Beefalo taming - Guide, Tips, and Calculations

[Friendly Grass]

THE EASIEST WAY TO TAME A PERFECT BEEFALO

Start by bonding with, feeding, and saddling a beefalo. Use a brush on your beefalo each day, feed it around 10 grass/twigs/anything throughout the day, and ride it all day. You should be set in around a season. Oh, and fight things with your beefalo unless you don't want a war beefalo.

 

FEEDING YOUR BEEFALO

During taming, a beefalo needs 11 carrots/juicy berries/bananas, 12 twigs/berries, 13 grass, OR 15 petals/foliage throughout each day (so the hunger provided does make a small difference, but it’s almost negligible). Remember that you can pick all of these while on your beefalo. Brushing the beefalo is equivalent to feeding it 4 things. Don’t stress about specific quantities per day, though. Just feed it now and then, especially if it’s not letting you on or if it shakes off it’s saddle.

 

RIDING YOUR BEEFALO

During taming, it is vital to be riding your beefalo whenever possible. It is a good opportunity to feed your beefalo when you need to get off and do something. Worst case scenario, the taming process takes a bit longer.

 

BUCK TIMER

I’ve heard people complain about their beefalo bucking them off so I thought I should mention this. When you start taming a beefalo, it will buck you off in a measly 15 seconds. But, this is reset if you dismount and remount your beefalo, and it increases significantly during the domestication process and once fully tamed. The point is, please dismount and remount your beefalo before combat, especially during early stages of taming, to avoid any unfortunate predicaments.

 

SALT LICKS

Parking your beefalo near a salt lick pauses domestication, and uses up the salt lick over time. This is a slight upgrade to leaving it somewhere else, unridden and unfed. I don’t recommend using them during taming if possible. Use them on a fully tamed beefalo when you need to leave it somewhere for an extended period of time, I’d say over a day. This is because of the way domestication loss gets worse the longer it’s left uncared for. For reference, it takes just 2 minutes of riding to make up for a day of domestication loss, a full day to make up for 2 days of loss, 4 days to recover 4 days of loss, but from there it gets really crazy.

Beefalo also don’t lose domestication while sleeping. But I’ve heard the trick of unloading them while sleeping no longer works. EDIT: Just tested and have confirmed this.

 

BEEFALO BELL

There’s no reason not to bond with your beefalo as most all the bugs have been fixed. It will only prevent your beefalo from going into heat so make sure to bond with it BEFORE it gets horny. It’ll follow you (if you have the bell) everywhere when bonded. Make sure to drop the bell when leaving it somewhere and then make sure to pick it back up if you don’t want to be abandoned later. 

 

SADDLES

Glossamer and War saddles are very expensive but worth it. These are great uses for a construction amulet. You can easily swap saddles before and after you fight, too. And on the topic of steel wool, the ewecus can not spit on players that are on a beefalo!

 

TENDENCY

Ornery is often considered the best tendency as infinite weapon and armor is a main reason to tame a beefalo, and it’s only a bit slower than Rider. The only downside is that you must feed it an item before it lets you on. You can get this by fighting during the taming process.

The Rider tendency is almost 15% faster and doesn’t require that maintenance. It’s base damage is only 25 but you can still fight with it when necessary. You can get this by not fighting during taming. I definitely recommend this as Wigfrid because she doesn’t synergize at all with fighting on a beefalo, and combat is almost free with her anyways.

Some people prefer going for a default tendency because you can still get the 50 damage threshold with a war saddle but don’t have the ornery downside. I’m pretty sure you will need to partially train in Pudgy tendency though by stuffing it’s face with food.

It comes down to playstyle and character choice, and you can even fairly easily keep multiple beefalos if you’re willing to supply the salt lick cost. It’s good to note however that the tendency takes into effect once the beefalo is fully tamed, and it then lasts forever and cannot be changed.

 

CLOSING NOTES

I made this guide because the few others seemed outdated, misleading, and/or overcomplicated, there are many misconceptions floating around, and I had some tips and calculations I wanted to share. I left a lot out and chose not to explain most of the exact stats themselves.

You can also check out:

wiki page, James Buckets video, DarkXero’s forum post, Swanky Psammead’s Beefalo Series

[themightyone]

I find the Glossamer saddle so much easier to construct than the war. I prefer to domesticate my Beef in the Summer. I generally spend the daytime by my bee boxes and flowers killing butterflies , after about 5 days of that method I have enough to build a Glossamer saddle. So this method works great when training a Ornary , and when its tamed I just pop on the Glossamer saddle as a nice reward. 

Maybe I just have awful luck at spawning a Ewecus but the War saddle usually takes 100 days before I can make one. 

[Friendly Grass]

17 minutes ago, themightyone said:

I find the Glossamer saddle so much easier to construct than the war. I prefer to domesticate my Beef in the Summer. I generally spend the daytime by my bee boxes and flowers killing butterflies , after about 5 days of that method I have enough to build a Glossamer saddle. So this method works great when training a Ornary , and when its tamed I just pop on the Glossamer saddle as a nice reward. 

Maybe I just have awful luck at spawning a Ewecus but the War saddle usually takes 100 days before I can make one. 

Nice set up!
The chance of getting a ewecus in a hunt starts out really low and then increases over time, maxing out at day 100. So it makes sense it takes a while before you can make one. Especially if you don’t have a construction amulet.

But its true that the war saddle isn’t as needed for an ornery since you already pass the 50 damage threshold.