4.AFFFFFFF - Animageddon Spoiler Thread

[Renegrade]

A little update on my testing: My 160+ block farm (which is mostly wheat with some hemp) is more than enough to support the two sheep I have, but catastrophically short of the required seed production. So classical animal breeding is probably fine for non-chickens.

However, chickens require seeds or seed-based foods (unless I'm mistaken?), and my farm rapidly lost ground against only four chickens. The seed production rate is just.. not there. They seem to burn through a whole stack in a 24h cycle, and I only had about 5 stacks of surplus which is now gone. NB: I don't have any sort of gourd-type produce -- only wheat and hemp so far.

btw, I actually like the mechanic, just worried that I'll never have non-rotting arrows ;)

Actually did a bit of surveying and dropped the results in Libreoffice Calc, and I have 147 wheat-growing plots and 72 hemp-growing plots.

Don't forget there's a limited draw distance for critters and monsters. They could very well just be beyond that. Personally, I'm more concerned about what looks like ghasts in the lower left corner :)

Nothing to worry about there, those are just bone blocks :)

Oh, that's reassur--hey! I see what you did there~ hehe

[FlowerChild]

Is animal automation going to be a thing anymore? Most automated farm systems tend to be kinda limited in scope (or semi-automatic at best), and I'm not sure it's going to be practical to have farm-fed animals etc...?

Not at the same scale, no. Ultimately, a lot of automated animal setups were largely fun technical projects that had little practical purpose in the past. Given that, I do not think they'll cease to exist in that role, they may just be a little more impractically non-practical :)

Having said that, I will likely tweek the food-item value a bit more, which should help some. I was mostly focused on getting the grazing values right with this past release. At present, I'd say grazing is MUCH more practical than hand feeding.

EDIT: As an FYI, I reviewed all the numbers involved, and I'd strongly advise moving towards gourds for chickens. I think the main problem you're running into is that you're trying to feed them based on crops primarily intended to feed other animal types, whereas the increased demands of the new system really emphasize specialization.

[Panda]

It's been an experience but now regular arrows are to hard to make for the purpose of ever shooting. Currently got 4 butchers stuck on level one arrow trading.

I have however become much more attached to my animals as i only have a select few. All my sheep except my brown and blue sheep got made into glue. Their names are Lapis and Dung.

Butchers have become a ducking mesaiah. They get all the gems now.

I also now have a great appreciation for the new animal food giving god which i mentioned in the spoiler thread.

Since the new changes i made much larger grassy pens with iron golems to be safe and periodically blast the ground with bone meal.

Also mother ducking bread. Hope you all like bread! Did i mention bread? Bread.

Hope this feedback helps~ <3

[FlowerChild]

and periodically blast the ground with bone meal.

Huh? That shouldn't do anything at all.

[Panda]

and periodically blast the ground with bone meal.

Huh? That shouldn't do anything at all.

Oh i thought because it made tall grass for them to eat..? Also i farm tall grass now

[Panda]

Wait do they not eat tall grass and get nutrition??

[FlowerChild]

Oh i thought because it made tall grass for them to eat..? Also i farm tall grass now

Are you saying you actually applied bonemeal to grass, and it worked, as you implied in your post, or are you just speculating about what you'd like to do?

If the first, it's a bug (and one I can't reproduce). If it's the second, please don't do that.

[Panda]

Sorry i did some prepping with bonemeal before i updated, was thinking i could grow a bunch of grass to feed them. So yes, it was speculation. Sorry for that, I'll try not to let it happen again.

I hope the other feedback was useful though.

[ExpHP]

You can use fences to enclose small regions of grass in the interior of your pen to get a higher grass-to-dirt "surface area." This should make a huge difference if you do it throughout the pen (the rate of grass growing will become proportional to the area rather than the perimeter).

Prior to the update, even a single fence post on a block seemed to be enough to prevent them from eating it; I'm not sure if that part is true anymore since I kinda somewhat recently died. :v (doesn't look like it from FC's image, though...)

[magikeh]

You can use fences to enclose small regions of grass in the interior of your pen to get a higher grass-to-dirt "surface area."

Man I love the new grazing changes, finally a real reason to deforest the local :D

[Renegrade]

Well, I made a little feeding station to replace the silly contraption I had tied in with the wolf feeder's item decay system:

Spoiler

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..it's pretty much an item decay system but with food ;) It seems to be keeping up with the two sheeps' dietary needs, without completely draining my wheat resources.

Also mother ducking bread. Hope you all like bread! Did i mention bread? Bread.

Switched to pure bread intake the first moment I could. I haven't used meat-based food for myself since the breeding item change. Only that nasty wolfsie gets meat-based food (tasty sandwiches).

