A few more Beefalo based Items

[Primalflower]

Many, many people in this community view beefalo domestication as an activity that is not worth the resources/attention for what you get out of it. Under vanilla circumstances, this remains rather true under the vast majority of circumstances due to many factors, as listed below.

The Pros of domesticating a Beefalo are as follows.

- The Beefalo can act as a weapon with no durability, with pretty high damage.

- The Beefalo can take a pretty substantial beating due to it's 1,000 HP, though the Beefalo doesn't have any armor so this is not super amazing when facing bigger crowds.

- You can go pretty dang fast with the right saddle on most all tendencies of beefalo.

- Uh, the beefalo is cute, I guess.

These pros are pretty considerable, but wait till you hear the Cons.

- The process of domestication takes at least 15 days, that is with a brush and never hitting the beefalo (which lowers domestication by 30% each time!). This is a rather large amount of time to dedicate to one singular task.

- The biggest con in my opinion: While Riding a beefalo, you are not allowed to do like 3/4s of the actions that you can normally do. To my knowledge these actions are: Picking up things, Foraging for grass/twigs/berries, chopping/mining/digging/pitchforking,  building structures, cooking in the crock pot, hanging anything to dry, opening chests/fridges, fishing, spelunking down into caves, doing basically anything when it comes to boat structures, and finally, fuelling anything. 

- A domesticated beefalo is very easy to lose, due to how they won't let you on no matter what if they are angry and fighting something. 

In my opinion, these cons are extremely important and hampering when it comes to a person's ability to maintain a beefalo while still playing the game normally and surviving. I think there are some things you could do to maintain the "spirit" of beefalo taming, while still making the entire idea much better than normal.

Items:

The Lasso:

Probably the most important Item Idea I'd like to show off. The most annoying and hampering thing about living with a domesticated beefalo is having to get off of it every single time I want to do a rather common task such as picking up a loose item on the ground, picking some grass or twigs, or opening a chest. I feel as if this problem could be fixed somewhat well while still keeping the idea of being "too high up" to access most things, with an tool like the Lasso. The way I imagine the lasso working is that it'd do an animation similar to the tail o' three cats, and then whatever action you chose would occur. This idea could be a lot more refined, but thats the basic concept.

Beefalo Armor:

This is admittedly a much less "necessary" venture, but I think the fact that players can be punished with loss of their beefalo simply by failing to get on it in time before it decides to sacrifice itself to the frogs or tentacles is a very debilitating experience that should be prevented with the addition of something like armor for the beefalo so it doesn't die quite as instantaneously without the player's guidance as the player scrambles to find something to fend off the issue with. It'd also of course be useful for things like when the player wants to use the beefalo to take down some of the harder mobs in the game, like the dragonfly.  

Beefalo Feeder:

Finally, I'd like to suggest a sort of automatic feeder for the Beefalo, kind of like the salt lick but more geared towards when you're still domesticating the beefalo rather than when you've already successfully done it. The way I imagine it working is that the beefalo would automatically try to feed itself with one of the item stored inside the feeder when it gets below a certain amount of  hunger. This small amount of automation would allow for the player to focus on something else other than the beefalo, when otherwise the player must return at least every day to either feed the beefalo or ride it around for the rest of the day, should they want to keep the domestication going at a constant rate. 

In conclusion:

Beefalo domestication is a very cool and interesting activity with decently compelling pros, but the fact that it requires at least a season of complete player attention, hampers the player's ability to do many vital actions, and can be extremely easy to lose should the player be too slow or make a single mistake, makes the entire activity unworthy for the majority of users. To combat this without just completely removing the "spirit" of beefalo taming, I suggest adding items that lessen some of the more cumbersome aspects of taming. Such as a lasso to let you pick up and open stuff while on the beef, armor to lessen the chance that beefalo die instantly without a player controlling them, and finally, a feeder for beefalo so the player doesn't have to constantly be by the beefalo's side for so long.

I hope that at some point at least 1 of these ideas gets implemented into the game, as I really, truly enjoy beefalo taming and want it to work more smoothly.

