How Viable is Beefalo Domestication?

[NSAiswatchingus]

5 hours ago, Well-met said:

if your best solution to a mechanic is "just roll back" then that probably means it's flawed.

What solution to what mechanic are you talking about? Someone asked how I kept my beef alive for so long and that was how. 

5 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Mistakes are players fault so with or without rollback, if a tamed beefalo dies is players fault but yeah, using rollback as a fact that the mechanic is good is nonsense

"Something crazy" can be a lot of things. Random lag spikes, disconnects, pet jumping on your controller/keyboard hitting the dismount button in the middle of a fight. The kind of things that make a player think, "Well, I'm not taking a 2 hour loss because THAT!" I've made plenty of points on why beefalo taming is useful. Everyone's entitled to use whatever aspects of the game they want to. 

[Brago-sama]

I too have an ornery beef in my 2300 day world. I like the concept, but yeah..... I feel it really needs some polishing.

He's still fun to use. I like fighting Klaus with him with Wes to impress people with, so at least he's good at making me feel cool.

I was thinking about making the speedy Beef, but Just one already eats so much salt licks. I think I'll wait until an update for beefs comes out (if it ever comes)

Edit: oh, and since someone shared the Xbox trophies, here's the PlayStation beefalo trophie percentage at 0.6%

Spoiler

 

[Toros]

On 6/25/2020 at 12:59 PM, NSAiswatchingus said:

What solution to what mechanic are you talking about? Someone asked how I kept my beef alive for so long and that was how. 

"Something crazy" can be a lot of things. Random lag spikes, disconnects, pet jumping on your controller/keyboard hitting the dismount button in the middle of a fight. The kind of things that make a player think, "Well, I'm not taking a 2 hour loss because THAT!" I've made plenty of points on why beefalo taming is useful. Everyone's entitled to use whatever aspects of the game they want to. 

In reality, you didn’t keep your beefalo alive that long, because rollbacks weren’t meant for undoing mistakes.

Your argument is revealed to be massively hypocritical because a big portion of the “Beefalo cost too much to tame” argument is that they’re a huge investment that can be very easily lost.

You are using anti-griefing mechanics for something it wasn’t intended for to bypass the natural downside of beefalo taming while arguing the mechanic doesn’t need changing.  No wonder you feel the way you do.

[NSAiswatchingus]

1 hour ago, Toros said:

In reality, you didn’t keep your beefalo alive that long, because rollbacks weren’t meant for undoing mistakes.

Y'all really wanted to jump on the rollback comment. Is there a specific purpose for rollbacks or is it to be used how each player sees fit? Since everything in this game must be an uber punishing slugfest I assume you never rollback for any reason OR use any mods as a solution to game mechanics. 

2 hours ago, Toros said:

Your argument is revealed to be massively hypocritical because a big portion of the “Beefalo cost too much to tame” argument is that they’re a huge investment that can be very easily lost.

I think we already established that beefalo domestication has a time and place. If on a personal server with long term goals, where time isn't limited, then domestication is a worthwhile investment. I don't see the hypocritical part. Certainly not "massively". 

2 hours ago, Toros said:

You are using anti-griefing mechanics for something it wasn’t intended for to bypass the natural downside of beefalo taming while arguing the mechanic doesn’t need changing.  No wonder you feel the way you do.

I didn't say domestication was perfect. It could use some polishing for sure. The thread is asking if domestication is VIABLE. 

Beefalo domestication is capable of working successfully. Do you disagree with that statement? Whether or not it's the absolute 100% most efficient course of action for general play environments is a separate discussion and one I'd probably agree with you on. 

[wigfrids hat]

i think people are focused on it because while it is a option that can be utilized it wasn't made with the intention of aiding in beefalo domestication so people who are against domestication as a practice can use this as an example of why domestication is not a reasonable option

 

i'm pretty neutral on it. it just seems like a late-game personal flex. you do it because it is there and it is hard. it extends the life of the game by giving you one more thing to do and if you manage it then it can be used to show others that you are a "pro" at the game for real and true without anyone complaining about cheats and cheeses

[MondayNight]

With introduction of Walter and Woby beef domestication became even more devalued. Couple this with cheap Moon Gate character-switching and you have a pretty much superfluous mechanic now, aka the beefalo domestication.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

59 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

With introduction of Walter and Woby beef domestication became even more devalued. Couple this with cheap Moon Gate character-switching and you have a pretty much superfluous mechanic now, aka the beefalo domestication.

i cant be hitten or fight with hambats damage with woby

[MondayNight]

2 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

i cant be hitten or fight with hambats damage with woby

Should've specified: for carrying statues to fight Nightmare Chess Pieces.

