Slime improvements

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by DanmakuGrazer, Oct 3, 2016.

  1. DanmakuGrazer

    DanmakuGrazer Void-Bound Voyager

    Ever since hearing about 1.1, I've been hoping it would bring along an overhaul of slime ranching and breeding, which always felt pretty unrewarding, but sadly that was not the case. The addition of Petrified Slime to slime balls is a good start, but not enough to make slime ranching worth it, so here are some suggestions on how to improve slime ranching and breeding from someone who has played around with slimes a lot, roughly in order from smallest to biggest.

    Let the player phase through slimes with the Slime Charmer Ring equipped

    Pretty self-explanatory, I should think. Getting stuck on slimes always wastes a lot of time when you get cornered inside a hutch. An easy solution to make harvesting slime balls faster, and doesn't affect the balance in any way.


    A way to automatically fill water troughs inside slime hutches
    Everything else can be automated with sprinklers or auto-feeders, and slimes should be no different. Either sprinklers, or maybe a Slime Hutch upgrade that requires a water source within a certain distance to automatically fill the troughs.

    Give more uses to slime eggs
    Now that it's possible to get slime balls in multiple hutches, I've quickly amassed a large number of slime eggs. In fact, I have more eggs than I'll ever need! Slime eggs sell for very little and they're not used for anything other than making more slimes, but all of my hutches are already full and I'm not in any rush to unleash 100 green slimes in the town. Maybe slime eggs could be used in some recipe to transform them into a different colour, used in some advanced magic, or just make them into mayonnaise. I bet purple slime mayo is delicious and worth a lot.

    Make it possible to disable the witch's black slime event
    Every night I fear I might lose one of my hard-worked slime colours to the witch's whims. A way to disable the event entirely -or better yet, for each hutch individually- would make me rest easier.

    A way to move slimes across hutches, and/or a way to easily and safely kill individual slimes

    Too many times I've had a nice colour of slime appear completely unexpectedly whilst breeding for a different colour, and I had no choice but to kill them and try to recreate them in an entirely new hutch. A way to move these slimes from one hutch to another would make it easier to separate different colours, and a way to kill individual slimes would make it easier to get rid of unwanted mutations when trying to fill a hutch with a single colour.

    A way to check what a slime is going to drop without having to kill them
    I often find myself wondering if a certain slime is too grey to be considered white, or too blue to be considered purple, and I have no way of getting them out of the gene pool without knowing for sure if they're detrimental to my goal. I don't know how this could be implemented, but it would be a lovely addition.

    A way to harvest slimes' drops without having to kill them
    Probably the most important change in order to make slime farming worthwhile, slimes have many interesting drops like gold ore, coal, and iridium ore, but they breed much too slowly to make killing them for their drops worth it, in addition to the complications of trying to breed a single colour considering random mutations can always happen, and it's possible for a slime to look purple whilst not dropping iridium. A way to do this could be through slime balls, it's pretty sad that a hutch full of green slimes and a hutch full of purple slimes give the same slime balls.

    Differentiate slime hutches and outdoors ranching
    Right now there is very little incentive to let slimes breed outside: you don't get the slime balls, and slimes can escape once you have too many. It would be interesting to see a distinction between hutches and outdoors ranching, maybe with hutches being the more "tame" side of slimes, and outdoors awakening the more "feral" side of slimes. Maybe even a bonus on the wilderness map? Something should be done anyway.
     
    • ConcernedApe

      ConcernedApe Stardew Valley Dev Developer

      Some good suggestions, thank you. I agree that slime breeding is not profitable enough. I would've liked to spend some time on it for 1.1 but I had a deadline to meet and I just wasn't able to. I might be able to add a way to prevent the witch from ruining your slimes in this little patch I'm working on. Perhaps just increasing the value of slime eggs by a significant amount would go a long way as well.
       
