Beefalo are almost really good now.

[Theukon-dos]

With the Year of the Beefalo coming to an end soon. I thought I'd make this thread just to talk about some last minute changes that would be really good for the beefs. Because the changes made to them in YOTB where a Massive step up, but I do think there are just a couple of small tweaks they could use.

 

I. Prelude

Before we begin, what changes did YOTB make to beefs and their domestication? 

First is, as many people know, Is the Beefalo bell. Probably the biggest addition to YOTB. The Beefalo bell allows you to name and bind yourself to a beefalo. The bound beef will follow the bell like an eye bone, and while held, it will follow you into caves and through wormholes. This alone fixes one of the biggest weaknesses of old beefs. That being how how limited they where compared to Walking Canes. 

Second, You can now pick objects while riding beefalo. Bushes, saplings, grass tufts, ect. Are all picked as normal, and items on the ground take 0.25-0.5 (I didn't count) seconds. This is also a massive and wonderful change for 2 reasons. 

1. It allows you to activly maintain a beefalo's obedience without having to constantly dismount it.

2. It removes the massive time loss that came from having to dismount the beefalo every time you needed to pick something up.

These two changes make Beefalo much more fluid and convenient to use. And have definitly pushed them into viability. But there are still changes that can, and in my opinion, should be made.

II. Food

First, I want to start With Beefalo hunger and food, because this mechanic is simultaneously compleatly pointless and way to tedious. Allow me to elaborate.

The first thing to note is that Beefalo have 300 hunger and a whopping 4x hunger drain. If their hunger is empty, then they will start to loose domestication. On the plus side, you can feed your beefalo grass and twigs to restore hunger. Ofcourse, it only restores about 4 and 10 hunger respectivly, meaning you need nearly a stack per day to keep a beefalo fed. HOWEVER. Beefalo will not loose domestication if you are riding them, or if they are near a salt lick. So, If you ride your beefalo around the map and park it near a salt lick while not in use, then you never even need to think about feeding your beef outside of keeping it's obedience up.

So, we've got a near-bottomless stomach on a creature that you never actually need to feed. Good thing there's nothing else linked to a beef's hunger, right? Nope! One of the 4 tendancies beefalo can have is Chubby. This is obtained by keeping hunger above 50% or overfeeding it. And it is G A R B A G E.

Chubby beefalo are slower than Ornary beefalo, weaker than Rider beefalo. And what do they give in return? a 6.25 sanity aura per minute. For reference, a Tam O' Shanter restores 6.7 sanity per minutes. You could stack the two auras. But a Tam already covers passive sanity loss 99% of the time. And on top of that, Beefalo will take the hits of most attacks, meaning you can wear a tam o' shanter on any other type of beefalo for a higher sanity aura without any of the downsides to the Pudgy beef. 

So just to Recap. Pudgy Beefalos are the most expensive to domesticate by a land slide, and are objectivly the worst option in every sense. Yeah. These guys need buffed.

 

III. S P E E D

This section is going to cover 2 seperate things. Speed boosts for the beefalo, and the Glossamer saddle.

 

First. Speed boosts. 

Beefalo are pretty fast on their own. I'm not sure quite how fast, but a default beefalo feels around twice as fast as a player. Now, I don't think that Beefalo should be effected by walking canes. I mean that doesn't even make sense, now does it? However, I do belive that Beefalo being effected by Roads and Cobblestone turf *would* be a good change. It makes sense, is fairly balanced. and rewards players for investing the resources into long-distance cobblestone pathways.

 

And now for the Glossamer saddle.

I'm sorry, but this thing is nowhere near worth it.

No, no. It's not as not worth it as you think, it's even less worth it than that. For 68 butterfly wings, you can make a saddle that has a 55% speed boost. Pretty cool, right?

Now what if I told you that the default saddle, made with pigskin, gold, and wool, gives a 40% speed boost, thus meaning that all that investment is actually for a 15% speed boost?

