Maximising pigman efficiency

[Arlesienne]

Ladies, gents all the original,

I'd like advice in regard to maximising pigman efficiency. They're useful as guards, sources of meat, pigskin, manure, for sanity and as slaves, err, well-paid labour.

Typically, I get a few pighuts near a dense forest, then obtain monster meat from spiders (often with the help of the pigmen themselves), finally feed it to them and swing an axe to some tree (early in the morning since they stop chopping as soon as dusk hits). This lets me get much wood fast and without wasting several axes. I also farm sanity as they work and dig out stumps. As monster meat has 0.5 meatiness, one bribes them for half a day. It takes two days to feed them four in order to transform into a werepig for increased meat drops and a guaranteed pigskin. In addition leaving a stack of petals near a werepig forces it to make it all into manure. If I desperately need meat or skin and can't spend two days maximising the return for value of monster meat, I typically lure a pig onto a tooth trap or unleash allied ones onto vit.

The question is, what could be improved in this scheme? There must be something I'm missing. Whenever there is no friendly Wigfrid around, I need their skin for football helmets and piggybacks, not to mention umbrellas (you need time before gaining access to a raincoat). Thanks in advance for any advice on what to do with pigs.

Regards,

Arlesienne

[228]

You can quickly collect lots of light bulbs in caves and then feed to werepig for 1:1 manure exchange. Do that once and you will have at least one chest full of biofuel.

Also, during fullmoon you can force pigs out by torching their houses (don't forget to extinguish while pig is transforming or make sure house is within ice fling range to make it extinguish houses for you). This way you can save on monster meat, as well as easily kill werepigs one by one. I have around 15 houses few screens away from base protected by ice fling, and usually farm all of them at once during fullmoon.

[Myself49]

Monster meat actually has a meat value of 1 not 0.5

You should build several pig houses and encase a Powdercake in a wall near them so they never return to their homes at night or dusk, don't wander around and are always abailable.

Also you should just build the houses somewhere near and move a forest near them rather than moving them near a forest.

It is more effective to find a place where many 2-3 lightbulb flowers grow and pick them up, even with the use of Wicker books, for mass poop by making a werepig eat it.

You should have an Eyebrella after the first winter really and after that you don't need any more wetproof clothes ever.

It is better to use bunnymen for meat since they respawn much faster and get killed much easier with traps.

That's my 2 cents.

[Maslak]

Just now, Myself49 said:

You should build several pig houses and encase a Powdercake in a wall near them so they never return to their homes at night or dusk, don't wander around and are always abailable.

Deerclops eye will do aswell. But the best option is probably rot, because it will never spoil and is much easier to get than eye.

[mochilo]

When I need a pig skin I just turn one of the pigs in a werepig and get it. I don't think I need all of them chopping all day long during two days.

If you have three pig houses, two of them are good enough to get a fair amount of wood.

What could be improved I think is not making them all die on the same day (after all of them got four monster meats). If what you want is farming pig skins you can kill one every day so they keep respawning and you never run out of pigs for some days. One pig skin a day sounds ok to me.

After exploring the world you should have found enough pig heads to smash for pig skins if you need to craft umbrellas. I never used piggybags and I never made it to spring on a server with more than a partner, so maybe I'm missing something. But if you are so many to need a few umbrellas I guess one of the players could focus into farming werepigs until you can craft one for everybody before spring?

[ShadowDuelist]

My current scheme involves getting 4 huts out of destroying the ones found in he forests or pig village. I live in a cave so i set those 4 in a light patch, making them prisoners of their own fears ( darkness). I do the same in another area nearby, with bunnymen, and relocate them to a circle of bunnymen hut with a spooder nest in the middle of them. Thhis provides me monster  meat every morning ready to collect, which is fed to the piggies, werepig-ing em to collect the meat and skins, one by one. I farm em all once every 4 days and turn some of the profits into new pig huts. This process made my tiny pig village into a vibrant pig vegas city. An army of 20+ piggies is a good source of whatever evil scheme you have as well.

