Dryad types and how useful are they

[pphhyy]

First off if you haven't try'd the Guaranlen Trees out id recommend giving them a try their pretty neat, also it will take most of a colonist OR slave's work day to maintain. Higher plants means less time maintaining the tree. You do not need a GOOD planter for the tree just someone with enough time in the day.

Each tree can produce 4 dryads at most and must all be the same type, and needs one colonist to maintain. Another thing to know is dryads dont eat food.

Carrier Dryad
This little bugger can carry 50 and moves slower then a person. with 4 of them hauling things around in the base at the cost of one colonist tending their tree i think its worth it.
The problem with them is the colonist tending the tree if all your colonists are needed for other jobs and hauling isnt a priority, but for a larger colony or a colony with colonist haulers these guys are a nice replacement.

Barkskin And Crawler Dryads
One has tons of armour the other sharp claws.
If you have ever breed dogs or wargs for war you'll love these guys. Im not sure if having them be your main defence is a good idea but having them as flooder works great. since they dont eat mainlining them is easy compared to other war animals. a larger colony may still want wargs but at that point you dont need wargs haha.

Woodmaker Dryads
These guys are gonna become a staple in my lower tech colony's that need lots of wood.
Every 2 days each one will drop 25 wood. 100 every 2 days for all 4. Anyone sick of telling tribals to cut down tress for wood every so often will love these guys, they help remove alot of micromanagement. in a year thats 2500 wood, pretty good for a low tech group with more important things to do.

Medicine maker
How many times have you forgot to start with a colonist at 8 plants or had them die.
these guys can help elevate that, 3 herbal medicine every 2 days so for 4 its 12 every 2 days. pretty useful in the early game and produces 300 in a year which is usually more then what my medieval and tribal colony's can do with good planters. all from one colonist who docent even need to be a good planter.

Berry Maker
They will produce 32 berry's every 2 days 128 for all 4. which i thought sucked before writing this but thats 3200 berry's each year for one colonist who could suck at everything making it a decent food source if you dont have good planters. You could look at it like this each simple meal is 10 berries so in 2 days you could get up to 12 meals, or 6 people feed each day and not have to plant rice!

Gaumaker
Makes more tree seeds so you can have more dryads, does require 3 of them to combine into one so can take quite some time at 8 days for each to grow 24 days to get a new tree by growing these guys. i dont think their worth it in the early game as i got 3 sprouts in year 1 thanks to luck and festivals.

All in all i think this gameplay mechanic is super kool and useful especially if you dont want to go into a higher tech for whatever reason.

BUT it will not replace the way you play this game unless you want it to, if you enjoy making high tech bases with jacked up colonists this will all seem like a gimmick to you more or less, especially if your using mods. I do wish you could do more grandiose things with the trees but hopefully a latter update will expand them.

This wasent meant to be a guide but a bit of info of these guys for people wanting to try them but wanted more info before doing so, like me. Especially since i made an ideology around using them and needed to make multiple colony's to figure out how i wanted it to work.

Sorry for my ♥♥♥♥ grammar and if i got anything wrong about them plz tell me.

edit* i am an idiot who put 50 instead of 60 for the years days

[RCMidas]

Gaumakers have a certain use because each time you get three of them to merge, you open up their slots to be replaced by the tree. This means you can constantly get more seeds and just store them for later planting. And these trees can be planted under rock roofs (NOT constructed ones) and even overhead mountain tiles - they only need 5% fertility and no light to grow.

This means you can flood the map, even in underground areas, with "wild" unbonded trees that each produce two dryads over and over. All the meat you want even if all the animals leave for the winter and something goes horribly wrong with your stored food. I'm still testing out the value of these "wild" trees and their dryads as distractions and blockades during raids.

[pphhyy]

ooooooh thats kool, i might have to try that next

[ichifish]

Thanks for the write up pphhyy and RCMidas.

[Cormac]

Originally posted by pphhyy:

Berry Maker
They will produce 32 berry's every 2 days 128 for all 4. which i thought sucked before writing this but thats 3200 berry's each year for one colonist who could suck at everything making it a decent food source if you dont have good planters. You could look at it like this each simple meal is 10 berries so in 2 days you could get up to 12 meals, or 6 people feed each day and not have to plant rice!

on a 40/20 colony with lots of rich soil (which you might want to use for devilstrand or other things), strawberry plants take 6.06 days to fully grow, 6 grow periods (37 days, plus the time you need to harvest&replant) and a yield of 8 berries, you need 66,667 starberry plants for the same amount of harvest, overall 400 time a pawn needs to plant and harvest (overall 800 interactions), compared to the time he takes on the tree... if you add a greenhouse, it will be less, lets round to 10 harvests each year, 40 plants you need to heat, sunlamp und work with, and 1 colonist can support 2 full trees if need be

edit:
10 berrys = 1 simple meal
2 trees each 128 each 2 day = 128 berrys each day
each colonist eats 2 simple meals a day

128 berrys / 10 berrys/meal = 12 meals (and some rest)
12 meals / 2 meals/colonist = 6 colonists

asuming that 1 pawn is able to cook the food during the same day, you can nearly support a colony of 6 colonists of a single colonist and 2 trees, without much need for other colonists to interfere

[pheanox]

Honestly I love the dryads, I'm one of those people that is willing to take an initial -10 mood hit to cut down trees in the beginning of the game though from the tree connection.

