Fauna spawning conditions discussion

[Abyssian]

Since i never found relevant informations about this, only theories, i want to gather all experiences possible for this "minigame" of animals chasing through globe and rare underground animals driving me nuts. through all my gameplays i realized that entering the caves NEVER makes the animals spawn for you, no matter the rarity. I kinda found out that animals need some distance from the player to spawn and occasionally even rare underground animals will spawn on the ground, when cave entrance is near. Or my visor simply catches them underground so i need to dig to get to them. What are your experiences with animal spawning?

And yes, i hunting nanites "legaly", running mod free game and not using any copy glitches through other players giveaway.

Edit: All i want to know is all spawning conditions(even those which aren't mentioned in the chart). Or is it just pure RNG and all infos are for nothing?

[aggressor27]

Pure RNG, which even affect conditionals (time of day/location). Keep in mind that flora and fauna won't exist unless you as the player are present to view them. How that generation is determined I have no idea, but I'm sure someone on reddit has done a deep dive into the engine at some point.

[Abyssian]

Originally posted by aggressor27:

Pure RNG, to include conditionals (time of day/location). Keep in mind that flora and fauna won't exist unless you as the player are present to view them. How that generation is determined I have no idea, but I'm sure someone on reddit has done a deep dive into the engine at some point.

Sometimes i stand on high ground above some cavern complex for hour and no spawn. Then i go searching something else and they just spawn all of sudden around me, it's like place bound or something.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Part of the "joy/pain" of the critter hunt is not really knowing the spawn conditions. Over time, you gain some strategies that seem to work better but there are no sure things.

After 1700 hours:

Birds tend to spawn in the morning.

Feeding the critters you can find sometimes leads to elusive critters spawning-but no guarantees.

Underground critters often spawn at the entrances of caves versus inside the cave. A lot of buildings are located near cave entrances. Do the math.

Predator fish are more likely to show up in deep water (at least 30 m, but 50 m is ideal). A good rule of thumb is if the underwater flora changes you are in a good spot to find them.

Some critters only spawn at specific times of day/night. So you may have to stay for 30 minutes RT if you really want to find them.

In my experience, building a base seems to conjure up stragglers, but mainly that is because you end up spending more time on the planet.

If you are frustrated and not having fun searching - move along. It is a big galaxy and not worth your enjoyment dropping to dwell on a non-productive planet.

[Aurumworks]

I know for a fact that underground creatures can and do spawn inside caves. Sometimes you wander around long caves and nothing spawns. I think two factors prevent underground spawns: Steep caves as steep inclines seem to prevent spawning altogether. Spawns above ground taking up spawn slots for underground creatures. But as said above, going for building to building which open up caves to the surface is usually the best way to get your cave spawns.

[Abyssian]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

Part of the "joy/pain" of the critter hunt is not really knowing the spawn conditions. Over time, you gain some strategies that seem to work better but there are no sure things.

After 1700 hours:

Birds tend to spawn in the morning.

Feeding the critters you can find sometimes leads to elusive critters spawning-but no guarantees.

Underground critters often spawn at the entrances of caves versus inside the cave. A lot of buildings are located near cave entrances. Do the math.

Predator fish are more likely to show up in deep water (at least 30 m, but 50 m is ideal). A good rule of thumb is if the underwater flora changes you are in a good spot to find them.

Some critters only spawn at specific times of day/night. So you may have to stay for 30 minutes RT if you really want to find them.

In my experience, building a base seems to conjure up stragglers, but mainly that is because you end up spending more time on the planet.

If you are frustrated and not having fun searching - move along. It is a big galaxy and not worth your enjoyment dropping to dwell on a non-productive planet.

Thanks, i will use these informations well. And if i have fun chasing fauna? Partly. When i know i will earn between 1750 and 3000 nanites per planet, i can be very patient. :)

[knighttemplar1960]

There are spawn points for fauna and sentinels. They will spawn within a few units distance of the spawn point following the rules for spawning (like nocturnal or diurnal).

This is an early base I built during NEXT that I built over both a fauna and a sentinel spawn point.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1806975773

[blurryhunter]

So I've been relentlessly pursuing the last creature in a system which, naturally, is rare/underground/always active.

I've had to hunt down several of these in this system and found them with a fair bit of diligence but this last one is alluding me something fierce.

I started noticing something, though, that this planet has more of that the others did not and I'm beginning to think it might be the source of the issue related to just how abnormally difficult it is to find them, rarity be damned.

There are a lot of caves that are not part of the 'cave biome' and this planet is rife with instances where the whole tunnel is underground for miles but huge portions are 'ground textured' and even have ground plants like oxygen or boost plants growing.

My theory is that the difficulty in finding these creatures is that they are directly tied to the 'cave biome' textures and if 50% or more of a cave is just made up of the 'floor' of the planet's dig depth then you're losing out on just that much space to potentially have the creature appear.

[Aurumworks]

About difficulties finding the rare underwater predator creatures, I suspect that when you are swimming around for a while you end up with a lot of fish swarms following you around, clogging up the availability of further creature spawns. Dropping a save point and reloading in a deep sea area then almost immediately spawned several of those predators. Might be worth trying out.

[blurryhunter]

Can confirm now that any instance where there is above ground biome underground do NOT count for underground. Just found a group of above ground creatures hanging out underground. So it looks like that might be part of the issue; if not the biggest part.

Any above ground biome that is underground is directly competing with underground creature spawn potential.

[Eric Peng]

Originally posted by blurryhunter:

So I've been relentlessly pursuing the last creature in a system which, naturally, is rare/underground/always active.

I've had to hunt down several of these in this system and found them with a fair bit of diligence but this last one is alluding me something fierce.

I started noticing something, though, that this planet has more of that the others did not and I'm beginning to think it might be the source of the issue related to just how abnormally difficult it is to find them, rarity be damned.

There are a lot of caves that are not part of the 'cave biome' and this planet is rife with instances where the whole tunnel is underground for miles but huge portions are 'ground textured' and even have ground plants like oxygen or boost plants growing.

My theory is that the difficulty in finding these creatures is that they are directly tied to the 'cave biome' textures and if 50% or more of a cave is just made up of the 'floor' of the planet's dig depth then you're losing out on just that much space to potentially have the creature appear.

This is exactly the planet that is bugging me right now....

[Andreas]

In my experience it works best to find surface locations that dig into the ground (pretty much any structure) and reveal caves that way.
When you arrive, do something else first to give the critters some time to spawn.

If you _do_ venture into a cave, make sure to check for red dots, since the critters tend to scuttle right through the ceiling to the surface.

[AmberAnvil]

I just spent an hour-and-a-half searching for that last one on a mostly water world with mostly planetary crust cave floors. Finally found a decent-looking cave and halfway inside I found the criitter. The usual weekly chore.