Guaranlen Trees

[Zen]

There's a lot of things that seem to be very poorly thought out with the new expansion. And these trees take take about five hours of the day to maintain every single day. For one. For a skilled plant cutter. They're so inefficient that essentially whoever is doing the job can only prune the tree and eat and sleep.

These are extremely disappointing given that this whole expansion was partly marketed on their inclusion and interaction with the tree-worshipping meme. But really growing multiple of these trees just isn't very viable since to keep them at any level of useful dryads you need to dedicate someone to pruning them.

It takes like a day or twos work to sow a field and maybe a pen with hay for a large amount of animals by comparison. Why ever even interact with these things with how the math currently works?

[XelNigma]

I have three trees going atm. And like many others I feel like the time needed to maintain them is too much.
The planters skill effects the time to such a minor degree you can have a 0 planter bond with it and take up just about as much time as your main planter.
Which in hind sight I probably should have done as she doesn't have enough time to plant, harvest and maintain the tree. Tho setting a pruning time like meditation would be nice. As of right I have to micro manage her priorities when it's time to bring in the harvest.

I can't say how useful the dryads them selves are. They seem to sleep alot but don't eat so that's nice. I only have one bark skin, he tanked a bear for 3 hits and nearly died. He didn't so that's good.
The log ones are working well for me.
Not sure why I would want the herbal or berry one unless I'm in a biome that never lets me grow crops. I guess then they might have a purpose.

I feel like some mod is going to come along and give them powers. The tank one will apply movement debuffs or something, the attack will get a jumpjet power. The herb one will go and heal the others mid combat, food boy might shoot seeds for low but rapid damage? Maybe have the tree one deploy temp barricades and walls or something. Donno but I expect mods to buff them alot.

At least I hope because right now... It's just better to not spend your time unless you have a pawn with absolutely no worth while stats. And hey. Maybe that's their point, give value to the valueless. Kinda like giving a title back when royal first hit before they changed it so player nobles will still work.

[Kasa]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

I have three trees going atm. And like many others I feel like the time needed to maintain them is too much.
The planters skill effects the time to such a minor degree you can have a 0 planter bond with it and take up just about as much time as your main planter.
Which in hind sight I probably should have done as she doesn't have enough time to plant, harvest and maintain the tree. Tho setting a pruning time like meditation would be nice. As of right I have to micro manage her priorities when it's time to bring in the harvest.

I can't say how useful the dryads them selves are. They seem to sleep alot but don't eat so that's nice. I only have one bark skin, he tanked a bear for 3 hits and nearly died. He didn't so that's good.
The log ones are working well for me.
Not sure why I would want the herbal or berry one unless I'm in a biome that never lets me grow crops. I guess then they might have a purpose.

I feel like some mod is going to come along and give them powers. The tank one will apply movement debuffs or something, the attack will get a jumpjet power. The herb one will go and heal the others mid combat, food boy might shoot seeds for low but rapid damage? Maybe have the tree one deploy temp barricades and walls or something. Donno but I expect mods to buff them alot.

At least I hope because right now... It's just better to not spend your time unless you have a pawn with absolutely no worth while stats. And hey. Maybe that's their point, give value to the valueless. Kinda like giving a title back when royal first hit before they changed it so player nobles will still work.

Kk now we just be getting pokemon XD

[Garik]

The trimming seems to be taking precedence over eating/sleeping even, routinely finding my tree pruners starving from cutting all day. Even had my pawns nearly miss their own wedding, no pausing even for special events.

I'm not terribly upset by it, but that in particular feels more like a bug than a feature. You'd hope they'd at least know when to stop and eat..

[Shas'O O'Kais]

I've had a lot of fun playing with Dryads.
Sure, they eat up 4-6 hours of work every single day for one of your colonists, but the tradeoff is generally worth it.

4-6 hours of work for ONE colonist vs 4 carriers working almost round the clock hauling goods for you.
4-6 hours of work for ONE colonist vs 4 brutally effective murder machines to help you kill raiders with.

The amount of berries and wood those castes can produce aren't as time efficient as growing crops the old fashioned way, but some things in this game aren't there to be easy or efficient and are there to provide alternative playstyles. You CAN have a whole society that is fed by these trees, homes and items built from the wood they provide, etc without farming. Is it more inefficient? Sure, but not everyone plays rimworld for efficiency. If the purpose of the game was to be as efficient as possible, there would be no reason for a diversity of playstyles or self imposed rules/objectives.

[Smartboy64]

Here's another thought that could make Dryads a bit more effective.

