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Domesticated beefalo


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I recently managed the task of domesticating a beefalo for the first. I did read the long technical posting about this posted in an older topic, but remain confused on a couple of points:

1. Do I really need to feed or ride it every day to maintain its domestication/obedience? (It's a rider beef.) How long can I leave it alone before it loses its domestication? How can I tell if its domestication is in danger?

2. While feeding, riding or brushing it every couple of days or so is not that big a a deal during most of the year, I spend the summers in the caves farming monkeys and ruins gear. If I put a brand new saltlick in my beef's corral before I go down, will he still be domesticated when I return? Would putting TWO saltlicks in the corral hedge that bet?

3. What's the point? I used the beef to retrieve all the suspicious marbles and I might stay on the surface next summer so that I can use it to haul glass castles back to my base. But beyond that, is having a domesticated beefalo really worth it? I have a pretty sweet set-up with regard to resources and wormholes, so I rarely have to travel far from my base. Where I could really use him is in the caves, but....

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I can only address #3.  (though I believe #1 is "yes, you must and a season" and #2 is "Yes, and two would be even more sure, correct")

 

#3:  The point to having a domesticated beefalo is that it is cool.  There is no real other point for anyone who is an advanced player.  Medium-skill players playing Wes (like myself) do occasionally find them useful for fighting, but only because of Wes's damage-penalty.  (I guess Wendy might like them for the same reason as well)  But really ...

 

The only reason to domesticate a beefalo is because you think it's cool.  (so, if you don't think it's cool, don't bother)

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In my opinion, domesticating a Beefalo and keeping the domestication up are challenge in itself. Like killing a Giant is not always useful, it is fun and challenging. 

However, I too need more info about your Q#1 :3

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1: To keep it domesticated you need either to ride, feed/brush it or to have a salt lick by it. They lose domestication in 10 days if none of these happens. I'm not 100% sure about it, but it must be a good approximation because once I was spelunking and forgot to build new salt licks and at the end of summer both of my beefalos went wild. 

I don't exactly know how can you tell if the domestication is in danger, but I would also really appreciate a good answer, because I'm always afraid of it. I believe that the time how long you can ride it is can tell more or less the domestication level of the current beefalo, the longer it takes to get thrown down the more domesticated it is. You can ride it 800 seconds (13,3 minutes) if it's fully domesticated. However, I'm not sure if this method really works and is correct, and haven't really tested it (I mean, riding it for almost a quarter hour just to see if it won't go wild is way too much - and if you do tasks during it you might accidentaly get off of it and you can start the whole procedure again...)

2: One salt lick lasts 15 days if you have one beefalo. If you have two, it lasts for 7,5 days, 5 days if three and so on. So you can actually count how the number of needed salt licks depending on how much time you want to spend in the caves. Just make sure that there aren't any koalafants, no-eye deers or volter goats near of it/them because they also like salt... :) 

3: Technically, a beefalo isn't necessary for anything, the only thing where it's much better to have one is marble (and now boulder) carrying. However, there are a lot of tasks that can be more or less easier, safer or faster when done with a beefalo. I use a rider (apart from going to travelling of course) to lure monsters like Bearger. It's completely safe (you have to get off about once the whole day to not be thrown down), you can fight Deerclops for sanity with a bee queen hat withouth risking its durability. As long as you watch out for it it is a living-regenerating-100%-armour (so that you don't need any armour for the fight - "huge" advantage, I know, but I'm often lazy enough ;)). You can kill Goose/Goose without anything in the hand slot and so it's less anoying. If you're in danger you just hop on if (unless it's an ornery...) and run away, and a lot more. The only real disadvantage of a beefalo (as to my opinion) is that you cannot interact with stuff on the ground without having to get off, which can be quite annoying in a fight for example if not well prepared.

Depending on the character an ornery beefalo can be really useful, in my Wendy-main solo world it's practically a built-in walkingcane-darksword-regenerating100%armour, so I always kill Dragonfly and Klaus on it. It's not that much a help for a Wolfgang though. 

There's also a good video about beefalo taming made by James Bucket: 

I used it to learn how domestication exactly works and it was proven really useful. There are many details mentioned in there and it's also quite funny :)

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Optimal use for the beefalo is temporarily taming them to move suspicious marble, and then harvesting them for materials.  They're a lot of time and effort to tame and maintain for little benefit after that.

