Serum: Best Early Game Serums

Serum is a survival, crafting, and exploration game that features a variety of different serums for players to use. Each one provides different effects useful for combat, survival, and traversal of Serum‘s gloomy and atmospheric game world. Although options are limited in the early game, there are still some choices to be made when equipping Adam, the protagonist, with serums.

While it’s possible to stack serum effects, doing so produces more Human Distortion, which can prevent Adam from healing, so it’s not always the best choice. Here are the best early game serums, accounting for availability, level of distortion produced, and any abilities or powers they provide.

10 Tether Serum

Useful Combat Power

• Effect: Grants Tether combat power
• Distortion cost: +10 Human

The Tether Serum is an essential serum in any tester’s toolkit. Combat in Serum can be quite difficult, especially at the start of the game, and the active serum Tether is a great way to level the playing field.

When Adam uses Tether, woody vines grow from the ground to entangle any enemies around him, giving the player room to breathe and an opportunity to attack. Used as a singular effect the Tether Serum only costs +10 Human distortion, too, making it a cheap way to gain an active power.

9 Health Restoration Serum

Basically A Healing Potion

• Effect: Grants varying health restoration
• Distortion cost:

Health Restoration is an excellent effect that can help keep Adam alive longer. It’s essentially a basic healing potion. The Health Restoration effect can be used in conjunction with other serum effects making it a good choice to round out a particular serum – particularly with the Blight Protection effect.

Not as flashy as some other serums, Health Restoration Serum is very useful in the early game when it feels like enemies hit harder and take a while to go down.

8 Destructive Leap Serum

Area Effect Damage

• Effect: Grants the Destructive Leap ability
• Distortion cost:

Destructive Leap is an incredibly useful ability that allows Adam to jump up and crash into the ground, letting off a shockwave that stuns nearby enemies.

This is an extremely effective ability that’s available very early on in the game, making it an easy choice of effect to use in a serum.

7 Weapon Damage Serum

• Effect: +10 Damage
• Distortion cost: None

The Weapon Damage Serum is an extremely useful serum and serum effect. It grants additional damage to Adam’s weapons but doesn’t have a Distortion cost, making it essentially free to use.

Weapon Damage is a great effect to combine with other effects to make even more potent serums, but the Weapon Damage Serum is a great choice on its own precisely because it doesn’t cost Distortion and can be used as and when necessary.

6 Antifog Serum

Fog-Be-Gone

• Effect: 100% Toxic Mist resistance for 10:00 minutes
• Distortion cost: +20 Human

The game world of Serum is a harsh one filled with mutated plants, animals, and even a dangerous toxic mist. Even with blight protection, the toxic mist in Serum is deadly to protagonist Adam, effectively blocking the player from traversing locations inside the mist.

Fortunately, there is a type of serum that grants 100% protection from the toxic mist. Antifog Serum is an essential serum for any player to carry around, whether on its own or as a combined effect with another serum.

5 Blight Protection Serum

More Time To Live

• Effect: +5:00 minutes of Blight protection
• Distortion cost: +33 Human

The Blight Protection Serum is the basic serum Adam can craft and sometimes find in the world, but it’s an incredibly useful serum. In Serum, Adam only has a limited amount of time he can survive in the world without protection from the Blight.

Blight Protection Serum grants five whole minutes of Blight protection and can be stacked, at a cost of only 33 Human Distortion. This is larger than some other serums, but it’s an absolutely essential expenditure and is a lot better than simply eating raw ingredients for minuscule boosts.

4 Blight Protection + Antifog Serum + Healing Serum

Antifog, Antiblight, Nice Healing

• Effects: +100 Toxic Mist resistance for 10:00 minutes, Blight resistance for 5:00 minutes, 100 Healing
• Distortion cost: +53 Human

This serum packs a whole lot of punch, granting five minutes of blight protection, ten minutes of Toxic Mist resistance, and 100 healing. This is really great utility, but it does come at quite a steep cost.

+53 Human distortion is a lot to pay for the effects, but sometimes it’s worth it for the all-in-one effect.

3 Blight Protection + Healing Serum

Fantastic Basic Serum

• Effects: +5:00 minutes Blight protection, 100 Healing
• Distortion cost:

The Blight Protection and Healing Serum is a great choice of serum to use after a fight. Some fights in Serum can last a little while, especially in the early game, so at the end, it’s easy to run out the Blight protection timer and be in need of a little healing.

Thankfully, this two-for-one serum can do both. Using it extends both the Blight protection timer and grants healing, giving Adam – and the player – a little extra room to breathe.

2 Tether + Destructive Leap + Blight Protection Serum

All-In-One Blight Protection And Utility

• Effect: Grants Tether, Leap of Destruction, and 5:00 minutes of Blight protection
• Distortion cost: +69 Human Distortion

The combination of the Tether, Destructive Leap, and Blight Protection effects is an extremely useful one during the early part of Serum. Tether and Destructive Leap offer great combat utility, while protection from Blight is always a plus in Serum’s harsh world.

As a nice bonus, the Tether and Destructive Leap abilities last until death or the use of the Absorber, making them a much more medium-term effect than many others.

1 Resistances Serum

Three Resistances in One

• Effects: Blunt, Slashing, Piercing Resistance +0.3 for 5:00 minutes
• Distortion cost: +15 Human Distortion

Combat in Serum can be quite challenging, and there are times that Adam feels quite squishy. Fortunately, there is a solution to that problem: a serum specifically designed to increase Adam’s resistance to damage.

This is a nice effect, and it’s also pretty cheap in terms of the Distortion it causes, although its ingredients are a little more annoying to gather than some other serums. Still, it’s a great choice for any player who’s feeling a bit fragile.