 

[Swanky Psammead]

As someone who finishes taming an ornery beefalo during the first year's winter in 90% of worlds I play on, I would like to respond to some of these points

On 8/17/2020 at 5:53 PM, Lbphero said:

- The Beefalo can act as a weapon with no durability, with pretty high damage.

Reworked Wendy gets up to 101.64 damage with it, which is much higher damage than any other character can achieve with melee weapons aside from Wolfgang (third place is Wigfrid with a morning star on wet targets, at 90.3125 damage). I feel that "pretty high damage" is a slight understatement, at least in her case. 66 damage on other characters is more reasonably described as "pretty high".

On 8/17/2020 at 5:53 PM, Lbphero said:

- The Beefalo can take a pretty substantial beating due to it's 1,000 HP, though the Beefalo doesn't have any armor so this is not super amazing when facing bigger crowds.

Beefalo get 4x healing from food, which is an effect equivalent to wearing 75% DR armor. They also heal passively over time. I find it is simpler to think of a beefalo as a vegetarian character with 250 HP, 75% permanent DR, and a passive heal of 1.75 HP/10 seconds, for purposes of their tankiness in combat; this puts them into perspective in stat values we are more familiar with in traditional combat.

Another perk of beefalo combat that I feel you have overlooked is the fact that they do not require players to spend their chest/head/hand slots on weapons and armor, as traditional combat does. This leaves players free to use all three slots for whatever non-DR equipment buff provides best utility in the current combat situation (lightning-proof gear for Moslings, lantern/miner hat/moggles for nighttime fights with no Star Caller's Staff, bee queen crown for insanity auras, scalemail to tank Klaus' fire spell, insulation against heat/cold in winter/summer, backpack, etc.)

On 8/17/2020 at 5:53 PM, Lbphero said:

- The process of domestication takes at least 15 days, that is with a brush and never hitting the beefalo (which lowers domestication by 30% each time!). This is a rather large amount of time to dedicate to one singular task.

I have to disagree strongly on this point. The only possession in the game that I consider comparable to an ornery beefalo in its combat utility is double bone armor, which takes ~40 days to acquire. The beefalo is a very swift acquisition by comparison.

On 8/17/2020 at 5:53 PM, Lbphero said:

The biggest con in my opinion: While Riding a beefalo, you are not allowed to do like 3/4s of the actions that you can normally do. To my knowledge these actions are: Picking up things, Foraging for grass/twigs/berries, chopping/mining/digging/pitchforking,  building structures, cooking in the crock pot, hanging anything to dry, opening chests/fridges, fishing, spelunking down into caves, doing basically anything when it comes to boat structures, and finally, fuelling anything. 

This, I can agree with, though I have learned to tolerate it for the sake of the beefalo's other perks. The main place it is a liability is the Crab King fight, where one must dismount to repair the damage dealt by Imposing Claws.

In my playstyle I tend to do all of these sorts of activities in large chunks while dismounted after leaving my beefalo at its salt lick, so that there isn't much repeated mounting/remounting.

On 8/17/2020 at 5:53 PM, Lbphero said:

- A domesticated beefalo is very easy to lose, due to how they won't let you on no matter what if they are angry and fighting something. 

Pan flute / STS fixes this problem for everything but tentacles. I drive tentacles extinct pretty early into a world's lifetime for this reason.

On 8/17/2020 at 5:53 PM, Lbphero said:

This is admittedly a much less "necessary" venture, but I think the fact that players can be punished with loss of their beefalo simply by failing to get on it in time before it decides to sacrifice itself to the frogs or tentacles is a very debilitating experience that should be prevented with the addition of something like armor for the beefalo so it doesn't die quite as instantaneously without the player's guidance as the player scrambles to find something to fend off the issue with. It'd also of course be useful for things like when the player wants to use the beefalo to take down some of the harder mobs in the game, like the dragonfly.  

