How Viable is Beefalo Domestication?

[Pootis Bird]

On 4/30/2020 at 9:20 PM, Well-met said:

As for ideas, here's my take as somebody with 1,500 hours of beefalo business

• Tamed beasts should never undomesticate unless players hit it with sharp weapons
• Add some measure of feedback for the hidden stats. A widget or something? We need to see them
• Allow being able to mount beasts in aggro
• Beefs should not attempt to return to savana before it has reverted to full 0% domestication
• Fix unmounted saddled beasts not inheriting the saddle damage bonus
• Fix scaled players making the beast bigger (i.e mighty wolf)
• Beefalos should never produce babies if it has any point of tame process (heat can still happen)
• Tamed beasts should never poop
• Tamed beasts should be able to enter the caves
• Tamed beasts should have a ownership system
• Mounted beasts should leave a server with their owner
• Other players should be unable to harm tamed beasts, even with indirect ways such as gunpowder
• Make salt licks manually repairable with nitre
• Add a new salt lick structure tier that uses sea salt and lasts much longer
• Make straw bedrolls feed beasts 150 hunger
• Tail-o-whip hits should give obedience (at the cost of health)
• Buff tamed pudgy sanity aura to +25/min 
• Add a craftable beast healing item
• Add a few new saddles (shadow and moon saddles?)
• Add a second equipment slot on beasts (like the fishing rod widget)
• Add various gears with defensive buffs for the new slot

(Horseshoe from gorge, a container like Woby, mount armor etc.)

• Add a "mutated" tendency for beefalos.

2000 health

+25% size

 0.5 attack speed

Moon teal colored fur and many more sets of eyes.

Add some new mechanic to mutate beefs on the moon island (perhaps related to a moon saddle?)

Brushing gives 75% wool, 25% moonglass

• Add Koalefants to domestication.

Domesticated Koalefant grows very long horns.

Has 1 point longer attack range. 50 base damage instead of 34.

x2 domestication time, x2 obedience loss, x0.5 hunger.

No tendencies.

Other misc stats same as beef.

Summer koalefant is a shelter. Winter koalefant radiates small heat.

Brushing gives 75% manure, 25% phlegm

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[TemporarySolutn]

zero

[I luv Wendy]

On 6/27/2020 at 12:59 PM, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Rest is pure "premium" facultative use. Aside Wendy and Wes, taking care of tamed beefs is a waste of time. 

No its not a waste of time for wormwood who cannot heal from food. Beefalo is perfect meat shield and heals 4x from food, which wormwood produces alot.

And its the same with some other characters. All you need to do is some testing. 

[MondayNight]

3 minutes ago, I luv Wendy said:

No its not a waste of time for wormwood who cannot heal from food. Beefalo is perfect meat shield and heals 4x from food, which wormwood produces alot.

And its the same with some other characters. All you need to do is some testing. 

Simpler Wormwood HP solutions than the time-and-resources (constantly) sunken into fleeting Beef domestication:

  and/or 

[I luv Wendy]

1 minute ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Simpler Wormwood HP solutions than the time-and-resources (constantly) sunken into fleeting Beef domestication:

  and/or 

I would argue that all the above is more expensive than maintaining a beefalo that can tank, fight, heal with just a twig per use, or a couple of nitre and wood if left idle. 

In my 900 days Wendy playthough I tamed a beefalo on day 24 and I couldn't even count how many tentacle spikes/wooden armor/foodball helmet/pierogi it saved for me. 

Also personally I don't use celestial portal because according to lore your character has to die in order for it to work, and I don't like that. Sure its personal preference.

[Hornete]

7 minutes ago, I luv Wendy said:

Also personally I don't use celestial portal because according to lore your character has to die in order for it to work, and I don't like that. Sure its personal preference.

If I remember correctly, your character doesn't really "die". It might feel like death but I don't think it is. I believe some devs explained how the Celestial Portal works lore-wise on a stream(I wasn't there, but I think my friend @-Variant may have been) And they explained that when a character uses the Celestial Portal, the portal switches them around with another character in another world that's also using the celestial portal. This is the explanation I remembered.

[MondayNight]

2 minutes ago, I luv Wendy said:

I would argue that all the above is more expensive than maintaining a beefalo that can tank, fight, heal with just a twig per use, or a couple of nitre and wood if left idle. 

In my 900 days Wendy playthough I tamed a beefalo on day 24 and I couldn't even count how many tentacle spikes/wooden armor/foodball helmet/pierogi it saved for me. 

Also personally I don't use celestial portal because according to lore your character has to die in order for it to work, and I don't like that. Sure its personal preference.