 

They have some inefficient but viable edge cases (ornery with war saddle, riding beefalo for long travel) but in general are mostly just a way to waste a lot of food and resources, and especially are annoying to maintain through the first winter.

 

Pudgy is the least useful but has an adorable face.  I'd consider taming a beefalo once I had a megabase and automated resource gathering as a luxury, but before then they are mostly just like smallbirds.

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4 minutes ago, Toros said:

Optimal use for the beefalo is temporarily taming them to move suspicious marble, and then harvesting them for materials.  They're a lot of time and effort to tame and maintain for little benefit after that.

 

They have some inefficient but viable edge cases (ornery with war saddle, riding beefalo for long travel) but in general are mostly just a way to waste a lot of food and resources, and especially are annoying to maintain through the first winter.

 

Pudgy is the least useful but has an adorable face.  I'd consider taming a beefalo once I had a megabase and automated resource gathering as a luxury, but before then they are mostly just like smallbirds.

Beefalo are a lot of work for no real gain, it's just mostly for fun. Hell I have 4 farms set up as a dragon pie production center for beefalo taming... Further inefficiency honestly, but still fun.

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I think that perhaps the reason I enjoy beefalo taming so much on public servers is the same reason I enjoy playing Wes:  I like a challenge -- and I like ones tough enough to fail at.

 

Wes's hunger + sustaining a beefalo almost always kills me.  I love it.

 

(besides, Wes on a Cow!  I mean, c'mon .... 'WES ON A COW!!!!")

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My life was way easier when I got my beef, even when it is the pudgy one (less speed, less atack). Not only I cover distances way faster around the world, its speed is amazing for kitting all kind of enemies with no % loss on your weapons. Super good to run in circles during creatures fights such as wolf waves (damn I already forgot how are these called) against wild beefalos.

I used to give him 1-2 salt licks in summer when I wanted to spend it in the caves, and when I returned on autumn the beef was still there and happy to see me :D

 

Love the beefalo, it's an awesome creature. He will love you too!

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Ugh, just, if we could exit while mounted on them, have them have loyalty specific to a each player and not just in general and if salt licks had like x10 the durab...

Then I'd domesticate a beefalo for definite. The rider, preferably, since I need something to compensate for my charge not having effect as WX. Having them go through wormholes with you would be cool too, though, you can use a beefalo horn to do it anyway. Thing is, that thing has only 10 uses and can't be repaired in any way, so, killing a lot of other beefs... Killing a lot of other beefs ;-!

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6 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Ugh, just, if we could exit while mounted on them, have them have loyalty specific to a each player and not just in general and if salt licks had like x10 the durab...

I'd love to see this implemented, maybe with the exception that it could be possible for a group to tame a beefalo. This way everybody who contributed in the domestication process could be able to ride it, but no one else. I imagine it would be really useful for a group of friends, this way they could ride a beefalo at any time needed without having to tame one for everyone.

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I've had him for a full year now and have no regrets. Inspired by @mochilo, I made a war saddle and use him to kill walruses in the nearby three-tusk area, and there's a spider forest I've been slowly clearing. My impression is that queens are more likely to turn back into tier one nests if they've been attacked at least once, so I just go wallop them every so often. I also have a bunch of near-useless farms from when I was taming him, so I just plant all the random seeds I pick up there and feed him whatever grows. (He doesn't seem to hold the durians against me although they obviously don't agree with him.) I put a fresh salt lick in his corral every summer and replace it as needed during the other seasons, so I can ignore him for quite a while without him losing too much domestication. He's actually less annoying than a pet and much more useful.

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On 24/3/2017 at 6:29 PM, absimiliard said:

(besides, Wes on a Cow!  I mean, c'mon .... 'WES ON A COW!!!!")

 

5 minutes ago, Arlesienne said:

You tame a pudgy beefalo for its inherent cuteness. Also, unlike a smaller pet, it will not cry if unfed!

Btw I have this old screenshot from the day I domesticated my first (and only) beef that I love to show up everywhere I can and under every excuse possible, and it happens to relate to both these things... so here it is!! Wes + Pudgy, such a lovely combo. At the moment he has an ewelet friend instead of the brodling, for even higher cuteness levels.

20170119223141_1.jpg.f68d36d23623c21bb91

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