Bugs? Or intended interactions?

[Nicolas Cage]

I like this game, but there are some serious problems with it, the worst of which is the wording. It's clearly been translated from Chinese, and if I had to guess they just used an auto-translator and called it a day because there are some VERY unclear descriptions. Because of that I have a hard time knowing what to expect with certain interactions - often times things that I expect to happen don't while unexpected things sometimes happen as well. I'm honestly not sure if these are bugs in the code or intentional interactions, and I'm curious if anyone can help clarify that for me, and perhaps shed some light on some of the mechanics while we're at it. Any help is appreciated, so feel free to answer for any question(s) you know the answer to.

Firstly, is there an order of operations for when/if animals activate? It looks like it usually starts at the top right plot, moves to the right until it gets to the end of the row, goes to the leftmost plot the next row down, then moves to the right until the end etc., but at times it seems completely random...this is mostly evident in night phases, especially with Vipers. I've had Vipers call animals in and have all of those animals activate their abilities, I've had them call them in with no activations, and everything in between. It's not even consistent by animal - I've had predators eat at night and also seen them land right next to big juicy meals that they proceed to ignore. What am I missing here?

Geckos: Is there a logic to how these guys trigger? Sometimes they start next to a non-Crawling animal, run to a plot next to another (or the same) non-Crawling animal, and trigger again, running to yet another plot. Other times, however, they run right next to a non-Crawling animal and just sit there. What gives?

Hyenas: How does the second ability for these work exactly? The description is unclear. My guess would be it works like this: any animal directly behind (so on the square directly to the left of it, not above left or below left) any carnivore (not just the Hyena, and I guess not necessarily adjacent to the Hyena?) has a 30% chance to be consumed by said carnivore, earning you 20 gold. Is that correct or have I misinterpreted something?

Poison: So my guess for how this works is as follows: say you have some animal with 2 Contribution. It gets poisoned by a Cobra, giving it Poison 1 and losing 1 Contribution. It will still earn 2 coins total (one from the poison and one from Contribution), but the coins from poison are considered "extra coins" for other abilities (like Alpaca or Butterfly). Then next spin, the same animal gets poisoned again, bringing it to 0 Contribution. Poison is then removed from that animal but I'm guessing the Contribution is not restored? Or is it like, an animal with 1 stack of Poison will gain a cumulative 1 extra coin a day until it's eventually removed (so our example animal with 2 starting Contribution who is Poisoned, bringing Contribution to 1 and Poison to 1, would next spin gain 1 coin from Poison and 1 from Contribution, then next spin gain 2 coins from the still level 1 Poison and 1 from Contribution, then 3 Poison coins, etc. until removed)?

Iron Shorts: This item says "[Predator symbol] cannot be Predation" which...is nonsense. Am I correct in assuming that this means that Predators cannot be *eaten*, as opposed to Predators cannot *eat*?

Negligence Trophy: Based on its description, this item appears to essentially double their Contribution if they're on the top row, gaining coins for the Trophy then coins for Contribution. Maybe I'm blind but I feel like I have frequently seen this not happen, where animals with positive Contribution only gain normal Contribution coins, no bonus coins from the Trophy. Is "top row animals" a mistranslation or something, is it supposed to mean highest rarity animals? Or is there something I'm missing?

Lazy Sofa: "Animals that did not leave the field the previous day gain +2 Contribution" the day/night phases make this very confusing, as typically day animals aren't present at night. Does this effectively mean "any animal today that also came out yesterday gets +2 Contribution"? Or does it basically exclusively work with the Camping Tent item (the one that lets one of your highest rarity animals stay out when the animals go back inside, even through the night)?

Ouroboros: "Triggers its own ability when [Crawling Family icon] Evolution" - I'm guessing this means that when a Crawling Family animal levels up (not gains a pip, but goes up in number) it triggers its ability again (but, I assume, does not gain an additional pip for doing so). Is that right?

Cluster Orb: What is "type" of animal? Is that its class (Hoofed Family, Crawling Family, etc.) or the specific animal itself (Pig, Viper, etc.)?

Sand tile: What does this do exactly? The tooltip seems to suggest that it reduces any countdowns (like with Sheep or Pigs for instance) one additional time (so two in total - the standard one you get from the animal appearing and an additional one from the tile) and gains an XP (or level?) for any Crawling Family animal that lands on it, but near as I can tell this is not true? I've seen Crawling Family animals land on Sand tiles, do their actions and gain the expected amount of XP and then...nothing else. Timed animals also don't seem to get an additional countdown tick, they just tick down the normal one time they'd get for landing on any tile. So...what does this tile actually do?

Puddle: Does the +2 Contribution bonus apply when a Predator *on* the Puddle eats something, when a Predator eats *prey* that is on the Puddle, or both?

Thanks in advance for any help you provide!

[Daremo]

I agree the translation need some work but Hyenas are easy to understand.

When they are right behind another carnivore, any carnivore, they have 30% chance to eat it.