[jorgebonafe]

What,

Switched to pure bread intake the first moment I could. I haven't used meat-based food for myself since the breeding item change. Only that nasty wolfsie gets meat-based food (tasty sandwiches).

What? Wolves are eating better than the player now?
Should this mod change it's name to "Better Than Steve"?

[ion]

kibble is still a thing, fishing also. i think is better to render the meat down and make dynamite and go fishing for sandwiches. it's all about min-maxing your time

[FlowerChild]

Well, I made a little feeding station to replace the silly contraption I had tied in with the wolf feeder's item decay system:

Not sure if you've noticed (not sure if anyone has), but animals (other than wolves, that'll come) can now path to loose food. Was hesitant to mention it yesterday for spoiler reasons, but I included that bit to ease some of the pain in automating for animals in larger enclosures.

Should this mod change it's name to "Better Than Steve"?

Bastard :)

[ion]

Spoiler

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pigs will remove torches and candles from the dirt when eating grass. lost the ... to zombies overnight
also grass seems to spread faster to loose dirt that to dirt blocks.
sheep need a really big pen to survive as they eat way too much food that pigs and even cows and coupled with above it's death.
ATM in my world i have 2 cows, 2 pigs that i breed and kill, and 4 sheep. no chickens yet, store them as eggs.
seems odd that i need milk to breed all the other animals, so i keep some cows stored into mooshroom.

[karnak sam]

No recent release has truly frightened me to update like this has... but for whatever reason that made it so much cooler.

When I saw FC warn us to back up world's, I knew this was real.

So after culling my herds down to 1 breeding pair and expanding my farm by over 300% I've reached an equilibrium where I can keep them alive. Only chickens went extinct but I've got me some eggs squirreled away for a rainy day where I'm ready to hear the pitter patter of webbed feet again.

I've sort of always wanted a need to feed all animals similar to wolves, but their voracity is something beyond the scope of my imagination.

Enjoying this release very much, FC!

[ion]

grass planters are good in your fields as they can spread grass to nearest blocks.

[Renegrade]

You can use fences to enclose small regions of grass in the interior of your pen to get a higher grass-to-dirt "surface area." This should make a huge difference if you do it throughout the pen (the rate of grass growing will become proportional to the area rather than the perimeter).

I tested this out, btw, with the c version (am now playing d, but nothing in the notes suggested any changes) and single fenceposts, pairs of fenceposts, and little quads of fenceposts all prevent grazing on the blocks they're planted on.

I used to use a similar technique back in the day to help speed calf growth (only I used glass instead of fences) and can confirm that having seed plots definitely helps restoring grass.

Not sure if you've noticed (not sure if anyone has), but animals (other than wolves, that'll come) can now path to loose food. Was hesitant to mention it yesterday for spoiler reasons, but I included that bit to ease some of the pain in automating for animals in larger enclosures.

I noticed :) My original feeder was just a pair of dispensers throwing wheat into the area, from a three block height, so tended to scatter the wheat rather wildly, and they would still find it. I'd only penned them in close to the feeder in the screenshot as I wanted to allow the grass in the rest of the pen to grow back :)

grass planters are good in your fields as they can spread grass to nearest blocks.

Ah, good catch! I'll have to try that out too!

[SterlingRed]

I really thought I'd prepared properly (my base is at spawn). I expanded my wheat farm, built a pumpkin & watermelon farm at spawn, built large enclosures for all the animals (waited forever for all the grass to grown in), culled my herds all down to a pair each, with a couple of separate milking cows, and felt like I was set.

I installed the update and things were going well, until all my farm animals ran out of grazing grass. So I built despawn based feeders to supplement, and my wheat farm cannot keep up with the rate these critters eat! I guess an additional major expansion is needed for both my farms, and my critters grazing areas.

My current status is my cows, pigs, and sheep are all out of grass, I'm out of wheat, carrots, and kibble supplies and my growth rate doesn't keep up with their consumption. I have a second base with a considerable amount of resources located with my villagers (they were forever away so I didn't move them back to spawn). I'm afraid that by the time I go get the resources at my second base and return, all my critters (except chickens) will have starved to death. So...yeah...will probably need to kill them off, expand everything, and then fetch new ones after my supplies are built back up.

Other observations:
Breeding food items remain unchanged.
Instead of mass breeding large amounts of animals I find myself breeding a baby, and immediately murdering one of the parents.
I used to always be out of milk, but now I find I have a surplus because I'm breeding much less often than before.
Pigs can eat carrots, wheat, and kibble and as a result are much easier to keep alive than cows and sheep.
Starving cows look terrifyingly amazing.
This is the first 'resource sink' I can think of in BTW in which items are consumed to simply maintain something (other than Steve) rather than to produce a product. It's really interesting, and so far has really changed my priorities in the game. I was rushing to complete villager trading to get to the End but now I'm slowing down and really playing the mid game rather than just trying to get through it. I did not expect this to change my playstyle, but now that it has, I'm really enjoying it!