Rest is pure "premium" facultative use. Aside Wendy and Wes, taking care of tamed beefs is a waste of time. Ham Bat/Dark Sword, armor and kite. Sure, is your choice to tame and tralala Beefs. But in terms of how viable that is.. not so much. Only kinda mandatory partial-tamed beefs consistent use was for mentioned movement of Suspicious Statues heads.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Should've specified: for carrying statues to fight Nightmare Chess Pieces.

for statues i dont see how it changes. If you are walter you will use woby if not you will fed a beef with few twiggs

 

i never tamed one but is a luxury featured so i dont see logical to say isnt viable when you can tame a beefalo and use it with carefully. If someone was expecting to solve all his survival problems should rethink what are he playing, in dont starve anything is "easy". You dont need to use it to "win" as a lot of other "tedious" features

 

[MondayNight]

20 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

for statues i dont see how it changes. If you are walter you will use woby if not you will fed a beef with few twiggs

Walter can day 1 move said heads (if finding them then) after effectively punching MM out of some tier 1 nest spiders (Spider nests are pretty much everywhere) - what I do, yes, punching (no joke). No need to find beefs and the rest. Woby is more reliable, always follows you and whatnot. Of course is more viable than a beef at moving Statues heads.

And yes, you can "win" DST with any item, for example I love to whip all mobs with Tail o' Three Cats. Is it expensive? Certainly. Is it efficient? Hell no. Is it immensely fun (for me at least)? Hell yeah! Would I recommend it as a viable weapon? Nope. Same with Beefs. Again: play the game however you want, but if someone asks for efficient/viable/etc ways, perhaps don't suggest such items/mobs (Tail o'/Tamed Beef)

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Walter can day 1 move said heads (if finding them then) after effectively punching MM out of some tier 1 nest spiders (Spider nests are pretty much everywhere) - what I do, yes, punching (no joke). No need to find beefs and the rest. Woby is more reliable, always follows you and whatnot. Of course is more viable than a beef at moving Statues heads.

And yes, you can "win" DST with any item, for example I love to whip all mobs with Tail o' Three Cats. Is it expensive? Certainly. Is it efficient? Hell no. Is it immensely fun (for me at least)? Hell yeah! Would I recommend it as a viable weapon? Nope. Same with Beefs. Again: play the game however you want, but if someone asks for efficient/viable/etc ways, perhaps don't suggest such items/mobs (Tail o'/Tamed Beef)

and im with that. Is viable? yes, is efficient? nope

edit: im ok with beefalos being expensive. Make you more in in terms of taking care of an animal and also, with the perk he brings, could be a little op if it were cheap (tankiness, speed and good damage with no durability)

[Sweaper]

It's ok to start taming it first year, specially with a twig farm to feed it 16ish of those a day (4 every 1/4 a day), I don't remember the number for the exact minimum number of twigs anymore. Just expect to not get much of the other stuff done while taming the beefalo. Also, get a beefalo hat and don't leave your on heat unmounted beefalo near mobs if you're not carrying ice staff/pan flute or some other mob control item because it might die.

[Toros]

On 6/26/2020 at 8:00 PM, NSAiswatchingus said:

Y'all really wanted to jump on the rollback comment. Is there a specific purpose for rollbacks or is it to be used how each player sees fit? Since everything in this game must be an uber punishing slugfest I assume you never rollback for any reason OR use any mods as a solution to game mechanics. 

I think we already established that beefalo domestication has a time and place. If on a personal server with long term goals, where time isn't limited, then domestication is a worthwhile investment. I don't see the hypocritical part. Certainly not "massively". 

I didn't say domestication was perfect. It could use some polishing for sure. The thread is asking if domestication is VIABLE. 

Beefalo domestication is capable of working successfully. Do you disagree with that statement? Whether or not it's the absolute 100% most efficient course of action for general play environments is a separate discussion and one I'd probably agree with you on. 

Rollbacks were designed and intended purely as an anti-griefing measure, and that’s what I use them for.  There are many ways in game to undo normal failure and prevent loss of a world.  Domesticated beefalo are uniquely a large time investment that can easily be lost, which is why myself and other people say they aren’t a viable option due to moderate strengths, high risks, and high investment cost.

