Feedback [Nightly] Beasty

Last night's nightly update added the single BEST feature for crafting. Spoilers, of course.

When I went to Terramart, I saw some interesting things; an egg and some feed.

The latter two feeds had no price, so I couldn't buy them. I grabbed an egg and a Burning Beasty Feed out of curiosity, and found out the egg was a furniture item. After a few seconds, it was shaking.

When it was shaking, it could be interacted with. The most adorable thing popped out when I clicked on it.

This little thing wanders around like a critter, and can be captured. I made the mistake of thinking it persisted on my ship, and it despawned when I left. I made a capture pod and kept it with me. Now, the feed was interesting; you have to hold left click on the Beasty while holding the food. I only bought the burning feed, but when you shake the feed in Beasty's face, this happens;

The Burning Beasty is a big, fluffy and flaming cow! As it wanders around, it will graze on any grass (or floor in general, it isn't picky), and just look soft. After a while though, it changed colors. The yellow Burning Beasty became a red one;

Here's where things get pretty cool; you can talk to the Beasty by pressing E or middle mouse clicking it after it changed colors. This happens;

It reverts to yellow, and dropped a Scorched Core. There's no need to hunt the items when you can raise Beasty pets. Grinding to make the various EPP modules is much easier with these fluffy companions. I checked the other feeds in the assets, and they provide matching items; Frozen gives Cryonic Extract, Electric gives Static Cell, and Poisoned gives Living Root! Well, Poison and Living Root doesn't make sense, but hey; less grinding!

Whatever dev made this, you're awesome.

 

O god, I would love the idea of evolving pets that get really deep into this general idea, like a Chao Garden mini game within the game of Starbound itself. I guess all of the farmers roleplayers out there will now have a reason to create a barn now.

Also to the dev that made this a thing I'll have to say good use of the capture pods, I guess they aren't just good for combat anymore. In fact in theory you might be able to make a profit off of them.

 

I would ADORE if ranching was expanded upon; with more alien critters to care for of varying sizes and whatnot. It could be an interesting way to make a profit, too; simply sell off what ya get offa them, and you're golden.

But right now, beastys seem to work like a mobile plant, but without the need to water them; I'd assume that you'll have to provide food for them in a future update. Maybe getting them medicine for when they're sick/attacked by monsters? It'd be a fun and immersive in-game relationship to have your livestock assaulted by predatory monsters.

 

Seriously, this seems like a really cool feature. I should really check out the nightly build more if there are things like this in it

The item drops seem really helpful too. Nice one

 

Not going to lie: Their grazing animation is so super cute I burst into unabashed laughter when I first saw it!
Beasties will also complete any farmstead.
I wonder whether we'll see metallic or robotic variants in Glitch settlements... (like robo chickens?)

 

The Glitch Villages used to have the passive random quadruped, but now they have a grey Beasty that turns dark green and drops one Plant Fibre per harvest. Not really that useful, unfortunately. Here's hoping we get one that provides batteries or something instead at one point.

 

thanks for the post, it was interesting

 

Interesting to hear how my expectation was (almost) met perfectly. Apart from the Glitch Beasty being kind of lame as you describe, it's exactly where I'd expected it to be.

 

From Tiy's twitter:

https://gfycat.com/DisguisedPleasedAmazonparrot