom spores grow in Leafy Compost just fine, but with seven other types of compost to try out, why settle for the default? There’s Rich Compost that makes spores grow slower but sees more of them appear once the cultivation time is finished, or Loose Compost that does the exact opposite, growing quicker in exchange for growing fewer spores in total.
There’s no right or wrongway to cultivate mushroomsin Mudborne as long as you’ve got compost and a cultivator, but make doing so a priority – there are plenty of uses for them throughout the game.
Use Overflow Storage Areas In Machines
Each time you get your froggy little hands on a new machine, you’ll often see that there are a few blank slots along the bottom section. The menus for machines can be a bit overwhelming when you first begin using them, but it’s never a bad idea toleave resources for machines in the overflow storage. You’ll get better storage options as you progress through the game, whether by trading with other frogs or stealing chests you’ve emptied, but this helps for now.
Overflow is usually on the bottom of each machine’s menu. If you’re ever lost using a machine, the ? button on the left side of its menu will label the menu for you, making it easier to tell which components go where.
You’ll learn soon enough that, while your inventory looks rather large, it fills upfast. If you’re using the same resources in the same machines constantly, why not leave the stack of resources there in the machine itself for easy access next time you need them? You can even continue to add piles into the machine from your inventory if you come back with more items that stack. Especially if items have a singular use, like frogborne eggs, it’s helpful to limit inventory hauling where you can.
Invest In Frog Furniture
The frogs you catch or breed, though, do not count as resources – those are friends! If your frogs aren’t currently busy in a breeder box with another frog producing some frogborne eggs for you to pop into the nursery and raise, and you don’t have space for them in your inventory, you canbuy and place frog furniture items to stash spare frogswhen you’re not bringing them along.
You’ll find avariety of frog furniturein a few different sizes, able to place these items around your ecosystems to use to stash your froggy friends, especially if you trade with Annura for all your various flowers in the Climate Control region. Until then, you canuse a hammer to take furnitureyou see around thedifferent maps in the gameand bring it back home with you.
Interact with the frog furniture once placedto open a menu, which will display how many frogs can fit into that specific piece of furniture. Move frogs from your inventory into this storage area, and you’ll see them physically appear on the furniture back in the ecosystem, hanging out until you need them again. This is a helpful way tokeep track of important frogs, like ones you’re using for breeding or are saving fora specific Reflection Pool, since each map’s pool leads to a different section of the dream world.
Use Lilypads To Hop Across Deep Water
The maps you’ll unlock in your atlas as you progress through different chapters of Mudborne are vast and full to the brim with resources to collect and new areas to explore, but you seem to be a frog that can’t swim too well.Deep water blocks your pathforward in a lot of places (as will algae and assorted static, depending on where you are), but you might have a path after all.
Lilypads aren’t just for skimming off layers of waterproof coating for your compost layers – you canjump onto lilypads and use them to cross sections of deep water. Your frog can hop further than you think, too, so no need to go one by one. If there’s not a little cancel button over your mouse when you hover above a lilypad, that means your frog is capable of jumping there, so hop to it!
you may see lilypads on your map, which helps to plan ahead and see which land masses you cancurrently access in the world you’re in. Who knows what you’ll find if you hop to the neighboring section of shallow water, especially if you’ve already got the gear needed to clear out some of those pesky algae blooms that block access to critical buildings.
Commune In Your Dreams For Hints
That ethereally ominous frog that appears in the night sky sometimes when you go to sleep? You’re not sure who that is or what they want when you first spawn into Mudborne, having survived what seems likea cataclysm of some kind, but if you need ahint on what to do next, you may count on them to give it whenever asked.
While you’ll bump into the stellar frog several times organically as you follow the in-game guide and progress through major story milestones, if you ever find yourself lost, you can always choose to talk to the frog again. Simply head to bed and choose theCommuneoption instead of a time of day and the weather forecast . This brings you into a short cutscene where the sky frog offers hints on who to talk to or where to go to keep progressing the story.
Check The Dream World If You’re Lost In The Waking One
You’ve likely seen a few of the reflection pools dotted around the ecosystem when you first begin exploring the Spawning Pools map, so be sure to make note of where they are for later. These large frog ponds are your method ofmoving between the dream and waking worldsat will.
There are plenty of areas you can’t access right away in the waking world: you’ll find locked doors at almost every building on the Spawning Pools map, chests on islands you’ve got no way to reach, spots marked on the map that have no direct path to them, and more. If anything doesn’t make sense when you notice it in the waking world, make a note toinvestigate anything suspicious in both worlds.
That chest you’re able to’t reach in the waking world? The dream world has a path leading straight to it. That key you need to help Hopert open the roof to the building you’re sleeping in? That’s in the dream world, invisible in the waking world. Locked out of a building on a later map? Activate a Reflection Pool there and head into your dreams. If you’re ever stuck, check the other world to see what you can find!
Your Frog Friend Matters
Practically as soon as you catch your first frog,likely to be a Common Greenbased on where you first start the game, you’ll be prompted by the in-game guide toequip a frog from your inventory to follow you aroundas you navigate the two worlds (andthe Gateway Nexusas you fast travel between maps). Not only is it adorable to have a little friend to follow you around, constantly looking for love if you interact with them, but the frog you have following you will allow you access to different abilities.
As you breed frogs, you’ll always need to keep their genetics in mind, with their traits measured with the A.N.O.U.R.E.S.acronym, which stands for Amplitude, Nobility, Odour, Umbrage, Ribbit, Edacity, and Saturation. Depending on how your frogs have been bred, you’ll find plenty of variants of each kind, allowing access to a wide range of traits. Using the right kinds of mushrooms when youmake your magic mudis critical here!
Around the worlds in Mudborne, you’ll find plenty ofareas and puzzles available to frogs with certain statswhile remaining off-limits for others. For example, smaller frogs can fit into the small gaps you see in building exteriors, while heavier frogs can weigh down switches for you. Be sure you have the right frog friend following you for the occasion! You’ll need to manually place them, but having an important frog follow you is a great way to keep track of them in your inventory.