Beefalo Feeder:

Finally, I'd like to suggest a sort of automatic feeder for the Beefalo, kind of like the salt lick but more geared towards when you're still domesticating the beefalo rather than when you've already successfully done it. The way I imagine it working is that the beefalo would automatically try to feed itself with one of the item stored inside the feeder when it gets below a certain amount of  hunger. This small amount of automation would allow for the player to focus on something else other than the beefalo, when otherwise the player must return at least every day to either feed the beefalo or ride it around for the rest of the day, should they want to keep the domestication going at a constant rate.

The lasso sounds interesting, but the feeder would greatly diminish the experience of taming for me unless it is all-but-impossible to acquire early game, needing ingredients that are gated by time (glommer's goop, walrus tusks, steel wool, etc.). Part of what attracts me to the process of taming is the fact that it requires such personal involvement and intense focus, similar to what is required to rush AG / Shadow Pieces / Fuelweaver for an early Bone Armor. This makes the bond between rider and beefalo feel much more meaningful to me. I would not experience a very profound sense of attachment to a beefalo that I simply allowed to idle by a feeder for 20 days while I went about my business elsewhere.

The armor, I don't have a problem with aesthetically, but I think it would add enormous amounts of unnecessary strength to an already-powerful combat tool. You are giving the beefalo bonus DR which would stack multiplicatively with its 4x healing bonus. It would dwarf WX, Wolf, and Wigfrid in tankiness if the amount of DR was even as high as a grass suit's (1000 HP with 60% DR is 2,500 effective HP; Wigfrid with a battle helm has only 1,333.33 effective HP, fully mighty Wolf with a football helm has 1,500, fully upgraded WX with a football helm has 2,000)

[Primalflower]

12 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

As someone who finishes taming an ornery beefalo during the first year's winter in 90% of worlds I play on, I would like to respond to some of these points

first of all, i applaud you. That is crazy good and even with mods to allow me to pick stuff up while i'm on the beefalo, I still end up just barely creeping into winter when I try to beefalo rush, due to many factors.

12 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Reworked Wendy gets up to 101.64 damage with it, which is much higher damage than any other character can achieve with melee weapons aside from Wolfgang (third place is Wigfrid with a morning star on wet targets, at 90.3125 damage). I feel that "pretty high damage" is a slight understatement, at least in her case. 66 damage on other characters is more reasonably described as "pretty high".

I am aware of wendy doing VERY high damage when coupled on beefalo, I found this to be extremely useful when i'm stuck with a rider beef, since 38 damage is nothing to sneeze at. However I am reluctant to consider only wendy's damage when saying a general idea of how high the beefalo's damage can be, especially since later on the idea of swapping around characters is heavily encouraged and unless I Really need to be farming spiders I'm not going to be picking wendy, especially since when the damage amount you're doing matters the most isin bosses, and abigail is likely going to die very quickly in places like those and you'll be back to square 1 damage.

12 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Beefalo get 4x healing from food, which is an effect equivalent to wearing 75% DR armor. They also heal passively over time. I find it is simpler to think of a beefalo as a vegetarian character with 250 HP, 75% permanent DR, and a passive heal of 1.75 HP/10 seconds, for purposes of their tankiness in combat; this puts them into perspective in stat values we are more familiar with in traditional combat.

Another perk of beefalo combat that I feel you have overlooked is the fact that they do not require players to spend their chest/head/hand slots on weapons and armor, as traditional combat does. This leaves players free to use all three slots for whatever non-DR equipment buff provides best utility in the current combat situation (lightning-proof gear for Moslings, lantern/miner hat/moggles for nighttime fights with no Star Caller's Staff, bee queen crown for insanity auras, scalemail to tank Klaus' fire spell, insulation against heat/cold in winter/summer, backpack, etc.)

It's hard for me to agree with the idea of trying to think of beefalo as a vegan character with 250 HP and 75% damage reduction, when to put it simply, them having 1000hp and no armor is whats really going on, thinking of it any other way is just kind of over-complicating what are relatively simple numbers otherwise. In terms of combat, I understand that it can be useful to leave your slots open for light and otherwise incredibly niche things, but I don't really think they're game changers compared to what you can do with just having them on, off the beefalo. Like you could definitely use a beefalo to withhold the slots for better things, but you could also just take off the backpack, if you get what i'm saying.

