Waterweed mutations

[_underscore]

Hello!

I am currently trying to mutate some waterweeds to no avail. This is one of the setups:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This blasts the waterweeds with about 1300-1400 rads. Two setups of this kind have been going for over 700 cycles and I still have not gotten a mutation.

Every other plant I've done next to the satellite has mutated pretty much instantly and now such a long time has passed that I don't think I can blame it on bad luck.

The wiki says that waterweed mutation range is 25-740 rads, so I assume it's possible to have too much radiation in this case. After realizing this I made multiple wheezewort setups:

This has been going for about 500 cycles now, so I can only assume this also does not work.

What am I doing wrong? How do you actually mutate waterweeds?

[Charletrom]

You need more rads. Plant mutation chances range from 0% to 80% depending on its radiation range. Waterweeds are particularly rad-tolerant, as their maximum radiation is 7400 rads. Waterweed also has a very long growth time, which obviously means fewer chances to drop a seed, compounded with the potentially low chance of a seed spawning depending on the harvester's farming skill.

That said, 700 cycles is a long time. Do you know approximately how many seeds/cycle you get with the upper setup?

[_underscore]

The satellite setups should get me about 1.2 seeds per cycle.
The wheezeworts about 2 per cycle.

If a lack of rads is the issue the only thing I can think of is putting some next to my infinite nuclear waste storage.
But while the concentration in the center is very high at about 16k rads, for the neighbouring tiles it doesn't seem to leak out that much more than a satellite would. 
Is there a way to get higher rads, about the 6-7k range, shining onto a farmtile? Radiation lamps seem much too weak for the job.

[Charletrom]

Hmm I'm a bit surprised you haven't seen any mutations for the satellite (but not for the wheezeworts). Have you tried using a research reactor? You can set them um so they only run at harvest time, which is the only time the rads matter. The game only checks the rads at the active tile for the plant when the seed spawns. I have had success with waterweed using this setup. This post has a save file that demonstrates how to do it: 

 

Nuclear waste radiation works differenly from other sources, it only extends two tiles no matter what.

[_underscore]

Alright, waterweeds close to a research reactor did the trick and they mutated pretty quickly.
The main thing to learn from this is the massive difference in mutation chance between the plants.
I still have gas grass on the to-do list and they can take up to 12.2k rads. I will just assume that was never going to happen without a research reactor so thanks for the tip.

[cyberwarlord]

Nuclear waste. A lot of farms you can freeze tons of it just under the planters and or above.

Shinebugs and surface farm for passive seeds and easy crops.

 

Radbolt burst may have some potential but unlikely. 

Radioactive waste and germs.

Edited January 8 by cyberwarlord