The Appalachia Super Mutants were created shortly before the Great War, when West Tek contaminated the river water that ran through Huntersville with a strain of FEV as part of an experiment.[1]
The super mutants of Huntersville are similar to those of Mariposa and the Institute: they have green skin, overdeveloped musculature, and they are smart enough to build improvised armor from waste or scrap. Although they do not use large fortifications like the Vault 87 or the Institute strain super mutants, they can occasionally build small fortresses or take entire buildings. Like Vault 87 and Institute super mutants, Huntersville super mutants can grow into behemoths, which can be seen guarding their main bases.
The majority of the super mutants will attack the player character but some super mutants are nevertheless friendly and even trade with humans like Grahm.
Characteristics
Biology
Huntersville super mutants have green skin, hyper-developed musculature and are a slightly larger size than humans. Due to the nature of FEV and its origins as the Pan-Immunity Virion Project, super mutants are completely immune to the Scorched Plague.
They possess great strength, which allows them to inflict serious damage with melee weapons, but strong protection can limit the damage done.
As one can observe from time to time, super mutants are essentially carnivorous and hunt all kinds of creatures and animals, including humans, Scorched and large predators, to devour them or stock their meat to build up reserves. Many bags of meat are strewn about in the fortifications of super mutants or carried in their inventory.
Gameplay attributes
The Huntersville super mutants live mostly in small, well-organized groups, often led by a much stronger super mutant.
They often build armor made from scrap iron or rubbish that can provide some protection against the player character's attacks. They attack their opponents most often with rudimentary firearms like pipe pistols or more advanced weapons like rifles, shotguns or even missile launchers. Many super mutants fight with melee weapons or use explosives to attack from a distance.
It's rare to see a super mutant escape during a fight because they are not afraid to attack big predators like deathclaws, mega sloths or Scorchbeasts, and will continue to fight even if they are injured.
A super mutant that will run at its enemy with a beeping mini nuke in its arm. It will then detonate itself while in close proximity, killing its enemy and itself in a fiery, nuclear explosion. Shooting the mini nuke in the suicider's hand or targeting the right arm in V.A.T.S. will cause the mutant to explode prematurely, killing it instantly. As a result, shooting the bomb from afar is one of the most effective ways to dispatch them, and potentially other nearby enemies as well. If one is desperate to kill a suicider and the only weapon types available are unarmed and/or melee, the player may either sneak attack it, or run up to it, strike it, step back a bit, and repeat until it's dead (though the latter is not advised as one missed attack will allow the suicider to detonate the mini nuke, and accidentally hitting the mini nuke with either type of attack will detonate it). The suicider can be detected before it is seen by listening for the beeping of its mini nuke. If the suicider is killed without detonating the payload, which can be done with a headshot or body shot, a mini nuke can be looted from its corpse; otherwise, only nuclear material will be found on its remains.
Behemoths are powerful super mutants that have grown to an enormous size. Being the oldest and strongest of their kind, they lack intelligent speech, having to resort to guttural roars to communicate.
Behemoths are armed with a fire hydrant still mounted to a massive water pipe. They also have the ability to throw heavy boulders from the shopping cart on their back.