12 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Pan flute / STS fixes this problem for everything but tentacles. I drive tentacles extinct pretty early into a world's lifetime for this reason.

i love it when i use pan flute and then the hounds wake up faster than they can even complete their frickin falling asleep animation. Even outside of how silly it sounds to force all beefalo riders to constantly carry sleep inducing items on them, It is so ungodly frustrating to lose beef to something like that or getting bucked off during some sort of boss encounter and then just losing absolutely everything because you forgot the pan flute. Heck, I'd even be on board with something like a tamed beef having a way to revive it somehow so BS like that isn't as rollback worthy as it always is.

12 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

I have to disagree strongly on this point. The only possession in the game that I consider comparable to an ornery beefalo in its combat utility is double bone armor, which takes ~40 days to acquire. The beefalo is a very swift acquisition by comparison.

...

the feeder would greatly diminish the experience of taming for me unless it is all-but-impossible to acquire early game, needing ingredients that are gated by time (glommer's goop, walrus tusks, steel wool, etc.). Part of what attracts me to the process of taming is the fact that it requires such personal involvement and intense focus, similar to what is required to rush AG / Shadow Pieces / Fuelweaver for an early Bone Armor. This makes the bond between rider and beefalo feel much more meaningful to me. I would not experience a very profound sense of attachment to a beefalo that I simply allowed to idle by a feeder for 20 days while I went about my business elsewhere.

I considered this a lot while thinking about the long domestication time of beefalo, how perhaps the season-long commitment is more about building trust with the beefalo. To a degree I agree with you, in that a feeder would allow the player to just leave the beef to it's devices and thats kind of the antithesis of building trust with a beef, but I feel like the fact that taming is as much of an undertaking to be comparable with the brain power required to rush evil and f'd up activities like the shadow pieces, is kind of awful? Almost everyone I know hates taming beefalo in contrast to how you enjoy it, partly because of the other reasons I've stated, and partly because they have to watch out for the beefalo and be just that cautious for that long of a time. I feel like it'd be great to have an option for people who just can't really dedicate this much to a beefalo, making it require stupid and dumb items to craft would probably be the best way for your idea of beefalo taming to still exist while allowing for others to enjoy taming in the slightest, but I'd kind of personally just rather have both options be available at the start really.

12 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

The armor, I don't have a problem with aesthetically, but I think it would add enormous amounts of unnecessary strength to an already-powerful combat tool. You are giving the beefalo bonus DR which would stack multiplicatively with its 4x healing bonus. It would dwarf WX, Wolf, and Wigfrid in tankiness if the amount of DR was even as high as a grass suit's (1000 HP with 60% DR is 2,500 effective HP; Wigfrid with a battle helm has only 1,333.33 effective HP, fully mighty Wolf with a football helm has 1,500, fully upgraded WX with a football helm has 2,000)

think about it this way...you are incapable of healing or really putting on any more HP than you start with while fighting on a beefalo. A fight with dragonfly as Wolfgang is exponentially easier than a fight with dragonfly on a beefalo as wendy because of this, a wolfgang can constantly heal himself and as a result ends up having eons more capability to slip up and get hit than a beefalo rider would, even if he has 0 armor on. Admittedly, maybe beefalo armor wouldn't be the best approach to solving this idea, maybe instead you could just feed the beefalo while you're on it by clicking on yourself, and the idea i stated before where you could somehow revive the beefalo upon death could be better expanded upon and refined.

[Well-met]

18 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Reworked Wendy gets up to 101.64 damage with it, which is much higher damage than any other character can achieve with melee weapons aside from Wolfgang (third place is Wigfrid with a morning star on wet targets, at 90.3125 damage). I feel that "pretty high damage" is a slight understatement, at least in her case. 66 damage on other characters is more reasonably described as "pretty high".

that's a problem with Wendy, sir. It is not relevant with the beef.

18 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Pan flute / STS fixes this problem for everything but tentacles. I drive tentacles extinct pretty early into a world's lifetime for this reason.

You see no problem in wasting flutes for such a bad purpose? Or literally being forced to clear entire swamps for a mere mount? And STS is wicker only. "Just play wickerbottom bro"

Good on you for maining unmodded ornerys, they're still just about the second worst tendency.