      • Caudyr

        Caudyr Black Hole Surfer

        A couple of things I'd like to point out about this (and "fairly easy ways" to deal with them if they're done).

        AUTO-FILL FOR WATER TROUGHS

        Easy and simple way to do this is to simply give the slime hutch some upgrades, one of which would be the addition of a "water pump" as part of the hutch which will automatically fill the troughs. Could also have one that increases the size of the hutch.

        I still like the idea of being able to use the hutch for multiple types of monster breeding, though...so this could also be used to implement that (different sections for each monster type in the Hutch) if you wanted to, heh.


        SLIME EGGS

        I haven't messed with the Slime Hutch at all yet, tbh...so I don't know much about them.

        Do the slime eggs have color specifications on them already? (Like Green Slime Egg, Purple Slime Egg, etc.)? If not, giving them one might be useful.

        If so, you could make it so the Slime Eggs could be made into JELLO (or Gelatin, to avoid Jello copyrights, if it's necessary?) instead of MAYO...cause, y'know...they're slimes...and making mayo out of a slime seems STRANGE, imo. Then you could have things like Green Jello/Gelatin, Black Jello/Gelatin, Purple Jello/Gelatin, etc.

        The "more difficult to create" slime types, if there are any, could sell for more when made into Jello/Gelatin, too...so it would give you a way to make artisan goods out of the slime eggs.


        DISABLING WITCH'S BLACK SLIME EVENT

        CA's probably already got an idea about how to do this, since he's mentioned it already...but easiest way would be through a ritual at her hut, where you select what building you want to protect. Could make it be usable on things other than the Hutch, too...so it could be used to protect your barns and whatnot as well.........if you wanted to. ^^


        WAY TO MOVE AND/OR KILL INDIVIDUAL SLIMES

        Easiest way to do this would be to simply make an item that allows you to pick a single slime up, and it would "store" that slime in the item. If you know much about Minecraft, think of the Safari Nets from that game's modded side (but it could just be a "Net" here). It would accomplish both desires, since you could pick up the slime...move it a safe distance away from the others, then slaughter it. ^^


        CHECKING WHAT A SLIME IS GOING TO DROP

        Maybe have a separate item like an "Analyzer" or something like that, that will give you the details about the slime you click on with it. It would basically bring up a window similar to the animals in the barns and coops. Including what drops it will give...and maybe even what "breeding possibilities" there are with it (depending on how the breeding works, heh).


        HARVESTING SLIME DROPS WITHOUT HAVING TO KILL THEM

        Are you suggesting that we get things like Green Slime Balls, Black Slime Balls, etc. from the slimes (ONLY the ones on you farm, of course, not in the dungeons, I imagine)? If so, I'm all for this. The type of item that each Slime yields could basically depend on what Slime Ball it drops on the ground in a similar way to the coop animals, so it also makes it easy to identify what sort of slime you've got there, as well...which means it could be used to tackle the previous problem w/o having to make an "Analyzer" for it (though it would certainly still be useful, heh...especially if it lets you NAME THEM :D).

        An easy way to "tackle the drops" for this would be to either add a "Centrifuge" item you can build and place to put the Slime Balls in and have it process them...or have there be another upgrade for the Slime Hutch that adds a "processing spot" which includes a centrifuge...and maybe even a storage chest that will automatically input/output from the centrifuge (if that's easy to do, heh).

        It'd be kind of similar to the Mill, maybe? Except that instead of just processing all of one type, once it finishes processing one it will "automatically move the results to the chest and pull in the next one".

        When processing them, what the Slime Balls will yield through this will depend on what color they are...and they could also sell for differing amounts, as well, depending on what they will yield.


        Also...good to see ya around CA~ :D
         
        • DanmakuGrazer

          DanmakuGrazer Void-Bound Voyager

          To clarify, by "slime breeding" I mean breeding different colours of slimes than the 4 that you can get from eggs. While slime ranching as a whole is underwhelming, special attention should go to making sure that a hutch full of pure white slimes is more profitable/useful than a hutch full of green slimes, or at least that's what I believe.
           