[Fyredrakon]

Been writing a lot of the gaumaker and dryad wiki pages, and this is almost all good stuff, I will check it and include it on the wiki. First gonna critique your numbers: years are 60 days, 4 quadrums of 15 days, not sure how you missed this but its all right.

Pruning the tree: a pawn will take at least 7.5 hours a day to maintain 100%, and at minimum 5 hours with plants skills 0 and 20 respectively. The work is enough to get burning passion pawns to around 18 within a year, low passions to 15, and no passions to probably at least 8. Which is enough to make them plant herbal medicine. Assume around 6-7 hours for low skill pawns of pruning a day. So no, you don't need a good plants pawn, you will get one though.

Berrymakers (you got the math on this one wrong): get 3840 berries/year. So yes they can make 6.4 simple meals/day (given you have a cook) which is enough to feed 3.6 people, that's really good in my opinion, since your pawn should even have extra time after pruning for other work. They become especially good if you are on a tile with a low growing period, since they work year round, or if you are tribal and need consistent food supply since there's no refrigderation.

Woodmakers: get 3000 wood per year. Financially woodmakers suck, but they are also a source of guilt-free wood for tree connection meme, and its much more efficient than the measly 2 wood/fibercorn that you have as an alternative. For industrial age, thats 25 chemfuel/day, enough for about 5 chem generators, or 5000 watts.

Medicinemakers: are in my opinion bad, a reasonably sized medicinal grow plot will make more than the dryads for significantly less work, they dont require plants skills but you should end up with a pawn above plants 8 if you get your hands on a Gauranlen tree, since pruning gives plants experience.

Carriers: are in my opinion the easiest to say to yourself that they are useful. 4 carrier dryads hauling at a third the efficiency of a human for most of the daytime ends up being really good timewise. A single set of four should be able to deal with most hauling needs of a medium colony (10-15 colonists). Additionally, the dryads don't care about dead bodies so if your colonists don't like corpses, the dryads'll haul them for you, they can also haul from potentially more dangerous areas outside of your walls, where your pawns are more prone to getting caught off gaurd by raids(or if they are just dumb and out and about during raids, we've all had that one pawn that gets downed carrying steel during a raid). They are much more efficient at hauling than other hauling animals, since they haul all day nonstop.

The combat dryads are combat related, so I'll save you the hassle of numbers here: the clawers do more damage than a thrumbo, and the barkskins have the same armor as a thrumbo. Having a group of either is a good advantage on defense, and are small and harder to hit. The clawers should be able to help take care of manhunters, and barkskins can tank some damage rather than making your colonists take it. They are also hardier than normal animals, they don't bleed to death, don't need tending, heal faster, and are automatically replaced if they die within about a quadrum.

On RcMidas' statement about testing unbonded dryads, I look forward to future posts, I can think of using them as beauty path makers, since the moss they have around them is really beautiful, so they're great for outdoor pathways/rooms(I'm planning on making an outdoor temple with a few of them)

Also on RcMidas saying you can use unconnected trees for dryad meat, that's gonna get a no from me at least, it produces half a meat/day, which is basically useless. Considering in the fact that you need the seeds in the first place to get that microscopic amount of meat makes it even more useless. You need 20 meat for 64 pemmican, so you can imagine that takes at least three trees making the dryads(since the meat spoils, you need all the meat at once) and even then that's only 64 pemmican every 13-14 days. assuming you are making pemmican and not eating it raw. This could fairly easily be scaled up if the gaumaker dryads worked.

Gaumakers are (to my understanding) broken and useless right now, they won't merge to give new seeds, so hopefully that gets fixed next patch.

So yeah, conclusion, good job on your part, all good stuff, just adding on my two cents.

[Fyredrakon]

Originally posted by Cormac:

Originally posted by pphhyy:

Berry Maker
They will produce 32 berry's every 2 days 128 for all 4. which i thought sucked before writing this but thats 3200 berry's each year for one colonist who could suck at everything making it a decent food source if you dont have good planters. You could look at it like this each simple meal is 10 berries so in 2 days you could get up to 12 meals, or 6 people feed each day and not have to plant rice!

on a 40/20 colony with lots of rich soil (which you might want to use for devilstrand or other things), strawberry plants take 6.06 days to fully grow, 6 grow periods (37 days, plus the time you need to harvest&replant) and a yield of 8 berries, you need 66,667 starberry plants for the same amount of harvest, overall 400 time a pawn needs to plant and harvest (overall 800 interactions), compared to the time he takes on the tree... if you add a greenhouse, it will be less, lets round to 10 harvests each year, 40 plants you need to heat, sunlamp und work with, and 1 colonist can support 2 full trees if need be

edit:
10 berrys = 1 simple meal
2 trees each 128 each 2 day = 128 berrys each day
each colonist eats 2 simple meals a day

