Topic

Batterflies: These things could use a major reduction in the tedium department

So everyone hates farming batterfly guano.  Even though you can alleviate the various dirt shortages by going on tree killing sprees and holding digging parties, there isn't much to be done about the batterfly situation.

The big problem with the batterflies is the way they provide guano.  To recap:

Batterflies drop guano based on how much you feed them.  Roughly, if you feed them an amount of food that provides less than 15 energy, you get nothing but a nasty comment.  If you feed them between 15 and some number less than 50 energy, you get one guano.  Between 50 and 99 energy, you get two guano.  Feed them 100 or more energy and you get three guano. I dont think I've ever seen more than three guano drop and that's even after accidentally feeding the stupid thing, like, 50 potatoes (that's what, 300 energy?)

This means that the most resource efficient way of getting guano is to cook up a ton of, say, green eggs (17 energy) and feed them to the batterflies one at a time.  Alternatively, you can dish out meat in tens for three guano at a time... with the recent nerf to animal farming, though, this means you have to nibble an awful lot of pigs. 

Regardless of how you farm it, this task is incredibly tedious when you need, like, 300 guano to finish a stage of a project.  That's 1000 meats spooned out ten at a time... or 300 green eggs spooned out one at a time.  Right now, people do it because they want new streets opened, but it's going to get old REALLY FAST.

I propose that there be some fixed increment of energy that you can feed to the batterfly (maybe 30?) so that the amount of guano you get scales linearly with the amount of energy you feed it. That is, if I feed the batterfly 30 energy worth of food, I get one guano.  If I feed it 54 energy, I still get one guano.  But if I feed it 60 energy, I get two guano.  And if I feed it 3000 energy, I get one hundred guano. 

Or maybe you could develop some other, creative, fun way to gather bat guano.  But right now, farming bat guano is a real bummer and needs to be looked at.

Anyone have any better ideas on guano farming?

Posted 20 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • blitz .. i believe the intent is to have guano collection be tedious and time consuming, in order to slow down street creation.

    i agree it is a bummer, but i think the bummer is intentional.

    if it unlocking streets wasn't a bummer we'd be unlocking streets at a rate the developers couldn't keep up with, so it pays to bum us out.

    once the street is unlocked, the joy of unlocking is supposed to cause us to forget that we were bummed out, or at least make the bummed out period feel like it was "worth it". it is a simple work/reward situation. unfortunately if the street itself isn't rewarding enough upon exploration, the bummed feeling remains.
    Posted 20 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Unless you like being bummed
    Posted 20 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i didn't say the result was a bad one, necessarily : ]
    Posted 20 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Stri - Thanks for the explanation on who to collect guano, I don't think I totally got it before.
    Posted 20 months ago by Gizmospooky Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well, you could make it time consuming and not so tedious... maybe a hopper people load food into that the batterflies would nibble on and, as long as there is food in the hopper, the batterflies drop guano on the floor over time.  You could still do your guano collecting the old way, but if you want, you could dorp food off and spare yourself the carpal tunnel syndrome you get from the current guano collecting method.
    Posted 20 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Batterflies in the Chakra Phool area would seem appropriate, and would also make things a lot easier, since trekking to the caverns is a hassle. 
    Posted 20 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Once the game goes live resources will probably always be available on the auction house. As it stands now farming en masse doesn't benefit the farmer for certain resources. Even if some one were to farm resources in advance the inverse happens and people feel they wasted their time when some one donates first like in the ingot quest.
    Posted 20 months ago by DiB Subscriber! | Permalink