I'm thinking of starting a Slime Ranch playthrough. Any ideas?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Mistcrawler, May 17, 2017.

  1. Mistcrawler

    Mistcrawler Void-Bound Voyager

    So I'm just about finished nearly clearing all the bundles by winter of my 1st year (I missed a darn spring fish so I doubt I'll be done this year lol) and while i was clearing a bunch of slimes I started thinking about farming them instead of crops for a change. So here's what I was thinking:

    Objective: To clear Grandpa's evaluation at the end of year 2 with my only source of production being slimes and slime drops from my farm... or in town (yes, apparently I can make them in town too lol)

    Ways to accomplish this:
    1) Go the Joja route instead of community center with the money i earn from killing hundreds of slimes. After all, i won't have any crops or fish to turn in.

    2) If we're including slime products, and for the record I can see this taking some of the fun out of it late game, I can use iridium bars and drops from the slimes and continue to copy them with the relevant machines for income.

    Problems I see already:
    1) If i want to build slime incubators and hutch's without cheating, it requires combat lvl 9 and iridium bars, both of which would require a lot of time in the mines that have tons of supplemental income. I could cheat the hutch's in from the beginning with a few eggs and use that as my income year round, or I could try to beat the mines and ignore everything I get that isnt from a slime (excluding ore which i wont sell? or should I exclude that too?)

    2) There's a population cap on slimes, that as far as I know, appllies to at least all outdoor slimes. Every night theres a 3.5% chance of a slime (or each slime?) escaping when there's too many in play. Since I'm farming them I could just keep them at the population cap, but it'll be interesting to see if the population cap is high enough to sustain killing them for income.

    3) I hope villagers like slime, because that's all i have to offer them as friends :)

    What do you think so far? Or what would you change/pursue?
     
    • Lilliput

      Lilliput Supernova

      Outdoor slime ranching beats indoor for population growth, easily. The best locations for this after much testing and messing about would seem to be the railway station area or the island in the south-east corner of the Cindersap (south of Leah's cottage, where the spring onions grow). Wild populations of slimes down there spread like crazy. Getting a couple of purple slime eggs to farm for iridium will take a bit of luck and at least a couple of visits to the Skull Dungeon, but you won't get any slime-egg drops at all until /after/ you've built an actual Slime Hutch on your farm. (The trigger for adding them as a slime loot item does not seem to activate until you've had Marlon's cut-scene after building your first slime hutch. It's possible to make a slime-egg press before this, but getting purple slime eggs out of a slime-egg press is /really/ low probability, something like a 5% chance.)

      I suggest reading this thread if you haven't already done so for more suggestions.
      http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/the-magical-thread-of-slimy-awesomeness.127962/

      EDIT: Also, you will have a few things aside from slime to gift the locals with. Depending on slime color, they can drop a few gemstone types. Granted, not everyone likes gemstones, but, you'll be able to make at least a few villagers happy.
       
        Last edited: May 17, 2017
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      • Stryder87

        Stryder87 Giant Laser Beams

        I don't even know how this could even work... but I'm picturing the entire town overrun with slime... AWESOME! I think I've seen that before though... I think they were called The Flood... and they liked jumping on your head... :)
         
        • Mistcrawler

          Mistcrawler Void-Bound Voyager

          HAHA thanks for the quick replies and link - and if I get to name any slimes/hutches I'll be sure to name them THE FLOOD lol :) So any ideas for early game? Like what should I be allowed to keep or focus on to get hutches without breaking away from this theme?
           
          • Mistcrawler

            Mistcrawler Void-Bound Voyager

            And do you guys know if multiple indoor hutches count against the population cap for outside, or is every indoor hutch separate; I wonder how its calculated... (for instance, I heard somewhere that there was a bug where if you fill one water trough in a hutch it fills all of them, so maybe all the indoor hutches are connected?
             
            • Lilliput

              Lilliput Supernova

              Well, here's the thing, a lot of items you will need to learn how to make are dependent on other skills than 'combat'. You want decent fencing for outdoor slime pens? You'll need to raise your farming skill to get those. To produce the batteries you'll need to make slime-egg presses, you'll need to boost foraging to make lightning rods. The resources and smelting? Mining. You won't be able to pursue the large-scale slime ranching without first doing a lot of other things that don't figure into your plans. Not to mention that one of the things Grampa checks in his evaluation are your skill levels themselves. You're going to need to farm, mine, and forage just to keep afloat. If you consider fish to be slimy, then, add fishing in as another skill-set.
               
              • LuthienNightwolf

                LuthienNightwolf Oxygen Tank

                You'll need to kill 1000 slimes first in order to obtain the Slime Charmer ring, which is an absolute MUST if you're going to breed slimes. You have to do a pretty hefty amount of running around in the mines to reach that goal anyway so might as well work on the mining and combat skills while you're at it.
                 
                • Mistcrawler

                  Mistcrawler Void-Bound Voyager

                  Gahhh I don't see how I can raise my farming level without 'converting' to this theme after the first year of building up my skills (or is there something I could farm that's slime-related that would count towards the skill?), so there would be a lot of free ranged slimes lol. I wanted to solely do 'slime' things, with the exception of mining (since it has slimes I think it counts), but fishing might be a bit too far fetched to count, even with them being 'slimey' lol.

                  The foraging skill for batteries is a problem due to the time it would take to achieve it, but since I'll have to clear a lot of trees anyways for slimes it should still be possible. Maybe if I got really lucky and bought it at the travelling cart I could jump start things lol. After all, I imagine I'll be in the end game 'dungeon/cave' before I get batteries the normal way with this set of guidelines lol.