I use mods, generally ones that buff weak mechanics and nerf overly strong ones.

Taming beefalo is fighting bosses with axes and grass suits.  It can be done but is so inefficient and time consuming it’s not a viable choice when there are strictly better options.  Nor would I be happy is there weren’t, because combat with such would be tedious and punishing.

As someone who clearly loves domesticating Beefalo as a playstyle, you should be lending your voice to those who want it to be made vastly easier.  You could use your preferred tactic outside of long term solo worlds because it would be buffed into viability outside of very narrow parameters.  There is no benefit to anyone for maintaining status quo.

[NSAiswatchingus]

5 hours ago, Toros said:

Rollbacks were designed and intended purely as an anti-griefing measure, and that’s what I use them for.  There are many ways in game to undo normal failure and prevent loss of a world.

I don't think that's true. DST would have half the base it does if rollback wasn't an option. It would take new players far too long to get better or invested in mid-late game content if every failure meant a full world wipe or hours lost preparing for a fight/waiting for an opportune time to try again. My goal when playing a game is to have fun. If rolling back allows my friends and I to try what we're doing again instead of losing a bunch of time mindlessly gathering supplies again, I'm going to opt for that. Not everyone has all day every day to sit around a play games.

5 hours ago, Toros said:

Domesticated beefalo are uniquely a large time investment that can easily be lost, which is why myself and other people say they aren’t a viable option due to moderate strengths, high risks, and high investment cost.

Large time investment is subjective. 15 days with Brush. Not that long in my opinion. Easily lost if playing risky and not taking care of beef. If on public server you've wasted your time anyway because as soon as you leave it won't be taken care of. Moderate strength if not using an ornery beef sure, but that's not what it's trained for. 

5 hours ago, Toros said:

Taming beefalo is fighting bosses with axes and grass suits.

You're not doing it right then. An ornery beef with a War Saddle is the only thing you should be fighting bosses/hound waves with. It's actually like fighting with an unlimited Dark Sword and a 1000hp self healing meat shield. 

5 hours ago, Toros said:

As someone who clearly loves domesticating Beefalo as a playstyle, you should be lending your voice to those who want it to be made vastly easier.  You could use your preferred tactic outside of long term solo worlds because it would be buffed into viability outside of very narrow parameters.  There is no benefit to anyone for maintaining status quo.

I don't think to needs to be vastly easier because it's already pretty easy. It wouldn't matter how easy they made it anyway since anything but a solo or private server keeps going once you log out. Unless Klei entirely removes the maintenance upkeep for beefs it'll only ever be a serious option for longer term, more controlled, server environments. From what I understand, public servers are a playground and are in no way the preferred method to experiencing all the game's content. Most people consistently play on friends only and solo worlds which are the optimal places times to try beef taming. Not sure why that would be a "very narrow parameters". 

[ShyRo-Zyerenzy]

it's easy when you learn how, you can also stay surface a lot + mix it with preparing quickly the shadow bosses, dfly , beequeen. So it's viable as a rush strat too. Pick wendy to see even more damage as ornery too and you get an anti aoe double tank boss killer. 

There's only one thing i agree with. maintenance can be annoying in long term. It could be toned down or removed (  any change won't make a difference to me )

[Ispin69]

Hopefully after they put shipwrecked legit boats in dst, they improve beefalos next. No one should be using dragonpies to tame beefalo. Just use twigs. Not grass because grass will need to be fertilized eventually while twigs never need any maintenance. Everyone should have chests and chests full of twigs --- to fuel fires and flingomatics. Like others have said, they should make slots for armor or even increase damage with an extra beefalo horn or a weapon slot for the beefalo. Carrying slots would be nice as well. Other than using beefalo to explore for the klaus sack in winter, most people don't really use the beefalo in late game other than to move statue pieces or antlion glass castles. Salt licks should last twice as long as they do now or maybe make them cheaper to make as well.

[E1234]

Taming a Ornery+War Saddle Beefalo as Wendy (As I like to call it "War Chief Wendy") is the most broken thing you can do in DST. 1000 health pool that auto regenerates and 66 damage that gets boosted by Abigail's damage multiplier. It's obviously worth the effort if you're not in a public server. Combat becomes a joke when you have this. .

One of the major goals of the game, long term survival, is basically complete if you tame an ornery beefalo. Theres literally no way for you to die when you have one. The only thing that can damage you when you're on a beefalo is Mactusk's blowdarts and being lit on fire. You essentially have an 1000 hp damage shield that auto regenerates.