[FlowerChild]

I'm really enjoying it!

That's awesome to hear man! Thanks for the detailed write-up!

[FlowerChild]

In response to this bug report: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9640

@Battosay: Pigs aren't actually eating the grass, but rather snout around in the dirt under it for tasty goodies. This has a number of side effects including what you observed there :)

[Battosay]

Alrighty then, bringing this up here since I'm a noob now, and I make false bug reports :D

It seems like pigs will destroy torches placed on grass blocks when they eat, but so far it only seemed to happen when I was away. Was that just luck ? (the when-I'm-away part)
I haven't seen the same behavior from chickens, but I'm not sure about cows or sheep.

Edit : Well I've been too slow (I'm reading the forums during the night to pass time, I'm on a big journey ^^). This makes sense for pigs, I guess I just got lucky when I was in my base and they didn't eat the grass under torches.

[Battosay]

Also, I'll bring up my side-notes from earlier :

1) Even if that's not directly from this update : Holy shit, thank you for the new spawn-chunks-stay-loaded mechanic :) The dichotomy between having to stay around your base for IG months to kick-start hemp production, while having so much out-of-base activities to do was my biggest issue with the game. And it's gone, in a beautiful way !

2) Animageddon is fun as hell, I can't wait to try and figure out what I can do to make my life easier (aka, automated :D) in terms of animal breeding. Given how hard it is to keep them alive now, this really feels like automating it would have a purpose.

I must be at 120-150h into my world, I came to catch up on what you added in the game and read the forum as I do monthly or so, and you had just posted this very version which, along with the spawn chunks change, got me really excited to play again. Given that the last time I played was pre-complete revamp, I had a fuckton of things to relearn, and so far I'm having a blast.
But that's a bit off-topic here, I'll try to slowly write-up my experience in another post (by 10min increment while I wait for sunrise ^^).
But regarding the impacts of the Animageddon, I'd say that I absolutely love how it changes the 'early' game (can we even call it early anymore ? It took me around 100h to get my first everlasting torch lol) and how you stay well fed. Its harder to stay nourished than in Don't Starve now ! And oh boy, does it makes you want to get diamonds and go to the Nether as fast as possible. I must have killed every animal around spawn in a 500 blocks radius.
And I tried a lot of things, but I never managed to keep more than a single chicken alive before I got Nethercoal, and that was by 'abusing' a surface lava lake and the fact that grass can grow up to 3 blocks away from a block that can see the sky, and still grow under lava, then around it.

[FlowerChild]

Also, I'll bring up my side-notes from earlier :

That's awesome to hear man! I find it interesting that if I remember correctly, I think at a certain point the mod had gone too far with the hardcore features for your taste, and now it sounds like it's gone so hardcore that it's transcended that :)

It's actually something that's got me thinking that in the past given BTW slowly diverged from vanilla, at a certain point it was in a weird between state where it just felt like an ever harder version of what it previously was, but now it's gotten to the point where it's doing its own thing on so many levels that it may feel more like it's entirely its own thing.

Because yeah, I remember before I started the whole hardcore journey, BTW took something like 10 hours to play through the whole tech tree, and your 100 hours getting to your first torch is backed up by Vioki recently saying it took him 60 to reach the same point (which makes sense given you're having to relearn more of the mod than him).

I have no clue how much a full playthrough would be now. 150+ hours? Regardless, I feel pretty safe saying it's really not the same mod anymore :)

1) Even if that's not directly from this update : Holy shit, thank you for the new spawn-chunks-stay-loaded mechanic :) The dichotomy between having to stay around your base for IG months to kick-start hemp production, while having so much out-of-base activities to do was my biggest issue with the game. And it's gone, in a beautiful way !

Oops.

Dude, I am sad to say I'm likely going to piss you off with the next release. I only realized a few minutes after reading your email that the features I've been working on the past while are pretty much going to nuke your joy here. On the bright side, I think they'll likely entertain you in all new ways.

Anyways, remember this exchange with the next release, as I think you'll get a laugh out of the above once you see what's coming :)

[Panda]

Oops.

Dude, I am sad to say I'm likely going to piss you off with the next release. I only realized a few minutes after reading your email that the features I've been working on the past while are pretty much going to nuke your joy here. On the bright side, I think they'll likely entertain you in all new ways.

Anyways, remember this exchange with the next release, as I think you'll get a laugh out of the above once you see what's coming :)

Literally went into a panic to finish my ender portal (3 to go) cause now I'm scared to leave home unattended in fear of next release....

If it matters i have maxed out all villagers today, found the ender portal and started to complete it. This took 94 hours. But i got reallyyyyy lucky this playthrough