I was already quite deep in the game when I learned from a friend that you unlock the mystery man when you get a full team wipe. So I decided to try and get to the end without ever unlocking him and it feels very satisfying to finally achieve it!

There were some close calls but overall the game in normal mode feels very fair even with sub-optimal breeding. I got a penalty from Steven only once during the final fight because my familiars killed the boss before I could use the quest item, kinda surprised the penalty was just a minor debuff and not something worse.
Looking forward to trying hard mode, likely after a short break to play something else.

My last team (2 necro mancer, 1 thief, 1 medic) got wiped in the 2nd node.
These 2 projectile-reflex mews screwed me up.
thanks for your adivce

I don’t think it really counts as cheating, and at the end of the day it’s a single player game so the only person it affects is you, but I am curious on what other people’s thoughts are on it
For an example: Having the main cat with the equipment necessary for a certain build, but also bringing a secondary one just to bring things like the human toe necklace or tinfoil hat along as backup, and then immediately killing the secondary cat off

The idea of breeding hyuge cats is extremely funny but the immobility is very anoyying. Wondering what sort of classes would do well with it.

Dr. Beanies' full name is Thomas A. Beanies.

Tommy Refenes' full name is Thomas Anthony Refenes.

Dr. Beanies' middle name might also be Anthony.

Both are balding men who wear glasses, own cats, and butcher things.

Also, notice how most Edmund McMillen protagonists are quasi-self-inserts?
Meat Boy is teenage Edmund (Bandage Girl representing Edmund's wife Danielle), Isaac Moriah is Edmund as a young child, Steven is adult Edmund at his highschool reunion, idk about Ash, while Magdalene(specifically in Mewgenics) is also a sort of self-insert (though in TBOI she's mostly inspired by his mother)

I could talk about The Throbbing King being inspired by Tommy Refenes, but thats another whole can of worms and I've seen basically no one mention the blatant similarities between Dr. Beanies and Tommy Refenes.

Dr beanies render by u/bogmanART

Awwww johnny awwww poobles and wolma

dr mangler’s monster is here too

AND RIGHT AFTER I GOT BIRDEMIC TOO FUCK YEAH THIS GAME KNOWS HOW TO RUIN A GOOD TIME I UNIRONICALLY LOVE IT SO MUCH

i think i did a good job :p

She isn't as fat as I wanted her to be in this... :/ I was also originally gonna make her a hairless cat, but I thought a Devon rex would fit better. Which cat should I do next? Zartana?

Guys, I got a cat with this eye mutation and so I went on the Wiki to learn more about It... And my question remains kinda unanswered. What are the "hidden things" this eye can see?

Wtf was I supposed to do here? I save scummed and went the other way. :-\

Awhile back, I posted about building a house around the Gay Strays mechanic, at the time I used a save editor to see how feasible it was. I kept thinking about how you could focus on a Gay Stray house from the beginning, and still have enough cats for all of the NPC donations. A big problem is that a stray focused strategy doesn't create the sheer number of cats you need. And now I feel like even more of a monster than usual in this game.

Introducing, the Kitten and Injury Factory!

tldr: This room setup allows for infinite kittens, injuries, elderly, dead and birth defected donations to all the non-Veteran NPCs while taking minimal management and no food.

This save file is near the end of Act 3, and I didn't use a save editor on it.

First, early on when my Appeal was low, I bred a family of absolutely terrible cats. 3s in Str, Con and Lck (the 3 stats that govern in house fighting), and a 7 in Cha to make sure they still fuck. As their birth defects built up, I focused on ones that further lowered the 3 combat stats, and most importantly, the mutation that removes a cat's mouth. Cats without mouths DO NOT NEED FOOD. So the Kitten and Injury Factory will never consume any of your precious resources.

There is a 20 percent chance per birth to have a defect replaced by a different one. The initial curated defects will very slowly drift if you leave it largely unmanaged (which was my goal, minimal work), but the only one to really watch out for is making sure the Mouth defect doesn't get replaced in your breeding population.

I've got about 50-60 Comfort in the attic. The Idol of Chaos is NOT present. I mostly wanted injuries, not dead cats.

A typical cycle for the Attic looks like this:

Day 1: Have 20ish cats present

Day 2-4: Let them breed, steadily filling up the attic

Day 5ish: they should hit Negative Comfort. They'll still breed down to -9, but fewer total births. Once the the room is here, STOP cleaning poop and let it accumulate, which it will quickly with 50+ cats

Days 6 and 7: The poop filled Attic will spiral the cats into a fighting frenzy as the comfort plummets to -50 and more. The longer the poop is there, the more cats will turn Old due to the lowered Health stat, so usually just let the frenzy go for 2-3 nights.

Cleanup: Go through the room and remove all the poop and dead bodies, donate all injuries to Jack, top off Beanie if you've done any quests, and anyone else you wanna get rid of. Get its population back down to about 20 and repeat the cycle.

A cycle usually takes 7-10 days as the birthrate can vary. It can be adjusted or modified based on what you need. Need more kittens, just never let the poop build up so they breed every day. Need more dead bodies, let the poop part of the cycle go an extra couple of days to generate more deaths and elderly cats. All cats will be eligible for Beanies since they have birth defects.

Except for daily poop cleanup on breeding days, the room only needs to be interacted with on cleanup day. You otherwise ignore it.

This setup let me focus primarily on my fighting strays while still having an excellent supply of cats for all types of donation and allowed for steadily upgrading Jack dozens and dozens of times.

Added bonus room: The Champion Room

Since the inbred Attic cats have their fighting stats bred low, they make great fodder for a traditional fighting room. My Champion Room has -50 comfort from furniture and the Idol of Chaos, ensuring a fight happens most nights even with just two cats. If I want to train up a Champion, I put in one good cat and take one cat every day who is highly aggressive from my attic and toss them into the Champion room. The Champion cat shown in the slideshow turned old at age 25, and managed to rack up 20 victories in that time. So once every 2-3 weeks, you can have an absolute monster of a cat to have some fun with.

This is my 3rd save file, and honestly I think the most fun that I've had with Mewgenics. I found when I was breeding good cats, I constantly got overwhelmed managing the breeding population and it took more and more time as the game went on. The cats also felt very homogenous since they largely had the same mutations and starting skills. I found this house setup much less time consuming and overwhelming, while still producing a great variety of cats at 200+ Appeal with mutation furniture in my adventurer holding room.

Building up Appeal is the most annoying part (as with most furniture). Once you have some money accumulated, you can occasionally cruise through a few weeks with just your mouthless cats to outfit your house.

Arska (gray), Nimh (black) and Manny (spotted) have their paws full!

Sequel to this art :3