[Swanky Psammead]

16 hours ago, Lbphero said:

first of all, i applaud you. That is crazy good and even with mods to allow me to pick stuff up while i'm on the beefalo, I still end up just barely creeping into winter when I try to beefalo rush, due to many factors.

Aw shucks, thank you. In turn, I ought to be clear that I respect your analysis and am aware that I'm in a minority here even when I strongly disagree ^_^

16 hours ago, Lbphero said:

However I am reluctant to consider only wendy's damage when saying a general idea of how high the beefalo's damage can be, especially since later on the idea of swapping around characters is heavily encouraged and unless I Really need to be farming spiders I'm not going to be picking wendy, especially since when the damage amount you're doing matters the most isin bosses, and abigail is likely going to die very quickly in places like those and you'll be back to square 1 damage.

This is fair, although I have to point out that post-rework Abigail does not actually die very quickly to bosses anymore, and I find that for surface bosses (and most other purposes on the surface shard) Wendy with an ornery beefalo and war saddle is now by far the least resource-intensive character, if not considering automated or semi-automated boss farms with fling-o / bunnyman / catapult cheese; this is due to her near-Wolfgang-level DPS, lack of need for any armor and weapons, only needing blue caps for healing which are faster to gather than mass-cooking crock pot healing foods even with a 6-pot kitchen setup, and not needing to change shards / run to friendly mobs or tooth traps during hound attacks. (I don't actually value Wendy's spider-farming potential much in the lategame, when I get all the silk and glands I need from automated farms, but I still love her for hounds and depths worms)

I swap to Warly for a day every few years to make spicy chaud froid for the 304.92 damage thunderbeef, and Wolfgang sometimes for cave bosses, but that's about it. Though this is a bit of a digression since this is about beefalo in general and not just their specific synergy with Wendy.

17 hours ago, Lbphero said:

It's hard for me to agree with the idea of trying to think of beefalo as a vegan character with 250 HP and 75% damage reduction, when to put it simply, them having 1000hp and no armor is whats really going on, thinking of it any other way is just kind of over-complicating what are relatively simple numbers otherwise.

I recognize this might be counter-intuitive, but it is an equivalent effect. The purpose of wearing armor is twofold, to increase your effective HP (giving you more time to react to near-lethal damage before it is too late) and to increase your heal effectiveness (allowing you to bring fewer healing resources to a fight, and to spend less time performing heal animations). 80% DR from a football helm increases your heal value by 5x--two Deerclops hits now deal 30 damage instead of 150, meaning two hits can be healed with 1 honey ham instead of 5. Wigfrid's innate 25% DR behaves similarly, increasing her effective heal value by 1.33x; the Weremoose's innate 90% DR increases its effective heal value by 10x (though since it has no access to Woodie's inventory, it can only use this effect by consuming Jellybeans before transforming or by receiving heals from other players such as Wortox).

The beefalo's high base HP of 1,000 accomplishes the first purpose. The beefalo's 4x healing-received bonus accomplishes the second, as if it were wearing 75% DR armor. This is weaker than a football helm's 5x effective healing-received bonus, but is offset by the beefalo's passive periodic healing.

17 hours ago, Lbphero said:

i love it when i use pan flute and then the hounds wake up faster than they can even complete their frickin falling asleep animation. Even outside of how silly it sounds to force all beefalo riders to constantly carry sleep inducing items on them, It is so ungodly frustrating to lose beef to something like that or getting bucked off during some sort of boss encounter and then just losing absolutely everything because you forgot the pan flute. Heck, I'd even be on board with something like a tamed beef having a way to revive it somehow so BS like that isn't as rollback worthy as it always is.

That's fair. I tend to carry pan flute with me everywhere whether I'm mounted or not, just because of how useful and renewable it is; but I suppose not everyone may see it that way, especially if they don't kill DFly or reset the ruins very often and need to ration their green gems. Getting bucked off during a boss fight should not happen with a fully-tame beefalo though--they take nearly two days to buck, and dismounting/remounting resets the timer to full.