[ShadowDuelist]

The other advanced option is to keep food and grass enclosed with a dwarf star casted over them, and a flingomatic within range. the dwarf star will constantly smolder the grass, activating he flingo on that area permanently.Piggies will try to get the food and be constantly frozen by the flingomatics splash damage, making them easy to kill even with a cane. This works best during full moon, and its better for webber since he cant get too close to pig vegas.

I rather convert them one by one to werepig as I need though.

[ExtollerOfTrolls]

Whenever I play as Wigfrid, I basically survive solely on the meat from pigmen. For some reason, I also spawn Vargs when I reach the end of the trails in DS when I play as her (Seriously, in 90 days I had spawned eight Vargs and three Koalefants.), so, I stop hunting. The good news is, as long as you have plenty of spiders and pigmen nearby, getting werepigs is easy as 1-2-3. And yeah, good sanity bonus that I need to take advantage of more.

And pigs are a more reliable source of meat than hunts, because mysterious dirt piles get harder to find as I go on in the game. (Or maybe that's just for me.)

And of course, once you get four hides, you can make a new house.

If I'm playing with Wendy, I wait til dawn or night to transform them.

[Arlesienne]

8 hours ago, Myself49 said:

Monster meat actually has a meat value of 1 not 0.5

You should build several pig houses and encase a Powdercake in a wall near them so they never return to their homes at night or dusk, don't wander around and are always abailable.

Also you should just build the houses somewhere near and move a forest near them rather than moving them near a forest.

It is more effective to find a place where many 2-3 lightbulb flowers grow and pick them up, even with the use of Wicker books, for mass poop by making a werepig eat it.

You should have an Eyebrella after the first winter really and after that you don't need any more wetproof clothes ever.

It is better to use bunnymen for meat since they respawn much faster and get killed much easier with traps.

That's my 2 cents.

Thanks for the correction on monster meat values. Why don't I use bunnymen? I just can't stand them. Sometimes I take one or two hutches to be built next to mermhuts. But I only do it in a way the bunnymen are sure to fall first. Something in their psychovegan attitude just deters me.

Getting an eyebrella isn't hard, not to mention it becomes laughable, sanity-wise, with a hivehat, but I always give it away to WX or Webber, sooo...

8 hours ago, 228 said:

You can quickly collect lots of light bulbs in caves and then feed to werepig for 1:1 manure exchange. Do that once and you will have at least one chest full of biofuel.

Also, during fullmoon you can force pigs out by torching their houses (don't forget to extinguish while pig is transforming or make sure house is within ice fling range to make it extinguish houses for you). This way you can save on monster meat, as well as easily kill werepigs one by one. I have around 15 houses few screens away from base protected by ice fling, and usually farm all of them at once during fullmoon.

I never thought of torching and extinguishing their houses. I just do something to get them out before the full moon, then hunt them. For manure, unless I am around the apiary, I get flowers; these are abundant and raise sanity, something important if you give all sanity items to your team (Willow is ideal for the selfless admin role since she can manage sanity beautifully). I prefer to get lightbulbs for fuel of my lanterns (always leave one turned off near a touchstone etc.) and minerhats.

8 hours ago, Maslak said:

Deerclops eye will do aswell. But the best option is probably rot, because it will never spoil and is much easier to get than eye.

Exactly! Rot or the eternal fruitcake. No need to make powdercake.

7 hours ago, mochilo said:

When I need a pig skin I just turn one of the pigs in a werepig and get it. I don't think I need all of them chopping all day long during two days.

If you have three pig houses, two of them are good enough to get a fair amount of wood.

What could be improved I think is not making them all die on the same day (after all of them got four monster meats). If what you want is farming pig skins you can kill one every day so they keep respawning and you never run out of pigs for some days. One pig skin a day sounds ok to me.