Thought so. So I'd say either the cost of the glossamer saddle needs to be reduced, or the speed boost needs to be closer to 80-100% than 55%.

EDIT: As user @Cheggf pointed out, Once you do the math, the speed gained from the Glossamer saddle is actually only around a 10% increase over the default saddle, due to the fact that you always need a saddle while riding a beef, and the 15% higher speed bonus applies to the base speed of the beefalo.

 

IV. Conclusion.

So finally. What all do I think needs changed with Beefalo domestication?

1. Reduce hunger drain to something closer to 2x instead of 4x.

2. Buff the Pudgy beefalo. A higher sanity aura is the obvious change, but given that Pudgy Beefs are the only kind of Beefalo that actually require resource investment, I think they need a new bonus entirely.

3. Allow Beefalo to be effected by Roads and Cobblestones

4. Buff the Glossamer saddle.

5. Make the Beefalo Bell permanent.

6. MAKE THE STUPID AS HUNK OF MEAT NOT RUN AWAY WHILE I'M TRYING TO FEED OR RIDE IT BY THE NINE CIRCLES OF HELL PLEASE!

 

[minespatch]

29 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

So, we've got a near-bottomless stomach on a creature that you never actually need to feed. Good thing there's nothing else linked to a beef's hunger, right? Nope! One of the 4 tendancies beefalo can have is Chubby. This is obtained by keeping hunger above 50% or overfeeding it. And it is G A R B A G E.

I think all creatures in the game need a hunger limit. Would save on food. Kind of hilarious when I debug in 100 or 200 dragonpies for a boof and they still act like my cats.

[Theukon-dos]

18 minutes ago, minespatch said:

I think all creatures in the game need a hunger limit. Would save on food. Kind of hilarious when I debug in 100 or 200 dragonpies for a boof and they still act like my cats.

Eh. Beefalo already fart once their hunger gets too high, and turn any excess food to rot, last I checked.

The real issue is how fast their hunger drains.

[Notecja]

Number 5 should be number 1.

[me real life]

4 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

These two changes make Beefalo much more fluid and convenient to use. And have definitly pushed them into viability

What does "viable" mean in a sandbox game?

[Milordo]

1 hour ago, Sunset Skye said:

What does "viable" mean in a sandbox game?

it means something that is not garbage and wasting your time, speaking of.....

 

5 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

 

 

IV. Conclusion.

So finally. What all do I think needs changed with Beefalo domestication?

1. Reduce hunger drain to something closer to 2x instead of 4x.

2. Buff the Pudgy beefalo. A higher sanity aura is the obvious change, but given that Pudgy Beefs are the only kind of Beefalo that actually require resource investment, I think they need a new bonus entirely.

3. Allow Beefalo to be effected by Roads and Cobblestones

4. Buff the Glossamer saddle.

5. MAKE THE STUPID AS HUNK OF MEAT NOT RUN AWAY WHILE I'M TRYING TO FEED OR RIDE IT BY THE NINE CIRCLES OF HELL PLEASE!

 

The beefalo domestication it's still a chore. When the event came up i was radiant postive energy and happy for an overhaul of this forgotten mechanic. Apart from the fact domestication wasn't reworked, the bell helps a bit, that's true but we need to consider that it's part of the event, not the domestication itself, so we don't know if it will stay in the game.

I studied in every way this mechanic, watch every videos that people of this community suggested me, forums, wiki, .... nothing, the domestication is really still teadious, annoying, slow and painful. We tried and tested in our megabase, holy starve i would never try it in a new world. Not to mention if we look with a critic eye all this mechanic is one of the few things where klei didn't put love, interest and work (example: a lot, a lot of bugs, your beefalo try to kill you if you kill some wild beefalo, you can hit you beefalo without knowning 

In the end i'm sorry @Theukon-dos but i think nobody will still try this forgotten broken mechanic (not me for sure) if Klei not only balance what already you stated but even fix all the other problems. However the bell will not be forgotten, if it klei decides to be implemented and many people, even me, will use it only to reproduce more beefaloes and create cave beefaloes, not to ride one.