Original viability question I presume was spread among all types of servers, not just personal ones. And related to all types of play-style and characters not only for specific ones via almost-permanent "babysitting" of a mob (the beef) - aka generally speaking. In this line of thought try using a Tamed Beef on Dedicated Endless worlds with PvP enabled for example. Or Survival un-moderated servers. Where, upon de-logging, Random Noob N+1 smacks your beef because of reasons. Or that starving Wigfrid sees it as walking 4x Meats. Or it just wanders around some Tentacle Field of that helpful Wicker's farm. Or a Hounds Wave spawns 3-4 puppies in its pen (presuming there is a pen and wasn't destroyed by Summer Fires or a friendly Deerclops/Bearger). Or a certain sadistic player spanks your beef from time to time, incognito, just to see you puzzled why beef domestication takes so long or why beef suddenly lost domestication. Or being in a pen and forgotten by everyone reverts back to a simple beef. Or. Or, or, or. See the pattern here? When there is a lot of "or" and "if" problems and only a handful of pros, viability really goes down. And that's why time-and-again people (Beefs' fans) here on these forums post about Beef Domestication rework/re-balance etc via specific QoL update. Thus yes, generally speaking Beef domestication isn't very viable, au contraire mon cher!

[I luv Wendy]

5 minutes ago, Hornete said:

If I remember correctly, your character doesn't really "die". It might feel like death but I don't think it is. I believe some devs explained how the Celestial Portal works lore-wise on a stream(I wasn't there, but I think my friend @-Variant may have been) And they explained that when a character uses the Celestial Portal, the portal switches them around with another character in another world that's also using the celestial portal. This is the explanation I remembered.

Well, the character's quotes when using the celestial portal is just so sad to read. 

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

Original viability question I presume was spread among all types of servers, not just personal ones. And related to all types of play-style and characters not only for specific ones via almost-permanent "babysitting" of a mob (the beef) - aka generally speaking. In this line of thought try using a Tamed Beef on Dedicated Endless worlds with PvP enabled for example. Or Survival un-moderated servers. Where, upon de-logging, Random Noob N+1 smacks your beef because of reasons. Or that starving Wigfrid sees it as walking 4x Meats. Or it just wanders around some Tentacle Field of that helpful Wicker's farm. Or a Hounds Wave spawns 3-4 puppies in its pen (presuming there is a pen and wasn't destroyed by Summer Fires or a friendly Deerclops/Bearger). Or a certain sadistic player spanks your beef from time to time, incognito, just to see you puzzled why beef domestication takes so long or why beef suddenly lost domestication. Or being in a pen and forgotten by everyone reverts back to a simple beef. Or. Or, or, or. See the pattern here? When there is a lot of "or" and "if" problems and only a handful of pros, viability really goes down. And that's why time-and-again people (Beefs' fans) here on these forums post about Beef Domestication rework/re-balance etc via specific QoL update. Thus yes, generally speaking Beef domestication isn't very viable, au contraire mon cher!

Obviously Beefalo taming involving non cooperative player behavior, aka griefing, is an issue that Klei need to address. I agree with you on that. 

However, depreciating the value of Beefalo taming just because of the damage griefing could cause is not warranted imo. Beefalo domestication is beneficial in some situation for some playstyle involving some characters, and that makes it a good feature for me. After all, no one say you must domesticate a beefalo in dst. 

[Ohan]

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

upon de-logging, Random Noob N+1 smacks your beef because of reasons. Or that starving Wigfrid sees it as walking 4x Meats. Or it just wanders around some Tentacle Field of that helpful Wicker's farm. Or a Hounds Wave spawns 3-4 puppies in its pen (presuming there is a pen and wasn't destroyed by Summer Fires or a friendly Deerclops/Bearger). Or a certain sadistic player spanks your beef from time to time, incognito, just to see you puzzled why beef domestication takes so long or why beef suddenly lost domestication. Or being in a pen and forgotten by everyone reverts back to a simple beef. Or. Or, or,

I mean all of this can happen to whatever u want to insert in the argument. A bunnymen farm can get [fill in the blank] on whatever random [fill in blank] server too does that mean bunnymen farms arent viable?

If u choose to tame a beefalo on a random public server u shouldnt expect it to be there if/when u return the same way u shouldnt expect ur resources in ur chests to be there when u return lol. For the 20 something days ull be taming said beefalo in the public server and afterwards ull practically never have to worry about armor, weapon(if ornery obv), or healing (also walking cane) freeing up those resources for the other survivors. And when ur done playing for the day be that 30 or 60 ingame days u just give it to someone else and leave lol. 