I'd be very supportive of the idea of a revive item specifically for tamed beefalo. Players get multiple revive options for themselves, after all, and very cheap ones at that.

17 hours ago, Lbphero said:

I feel like it'd be great to have an option for people who just can't really dedicate this much to a beefalo, making it require stupid and dumb items to craft would probably be the best way for your idea of beefalo taming to still exist while allowing for others to enjoy taming in the slightest, but I'd kind of personally just rather have both options be available at the start really.

My issue is mainly that if both options are available at the start, the choice to rush beefalo taming the hard way becomes something I have to *justify*. There is a case for rushing the Ruins (early Ruins gear, unlocks potential for a lot of boss rushes), and a case for doing the Ruins in summer (more prep time, efficient use of a season where surface survival can be difficult, fits a more relaxed playstyle). If a chill Beefalo taming option is unlocked as early as the current options for a Beefalo rush, it will be objectively the superior option because it will prevent the risk of mistakes. Pre-crafting a feed station would tame a beefalo in (days to find Beefalo + 20), while rushing without a feed station would do it in (days to find Beefalo + 20 + sum of time lost due to player error).

I could see a compromise where a feed station is available to craft early, but only grants Domestication at ~66% the rate of feeding by hand and riding? Then the feed station would tame in 30 days and there would be benefits to weigh with each option, depending on playstyle preference.

18 hours ago, Lbphero said:

think about it this way...you are incapable of healing or really putting on any more HP than you start with while fighting on a beefalo. A fight with dragonfly as Wolfgang is exponentially easier than a fight with dragonfly on a beefalo as wendy because of this, a wolfgang can constantly heal himself and as a result ends up having eons more capability to slip up and get hit than a beefalo rider would, even if he has 0 armor on. Admittedly, maybe beefalo armor wouldn't be the best approach to solving this idea, maybe instead you could just feed the beefalo while you're on it by clicking on yourself, and the idea i stated before where you could somehow revive the beefalo upon death could be better expanded upon and refined.

Dragonfly is actually an example I would have cited as being particularly easy for (post-rework) Wendy with a beefalo, in contrast to Wolfgang. You absolutely can heal on a beefalo (it requires more actions and finesse to time your dismount/heal/remount, but you can do it) and Dragonfly gives you a long period to do it for free while she is summoning lavae. Wendy with a beefalo can thus do it with higher DPS than Wolfgang with a fresh hambat, using the same amount of healing items, no weapons, and no armor. If her ping is good enough to animation-cancel her attacks, she can even get the stunlock on DFly for a second scale, which Wolfgang usually needs a dark sword or better to do.

Wolfgang with a fresh hambat: 119 damage per hit, ~2 hits per second, ~238 DPS total

Wendy with a war-saddled ornery beefalo and Abigail at night (or using Nightshade Nostrum): 101.64 damage per hit, ~2 hits per second, +40 DPS from Abigail, ~243.28 DPS total

I would definitely support the ability to feed your mount while mounted though, I would see that as a QOL change (Walter should be able to feed Monster Meat to Woby while mounted too and maintain her top speed, imo).

The main raid boss fight that I would consider difficult with an ornery beefalo right now would be Crab King, although in fairness I haven't practiced him nearly as much as the others yet. Shadow Pieces can also be a little tense since you can't pause the fight with the Pan Flute if it's going badly, but their relatively low collective HP makes this a minor issue imo because the fight doesn't go badly very often.

12 hours ago, Well-met said:

You see no problem in wasting flutes for such a bad purpose? Or literally being forced to clear entire swamps for a mere mount?

Not really; flute uses are really abundant if you are killing DFly or regenerating the ruins semi-regularly. Every green gem is worth 37.5 flute uses (0.2 uses of a con amulet to make deconstruction staves for 1 green gem apiece, then 1 use of a decon staff to renew 9 uses of a flute = 1.2 green gems to renew a flute 5 times for 45 total uses = 1 gem per 37.5 uses); megabasers have so many flute uses that they are literally using them just to capture mobs like tallbirds or krampii for cosmetic zoos, lol. If you aren't killing DFly or regenerating the ruins semi-regularly, I can understand this price of upkeep sounding high--but no higher than other endgame items that require a fight with Fuelweaver / Bee Queen / etc.