128 berrys / 10 berrys/meal = 12 meals (and some rest)
12 meals / 2 meals/colonist = 6 colonists

asuming that 1 pawn is able to cook the food during the same day, you can nearly support a colony of 6 colonists of a single colonist and 2 trees, without much need for other colonists to interfere

A tribal pawn really can't do this safely, if the pawn supports 2 trees even at max level, it takes them 10 hours. They sleep for 8 and thus have only 6 hours left over for recreation, eating, etc. Even if you cut out their recreation, if they for some reason lose connection strength its more or less over for that tree. The only way to get it back is if you have a couple spare wakeups (each wakeup replaces 1 night's sleep, thus 4.8% strength per tree). So if your colonist misses a day of pruning, due to sickness, being drafted, travelling, bed resting, etc, its gonna cost you to get it back. Assuming you cut out the recreation temporarily to allow them to regain connection strength, you get about 4-5 hours extra pruning per day, which is a slow 2.4% strength gain/tree/day (assuming the same decay rate). Not to say its not worth having a pawn do that, but it's gonna be hard to pick up an empty tree.
I.e. don't make a pawn prune two trees if you don't have wakeup to spare.

[Sugar Glider]

Does anyone know if the moss for the trees will die without sunlight ? Trying to make cave tree dweller people but I have run into the issue twice of my moss dying after taking the time to plant fungal gravel to ensure that it would spread/stay.

[Kasa]

I want to point out what seems to be a pretty big flaw in your math.

It takes a level 20 planter to spend 5 hours on a single tree and there can only be 1 pawn per tree.

Which means to support 2 trees requires 2 pawns and if you want them to only spend 5 hours they will both need 20 levels in planting.

Mathematically the dryads do not compare to anything you can do without them, for example yes in order to get the same amount of berries you would need vast fields of straw berries.. or just grow rice and corn?

Same for wood and herbs, animals still suck but they perform better with better stats then the attack and defence druid plus they will awaken and follow your trainer no matter what time of day.

And trading a pawn for 4 carries that can only carry 50 lbs and move at 1/2 the speed of a pawn is subjective.

The dryads certainly are a play style you can choose to pursue but they are by far a efficient and debatable if even viable play style.

[pphhyy]

Fyredrakon thanks for the feed back i totally messed up how long a year in game was haha not sure how i did that, i only have 1200 hours in game you would think id remember.

[pphhyy]

Originally posted by Sugar Glider:

Does anyone know if the moss for the trees will die without sunlight ? Trying to make cave tree dweller people but I have run into the issue twice of my moss dying after taking the time to plant fungal gravel to ensure that it would spread/stay.

i dont know if they need light but they seem to have a life cycle and will die after x amount of days, all mine from a tree disappeared right in-front of me except the stuff grown later, which it seems it does grow around the tree naturally, dont know about underground you might be the pioneer on that

[Kasa]

Your also off on your math of the dryads damage.

A claw dryads damage works out to be 6.14 DPS and a thrumbo is 7.44, a warg has 4.24 but also has much better defence and can survive more blows then a claw dryad same goes for a bear.

The bark Dryad only has 3.16 DPS and worse moment and less health then wargs, bears, or thrumbos.

[Sugar Glider]

Did not know it died/ grew back naturally not sure if it will do so in my cave due to the lack of light. I have died in both attempts so could not last long enough to see if any grew back. It is a real shame because I wanted to build a colony that had like, an underground forest that depended on moss beauty for rooms and having a bunch of great trees for mood buffs. Sadly I do not think my hidden grotto is currently possible.

[Fyredrakon]

Originally posted by Sugar Glider:

Does anyone know if the moss for the trees will die without sunlight ? Trying to make cave tree dweller people but I have run into the issue twice of my moss dying after taking the time to plant fungal gravel to ensure that it would spread/stay.

Just tested this, thanks for the idea, I didn't have tunnelers so I didn't think to test it. The tree will grow moss as normal, on any tile with fertility, including the fungal gravel. It does not need light. I assume that the moss follows the same life cycle as normal, which includes the moss dying and regrowing. I don't really have accurate timestamps to determine the cycle length, but it seems that the moss will be gone for a couple of days every quadrum. If its important, stagger multiple trees so that there is always some moss.

[Fyredrakon]

Sugar you just posted before I did so I didnt see it, but the underground grotto sounds really cool, so keep pursing it if you want, the gauranlen trees dong appear to suffer from it, and even gain immunity to normal gauranlen trees's one weakness: toxic fallout. The moss is cool, so try to get those fungal floors for it, but yeah it does dissappear every so often, hopefully theres some changes to that, since it doesn't make sense for the moss to dissappear really, as moss irl doesn't really die.