Let Dryads be sent on caravans. You know how easy it would be to travel through the desert or ice sheets if you have 3 or 4 berry dryads just giving the caravan food? Since the dryads themselves don't need to eat anything at all this would allow caravans to travel longer without the insane prep of making a ♥♥♥♥ ton of survival meals.

[Big Dog]

I had a tree and a semi useless colonist who couldn't do most work types and only had passion for combat skills spend his days pruning a tree and the tree would spawn 4 little haulers for me that could haul, unlike the pawn and it was great.

I only used the hauling ones, cause I had a decent plants guy for medicine and was playing in arid shrubland where wood is still more than enough.

I think they should add ambrosia dryads.

[Magdaki]

I don't mind the gaurenlen trees, but they are a little underwhelming. The time to prune really should be affected by skill. I think if they change that it would go a long way to making them better. Some of the dryads could use a buff too. Currently the haulers are quite good and rest are ok to bad.

[Mimoslav]

Originally posted by Magdaki:

The time to prune really should be affected by skill.

It already is.

[RCMidas]

Originally posted by Dekk:

You can't plant gauranlen tree under a roof.

Under a constructed roof no, but I've been able to confirm that natural rock roofs and overhead mountains do not exclude the planting of the trees beneath them.

[Fyredrakon]

Gauranlen trees are what I think to be the game's solution to hard game maps, such as those in the desert. I've personally been doing a coastal tree connection desert colony, and having the trees fill in a bit of the more or less useless sand tiles. They also are the only trees that can give the amazing trees +12 moodlet to tree connection pawns. Other than that, I've been doing research on them for the wiki, and they aren't entirely useless. The berrymakers can sustain a pawn in pretty much every situation, including winter, and arent prone to fires like normal farms. Also the 5 hours a day is constant, you can always expect it whereas with plants and normal growing, more events can ruin the operation: blight, fires, solar flares. So while they arent perfect (yet, I hope for some major changes, specifically the production and gaumaker variants are pathetically underpowered) they've got their niche, especially if you are trying to do a playthrough with them for story.

[Fyredrakon]

Originally posted by Zen:

And these trees take take about five hours of the day to maintain every single day. For one. For a skilled plant cutter. They're so inefficient that essentially whoever is doing the job can only prune the tree and eat and sleep.

Also what kind of schedule are you giving your pawns, yes the trees take a minimum of 5 hours with a maxxed pawn, but they also dont have 5 hour workdays, you can easily get 10-12 hours of work from a pawn

[RCMidas]

Gaumakers can be produced indefinitely, however, which means you can plant as many 'wild' trees as you like, each of which will spawn two dryads. You can pick up a limitless supply of dryad meat that way even in the longest, harshest winters; and bond with the trees later on if you have a few extra pawns.

I'm still working on testing their effectiveness as distractions for raids, and it's looking quite entertaining at the moment.

[Kasa]

@Fyredrakon
That's 5 hours with a pawn with 20 plants. And it's 32 berries every 2 days that's effectively 3 simple meal every other day.

So lets say your give up you planter that has 20 ranks to take care of that tree and can get 4 berry dryads.

That's 128 berries every 2 days 6.4 nutrition every 2 days = 12 simple meals every 2 days = 6 meals a day.

Which translates into 1 pawns with a 20 growing skill feeding 6 pawns.

Though if we are playing on a desert map agave grows in abundance and combined with animals would be a more effective way to get food.

[Kasa]

@RCMidas

The trees only spawn dryads if some one is connected and pruning the tree so it's hardly infinite they did not spawn 2 dryads for me with out being connected to a pawn pruning a tree.
And you can only get Gaumakers if you are using the tree huger meme and the dryads have to grow to full size to produce a seed.

With your plan you would be giving up 1 pawn per tree and those pawns would be giving up roughly 3 hours a day to maintain 2 dryads that take 6 days to spawn and 6 more days to respawn when killed.

A single dryad can be killed for about 50-ish meat worth 2.5 nutrition every 6 days.

So 3 hours a day for 6 days for 5 nutrition worth 10 simple meals.

This is also assuming that they give the 50 meat when they are immature and do not need to be fully mature to give the max meat, though this is also assuming they do not give more meat if they mature, though even if the did I doubt it would be worth the 6 day way + the time it takes to mature.

[RCMidas]

Unbonded trees spawn two dryads at the same rate as bonded trees spawn theirs. It's not instant.

If you want more efficiency, have your pruners work with rice in their offtime. Then you can cook up a dryad/rice lavish meal every so often.