After exploring the world you should have found enough pig heads to smash for pig skins if you need to craft umbrellas. I never used piggybags and I never made it to spring on a server with more than a partner, so maybe I'm missing something. But if you are so many to need a few umbrellas I guess one of the players could focus into farming werepigs until you can craft one for everybody before spring?

I get skin for heads, but try to hammer them on full moons to get free nightmare fuel as well, that's one; spring annoys me, but I spend it preparing for summer spelunking since resources regrow like mad in rain. I hire a few pigs for these giant coniferous forests where you only get evergreens and an occasional spider den. I want to get this over with fast as it's one of the most boring biomes in my humble opinion and more chopping at once increases a free treeguard chance. Pighuts tend to occur naturally in such areas. Often enough, the rebel pig village (on the opposite side of the road to the pig king) is on the border. I hire pigs, get wood, treeguards target pigs rather than me, I finish them if pigs fall or werepig my minions, finally get the pinecones and move the forest elsewhere.

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

My current scheme involves getting 4 huts out of destroying the ones found in he forests or pig village. I live in a cave so i set those 4 in a light patch, making them prisoners of their own fears ( darkness). I do the same in another area nearby, with bunnymen, and relocate them to a circle of bunnymen hut with a spooder nest in the middle of them. Thhis provides me monster  meat every morning ready to collect, which is fed to the piggies, werepig-ing em to collect the meat and skins, one by one. I farm em all once every 4 days and turn some of the profits into new pig huts. This process made my tiny pig village into a vibrant pig vegas city. An army of 20+ piggies is a good source of whatever evil scheme you have as well.

This is an excellent idea! Pig Vegas and evil schemes sounds like my little paradise !

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

The other advanced option is to keep food and grass enclosed with a dwarf star casted over them, and a flingomatic within range. the dwarf star will constantly smolder the grass, activating he flingo on that area permanently.Piggies will try to get the food and be constantly frozen by the flingomatics splash damage, making them easy to kill even with a cane. This works best during full moon, and its better for webber since he cant get too close to pig vegas.

I rather convert them one by one to werepig as I need though.

Could work, but just like you, I prefer to turn them one by one. Ideally with their buddies doing most of the job for me.

3 hours ago, ExtollerOfTrolls said:

Whenever I play as Wigfrid, I basically survive solely on the meat from pigmen. For some reason, I also spawn Vargs when I reach the end of the trails in DS when I play as her (Seriously, in 90 days I had spawned eight Vargs and three Koalefants.), so, I stop hunting. The good news is, as long as you have plenty of spiders and pigmen nearby, getting werepigs is easy as 1-2-3. And yeah, good sanity bonus that I need to take advantage of more.

And pigs are a more reliable source of meat than hunts, because mysterious dirt piles get harder to find as I go on in the game. (Or maybe that's just for me.)

And of course, once you get four hides, you can make a new house.

If I'm playing with Wendy, I wait til dawn or night to transform them.

It sounds clever. Generally I don't get pighuts close to any camps. I build separate labour camps for lumberjacks. And when I start drowning in food in spite of many people on the server visiting Auntie Arles for dinner, it's just awesome to parade with your own Legion of Terror.

[HamBatter]

9 hours ago, Maslak said:

Deerclops eye will do aswell. But the best option is probably rot, because it will never spoil and is much easier to get than eye.

Tallbird Egg can't burn like Deerclops Eye, but the previous is not as convenient stacking-wise and both can be eaten by bats.

I wonder what Pig-attracting items have the lowest risk of removal by other means.

[hkhm]

47 minutes ago, Arlesienne said:

Something in their psychovegan attitude just deters me

nah. that's the best thing about them. >:D

[HutGenerator]

11 hours ago, Arlesienne said:

Ladies, gents all the original,

I'd like advice in regard to maximising pigman efficiency. They're useful as guards, sources of meat, pigskin, manure, for sanity and as slaves, err, well-paid labour.

