New Critters Feeback

[Mariolo]

After messing around on sandbox, doing some math, and some testing, here are some of my thoughts on all the new critters

Mimika

I like it. For a very cheap cost, get a critter that boosts the growth rate of your plants. It you toast the seeds it isn't the worst option for food but I wouldn't  rely on that. I've heard that its boost doesn't stack with grubgrubs which is a shame because I think if you through the effort of setting up mimika and grubgrubs you deserve to have fast plants

Lumb

This one is way overpowered at the moment. One single lumb can feed 3.3 dupes, and you only need 1 ovagro node with 24 vines for a full ranch of 6. Everything else about them is fine, their meat output is just ridiculous. I've also heard they are able to harvest hanging plants which doesn't make much sense but it's fine.

Dartles

There are some things I dislike about this critter. First, they made pufts obsolete for bleach stone since they are much easier to manage. Second is their food requirements. You need 4 plants per dartle, which would be fine but since they only require 4 tiles of space and have such short lifespans it feels like you are intended to ranch a high number of them. The fertilizer requirements of the dewdrop plant are also annoying since they require brine ice, which is only solid at -15ºC so you need to keep them very cold, and since you ice most likely comes from Rhexes, you need to have your Rhex ranch very cold. One change I would propose is to halve their food requirements but also halve their meat and bleach stone output (currently one single dartle can feed about 1.5 dupes so they greatly outperform the hatch).

Rhexes

I love this one. First carnivorous critter we have. I like that it is more efficient to feed them the critters directly but if you don't want to deal with the logistics of that you can just feed them meat. It makes for a fairly challengging ranch design.

I think they tried to recreate the flox-bammoth loop with Rhexes and dartles. The numbers don't quite line up since rhexes produce slightly too little brine ice... unless you feed them their own children. On that topic, baby rhexes hatch with 100% scale growth so you can get 4 extra feathers. I hope they don't nerf it because they only make about 1.2 feathers/cycle which is still outperformed by the mighty drecko.

Now one thing I dislike about this critter is that it has way too much overlap with Bammoth: a critter that produces reed fiber and has to be ranched in cold conditions (if you don't the brine ice instantly melts) that are a net calorie deficit (it give more food to eat plume squash directly over bammoth). I don't know how you would fix this or if it needs to be fixed in the first place but it is something worth considering.

I don't know on what conditions they miss their prey but I know it is intended to prevent them from haunting to extinction other critters. I think this should only apply to wild critters since if you tamed them you probably have more of them safe in a ranch and it would make feeding Rhexes a lot simpler. I think you are intended to ranch both Rhexes and Dartles on the same ranch but I don't see this working as you would have to manage very carefully the rhex and dartle population and you would rather have the rhex eat the newly hatched critters rather than the adult ones.

Gnit

I love the idea of adding mosquitos. They reproduce very quickly and are a nuisance but since they need liquid to reproduce there's some counterplay. Now one problem I have is that they very quickly reproduce until they overcrowd the room if there's a liquid available, which can seriously lag your game since flying critters are notoriously laggy. I'm also not sure if they are even better than Mimika for farming lura plants because they seem like a hassle to keep under control and you need some sacrificial critters to get stung otherwise their numbers will slowly drop. I think they are a great adition to the game but wish they had some other use because they seem outclassed at the very thing the were designed for. It would also be cool if they could spread disease but I think most players would hate that.

Jawbo

I like this one but it admitedly needs some work, it is definitely the weakest of the new critters.

The first problem is that they are just pacu+. Pacu already made a lot of food and lime. This critters takes pacu... and makes more pacu. I wish they had something to differenciate them more from regular pacu.

They suffer from the classic pacu problem of being obnoxiously hard to tame since they eat from the feeder very infrequently. Unlike the Rhex, you are very much discouraged from feeding them directly since it is just as efficient to give them pacu fillet, and they don't gain a happiness bonus from eating pacu so this is just unviable.

My proposed fix for this critter is to make them eat .75 or .5 pacu/cycle (while keeping the same 1000kcal/cycle of pacu fillet if fed through a feeder) and make them get tamed and happy when eating tame pacu, so after taming the pacu the Jawbo starts becoming tame too. This would allow for some fun ranch designs where instead of leaving the pacu to starve you drop them into a bigger tank to feed Jawbo

 

Some other additions I would like to see, I wish we got some new gas range recipies. Some of the new foods can replace existing foods on some recipes but I want something new. One problem the deep frier had is that you would make at most +4 quality food so it didn't see much use late game. Another microbe musher recipe would be neat as well although not necessary. Tender bisquet and smoked fish should also be a replacement for barbeque and pacu fillet for gas range recipes.

I will start a survival playthrough when I get some time for it and my opinion may change a lot, but these were just my thoughts after some testing and I hope this feedback is useful

Edited May 25, 2025 by Mariolo

[Carib94]

I agree with almost everything except maybe the Gnits take I believe they are really best for the Lura Plants in a large scale and they dont require any resources just a sting target. The best targets are the Dartles(high reproduction rates the same as Pacus) and even Morbs(they dont die). While Mimika are simpler and requires dirt which is renewable via pips and can pollinate the Luras to grow faster which is nice, but doesnt really matter since Luras doesnt require any fertilizer. but im glad that we have options for the Luras tho.

1 hour ago, Mariolo said:

I don't know on what conditions they miss their prey but I know it is intended to prevent them from haunting to extinction other critters. I think this should only apply to wild critters since if you tamed them you probably have more of them safe in a ranch and it would make feeding Rhexes a lot simpler. I think you are intended to ranch both Rhexes and Dartles on the same ranch but I don't see this working as you would have to manage very carefully the rhex and dartle population and you would rather have the rhex eat the newly hatched critters rather than the adult ones.

See quote below

5 hours ago, Tigin said:

They do hunt tame critters at any age (the hunt chance increases linearly with age, with a minimum chance of 15%) . However, wild critters cannot be hunted until their age reaches 85%. The hunt chance for wild critters is then the percent age of the critter squared. (If a wild Flox is age 90, then it will succeed 81% of the time). It's arguably put in place to protect the wild prey population from being hunted to extinction

By any chance can you share a Live Fed Rhex ranch if you done one.

 

Edited May 25, 2025 by Carib94

[Slightquills]

This might be a hot take, but I don't this carnivorous animals should be allowed to be domesticated, but instead have their reproduction based on the availability of food to them.

If the hunting vs age mechanic is actually how it works I think that's a cool detail.

Additionally, I like the idea of a happiness (additionally a reproduction bonus) for predators that eat a live prey.

Edited May 26, 2025 by Slightquills

[bobthedog]

27 minutes ago, Slightquills said:

Additionally, I like the idea of a happiness (additionally a reproduction bonus) for predators that eat a live prey.

This would make it possible to feed live fish to jawbos.

[purpleposeidon]

On 5/25/2025 at 1:10 PM, Mariolo said:

Another microbe musher recipe would be neat

Fig newtons would make sense.

[yulong11]

Surprisingly, the three new dinosaur species can reliably produce three burgers per cycle while also generating peat and fiber—all with just 90kg of water and 15kg of salt water input per cycle!

[asurendra]

2 hours ago, yulong11 said:

Surprisingly, the three new dinosaur species can reliably produce three burgers per cycle while also generating peat and fiber—all with just 90kg of water and 15kg of salt water input per cycle!

Well, at least it requires inputs. While pips farms are totally free

 

I agree that Jawbo need to be tweaked. Its not unic, its just copy of pacu. 

Edited May 29, 2025 by asurendra