Can i ask why tho you titled "Beefalo are almost really good now" ????   They always been useful in the game.

[me real life]

5 minutes ago, Milordo said:

it means something that is not garbage and wasting your time, speaking of.....

How do you waste your time in a sandbox game, though? There's no goal or way to win and there's nobody you're competing against, so there's really no such thing as wasting time unless you're not having fun, in which case you can just not engage with the thing that isn't fun for you/try to find a way to use the mechanics involved to make the thing more fun for you.

[Milordo]

8 minutes ago, Sunset Skye said:

How do you waste your time in a sandbox game, though? There's no goal or way to win and there's nobody you're competing against, so there's really no such thing as wasting time unless you're not having fun, in which case you can just not engage with the thing that isn't fun for you/try to find a way to use the mechanics involved to make the thing more fun for you.

Nothing wasting your time? So you cook every time all dishes in the game for your survival or instead cook the same pierogis , meatballs, honey hams and others few dishes?  You use every clothing in the game for surviving all seasons or use the same eyebrella, tam o' shanter and thermal stone? You use every piece of armors and weapons in the game and strategically change them or use the same football helmets, dark swords, ham bats and others few armors?

Don't justify when something is weak, unbalanced and useless with "you're not having fun". Btw, it's fun for you knowning that all that fancy clothings you can use are useless and literally wasting your time?

[me real life]

23 minutes ago, Milordo said:

So you cook every time all dishes in the game for your survival or instead cook the same pierogis , meatballs, honey hams and others few dishes?

I feel like this was meant as a "gotcha!" comment but like, yes? I try to cook as many dishes as I can. The main ones recently being:
- Dragonpies
- Barnacle Linguine
- Bacon and Eggs (rarely, when I wanna use my leafy meat)
- Barnacle Nigiri (I prefer this over pierogies due to the super fast cook time)
- Soothing Tea
- Melonsicles
- Taffy
I've been wanting to try Veggie Burgers too but haven't had much luck with growing onions. Guacamole also sounds like it could be nice since it's just two ingredients + twigs/forget-me-lots for pretty decent hunger, and I go to the desert with my beefalo for tumbleweed picking pretty often so using cactus for it kind of sounds perfect for me.

Variety's super important in DST! I only make meatballs if I'm feeling super lazy, and I even use an insulated pack so that spoilage time isn't as big of a factor in deciding what I want to cook.

31 minutes ago, Milordo said:

You use every clothing in the game for surviving all seasons or use the same eyebrella, tam o' shanter and thermal stone?

I definitely stick with an eyebrella during Spring cause it's the best option for how I play, but in Summer I tend to start/end the season with a fashion melon while only using an eyebrella in the hottest part in the middle, with luxury fans for quickly cooling off, and during Winter I'm always experimenting with stuff like stuffed pepper poppers, fire nettles, and I've been meaning to try that sunfish thing people always talk about.

Warly's dishes also sound really cool for seasonal hazards, Cordon bleu especially sounds interesting to farm. I've gotta try those one day too.

37 minutes ago, Milordo said:

You use every piece of armors and weapons in the game and strategically change them or use the same football helmets, dark swords, ham bats and others few armors?

Combat isn't super fun to me so I tend to not engage with it all that much, like I mentioned in my last post, so I actually tamed an ornery beefalo just for when I have to! For the occasional deerclops and treeguard and such. No armor or weapons needed, cause the beefalo's both!

Before that though I tended to use bee queen crowns as my main armor against bosses, while padding out their durability a bit by using a cookie cutter cap for smaller nuisances. Different armor types really shine when you're only fighting infrequently, cause they tend to take a long time to break over those long periods.

For weapons, I mostly stuck to tentacle spikes and spears since they're just reliable, but I did used to try keeping a bat bat around as a sort of "secondary" weapon back when I did combat more often.