What's not clear at first is where is "behind".
But it's "to the left" and I think it really is behind the animals who look to the right if I remember correctly (I'm not on the game right now)

For Iron Shorts you're correct.
You just have to think of those actions like "predation" as a verb that only has one form and adapt depending on the rest of the sentence.
From that it actually all makes sense.

[Nicolas Cage]

Originally posted by Daremo:

I agree the translation need some work but Hyenas are easy to understand.

When they are right behind another carnivore, any carnivore, they have 30% chance to eat it.

I'm like 90% sure that I've seen Hyena's eat both non-carnivores and carnivores that are not directly in front of them though, which should not be possible if they worked the way you describe. I think maybe they're more confusing than you think they are heh.

[quakins]

I believe the way the game handles triggers is that it does all of a certain type of trigger at once. I don't know the exact order, but it seems to go through each square one at a time in that "phase" and check for abilities at that time and if they can trigger. For instance, breeding will happen before certain other types of abilities so that's why all of your rabbits breed all at once before other things happen. Sorry if that seems vague. I don't know the exact order, but I am fairly certain it does work this way and it'd just be a bit tedious for me personally to catalog the exact order of effects. But nonetheless, I believe breeding, item effects, talent effects, animal abilities, timers ticking down, and the actual contribution gain are all in different groupings. Also important to mention that the breeding phase seems to be skipped at night for regular nocturnal animals, but will still happen if you have a bunch of animals that are forced to stay out all the time (such as having fish nets over cave terrain on Ocean Ranch levels). But yeah if you ever notice an effect not happening after an animal is spawned it's usually because it's spawned in a square (or "phase") where the triggers of that kind have already been checked so the game doesn't go back to retrigger them or anything.

So, to apply this to your examples:

For Geckos the important thing is whether or not the square they moved to is further down the line of triggers that are still being checked or not. If they started in the last space and moved to the first, they won't trigger again even if they are adjacent to a hamster in both instances. This seems unintuitive at first, but I think it's actually a reasonable way to prevent infinite combos without "special-casing" a whole bunch of things.

The Hyena has a chance to eat a carnivore via its own effect if the hyena itself is to the left of the aforementioned carnivore. You may have confused yourself because of the effect of the level 3 carnivore talent which enables it to eat carnivores of a lesser rarity in any adjacent square. Although it's not an incredibly far-fetched bug, I've yet to see them eat non-carnivores (Quite possible it's been patched out since you've made this post though.)

Poison was an incredibly weird mechanic to wrap my head around when I first unlocked the crawling family so I don't blame your confusion at all. Basically, the poisoned animal will generate an additional amount of gold equivalent to the poison stacks on it (so, yes, in your example just 1 extra) and then it will lose 1 contribution regardless of how many poison stacks are on it. Unsure of the order in which it gets the extra gold and also that it actually loses the 1 contribution but, nonetheless, your first instincts on the effect appear to be correct.

Iron Shorts are a weird wording but yeah that's what they do.

I honestly do not take negligence trophy super often. I'll try to test it with cardboard box and share my results. Edit: OK yeah it works and does what it says. You may have been confused because it happens at a different timing than when the animal gains gold from its contribution. The animal can also be spawned in the top row after it's window to gain the gold from this item happens such as from the effects of Queen Bee or Queen Ant

I'm pretty sure you are correct on the effect of Lazy Sofa being as narrow as it is. I will say, however, that it at least has a couple more synergies than that. Conch from the ocean family is stuck on the board so it will gain the bonus and fishing nets in the ocean ranch also cause any pet caught in them to benefit from the effect. The sloth pet that you get in higher difficulty Sunny Ranch levels also benefits from it. Makes me feel like they had more plans for this type of effect on various animals that never made it but who knows.

Yeah I am pretty sure that's how Ouroboros works. I'd be interested in testing it just to make sure since there are always quite a lot of triggers to notice in crawling setups anyways but I am fairly sure it works like you think. So if Komodo used its ability and evolved, it would activate again and you'd gain the coins equal to X times cat food again. Unsure how animals work that don't have an ability that activates for their evolution and instead have a triggered ability from other things happening like iguana.

I cannot think of the exact effect of Cluster Orb off the top of my head, but yeah generally type refers to family and when it doesn't it's usually sort of obvious (Like peacock uses "type" but it also only affects bird family so it's obvious it wants identical birds rather than just the same family.)

I'm unsure of the issue you're having with sand tiles working. They definitely do work for me. Is it perhaps just that the timing is weird that's messing with you here? I noticed that they don't just have a single time that they trigger like at the very start of a day or anything like that. It seems that it will trigger if an animal starts the day there OR if it finishes movement and ends up there (I noticed this by starting with Queen Ant via cardboard box in the Desert Ranch.) Not intuitive but I am fairly sure that they do work. Could have been bugged when you made the post as well.

My understanding of the effect of puddle is that when an animal standing on the puddle predates something else they will gain the +2 contribution. I am unsure how this works with animals that move to the square of the thing they kill though. I am also unsure if mimic octopus can benefit from this effect if it transforms into a puddle.

Ok I'm sorry to mix a few that I'm less sure of in with ones I am very sure of but, nonetheless, I hope this was helpful. I'll update this or make another comment if my testing reveals contrary information.