How To Improve Gnits To Make Them More Useful

[vonVile]

Here's 2 improvements on the design for Gnits:

1, Gnits instead of just producing 1 Larva should spawn around 3-6. Insects in nature spawn hundreds of eggs for only under 5% surviving to reproduce.

2. Larva Gnits should be a natural food source for Frys and other small fish for population control. If balanced right 1-2 Larva Gnits should become Gnits. I don't know the math on the fish food consumption, but 1 Larva Gnit should fill a fish's daily requirements.

[Cmagik]

Point 1 : That's really not an issue, gnit, provided they can sting, reproduce extremely fast. a well "fed" gnit lays 2 eggs in a life time, which means you double its population by 2 every 10 cycles. Which means that in 100 cycles you'd reach 1024 gnits (assuming room space + feding is somehow kept perfect the whole time...). So really, gnit reproduction rate isn't an issue.

Point 2 : The issue is that gnit naturally spawn with jawbo / pacu, if pacu were to eat the eggs, then the population would collapse within 10 cycles. This is for the same reason that pacu (unfortunately once you have a running farm...) don't eat seakomb leaves. (Altough it'd be nice if alternate pacu could... so many seeds...). You could argue that quite often gnits lay their eggs above a solide surface thus out of pacu's reach. Still, it would be quite the gamble that any gnit population goes extinct within a few dozen of cycles due to unlucky eggs locations. So unless Klei would introduce a new eggs laying mechanism, this would most likely causes more harm than good.

My view on the matter : Mimika > Radbee > Shine bugs >> Puffs >>>>>>>>>>>>> Gnits in term of critter managements. Thus, making gnits a poor / terrible choice.

Whenever you want to make a lura plant farm, you need to pick which critter you'll feed the plant, there are 5 options. 2 are free as in, don't require any input, Gnits and Radbee and the 3 others requires ressources in some way/shape or form. Mimika requires dirt (unless wild), shinebugs / puffs a bit of feeding. 

Mimika are the best in term of "effort vs result". They require a tiny bit of dirt which is plentiful on the PPP asteroid, will pollinate the Lura and can be boosted with the farming station. Once the autosweeper is unlocked, there's really not much to do anymore, just fill a box with dirt and forget it. Radbee while technically better because they'd require 0 input, do require some temperature control and special environnement as the Lura and Radbee have drastically different temperature requirement. So you typically need a chlorine room, with 2 different cooling loops. While it isn't very complex, it's a lot of effort, much more room to save... a bit of dirt. 

Shine bugs and puffs are more annoying, take more space and thus are poorer choice to feed the lura.

And then you got the gnit.... They're free, like radbee, unlike radbee they don't require temperature control... but unlike mimika and radbee, they do require critter management which mimika and radbee don't. 

And to get that critter management right, you need a much more complexe design than a mimika farm or even a radbee. The best critter to feed them are most likely wild dartle, but since dartle require 4 space, gnit require 4 space, that's 8 space per gnit. That wouldn't be so bad provided they wouldn't reproduce so fast that until you get autosweeper, your dupes would spend half their times moving eggs around. Since eggs moved to a bin die when they hatch, you'd need (before autosweeper) an automatic dispenser, and that requires again an extra step to be sure your dupes don't store the same eggs until they die of old age. By the time you've got access to your atmosuit, your dupes might get stung everytime they'd interact. All this could be somewhat avoided by having a breeding room and a feeding room in which you have no accces to the eggs landing site after using the automatic dispenser (again, before autosweeper). But then you'd need a precise population control to avoid having too many gnits in the lura room which would expose your dupes everytime they'd come harvest. 

In short... gnit are a lot of work.. a LOT of work just to save a few kilos of dirt every cycles... dirt which you don't need for anything else but .. mimika.

So why bother? 

This is the core issue with gnit. There's no easy way to manage them. Mimika can be used from the get go, works extremely well, you don't care about overpopulation (you can feed the mimillet to pacu), they can benefit from the farming station, etc etc... 

Until gnit management becomes *much* easier, there's really no reason to use gnit beside the satisfaction of having an overly complexe design to save 100kg of dirt/cycles (which is more than enough for many of us xD)

 

 

Edit : 

Currently at cycle 150, simple design, been running since cycle ~10. Not even an autosweeper (I rly should...) 

Made all the plastic I could ever need at this stage of the game... 

Trust me I've tried using gnit, but *every time*, 

early game : mimika is easier
Mid game : more mimika would be easier than gnit
late game : drecko / petroleum are faster, easier than gnit

Edited September 26, 2025 by Cmagik

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 9/26/2025 at 4:59 AM, Cmagik said:

Currently at cycle 150, simple design, been running since cycle ~10. Not even an autosweeper (I rly should...) 

