Mewgenics Guide: How to Maximize Your Retired Veterans
Surviving a run in Mewgenics is a miracle, but figuring out what to do with a house full of aging, traumatized felines is the real RNG circus.
Mewgenics is fundamentally a game about resource management, and your most valuable resources happen to meow, mutate, and occasionally sprout extra limbs. When a squad of your best fighters actually makes it back home in one piece, the game slaps a little crown icon next to their names and officially forces them into retirement. You can no longer send these specific cats out on standard adventures.
At first glance, this feels like an annoyance. Your house starts filling up with aging veterans who just eat your food, take up valuable floor space, and start weird fights with the furniture. It is incredibly tempting to purge them all and start fresh with a new litter. Tossing them blindly is a massive tactical error. I learned very quickly that these grizzled survivors are the entire foundation of your late game progression. Managing your retired roster requires a bit of cold calculation and an embrace of the absurd, but I have mapped out exactly how to extract every last drop of value from your furry pensioners.
Building a Grotesque Bloodline
The absolute most important function of a retired cat is breeding. This is a genetics simulator wrapped in a tactical RPG, and if you want strong kittens, you need remarkably weird and durable parents.
Stats, Inheritance, and Weird Furniture
Your retired cats usually possess the highest base stats in your entire colony precisely because they actually survived a gauntlet of biological horrors. When you place two high tier retired cats in a room together, their offspring have a very high chance of inheriting those superior stats and even some of their specialized, borderline grotesque abilities.
You need to identify your absolute best specimens and treat them like royalty. I always dedicate a specific room in my house purely for my top tier breeders. You can actively increase the odds of producing god tier kittens by purchasing and placing the right pieces of furniture in that specific room. Do not get bogged down trying to make the room look aesthetically pleasing. You are running an unhinged ecosystem. Focus entirely on furniture that buffs the specific elemental affinities or base stats you want to pass down to the next generation.
The Local Feline Trade
Eventually, your house is going to run out of space. You cannot keep every single cat that survives a run, no matter how weirdly endearing their parasites are. Once you have your core breeding pairs established, you need to start shipping the overflow off to the various freaks wandering around town.
Donating cats is the primary way you unlock permanent account upgrades, new room expansions, and powerful items. However, every single NPC has very specific tastes. Tink is ruled out entirely because he only accepts kittens. For the rest of the cast, you need to match your retired stock to their unique demands.
My Personal Donation Priority
I highly recommend focusing your early efforts entirely on Baby Jack. Getting your hands on high quality furniture early on completely breaks the RNG in your favor. Once my breeding rooms are fully kitted out, I pivot to Frank to expand my floor plan. I keep a mental checklist of Butch and his biome requirements, shipping him exactly what he needs to unlock the next inventory slot. I only bother with Dr. Beanies when I accidentally breed a cat with a horrific parasite that I want out of my house immediately.
Defending the Homestead in Act Two
If you thought retirement meant peace and quiet, the game throws a massive wrench into your plans the moment you unlock Act Two. This is where your hoarding of strong cats truly pays off.
The Siege Mechanics
Starting in Act Two, your house will randomly be targeted by home invaders. You get a one week notification before an utterly ridiculous boss like Guillotina or Pyrophina kicks down your front door. You cannot send your active, adventuring cats to defend the house. Your retired cats are your only line of defense.
This completely changes how you value your roster. You cannot just donate every single cat you are not actively breeding. You must maintain a standing militia of highly capable retired fighters. When that one week warning pops up, you have to scramble to prepare. I usually spend that week breeding replacement kittens just in case the defense goes horribly wrong. These fights are hilarious, high stakes tactical puzzles. If you lose the battle, the game does not end, but every single retired cat involved in the defense is permanently killed. It is a devastating blow to your breeding program if you send your absolute best cats to the front lines and they get wiped out.
Super Retirement
If you actually manage to defeat a home invader, the surviving cats undergo a unique status change. They become "Super Retired". This title means they are permanently locked out of any future combat, including future house defenses. They can only be used for breeding or donated to NPCs.
This mechanic forces an absurd balancing act of your roster. You cannot just rely on the same four overpowered veterans to defend your house forever. You have to constantly funnel new cats through the adventure pipeline, retire them, use them for a single glorious home defense, and then put the survivors out to stud. It is a grotesque genetic arms race that constantly demands your attention. Treat your aging fighters with respect, manage your mutated bloodlines carefully, and you will eventually build a colony capable of surviving anything this weird world throws at you.