IMO, as guards, pigs are not that reliable because of their fairly long respawn time. I only use them combining with bunnys as depth worm guardians in the caves. But they are only for distraction, I will still kill the depth worm myself. In overworld, beefalos are much more better as guards because of their high health and mass population.

As source of meat, bunny farm is way more easier. Bunny respawn everyday. And feeding carrots and fake attacking strategy has no risk at all and less time consuming if you walled up your bunny farm. For pigs you still have to feed and turn into werepigs and fight, althought kite fight is still easy.

Pigskin is the only thing that has no alternative but to actually get it from pigs. But if you want pig skin for umbrella, I would suggest using eyebrella instead. During the first autumn, it will only rain once. So straw hat will do the job, you will definitely able to deal with some temporary wetness. After the winter, you should able to have eyebrella, and handle spring easily. As for football helm, log suit is the easier alternative. Logs and grass are way easier to get and less effort. Head gear is more important for miner hat/tam o/eyebrella/beefalo hat/etc. 

Manure farm is the best thing about pigs. Flowers/berries/light bulbs and feeding werepigs is the easiest way to get manure.

Sanity I would suggest glommer and tam o as a better choice. You can get tam o at day 21 and glommer at day 11. Before day 11, you would not have any sanity problem, or you can just pick up wild flowers to gain sanity and prepare for your manure farms too.

Well-paid labours, if you are using them to chop trees, they are actually kind of not reliable. I would suggest using bearger to farm logs for you. Build a dense 200++ forest before autumn and welcome bearger and you will be omg. If you dont have so many pine cone yet, just use the default forest until you get enough pine cone.

[Arlesienne]

On 10.01.2017 at 1:35 AM, HamBatter said:

Tallbird Egg can't burn like Deerclops Eye, but the previous is not as convenient stacking-wise and both can be eaten by bats.

I wonder what Pig-attracting items have the lowest risk of removal by other means.

I'd suggest our new eternal fruitcake, though a tallbird egg would be smart too; Glommer's goop? I think pigs eat it. Or rot. I'd say burning is of little danger as you'd use rock walls anyway. And you don't build food-based traps like that near batilisks.

On 10.01.2017 at 2:12 AM, hkhm said:

nah. that's the best thing about them. >:D

Allow me to politely disagree.

On 10.01.2017 at 3:47 AM, HutGenerator said:

IMO, as guards, pigs are not that reliable because of their fairly long respawn time. I only use them combining with bunnys as depth worm guardians in the caves. But they are only for distraction, I will still kill the depth worm myself. In overworld, beefalos are much more better as guards because of their high health and mass population.

As source of meat, bunny farm is way more easier. Bunny respawn everyday. And feeding carrots and fake attacking strategy has no risk at all and less time consuming if you walled up your bunny farm. For pigs you still have to feed and turn into werepigs and fight, althought kite fight is still easy.

Pigskin is the only thing that has no alternative but to actually get it from pigs. But if you want pig skin for umbrella, I would suggest using eyebrella instead. During the first autumn, it will only rain once. So straw hat will do the job, you will definitely able to deal with some temporary wetness. After the winter, you should able to have eyebrella, and handle spring easily. As for football helm, log suit is the easier alternative. Logs and grass are way easier to get and less effort. Head gear is more important for miner hat/tam o/eyebrella/beefalo hat/etc. 

Manure farm is the best thing about pigs. Flowers/berries/light bulbs and feeding werepigs is the easiest way to get manure.

Sanity I would suggest glommer and tam o as a better choice. You can get tam o at day 21 and glommer at day 11. Before day 11, you would not have any sanity problem, or you can just pick up wild flowers to gain sanity and prepare for your manure farms too.

Well-paid labours, if you are using them to chop trees, they are actually kind of not reliable. I would suggest using bearger to farm logs for you. Build a dense 200++ forest before autumn and welcome bearger and you will be omg. If you dont have so many pine cone yet, just use the default forest until you get enough pine cone.