                  As far as Grandpa's eval, I did think getting the required points was very possible:

                  Assuming I was earning enough money, the Joja path would net me 3 points for completion, skull key for 1, maxing out my foraging, mining, and maybe combat skills that's 30 skill points right there for one point, up to 7 points for a million gold (wishful thinking, but I have some room to fall short on this, and up to 4 for various friendship points.
                   
                  • Lilliput

                    Lilliput Supernova

                    Optimistic. You're already talking about limiting gifts for the villagers by limiting what you produce and forage, that will make getting those friendship points a lot harder. You can talk to everyone, every day, but that's a lot of running around, isn't it? And I don't think you get any points at all for CC completion if you go the Joja route. (I've never done it, but the wiki specifies grampa gives 1 point for CC completion and 2 for the CC completion ceremony-- neither of which you get if you pay Joja for the community improvements instead.)

                    Oop, I did forget the Slime Charmer ring, as Luthien pointed out. Trying large-scale slime farming without it will be an ordeal, to put it mildly!

                    I may offer a slightly revised vision of your proposed slimy plan, something I did myself a couple of saves ago. Using the Wilderness Map, I created a Monster Hunter character (Inspired by a combination of Indiana Jones and Solomon Kane (for those who read R.E. Howard)) who farmed and did the other skills only with the larger goal of completing monster eradication goals for the Adventurer's Guild. I would farm, but only those crops that could be used for mining or combat bonus recipes. I built a Slime Hutch but did most of the slime ranching outside, in the Cindersap area, raising a huge colony of purple slimes for their ore and other drops. (The indoor slime colonies were only for 'pet slimes' of specific colors.) Something along these lines may let you pursue a slimy career with a few revisions!
                     
                      Last edited: May 17, 2017
                    • Stryder87

                      Stryder87 Giant Laser Beams

                      I don't have the ring yet, I can't even run around through my one Slime hutch with about 12 slimes without almost getting my butt handed to me! haha I actually carry that Return Staff from the sewers with me when I go into my hutch just to escape the lil' beasties.
                       
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                      • Lilliput

                        Lilliput Supernova

                        Someone else I saw either here or on youtube (I forget which) had a similar problem and put up internal fences inside the slime hutch to allow himself to move around at least enough to refill the water troughs, without becoming Pete Venkman to a Class 5 Full Roaming Vapor.
                         
                        • LuthienNightwolf

                          LuthienNightwolf Oxygen Tank

                          ^ That's what I did with mine, way back on my first farm where I actually used the slime hutch for slimes. Made it a heck of a lot easier to get in and out without being attacked. The ring will prevent this issue as well.
                           
                          • Stryder87

                            Stryder87 Giant Laser Beams

                            But both you and the slime need access to the water troughs. That would require a shared space where they can succefully do the head tango until you blackout... not to mention being able to grab the slime eggs.
                            However, can you not fill the water trough and just not get the slime eggs? Not sure how that works. I thought they needed the water to reproduce as well.
                             
                            • Lilliput

                              Lilliput Supernova

                              Do they? I've never actually seen the slime visit the troughs, just like I've never actually seen a chicken eat hay from the feeder inside the hutch. Does the game actually check to see if they have access? Or is the presence of water inside the trough enough to satisfy the hidden livestock behaviors, when you aren't actually inside the hutch?

                              My only active Slime Hutch is currently a winery, so, not going to be able to test this out for myself.
                               
                              • Stryder87

                                Stryder87 Giant Laser Beams

                                Well, I do know that if you don't put hay in the feeder, the animal happiness will go down, so i would assume it's the same for the slime. Whether they actually have to have full access to the troughs as opposed to them just being filled, no idea. I should fire up that save and try it out.
                                 
                                • LuthienNightwolf

                                  LuthienNightwolf Oxygen Tank

                                  The slimes don't have to be able to reach the troughs, you can fence them off and the slimes will still produce slimeballs. :) The game only checks to see if the troughs are filled.
                                   
                                  • Stryder87

                                    Stryder87 Giant Laser Beams

                                    You still have to get to the slime balls though. hahahaha
                                    Return Scepter FTW!! :headbanging:
                                     
                                    • Lilliput

                                      Lilliput Supernova

                                      Yes, exactly my point-- it's not that the game doesn't need those troughs to be filled or there to be hay in the feeder. Those are absolutely required. My point was, does the game /actually check if there is a physical path to that full trough/feeder?/ And Luthien confirms what I suspected. The game doesn't, because any feeding or drinking takes place when you aren't present in the building, and the resource merely deducted by a hidden game mechanic. This makes fencing that area off a little safer for slime ranching before you can get the Charmer ring, though you're right, it doesn't help you to collect the slime balls.
                                       
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                                      • ChaosAzeroth

                                        ChaosAzeroth Existential Complex

                                        I actually used one of my hutches to help get the ring, as it's a nice supplement to mines and can be cleared out quickly to try new color lines.
                                         
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                                        • LuthienNightwolf

                                          LuthienNightwolf Oxygen Tank

                                          When I had my setup I had a pretty elaborate system of gates and fences. I had a fence that went around the perimeter of the room (except the top wall) with gates placed next to the incubator (so I could run in, throw an egg in, and get out quickly) and near the entrance. The troughs and egg-maker were on my side of the fence so the only time I had to go in with the slimes was to harvest. Gates placed at opposite sides of the enclosure gives you a chance to outrun them and get through before they have a chance to pile up on you.

                                          Even with all that, I got tired of being swarmed so I emptied the hutch and just used it for storage until I got my ring. >u<
                                           
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