41 minutes ago, Milordo said:

Btw, it's fun for you knowning that all that fancy clothings you can use are useless and literally wasting your time?

How could I waste my time in a sandbox game? I'm always having fun with whatever I'm doing, I wouldn't be playing if I wasn't, so that time isn't wasted at all.

The way you've written your reply implies that you think it would be absurd for me to not be always following the meta, but playing a sandbox game by only ever engaging with the meta is really the most miserable thing in my opinion, it's so so much more fun to experiment with all of the options that the game gives you for completing any task. That's why I took issue with the initial use of "viable" here, it shows a competitive attitude leaking into this sandbox game, with the idea that any feature must reach a certain meta threshold to be considered "viable" and worth using. That kind of thing can really sap all of the fun out of a game that does such an amazing job of giving you so so many options and mechanics to play around with.

[SonicDen220]

I agree with most of those proposed buffs (especially #5), but think glossamer saddle is alright the way it is. You only need to make it once and you don't need 68 butterfly wings (you can use a construction amulet to make it cost only 34). Plus the game pokes fun at its cost with its crafting description ("Offsets the time spent making it. Maybe"). And 15% speed difference is still considerable, especially because it's permanent. If the normal saddle is like a walking cane for your beefalo, then glossamer saddle is like a walking cane + almost magiluminescence speed boost. 80-100% would be absurd.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

I could get behind 1,3,5.

For my opinion on point 4 see SonicDen220's anwer.

And my opinion on point 2 is that you failed to consider the main point of pudgy beef. It is the cutest one.
I don't think every thing in DST is there to help a player (like sanity aura), rather it's there for each and every player's individual reason like:

1) having a challenge - getting pudgy beef could be a goal you set for yourself at the start of a game.

2) It's fun to be around - you can like how it looks, how it behaves etc...

3) showing off - what's a better way to show others that you are able to take care of hungry players than making enough food for a "4x the hunger drain beast".

Thinking about it now, i probably disagree with lowering the hunger drain as well. Maybe to only 3x.

[Well-met]

4 minutes ago, Cr4zyFl4mes said:

1) having a challenge - getting pudgy beef could be a goal you set for yourself at the start of a game.

2) It's fun to be around - you can like how it looks, how it behaves etc...

3) showing off - what's a better way to show others that you are able to take care of hungry players than making enough food for a "4x the hunger drain beast".

 

this is most definitely not how videogames work. or anywhere else in life for that matter.

People want to reap good rewards for their considerable effort. The context doesn't matter.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

How can people say that hornery and speed beefalo arent worth or even more absurd, inviable

Sometimes i dont understand people

[Theukon-dos]

3 hours ago, Milordo said:

it means something that is not garbage and wasting your time, speaking of.....

 

The beefalo domestication it's still a chore. When the event came up i was radiant postive energy and happy for an overhaul of this forgotten mechanic. Apart from the fact domestication wasn't reworked, the bell helps a bit, that's true but we need to consider that it's part of the event, not the domestication itself, so we don't know if it will stay in the game.

I studied in every way this mechanic, watch every videos that people of this community suggested me, forums, wiki, .... nothing, the domestication is really still teadious, annoying, slow and painful. We tried and tested in our megabase, holy starve i would never try it in a new world. Not to mention if we look with a critic eye all this mechanic is one of the few things where klei didn't put love, interest and work (example: a lot, a lot of bugs, your beefalo try to kill you if you kill some wild beefalo, you can hit you beefalo without knowning 

In the end i'm sorry @Theukon-dos but i think nobody will still try this forgotten broken mechanic (not me for sure) if Klei not only balance what already you stated but even fix all the other problems. However the bell will not be forgotten, if it klei decides to be implemented and many people, even me, will use it only to reproduce more beefaloes and create cave beefaloes, not to ride one.

Ok. See, Here's the thing though.

Beefalo taming isn't and shouldn't be something that you just go out of your way to do. As someone who's been taming Beefalo for my last few worlds, you want to think of them like a walking cane, in a sense. That is to say, bring them everywhere.

