I'm not generating the mutations automatically. Every one is a single targeted change assigned to a single test, reviewed one at a time. Thanks to that changes that mean the same thing don't stack up. The cost is reversed, I only catch what I thought about.

My real issue is different. This week one change removed the step which is creating a filename from the path and the test didnt catch it, it was passing. It wasn't an equivalent mutant, the test was looking at the wrong place. It works for me only because I'm working here on a single file, a complex bash script. Does anyone have a sensible way to limit equivalent mutants without manually checking every one that survived?