I don't see a war-saddled ornery beefalo as a "mere mount". It is a speed boost greater than a walking cane (8.75 units/second vs. default player speed with cane at 7.5 units/sec), it is an infinite-use Glass Cutter (or infinite use Blow Darts if I am Wendy with reworked Abigail's damage buff), it is a 100% DR armor item that repairs itself for 33% of its durability automatically every day and can be repaired for an additional 8% of its durability per Blue Cap if the natural regen isn't fast enough for you; and it is all of these things simultaneously, without requiring you to use any of your head/hand/chest slots. That's worth the upkeep IMHO.

[Maxposting]

I just wish the beefalo's would keep their domestication that would decline way slower when not loaded after fully domesticated

[Swanky Psammead]

1 minute ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

I just wish the beefalo's would keep their domestication that would decline way slower when not loaded after fully domesticated

Trade secret:

Unload your beefalo at night, while it is sleeping. It never loses domestication while asleep--and if it is unloaded while asleep, it never wakes up until it is loaded again. Preserve your Salt Lick durability, and never worry about domestication loss again.

(and yes, because of this, Salt Licks are completely unnecessary in Lights Out worlds)

[Maxposting]

3 minutes ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Trade secret:

Unload your beefalo at night, while it is sleeping. It never loses domestication while asleep--and if it is unloaded while asleep, it never wakes up until it is loaded again. Preserve your Salt Lick durability, and never worry about domestication loss again.

 

THANKSTHANKS A LOT well

Imma go start redomesticating my beefalos...

[Kur0u]

10 hours ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Trade secret:

Unload your beefalo at night, while it is sleeping. It never loses domestication while asleep--and if it is unloaded while asleep, it never wakes up until it is loaded again. Preserve your Salt Lick durability, and never worry about domestication loss again.

(and yes, because of this, Salt Licks are completely unnecessary in Lights Out worlds)

How can you unload a beefalo? You just go x# screens away from it?, How would I know if it's working?

I usually have 4 saltlicks with my penned beefy, even though they are separated with fences he still manages to eat the saltlick.

Added a bonus koalafant to the pen and boom, they destroyed everything during summer while I was in the caves.

Spoiler

Sorry about all these questions, I play on ps4.

 

On 8/18/2020 at 7:53 AM, Lbphero said:

Beefalo Feeder:

Finally, I'd like to suggest a sort of automatic feeder for the Beefalo, kind of like the salt lick but more geared towards when you're still domesticating the beefalo rather than when you've already successfully done it. The way I imagine it working is that the beefalo would automatically try to feed itself with one of the item stored inside the feeder when it gets below a certain amount of  hunger. This small amount of automation would allow for the player to focus on something else other than the beefalo, when otherwise the player must return at least every day to either feed the beefalo or ride it around for the rest of the day, should they want to keep the domestication going at a constant rate. 

I really love this idea, as I mentioned above saltlicks are proving to be inefficient for when you need to stay away for a long period of time. Make it 4-5 planks and 10 grass as crafting recipe and you can add grass to restore the amount of food inside whenever it's empty. Beefy would eat 20-25% of it daily. I'd be happy with that

[Swanky Psammead]

1 minute ago, Kuro_kira said:

How can you unload a beefalo? You just go x# screens away from it?, How would I know if it's working?

1) wait until the beefalo goes to sleep (they do this automatically at night, but you can also force it with pan flute / STS)

2) move about 76 game units (~19 pitchfork tiles, how many screens this is depends on how far you are zoomed out and whether you use any mods to zoom out further) away from the beefalo before it wakes up

3) your beefalo will now remain asleep until you (or another player) loads it again by coming within ~15 pitchfork tiles / ~60 game units of it; it will not lose any domestication, or take licks from nearby salt licks, while sleeping.

Simplest way to do this is to dismount your beefalo at night, in a place that you and your fellow players don't normally visit and won't visit for the foreseeable future until you want to ride the beefalo again. Then run away. You will know that it's working if you make it ~19 pitchfork tiles away before morning comes.