A beefalo does not need to be fully tamed to be useful. While they will throw you off quite frequently in the early days, by the time you reach about 10-20% domestication, You can go about a minute or two without getting thrown off. And this number only increases as you ride them more and domestication increases. 

Hell, This is one of the reasons that being able to pick things while riding a beefalo is so good is because you can be constantly picking grass and twigs to keep it's obedience up. Especially if you tame a beefalo early game, where you're going to be constantly riding it as you explore the map 

Seriously, try it out the next time you start a world. Make a saddle when you get an alchemy engine and start the domestication process early. I promise you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Quote

Can i ask why tho you titled "Beefalo are almost really good now" ????   They always been useful in the game.

Before the YOTB, They where really only good for transporting heavy objects. You couldn't bring them through wormholes, you couldn't bring them into caves, and you had to dismount them any time you actually wanted to do anything. YOTB and the Beefalo bell have massively broadened their use and made them quite nice to have.

 

1 hour ago, Cr4zyFl4mes said:

I could get behind 1,3,5.

For my opinion on point 4 see SonicDen220's anwer.

And my opinion on point 2 is that you failed to consider the main point of pudgy beef. It is the cutest one.
I don't think every thing in DST is there to help a player (like sanity aura), rather it's there for each and every player's individual reason like:

1) having a challenge - getting pudgy beef could be a goal you set for yourself at the start of a game.

2) It's fun to be around - you can like how it looks, how it behaves etc...

3) showing off - what's a better way to show others that you are able to take care of hungry players than making enough food for a "4x the hunger drain beast".

Thinking about it now, i probably disagree with lowering the hunger drain as well. Maybe to only 3x.

I can get behind the pudgy beefalo being a trophy tame. But in that case then I'd still like it to be an upgrade to the default beefalo. Or atleast not be slower than it.

[Mike23Ua]

My biggest problem with the Beefalo Bell & all the new features that Year of the Beefalo brought: is that it makes getting a walking cane Pointless.

The only use I can see a Walking Cane having anymore is maybe during a Boss Fight.

But the Difference here: You can ring a simple bell & have your Beefalo friend follow you, you can also quickly craft a saddle & from that point forward reap all the benefits of a Walking Cane while never getting off your Beefalo (except for the few times it bucks you for not being fully tamed yet)

To even get the Walking Cane.. you have to either luck up on it in a failed survivor set piece or wait until Winter & go kill MacTusks for their Tusks.

Do you guys NOT see the problem here? MacTusks are my least favorite enemy mob in the entire game: and as a result I rarely RARELY Ever had a Tam’o or Walking Cane- But NOW Beefalo completely eliminates the need to even go after Walking Cane at all unless I want to use it in a boss fight or something.

 

[Well-met]

24 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

My biggest problem with the Beefalo Bell & all the new features that Year of the Beefalo brought: is that it makes getting a walking cane Pointless.

The only use I can see a Walking Cane having anymore is maybe during a Boss Fight.

But the Difference here: You can ring a simple bell & have your Beefalo friend follow you, you can also quickly craft a saddle & from that point forward reap all the benefits of a Walking Cane while never getting off your Beefalo (except for the few times it bucks you for not being fully tamed yet)

To even get the Walking Cane.. you have to either luck up on it in a failed survivor set piece or wait until Winter & go kill MacTusks for their Tusks.

Do you guys NOT see the problem here? MacTusks are my least favorite enemy mob in the entire game: and as a result I rarely RARELY Ever had a Tam’o or Walking Cane- But NOW Beefalo completely eliminates the need to even go after Walking Cane at all unless I want to use it in a boss fight or something.

 

beefalos aren't even remotely similar to a walking cane.

there's still plenty of actions impossible when mounted and lots of maintenance involved, neither which apply to the versatility of a cane.

the walking cane also doesn't die.

