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Posts
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Evening! I’ve been wrestling with sheep and chickens for a couple hours total now, and I can’t quite get a handle on these new mechanics from the dev’s point of view. I get how the mechanics work, but I’m less clear on what the intended end result of these mechanics is in gameplay, or how to use them in legitimizing ways.
The feeding mechanic is great for sheep; before if someone set up a sheep spawn it was spawning sheep 24/7, now you can set up a sheep spawn but “turn it on” by feeding the sheep, and when you’re not there to feed them the spawn “turns off.” Excellent! Monitoring each individual sheep is turning out to be a little much though.
Each time a new sheep spawns, the two sheep that spawned it drop to 50% hunger, and must be (carefully) fed again to hit the 70-90% margin. This means you need a setup where you can feed each sheep individually, which is the easy part; but going back to hand-feed each sheep after each spawn is daunting.
It would be nice if animals were “smart” about how they ate, so you could stock a sheep with feed and it would eat when it was hungry, staying in a breeding state. Since the feed would be on the ground you would still have to periodically restock the feed, but the sheep would do their thing without the constant maintenance.
Even with constant maintenance I’ve spent a fair amount of time waiting for a new sheep to spawn, despite setting up and maintaining 4 spawns. Because it takes sheep upwards of a full day to regrow their wool, wool farming is inherently based on spawning new sheep. Right now it’s a lot of effort for each spawn.
And each spawn is only worth 3 wool, which is 3 yarn. I’m feeling concerned over this because my knitting level isn’t nearly as high as it could be, but even with +750% XP gain I need thousands of yarn for each level. Right now that just can’t be reasonably met, unless I am missing an intended way to approach these mechanics.
IF we can get back to the point where sheep spawn like old times (so long as you prime them with feed) then I think it’s great. I can vouch for old farming methods working if you put the effort in. But going back to feed two sheep after every spawn, and then having to wait for the spawn, is all I can figure out so far.
I know it’s early implementation though; I wanted to offer some early feedback from the perspective of a sheep farmer, or if I’m missing something maybe I could get a clue, and hope that we can crank this up and get some good sheep spawns going again so wool is still a viable resource. But the wool per hour right now is not great.
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As for chickens I haven’t got a clue, they’re total bird brains. Just being on grass they eat up to 40-50% fed, but they need to be on grass to molt feathers at 10-30%. So you need to move each chicken off the grass, wait for them to starve, then put them back on the grass until they stop molting, then starve them again, etc.
The whole exercise is really bizarre, I’m not sure how to manage the chickens at all. Plus how stubborn animals disrupt any system that requires you to move them around a lot.
Thank you for reading! Also please buff knitting and crafting! Thanks!
Polar Bear
Posts: 39I totally agree especially:
IF we can get back to the point where sheep spawn like old times (so long as you prime them with feed) then I think it’s great. I can vouch for old farming methods working if you put the effort in. But going back to feed two sheep after every spawn, and then having to wait for the spawn, is all I can figure out so far.
I hate to complain about the new sheering, milking, and molting mechanics cause it’s kinda fun but it’s too tiring and time consuming. >_< setting up a farm is a lot of work and maintainance (need to take note which sheep will die earliest to replace them before their 3 day lifespan), not to mention at risk of a wipe out because of wolves and other things.
I’d like to suggest faster and more sheep or cow spawns after feeding. A chance to get more wool would be nice too.
Goblin
Posts: 65Wool I find is hard to get, but with proper prep, and setup, you can pull 200+ Feathers an hour with just 13-15 chickens.
So I believe it just may be we still need to figure out how to properly prep the sheep, but how I have no idea.
I’ve been busy working on a client patch so I haven’t had much time to work on server balance but I can say that at least wool will be getting a boost for sure. Thanks for the testing/feedback.
Thank you! That’s good news. 😀
Polar Bear
Posts: 39??? yay thanks admin!!
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