          • Lumisteria

            Lumisteria Scruffy Nerf-Herder

            I'm happy to see the changes of slime egg price and the statue preventing witch event in the 1.11 update. Thanks ConcernedApe :)

            I hope there will be more update concerning Slime in the future, but it will already make slime farming more viable.
            I agree that sprinkler should be used to fill the water troughs.

            And a way to move slime in others slime hutchs or outside would be welcome.
             
              Cemo likes this.
            • Bullhead24

              Bullhead24 Big Damn Hero

              How nice would it be if the end goal of slime farming was to create the ultimate slime. A big applause for "SLIMEGIRL".
               
              • Caudyr

                Caudyr Black Hole Surfer

                Anthro Slime, eh?

                ONLY IF IT BECOMES A CHARACTER WITH SCENES!!

                *wants to see that as a marriage candidate, and then have special reactions from all the townsfolk about it!* :rofl:
                 
                • lordofdragonss

                  lordofdragonss Void-Bound Voyager

                  I'm already using a Slimegirls reskin for that, hahaha.
                  But IMO if you keep slime long enough (or lets say 5 slimes of the same color) they should merge and become the bigger one that always guarantee the slimeball daily.

                  I really like the idea of tamed monster on my ranch, and I think some slimes should become not violent after some time - and then when you click them you will get the same window like the normal livestock has.
                   
                  • DanmakuGrazer

                    DanmakuGrazer Void-Bound Voyager

                    There's nothing random about slime balls, so I have no idea what you mean.
                     
                    • Mistcrawler

                      Mistcrawler Void-Bound Voyager

                      I love the suggestions so far but I just wanted to throw in two other ideas that I think would help (and both seem to touch on prior suggestions as well in this thread):

                      1) Decrease the size of the slime hutch by at least 1/4 - the deluxe barn itself takes up maybe 3/4 the size of the slime hutch and its exponentially more productive. After all, the slimes don't seem to need more room than 1/2 the size of the coop if you breed them outdoors, so I'm not sure how all that space is justified in Robin's mind lol.
                      More importantly, if you need to keep that giant size for some reason, how bout putting in a toggled door like the barn/coop so you can enjoy your slime army from a distance. Seems like all the framework is already built into the game :)

                      Update: Just as an addendum to this post - I have the lakeside farm and it seems there's only 2 islands that would even support the size of this monstrosity of a building. Technically it JUST fits on the southern-most island and one other island as well, but then there'd be no way to get into the building since the door is fixed on the south side of the building :( . Either making it one tile smaller height-wise or putting a built-in path to the door of the building (it doesn't make much sense that Robin would agree to build a building that she can't even enter!) would make it much more manageable.

                      2) Add a rare drop for bred slimes for a slime pet/slime pet achievement where you can choose a slime as your new pet next game/slime king boss. For the slime pet, every farm has water on it so they don't technically need the pet's water bowl, but it's already there and supports slimes anyways if you want it to count towards Grandpa's shrine as an official pet. The slime king boss could potentially look like the slime king in terraria and could drop rare items as well as multiple slimes on death. Maybe gaining the slime charmer ring from the slime boss would make more sense than getting the ring that makes slimes passive to u by slaughtering 1000 of their kin lol :)
                       
                        Last edited: Oct 14, 2016
                      • Bullhead24

                        Bullhead24 Big Damn Hero

                        A Slimegirl (suu) as a waifu would be truly be the supreme choice^^

                        I also would like the slime hut to be smaller. It really isnĀ“t justified to be that big considering your example with the barn.
                         
                        • Nanofuzer

                          Nanofuzer Space Hobo

                          How about new boots with some better buffs like speed. And like make the time go by a little bit slower, maybe 10 secs per 10 In-Game minutes.

                          kthnxbai :D
                           

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