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

My biggest problem with the Beefalo Bell & all the new features that Year of the Beefalo brought: is that it makes getting a walking cane Pointless.

The only use I can see a Walking Cane having anymore is maybe during a Boss Fight.

But the Difference here: You can ring a simple bell & have your Beefalo friend follow you, you can also quickly craft a saddle & from that point forward reap all the benefits of a Walking Cane while never getting off your Beefalo (except for the few times it bucks you for not being fully tamed yet)

To even get the Walking Cane.. you have to either luck up on it in a failed survivor set piece or wait until Winter & go kill MacTusks for their Tusks.

Do you guys NOT see the problem here? MacTusks are my least favorite enemy mob in the entire game: and as a result I rarely RARELY Ever had a Tam’o or Walking Cane- But NOW Beefalo completely eliminates the need to even go after Walking Cane at all unless I want to use it in a boss fight or something.

 

Walking canes are much more versitile than beefalo, even if the beefs have a higher top speed.

 

Also, Pro-tip for dealing with Mactusks: They're teathered to their igloos, so if you run them far enough away, then they'll start ignoring you and walking back towards their house, basically giving you a free kill.

[Notecja]

7 hours ago, Milordo said:

your beefalo try to kill you if you kill some wild beefalo

I think this is intended. We are forcing it to kill its family...

[Cheggf]

13 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

But a Tam already covers passive sanity loss 99% of the time.

A tam covers passive sanity loss 100% of the time. 6.7 is a greater number than 5 so even during the time you'd be losing sanity normally you'd still be gaining 1.7 per minute. The only way to go insane with a tam is if you're either basically never wearing it or doing extremely sanity intensive things like kiting Deerclops with an axe.

13 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

No, no. It's not as not worth it as you think, it's even less worth it than that. For 68 butterfly wings, you can make a saddle that has a 55% speed boost. Pretty cool, right?

Now what if I told you that the default saddle, made with pigskin, gold, and wool, gives a 40% speed boost, thus meaning that all that investment is actually for a 15% speed boost?

15% of base speed, but I think a 15% speed boost is misleading. You're already going at 140% speed, so you're only relatively 10.7% faster.

[Theukon-dos]

28 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

A tam covers passive sanity loss 100% of the time. 6.7 is a greater number than 5 so even during the time you'd be losing sanity normally you'd still be gaining 1.7 per minute. The only way to go insane with a tam is if you're either basically never wearing it or doing extremely sanity intensive things like kiting Deerclops with an axe.

15% of base speed, but I think a 15% speed boost is misleading. You're already going at 140% speed, so you're only relatively 10.7% faster.

1. Fair enough.

2. Thankyou for doing the math and proving my point even further

[themightyone]

The Pudgy beef is a bit weak and could use a slight buff. I agree. One thing I thought would be nice would be to make the riders hunger loss cut in half while riding it. Kind of like a belt of hunger. It would be a solid perk but not too op. 

[ButterStuffed]

Pudgy beefalo could produce higher quality manure that could be used for farming.

[SinancoTheBest]

4 hours ago, themightyone said:

The Pudgy beef is a bit weak and could use a slight buff. I agree. One thing I thought would be nice would be to make the riders hunger loss cut in half while riding it. Kind of like a belt of hunger. It would be a solid perk but not too op. 

Awesome perk ideaa, would make me go for pudgy for a reason other than just to have one

[prettynuggets]

i think as long as u riding the beefalo even he at 0 hunger point the domestication wont drop . when u not riding it give it salt lick . feed it some twig then mount him again ..

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, ButterStuffed said:

Pudgy beefalo could produce higher quality manure that could be used for farming.

Eh. you don't need much manure now that farms have been buffed. And even if you did, it's much easier and faster to just feed werepigs a comical amount of lightbulbs.

14 minutes ago, prettynuggets said:

i think as long as u riding the beefalo even he at 0 hunger point the domestication wont drop . when u not riding it give it salt lick . feed it some twig then mount him again ..

Yes. I mentioned this.