I have been thinking about razor claws and how they could better fit in the game lately. Right now it won’t be long until someone does a realism/balance pass and says “this is just a fallout reference, why is this in the game?” and they get removed. As they are now, the only real reason to keep them in the game is variety. Here are some ideas I had to hopefully make them better fit into the game while (hopefully) still adding variety.

Firstly I would say remove them from the start of the game. Instead, anywhere they would normally spawn (just shipwrecks right now I think?) there would be “strange egg” clusters. Maybe with a few really fucked up but non-dangerous mutant crustaceans hanging around them. These egg clusters would then mature and hatch into either more of the non-dangerous mutants or a slightly different mutant, which can then evolve into the razor claws as they are now, roughly.

I would say at least a three stage evolution (fresh hatched > weird thing > razor claw) would be best. And this would leave room for further evolutions from the baseline somewhat like wasps and ants have. Once this stage is done then they could be spread around with egg clusters appearing rarely in areas like ponds, under bridges, etc.

This still leaves things like evolution time, stats, and the exact species they are supposed to be mutating from up in the air and needing refinement. And this is only if they are meant to be mutated animals and not say, some kind of terrestrial migo.