Made all the plastic I could ever need at this stage of the game... 

You know, I feel like an idiot now. ROFL!  I've been trying FOREVER to figure out how to run a gnit farm for amber and the micromanagement necessary is just insane.  Then you go and post an image using mimika and suddenly I realize I've been an idiot.  That is so easy!   I think now I can do everything renewable without touching the oil biome.

[Eliaslorenz]

On 9/26/2025 at 6:59 AM, Cmagik said:

Currently at cycle 150, simple design, been running since cycle ~10. Not even an autosweeper (I rly should...) 

Made all the plastic I could ever need at this stage of the game... 

Trust me I've tried using gnit, but *every time*, 

early game : mimika is easier
Mid game : more mimika would be easier than gnit
late game : drecko / petroleum are faster, easier than gnit

Maybe gnits could have a secondary morph which is from an ADDITIONAL egg that's laid whenever a gnit reproduces. So basically it lays 2 eggs at once.

This secondary morph is docile and can't reproduce, but can be eaten by fish and plants that eat critters, allowing easy management of gnits by simply separating egg types.

This would also mean pacu could eat the other morph of gnits without having to worry about causing the gnits to go extinct. Klei could also explain it as a "defense mechanism gnits exhibit to keep their main population high by satiating other fauna with sacrificial young" or something

[wjingyao2008]

gnit farm is not that hard. The trick is only move the extra eggs (automation)to lura farm. The gnit breeding room will fill with gnits  once they got  some critters to sting. 

[Gurgel]

I just use this super-simple design. Plastic maker on top. No dupe interaction in the actual planting room, it is sealed. Space is 75 tiles and 6 Luras is probably the max for this one. I have had the Gnits die off with 8 Luras and had to restart it. But this one has been in operation for > 1000 cycles without problems. 

[NNOUS]

I genuinely think they are not made to be useful, more just an obstacle for getting into the biome. It's a slimelung replacement as for going into those places unprotected 

[Senthe_]

On 5/16/2026 at 3:23 PM, NNOUS said:

I genuinely think they are not made to be useful, more just an obstacle for getting into the biome. It's a slimelung replacement as for going into those places unprotected 

Gnits + Lura Plants can literally produce resources out of nowhere, completely for free, and at a reasonable pace. I don't get how could you consider that useless. I consider them one of the most powerful critters in the game. With one simple farm you can get enough Amber to completely satisfy all your Plastic needs in early/midgame, and a ton of Lime from the Fossils on top of that, which is always the main bottleneck for producing Steel.

Edited May 29 by Senthe_

[NNOUS]

23 hours ago, Senthe_ said:

I don't get how could you consider that useless.

Did it say useless? Read

Gnits stinged critter and dupe can't be stinged to give other gnits production boost is the most annoying part to make the whole thing automated. 

[Shinkarr]

You can make an automation to keep fixed number of Gnit eggs in the Gnit ranch and move excessive eggs to the separate lura plant farm. That way Gnits will never die out. I had success with weight plate holding eggs and connected to conveyor chute. But never tried it with Gnits. Their egg weight might be too small for weight plate. 

On 5/29/2026 at 11:49 AM, Senthe_ said:

Gnits + Lura Plants can literally produce resources out of nowhere, completely for free, and at a reasonable pace.

Exactly! And it doesn't feel like you're using an exploit like with Balm Lilly + Drecko. The complexity of ranch design is what makes the game fun.

Edited May 31 by Shinkarr

[Senthe_]

On 5/30/2026 at 5:23 PM, NNOUS said:

Gnits stinged critter and dupe can't be stinged to give other gnits production boost is the most annoying part to make the whole thing automated. 

I see your point. Automating mixed-critter farms in general is tricky. But as long as you can accept it not being perfectly efficient, but good enough, IMO it's really straightforward : ). "Gnit Stung" status lasts 0.5 cycle, so you just need to ensure a ratio of ~2 breeding gnits per stinging victim. For the victims I use wild dartles of various ages, so it's literally set-up-and-forget, zero further effort needed, zero dupes getting stung. It's never ideally efficient, but it works.

[takas]

Regarding Gnits, I wish cracking their eggs would give us a tiny amount of something, just like Shinebugs. Since the effort required to crack the eggs is so high, it wouldn't be overpowered, so I think it would be a well-balanced adjustment.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 9/26/2025 at 4:59 AM, Cmagik said:

early game : mimika is easier
Mid game : more mimika would be easier than gnit
late game : drecko / petroleum are faster, easier than gnit

.. and you can fry up any extra mimika to eat if you're short on food for some reason.  I mean, I know I responded to your first post earlier in this thread, but I recently had a food shortage problem and was glad I had been growing mimika for my amber because, well, dupes can't eat extra gnits.