[MondayNight]

8 minutes ago, I luv Wendy said:

Obviously Beefalo taming involving non cooperative player behavior, aka griefing, is an issue that Klei need to address. I agree with you on that. 

However, depreciating the value of Beefalo taming just because of the damage griefing could cause is not warranted imo. Beefalo domestication is beneficial in some situation for some playstyle involving some characters, and that makes it a good feature for me. After all, no one say you must domesticate a beefalo in dst. 

The only example of clear griefing was "a certain sadistic player spanks your beef". Rest are issues with all servers and Tamed Beefs. Reality is taming beefs isn't a viable thing on most servers out there, were randoms of all skill-levels roam free in chaos. Don't forget vast majority of newbies/noobs/casual players (aka bulk player-base) most likely have no idea about Tamed Beefs mechanics and how to interact with them, thus their lack of knowledge will cost you your beef in nearly all these inevitable interactions.

 

3 minutes ago, Ohan said:

I mean all of this can happen to whatever u want to insert in the argument. A bunnymen farm can get [fill in the blank] on whatever random [fill in blank] server too does that mean bunnymen farms arent viable?

If u choose to tame a beefalo on a random public server u shouldnt expect it to be there if/when u return the same way u shouldnt expect ur resources in ur chests to be there when u return lol. For the 20 something days ull be taming said beefalo in the public server ull practically never have to worry about armor, weapon(if ornery obv), or healing freeing up those resources for the other survivors. And when ur done playing for the day be that 30 or 60 ingame days u just give it to someone else and leave lol. 

And those precise points make Beef Domestication to have low viability at large. You can make a bunnyfarm in 1-2 days and it provides constant Meat and Carrots (some view it quite OP considering Bunnymen spawn each day) - yes, if you aren't careful on not having meat in inventory you risk dying. Small steep danger, huge benefits. With Domesticated Beef is quite the opposite: small-to-modicum benefits in 3 characters' cases (for rest is superfluous), big problems with a lot of "ifs" in general.

 

I get it, you both are fans of current Beefalo Domestication and is ok. "Your world, your rules" and fun whatever that may be. But objectively looking at Beef Domestication as initial process and maintenance over time, is quite lackluster and, of course, has low viability. Again: when you consider "the big picture", in general. It doesn't subtract from you your entertainment acknowledging Beef Domestication could benefit from a buff re-work - will certainly profit you too. And if KLei doesn't re-tweak it, still ok for you: being low viability means only fans of current Beef Domestication get to parade their magnificent rare war/race/fatty mounts till they delog and finally that hungry Wigfrid gets some high-status quality (medium rare) meat .

[Ohan]

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

Beef Domestication as initial process and maintenance over time, is quite lackluster

I think i speak for an overwhelming majority of beefalo tamers when i say that we’ll gladly welcome any potential qol improvements to the taming process with you . Its not perfect but i also dont believe its as bad as you make it out to be. I dont think it should ever be “buffed” to the point where everyone has to tame a beefalo. It wouldnt make much sense for a wolfgang or wigfrid to tame an ornery for the purpose of fighting but they could certainly enjoy a rider beefalo if their world has bad wormhole connections etc. 

A domesticated beefalo offers a completely different way to play the game. When it comes to an ornery (esp with a war saddle) it lets u approach fights a lot more carefree and laid back. In the solo world im playing rn i didnt build any kind of hound defense untill well after day 100 because with a bit of kiting the war saddle ornery can easliy deal with large hound waves. 

If ur playing a fighter obviously beefalo domestication is less valuable and i dont think theres anything wrong with that. If ur not playing a fighter or u just want to approach fights with a walking cane, lantern, any kind of weather protection and glass cutter equipped all at once + 1k self healing hp pool an ornery beefalo with a war saddle might just be for you 

 

i think part of the problem might be that the ornery + war saddle is the most fleshed out of the tendencies its the best bang for ur buck. If u dont want fighting support then taming as a whole might be disappointing to you. We need a saddle that acts like a backpack and other perks that a wider selection of survivors might be interested in 

[Well-met]

I don't think anyone genuinely says tamed beefs are bad as a mechanic. It's awesome, they're awesome and no one would attempt to suggest ideas to salvage it if they didn't enjoy the mechanic in the first place.

[wigfrids hat]

since someone just tamed a beef in a pub this morning i'mma say it is still viable

 

[Sweaper]

Can't rush ruins and is too risky using it against BQ or Dfly, tame it for fun.

[Ohan]

5 hours ago, Sweaper said:

Can't rush ruins and is too risky using it against BQ or Dfly, tame it for fun.