Thank you, but for the bearger, I have to wait a year unless you get some special settings. The eyebrella, on default settings, is once per winter - not an option in multiplayer where you, the host, have to cheapskate on yourself to ensure the clients have good items. I don't need much manure (unless the mechanics of getting presents are kept from Winter's Feast, not sure about it - then i will need manure for planters), because I don't bother with farms. If there's no Wigfrid willing to make helmets, I go for the football ones, because I prefer having extra protection. Just a personal playstyle, I believe, due to so many ways of dealing with sanity.

* * *

I see people keep mentioning bunnymen. Thanks, but the question is about pigmen, so if you could all stick to the theme, I'd be grateful. These furry things creep me out and we have a lifelong feud, so nope, not planning to be friends with them.

[WiggyWolf]

Looks like an efficient pig farm. Same as the bunnymen, you don't need to fight them. Simple enough. That's all the pigskin you will need.

[artemiyME]

Don't think anybody mentioned funny Pigman mechanics vs other world critters:

- Frogs in Overworld frog ponds. Sometimes I have fun times making pig villages right smack in middle of large frog pond gathering, for some pig-on-frog action, its always fun to watch and root for pigs but somehow they always lose  (unless you have at least same amount of houses as frog ponds)

- spring killer bees, same as above, adding bee boxes into pig villages always results in a fun and automated meat producing machine, just come and grab the loots, and clench your buttcheeks for stinger overload lag T_T. Add them to frog ponds as well, they will kill frogs for you too xD!

Catcha lata, you pig maniacs!

[Arlesienne]

18 hours ago, artemiyME said:

Don't think anybody mentioned funny Pigman mechanics vs other world critters:

- Frogs in Overworld frog ponds. Sometimes I have fun times making pig villages right smack in middle of large frog pond gathering, for some pig-on-frog action, its always fun to watch and root for pigs but somehow they always lose  (unless you have at least same amount of houses as frog ponds)

- spring killer bees, same as above, adding bee boxes into pig villages always results in a fun and automated meat producing machine, just come and grab the loots, and clench your buttcheeks for stinger overload lag T_T. Add them to frog ponds as well, they will kill frogs for you too xD!

Catcha lata, you pig maniacs!

Of yes, I LOVE pig-frog fights! Definitely yes. Should have listed it too.

[SimonL]

I think you've got it down. Though you said it takes 2 days to make a werepig? I usually just feed them all 4 meats all at once. And sometimes they'll refuse you because they've eaten too much (if they happened to eat a morsel or regular meat), all you have to do is drop the monster meat and they'll eat it anyway. I usually do the werepig transformations by befriending each individual pig first then I drop a full stack of monster meat on the ground and let them eat it till they have eaten 3 apiece (This is when i have like 40 monster meat). Then I transform one and kill them one by one. 

Once you have reached a critical mass of pig houses (20? 30?) I usually start a pig civil war by having 2 allied pigs attack each other. This is one of the fastest ways of getting a lot of meat quickly and so then monster meat method is used a lot less. You can cut down on overhead (feeding the pigs) if you build a one-man band. Wear it just long enough to get them fighting.

I rarely do this (since i rarely base near beefalo) but if you are in need of meat and a beefalo horn, can lead your army to a suicide mission.

Oh, and a side-note for the pigcentric gameplay is to always keep a built pighouse on hand. So if you ever get in trouble during the day, drop a pighouse and they can fight for you.

[Arlesienne]

@SimonL, you can absolutely make werepigs faster. I simply enslave them for as long as possible with the four monster meat pieces so that they chop a forest down for me before dying. Horrible, I know. But it also farms sanity at an insane rate. Pigs near frogs don't get hired, I just wait until they start getting mobbed and pick up the loot.

[SimonL]

Oh yeah, I definitely make them work for me before I transform them. Nobody is crueler than I to the pigmen.