People really over exaggerate how hard it is to tame a beefalo, probably due to a lot of the misconceptions about it and how the stats are all hidden. People still think you need to feed it 4 dragonpies a day for 20 days to tame it when thats just not the case. You just have to keep riding it and feed it a couple twigs every time you get off it.

The only thing that sucks about taming beefalo is that you cant take it into the caves, which I'll admit really blows.

Also, People comparing a tamed beefalo to Woby are completely missing the point. Woby isn't a 1000 hp death machine infinite durability Dark sword. You cant effortlessly tank everything without taking damage with Woby.

So if the question is "How viable is beefalo domestication?" the answer is "Extremely viable". I'll also add that the only really useful tendency is Ornery and Default. RIder+Glossamer Saddle is very fast and has minimum 95% obedience but I don't think thats worth doing half the damage. 

[NSAiswatchingus]

I've also been finding that the usefulness of a beef is even greater when playing as Walter. No armor blocks 100% of all incoming damage but a Beefalo does keeping Walter's sanity intact.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

5 minutes ago, NSAiswatchingus said:

I've also been finding that the usefulness of a beef is even greater when playing as Walter. No armor blocks 100% of all incoming damage but a Beefalo does keeping Walter's sanity intact.

I guess he cant shot riding the beefalo like ridong woby, right? It could be so good

[NSAiswatchingus]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

I guess he cant shot riding the beefalo like ridong woby, right? It could be so good

He still can. Just equip the slingshot and he'll attack with that instead. Unequip to go back to normal beef attacks. Could be useful if on a Rider type. 

[WhoSalty]

As soon as it is time to move all the statues around the map for the shadow creatures fight is when I start domestication. Since you really need a beefalo for the task anyway I think it’s smart to do it during this time.  You spend a few days on the thing moving the statues and before you know it the domestication job is done.  Much easier if you already have a brush.  To keep it domesticated I pen it with a gang of salt licks.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

On 4/30/2020 at 3:20 PM, Well-met said:

Add Koalefants to domestication.

OMG, now i wish to be able to domesticate ewecus. Also, i would love to be able to domesticate gnarwails and swim on them.

[SnowdropPax]

Beefalo are a valuable asset. Or, they can be. Beefalo allow you to carry heavy items quickly and efficiently. But right now it's very time consuming and costly to tame a beefalo. Beefalo taming takes 20, long tedious, days. And that's assuming that your beefalo doesn't loose any domestication points. A beefalo has 375 hunger and looses 300 points every day. So a beealfo needs to eat 64 grass, 32 twigs, 8 fist fulls of jam, or 4 dragon pies a day. That's a bit ridiculous

It's my opinion that either beefalos shouldn't loose domestication points once domestication has been started, or else lower the hunger drain/amount needed to keep beefalo full. 

[Ohan]

24 minutes ago, SnowdropPax said:

So a beealfo needs to eat 64 grass, 32 twigs, 8 fist fulls of jam, or 4 dragon pies a day.

Feeding it 24/7 is one way of taming it but u can also tame a beefalo by just feeding it a few twigs/grass/berries a day, just enough to maintain obedience basically, and riding it. you can successfully tame a beefalo while completely ignoring its hunger 

A beefalo gains domestication if it has food in its belly and/or ur riding it. If you start the taming early game u'll explore the map much faster while at the same time taming a beefalo without needing to feed it 4 dragon pies a day 

 

[Primalflower]

It's viable enough! Just not the way a lot of people have been misinformed into doing. 

Something many people seem to get stuck on a lot is whether or not you should ever feed your beefalo. You shouldn't! It's a complete waste of time to try to rise the beefalo's hunger value, you should only ever feed it stuff like lightbulbs/twigs/grass to raise it's obedience so you can hop on it. simply riding it will raise domestication just as much as it having some hunger, and you should be riding it basically all of the time if you choose to do it anyway. 

That alone, I feel makes beefalo domestication twenty million times easier.

Aside from that, I feel like taming beefalo is something you have to really understand before you get into. At least when I get a tamed beefalo on lock, I basically spend the rest of my game riding it around and minding it, so as to keep it's domestication up and continue using it to it's best potential. I assume many tame beefalo with the intention of only ever using it for one or two things, and just having it rot in salt lick hell for the rest of the game, which is really not something I'd say you should do if you want a tame beefalo to be "viable".