How does a tamed beefalo prevent you from rushing the ruins. Rushing implies that its the first thing u’ll do meaning u wont have the beefalo yet. If u do have a beefalo and want to go to the ruins you park it next to two salt licks and u can go spelunking for more than 20 days. 

 

I have killed both dfly and bq multiple times by myself on a war saddle ornery. Dfly completely solo and bq with bunnymen but theres no reason why u couldnt apply the complete solo strats against bq on top of a beefalo 

[wigfrids hat]

1 hour ago, Ohan said:

How does a tamed beefalo prevent you from rushing the ruins. Rushing implies that its the first thing u’ll do meaning u wont have the beefalo yet. If u do have a beefalo and want to go to the ruins you park it next to two salt licks and u can go spelunking for more than 20 days. 

 

I have killed both dfly and bq multiple times by myself on a war saddle ornery. Dfly completely solo and bq with bunnymen but theres no reason why u couldnt apply the complete solo strats against bq on top of a beefalo 

you cant rush because you are busy with beef and you cannot leave it because someone could steal it or something could kill it

[Ohan]

8 minutes ago, gaymime said:

you cant rush because you are busy with beef and you cannot leave it because someone could steal it or something could kill it

That is not different from literally anything else... Surprise! U cant do two wildly different things at the same time. U cant build a base and ruins rush at the same time and if u leave your base someone can destroy it

[wigfrids hat]

2 minutes ago, Ohan said:

That is not different from literally anything else... Surprise! U cant do two wildly different things at the same time. U cant build a base and ruins rush at the same time and if u leave your base someone can destroy it

so? you asked and i answered XD it doesnt matter if other things have the same restriction(though i would say a dead beef is more of a loss than a trashed base with the same amount of time sunk into it)

[Ohan]

24 minutes ago, gaymime said:

so? you asked and i answered XD it doesnt matter if other things have the same restriction(though i would say a dead beef is more of a loss than a trashed base with the same amount of time sunk into it)

So...? Its a pointless argument who would start taming a beefalo if they intend to rush the ruins? Who would start any time intensive above ground project if they intend to rush the ruins? Why should that be a consideration in deciding if beefalo taming is “viable or just something to do for fun”. These are hypothetical questions fyi before u decide to answer them too 

[wigfrids hat]

5 minutes ago, Ohan said:

So...? Its a pointless argument who would start taming a beefalo if they intend to rush the ruins? Who would start any time intensive above ground project if they intend to rush the ruins? Why should that be a consideration in deciding if beefalo taming is “viable or just something to do for fun”. These are hypthetical questions fyi before u decide to answer them too 

if you dont want them answered then don't use them in your argument, yeah? also i am quite confused as to why you'd try and pick a fight with me over this. are you angry that the thought would be entertained that someone might have limited time or just put out over the idea that someone may like doing both of those things enough to consider them both worth doing early? as it stands the choice is a valid one for people who are capable and willing to do either but not so daring as to do them both(also a 'rush' can be at any point in the first season and still be a rush. i've seen many people call it a rush when it is before day 15 of a world)

[Sweaper]

5 hours ago, Ohan said:

Its a pointless argument who would start taming a beefalo if they intend to rush the ruins?

Isn't that viability? If I could rush ruins with a beefalo that would be viable.

[I luv Wendy]

12 hours ago, Ohan said:

I have killed both dfly and bq multiple times by myself on a war saddle ornery. Dfly completely solo and bq with bunnymen but theres no reason why u couldnt apply the complete solo strats against bq on top of a beefalo 

My problems with fighting bee queen solo on top of a beefalo is that you can't heal while on top of a beefalo, and bee queen and her minions attacks you relentlessly giving you little time to jump off, feed, and jump on, and if your beefalo was attacked when you're off then beefalo aggros and you can't remount. That basically means a uses of pan flute every time your beefalo needs to heal. 

On the other hand, it's hard to kite bee queen, even though beefalo is immune to slowdown by bee queen's honey patch. especially since beefalo can be slow down by honey patch.

From my experience, beefalo is helpful in every kite-able fight, or fight that has long period of down time. For example, Klaus, Dragonfly, Shadow pieces, etc. 

[Well-met]

29 minutes ago, I luv Wendy said:

even though beefalo is immune to slowdown by bee queen's honey patch. 

is not

[AlternateMew]

I've never tamed a beefalo before an you all are making me want to do it.

[MondayNight]

6 minutes ago, AlternateMew said:

I've never tamed a beefalo before an you all are making me want to do it.

Don't tell anyone this spoiler but..

Spoiler

It will die.