Confused Rock

I've never had the issue of a salt lick not cutting it, and I've left a beefalo alone for over an in game year. at that point, giving it 1 twig to reset it once a year doesn't sound like high maint costs. it's not like when you're domesticating a beefalo you're just spending 20 days hugging it. there's plenty you can do while riding a beefalo, it's less like taming a beef is an activity that takes 20 days and more like taming a beef restricts you from performing certain activites like going in caves.

beefalo taming only takes too long if you think of domestication as an end goal, where it's more just a bonus. if you can ride a beef more than 10 secs without being bucked off it's good enough to give you a huge speed boost. by the time it lets you ride for a full minute it can now do combat just fine.

I still enjoy taming beefalo day one on a public server. Half tamed beef are really convenient for murder and will work out fine for your time if you remember not to take damage in a bramble husk while near your cow.

I can see why people think beefalo taming is a bad idea, and I can especially see why a wolfgang main would think it's a bad idea since wolfgang and wx are the characters beefalo taming complements the least. Absolutely don't tame a beefalo if you're playing wolfgang. That's like making 40 pierogis as wurt. As someone who thinks it's a good idea. not a great idea, just a good one, because it's absolutely exhausting and risky and so it probably won't actually be a good idea until you've done it a couple times before. you can do it as early as day 2, really. Just means you can't do anything cave related if you want to finish it quickly. a few things most important to remember: 1. it only takes a day or two of riding for the beefalo to let you ride for a long enough period that you can use them for anything, really. Just a bit more annoying to feed. This means that if you're just using a beefalo to carry stuff around- you don't need to tame a beefalo. it'll do you just fine to slap a saddle on a random beef and haul with it. This also means that it's not necessarily a bad idea if you're on a public server and only plan to hang around a year or so, that beef will be handy even before it's fully tame. 2. you can just slap down 12 salt licks somewhere and forget about them for a while if you want. This also means that if you already have a brush and just want to casually tame one, just drive them to base and brush them from time to time, maybe fill their stomachs a bit. 3. BEEFALO DON'T NEED TO BE FED FOUR DRAGONPIES A DAY. ABOUT TEN TWIGS WORKS IF YOU RIDE IT INSTEAD. THEY NEED LESS FOOD IF YOU DON'T MIND LOSING SADDLE DURABILITY. THEY NEED LESS FOOD IF YOU USE THE BRUSH INSTEAD. THEY NEED TO BE FED NOTHING IF YOU LEAVE THEM ON A SALT LICK. The only thing holding beefalo back is their inability to go in caves and that you can't heal while riding them, meaning a pan flute is a must for fighting bosses if you don't have any other openings and expect to take damage (on the plus side, they naturally regenerate hp well enough you usually don't have to worry about it otherwise and they're incredibly easy to heal when you're off them since a stack of blue mushrooms is 3200 spare hp.) The most important things to consider are what you want the beefalo for and your character. First off wickerbottom can definitely feed a beefalo easier but again you generally don't need to feed a beefalo too much. I recommend just making a spiky bush farm, it grows in winter and a log suit allows you to all but ignore the damage you take. If you're taming a beefalo just for speed, it might not be too effective. obviously you'll want a rider beef. I don't think a beefalo is as valuable for the effort if you're looking for speed, especially since they can't use wormholes, but if you're just casually taming it later on it can help close gaps. Proobably don't bother if you're WX or wolfgang since they don't need the speed at all. If you want to kill stuff with a beefalo now it gets good, mainly because you don't have to maintain armor or nothing. I like to wear a bone helm while riding an ornery beefalo to fight nightmares since they can't hurt me and damage the bone helm while I ride the beefalo. Characters who do best with a beefalo for fighting: 1. wes obviously can compensate for the beefalo's damage being better than anything wes can do with their lower damage modifier. 2. Warly's food still increase your damage while you're riding a beefalo, last I checked being literally a few days ago. Definitely works well. 3. Wendy used to work well on a beefalo since she had the same compensation for the damage as with wes as well as having abigail to help deal damage, but her refresh made riding a beefalo about twice as good. not only can she use everything abigail related while riding a beefalo, but the lowered defense of abigail applies to enemies you attack with a beefalo: including the damage bonus wendy has against abigail's targets. Unless I'm going insane and this is all a lie, 50% more damage on a beefalo is pretty good, plus the damage abigail's doing. That plus warly stuff would mean 300 damage per headbutt, which is a pretty decent wolfgang impression imo. I should probably stop writing this at some point so the last thing I'll say is that yes, the glossamer saddle is a good idea. if you're taming a beefalo after the first year, make one first (or just a war saddle). making a glossamer or war saddle are both good uses of a construction amulet. I recommend making one not just for the speed or damage boost but because they break slower. normally a beefalo knocking its saddle off is a huge problem, either you feed it a bit whenever you dismount to make sure it doesn't buck the saddle off or you end up having to craft several. Not the case with the glossamer saddle or war saddle, you can screw it up 15 times and you still won't lose the saddle. Once they're fully domesticated you don't have to worry about it any more. Beefalo can be an investment or you can just pick one up and use it before it's even fully domesticated and it'll be decently effective. If you want to become as combat effective as possible in the first five days all you need to do is find a beefalo. PS you don't need a beefalo hat to deal with your boy in winter just leave him near a salt lick for a day or two and party. if you had to get on him you can he'll just jab you a bit.

Deerclops, the first boss where wendy's damage modifier really needs to be considered, is able to kill abigail in five hits. Abigail will not dodge deerclops. This is one of many situations where wendy won't be able to compensate for her lower damage, and there it really matters. I completely disagree that wendy has no downsides, and that recent changes have made for fewer and fewer downsides. A lot of characters have negligible downsides! The oldest character to have any awful ones is webber. It has always felt weird to me though that wendy's only downside is that she's worse in combat while her upside is that she's better in it.

I kind of miss the mechanic since I was fighting alongside abigail because I couldn't have her tank and... I almost entirely ignored the fact that I was at 1hp by riding a beefalo, and that kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? If it still existed, it would have to cap out when wendy's at around 40 hp so she's still able to fight when armored. That, or make it temporary or somehow exhaust abigail to make it clear this is a plan B and not a good idea. But changing it this many times would be a lot of effort. As always my soul resonates with everything swanky said.