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The final step to take you out of the Spawning Pools map inMudborneis to meet up with Dendro and find a way to access the Central Junction, the main hub for the pond that allows access to several new areas you’ll need to explore and restore to progress the game.
Dendro asks you to open the North Spawning Pool just to the east of where you find him, which requires you to change a frog’s A.N.O.U.R.E.S. quite significantly in just a single generation. Use your progenitor to find the correct magic mud recipe that unlocks the North Gate.
Make Genetic Changes In A Single Generation
When you first meet up with Dendro the historian, he’ll give you a wealth of information about the area you’re in and the things that’ve been going on, but he also mentions that there’s much more to your pond just ahead of somestepping stones to the north that have disappearedonce he crossed them. You’ll have found the first half of them by activating the switch on the roof of the Reeption building, but to finish reactivating the stepping stones, you’ll need toenter the dream world from a new access point.
So far, you’ll have been usingother Reflection Poolscloser to your temporary home down at the Carpenter’s Workshop with Ribbert, potentially even exploring other pools as you breed new frogs using the mushrooms you’ve found around the Spawning and Distant Pools maps. Now, though, Dendro tells you that you’llneed to reactivate the Northern Reflection Pooljust to the east of where he’s standing to gain access to the other half of the path into the Central Junction.
This Reflection Pool, like the others, will ask to see a specific set of frog traits, but this one has an additional layer to the puzzle - you’ll need tobreed the requisite frog in only a single generation. This introduces you to a new tool, theprogenitor, which can analyze and display theprevious six generations of any frog’s lineage. It allows you to make sure you’ve made the jump asked of you in the limited generational span, which will require some extremely careful mushroom balancing.
The spores you’ll need to open the North Spawning Pool in Mudborne can all be found in the dream world, the Distant Pools, which you’ll see displayed both on the small signs right beside the pool and on the informational page for that specific Reflection Pool in your Scrapbook, where you’ll collect all kinds of notes and bits of lore leading to discovering the truth behind what happened at this pool.
Specifically,the key mushroom you’ll needto get from the dream world is theFool’s Mirror, the blue mushrooms with purple dots that grow in chilly water in the dream world when it’s not raining, as well as theSquat Amplifierthat blooms in dream world mud when it’s raining and balmy.
While you’ll only need one for this recipe, it may not be a bad idea to grab a few mushrooms when they’re in bloom - it never hurts to have different effects at your disposal when tinkering with frog breeds, especially whentrying to make their variants.
With these two critical dream world mushroom species in hand, you’ll want to be sure to also grab aFlat Stinkhornfrom the grasses of the waking world, since it’s the final piece of the puzzle to makethe correct magic mudthat opens the North Gate. Head back to wherever you’ve left your crusher and cauldron and prepare a mud recipe that usesone Flat Stinkhorn, one Fool’s Mirror, and one Squat Amplifier. The resulting mud willadd two Nobility and subtract one Odorfrom any frog on which it’s used.
To breed the frog that opens the North Reflection Pool to progress into the Central Junction, you’ll simply need to breed tadpoles of theFurious Lurkervariety using this mud, and capture at least one of them once they’ve grown to their full size after some time in a feeder. This will give you theRancid Lurker variety, a green iteration ofthe Furious Lurkerthat has the correct genetic sequencing in the requisite number of generational jumps.
With a Rancid Lurker in hand, head back to the Northern Pool and place your frog variant into the Reflection Pool there as you normally would. After a brief animation, the Northern Pool will be active, and you can use it to enter the Distant Pools map from a different location to the north, which was previously inaccessible.
Be sure to bring a frog with maximum Amplitude like a Vast Mudlurker with you when you enter the pool to save some backtracking.
After going through the Reflection Pool yourself, you’ll find a newbridge leading northinto the next area, which is where you’ll find apressure switchthat activates the remaining stepping stones into the Central Junction. With the frog in place and the stones restored, goback to the waking worldagain, then hop on over the stones to find Dendro and get the ball rolling on saving the rest of the pond.
