Beefalo Taming is pretty bad - Some ideas to fix it.

[Vargling]

First off, when fully tamed it shouldn't lose domestication unless you directly hit it. That's honestly stupid. It should have infinite riding time, too.

Again, it should not follow you, but it can wander around - So it can be fenced in with a salt lick.

And perhaps, the domestication max should be LOWer(edited - typo), or perhaps the brush should do more. 20 days is a long time to dedicate to it.

[Sinister_Fang]

5 hours ago, Vargling said:

Again, it should not follow you, but it can wander around - So it can be fenced in with a salt lick.

If there's a salt lick nearby then the beef will tend to stick around that instead of following the nearest player. Plus with gates it's easier then ever to make a beefalo pen.

[blubuild]

It should definitely not take such a large amount of time to tame, so that it's actually worth it and so that you can also do other things with your time in the meanwhile.

[Vargling]

13 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

If there's a salt lick nearby then the beef will tend to stick around that instead of following the nearest player. Plus with gates it's easier then ever to make a beefalo pen.

Yes, but it isn't necessary. They should not follow anything, just wander around in the vicinity of a salt lick, so that a pen is more necessary.

[justjasper]

I like that it's hard, I like having a project that is really difficult, has to be maintained and can all go to pot in an instant. Recent example: 10 days into domestication, I tried to put a saddle on a beefalo I didn't realise had dropped obedience while I had pig followers. Grumpy beefalo hit me, and my loyal pigs killed it. I was super bummed out!

But nerfing something that is meant to be challenging spoils things for players who like a challenge and are capable of taking such challenges on. If you're really struggling, I'm pretty sure the kind of changes you're talking about can just be achieved with modding! You could ask around to see if someone wants to take the project on, or you could learn to do it yourself. Not as hard as it sounds, since you wouldn't need to create any new prefabs or assets (art), just edit existing ones. I'm sure an "Easier Beefalo Taming" mod would be well popular and make plenty of people happy, without spoiling a challenge for the rest of us.

[Vargling]

44 minutes ago, justjasper said:

I like that it's hard, I like having a project that is really difficult, has to be maintained and can all go to pot in an instant. Recent example: 10 days into domestication, I tried to put a saddle on a beefalo I didn't realise had dropped obedience while I had pig followers. Grumpy beefalo hit me, and my loyal pigs killed it. I was super bummed out!

But nerfing something that is meant to be challenging spoils things for players who like a challenge and are capable of taking such challenges on. If you're really struggling, I'm pretty sure the kind of changes you're talking about can just be achieved with modding! You could ask around to see if someone wants to take the project on, or you could learn to do it yourself. Not as hard as it sounds, since you wouldn't need to create any new prefabs or assets (art), just edit existing ones. I'm sure an "Easier Beefalo Taming" mod would be well popular and make plenty of people happy, without spoiling a challenge for the rest of us.

It's not a challenge, it's tedious. I've done it successfully many times, but when you devote so much time and it just kills you, that is utterly stupid.

[Michi01]

I think the amount of time and effort that goes into domestication is completely fine it should be challenging, but it's so frustrating how quickly they can lose domestication just because it ran towards someone and got out of range of the salt lick and also apparently they wont actually use salt licks if no one is near them or if they fall asleep before using it which is really frustrating because one can still lose a beefalo after penning it in with enough salt licks.
Also why are domesticated beefalos targeted with ctrl f, I lost a domesticated beefalo before because someone wanted to attack a gobbler while standing next to the pen.

[Ecu]

I think the main issue with Beefalo taming is that they just aren't worth the effort.  I personally feel the effort is actually great and should definitely remain (including having to maintain domestication), however, the tamed Beefalo need to be buffed and the bugs need to be fixed.  Currently, riding a tamed beefalo is essentially the same as running with a walking stick.  Fighting with a tamed beefalo is roughly the same or worse than fighting with a ham bat.  Both the walking stick and the ham bat are far easier to acquire and need little to no maintenance and as such, they kind of make taming beefalo worthless.

I think beefalo should have very large health pools.  Once fully domesticated, I agree that they should be allowed to run indefinitely with a rider.  Creatures should target the beefalo primarily, instead of ranged creatures targeting the player.  Various little fixes should be put into play to keep beefalos a worthy mount to have and worth the time and resource investment, especially since in DST 15-20 days of time is a lot of time to invest when on average a server doesn't last past day 100.

[Michi01]

7 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I think the main issue with Beefalo taming is that they just aren't worth the effort.  I personally feel the effort is actually great and should definitely remain (including having to maintain domestication), however, the tamed Beefalo need to be buffed and the bugs need to be fixed.  Currently, riding a tamed beefalo is essentially the same as running with a walking stick.  Fighting with a tamed beefalo is roughly the same or worse than fighting with a ham bat.  Both the walking stick and the ham bat are far easier to acquire and need little to no maintenance and as such, they kind of make taming beefalo worthless.

I think beefalo should have very large health pools.  Once fully domesticated, I agree that they should be allowed to run indefinitely with a rider.  Creatures should target the beefalo primarily, instead of ranged creatures targeting the player.  Various little fixes should be put into play to keep beefalos a worthy mount to have and worth the time and resource investment, especially since in DST 15-20 days of time is a lot of time to invest when on average a server doesn't last past day 100.

Wrong. A rider beefalo with a glossamer saddle can outrun someone who is walking on a road with a cane and a magiluminescence. An ornery beefalo with a war saddle is still faster than someone with a cane and does only a few damage points less than a dark sword (but without sanity drain and the few less damage points mean like one or two more hits on an enemy at worst). They also have a health pool of 1000 health which is pretty large and regenrate health and gain 4 times the amount of health from healing food.

[Ecu]

6 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

Wrong. A rider beefalo with a glossamer saddle can outrun someone who is walking on a road with a cane and a magiluminescence. An ornery beefalo with a war saddle is still faster than someone with a cane and does only a few damage points less than a dark sword (but without sanity drain and the few less damage points mean like one or two more hits on an enemy at worst). They also have a health pool of 1000 health which is pretty large and regenrate health and gain 4 times the amount of health from healing food.

Perhaps they are indeed more useful than I initially believed, I had watched a video on them and they did not seem as good as you are claiming.  However, it is possible that I misunderstood.

I would still claim that due to the difficulty of acquiring them, and the issues with getting kicked off of them, being unable to feed them while mounted (unless that's been fixed), and saltlick bugs, they aren't probably worth the effort in standard play.  Having to periodically stop to avoid being kicked off really impacts usability.  I'm also not sure if you can gather while on one and the animation delay of having to hop on and off is massive when compared to switching tools.  This, to me, makes walking cane quite superior for movement enhancement.

As for damage, perhaps they indeed could be useful.  However, as you cannot feed them to heal them while riding (again unless that has been fixed), it means that the main area you would want to have one for support (say fighting a boss), it isn't practical as they would likely just die.  Hell, even fighting a bunch of basic monsters, you would run into issues with health after only a couple creatures.  So while they do indeed do decent damage, practically speaking, you're better off with armor and a weapon as it is easier to acquire and will let you fight longer.