[Well-met]

No average player would ever know the game even "unloads" things, let alone how it affects a beefalo. At this point we're reaching exploit levels.

Says alot about a mechanic when you got to trick the engine just to keep the former tolerable.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

59 minutes ago, Well-met said:

No average player would ever know the game even "unloads" things, let alone how it affects a beefalo. At this point we're reaching exploit levels.

Says alot about a mechanic when you got to trick the engine just to keep the former tolerable.

you really need to have right, my god

[Swanky Psammead]

No, it's a fair point. Exploits involving loading/unloading are controversial and the line where they cross different players' point of disengagement from the game fantasy will always be subjective.

I make no judgments or prescriptions about use of the infinite beefalo domestication trick--use it or ignore it as you prefer--but either way, it does exist as part of the game RN, just like pillar cheesing the Ancient Guardian and manipulating lavae pathing with stone walls.

[Roosty_knife]

oh boy. I do enjoy 'em a lot, i love beefalos.. Every my world has an domesticated beefalo. I agree that they can have an improvment. Especially in the picking >from the ground< part. Now i am using a mod for this task "Beefalo plus", also "DST Where's my Beefalo"
Here is my "fresh tamed beef" 

[wigfrids hat]

4 hours ago, Roosty_knife said:

oh boy. I do enjoy 'em a lot, i love beefalos.. Every my world has an domesticated beefalo. I agree that they can have an improvment. Especially in the picking >from the ground< part. Now i am using a mod for this task "Beefalo plus", also "DST Where's my Beefalo"
Here is my "fresh tamed beef" 

it is the fact that you two are making the same face that kills me

[Primalflower]

On 8/22/2020 at 4:09 PM, Swanky Psammead said:

Trade secret:

Unload your beefalo at night, while it is sleeping. It never loses domestication while asleep--and if it is unloaded while asleep, it never wakes up until it is loaded again. Preserve your Salt Lick durability, and never worry about domestication loss again.

(and yes, because of this, Salt Licks are completely unnecessary in Lights Out worlds)

1: sorry for not responding to your response to my response, I'm kinda busy and don't really have the brain power to read and intelligently respond to such things atm lol

2: holy crud. legitimately, holy crud. That is such amazingly useful knowledge and I am so so happy that you mentioned it. I can finally domesticate beefalo in endless servers without fear!!!! 

P.S.: does the beefalo unload if you disconnect while right next to it?

[Wumpus the 19th]

beefalo trawl net.

that's all i'm saying.

beefalo trawl net.

[Swanky Psammead]

2 hours ago, Lbphero said:

1: sorry for not responding to your response to my response, I'm kinda busy and don't really have the brain power to read and intelligently respond to such things atm lol

No worries : )

2 hours ago, Lbphero said:

P.S.: does the beefalo unload if you disconnect while right next to it?

Yes, but it must be asleep before you disconnect. If you dismount and then disconnect too quickly--i.e., before its fall-asleep animation completes--it could unload in its "awake" state (which, similarly, is permanent while unloaded, and drains Domestication constantly).

[BezKa]

On 8/18/2020 at 12:53 AM, Lbphero said:

- A domesticated beefalo is very easy to lose, due to how they won't let you on no matter what if they are angry and fighting something. 

I have never domesticated a beefalo before, but it's very high on my to do list (I do most stuff only after I did/tried to do them with my friends so we can share the experience together). So far, I've been hearing about massive amount of problems regarding owning a beefalo and this one seems most worrying. I love to grind and do tasks that require slow progress and taming is exactly the kind of thing I think I will enjoy, but to lose it in such stupid way as it wandering to my bee farm during spring seems unappealing... 

So I suggest beefalo horn used as a whistle. It has 10 uses, and playing it will make your beefalo play 'hearing' animation then rush to you if it's close enough (on your screen? Bit further so it can be used as a tool for finding it?), stopping the fight with whatever gained it's aggro. 

I have some experience with Woby and her running around is annoying enough, so I imagine it's only harder with beefs.