Megasloths are Awesome!

[👁]

Megasloths produce can eat anything, can be used as pack animals, wool, can be trained to haul things around your base, can rescue downed pawns, and can follow you around helping you fight.

Is there a better vanilla pet?

[glass zebra]

Probably a combo of dogs/wolves + horses for hauling/combat + pack animals. Dogs will also not filth up your base when hauling. I don't really see the point of wool in this game to be honest, except it being weird not existing. Since the armour penetration addition, mega sloth wool is also not really better than other wool anymore. They do make pretty good tanks as long as their brain stays intact though.

I hope you saw that you can ride thrumbos in caravans.

[Harry_Robinson1]

Megatheriums are also pretty epic

[👁]

I mean wool can be used to make clothing and can be traded, it's pretty useful. I tried with a dog but I kept running out of meat and they can't seem to feed themselves. Megasloth just eats whatever.

I... I gotta get a Thrumbo!

[glass zebra]

Dogs do eat rice though (and the more efficient meals) and a single dog doesn't really haul much less than a single megaloth. Very few things stack over 75 (which is what colonists haul) and very often haul jobs will carry smaller amounts than that (unless it's harvest time, which can lead to your zone allowed megosloth eating the plants since "Megasloth just eats whatever").

While wool can be used to make clothing and traded, the same is also true for cotton and leather. Wool does not really much of an edge over any of the two, apart helping a bit in extremely cold regions and maybe some decor bonus over some of the leathers and market value over cotton. Alpacas can also carry on caravans and give (much more valuable better) wool and leather - including their own - is often better for clothing (looking at thrumbos again).

Megasloths are a jack of all trades, but not really a master of any. They can definitely be useful of course.

[martindirt]

Second best vanilla tanks, just behind Thrumbo. Nothing more.

[👁]

Ah, I know where I went wrong. I tamed a Timber Wolf and just thought of it as a dog.

[glass zebra]

Timber wolves do not raw eat rice (but still meals), but they do eat much less than a dog and a fraction of what a megasloth eats. They do however produce more filth than a dog.

[Hunzber]

Originally posted by 🤡:

I mean wool can be used to make clothing and can be traded, it's pretty useful. I tried with a dog but I kept running out of meat and they can't seem to feed themselves. Megasloth just eats whatever.

I... I gotta get a Thrumbo!

Hopefully one of the colonists get a taming inspiration which is an instant success on taming a thrumbo. Or the game self-tames one of them.

[Captain Nerdiepie]

Megasloth cannot be used as a pack animal unless you use mods. it is a good animal but not top tier.

Elephants are better in maps that they're viable because it is also a pack animal.

Elephants eat more technically but both really need grazing due to that high hunger rates. Both are terrible haulers due to their ridiculous filth rate.

Megasloth does have valuable wool and heavy fur is arguably the best midgame textile type. Heavy fur is extremely wealth efficient for what it offer (basically superior to bear fur in all aspect that matter while being more wealth efficient as well).

However, the problem is that megasloth, with it's high hunger rate, perform best with grazing, but its textile products are best in coldest of regions without grazing. This awkward combination prevents it from contending for slot of top tier animals IMO.

As a side note, combat animals, in general, decline in usefulness as game difficulty increases, as they perform best when they can overwhelm the enemies. I stop relying much on combat animals on blood and dust and losing is fun. Maybe they're still viable but I think animal centric strategies are suboptimal at higher difficulties. For higher difficulties, I don't think any combat animals are top tier as they increases raid point a ton without enough benefits in return.

All in all, I think megasloth is one of the better animals, but not the best. Horse is probably the best animal at highest difficulties. Elephant is the best at Strive to survive and lower, with year round grazing.

[Astasia]

A single megasloth can be pretty strong early game, but eventually the lack of armor on animals and their melee nature means they start taking devastating injuries in combat. Very quickly a combat megasloth will be missing eyes and brain damaged. You need quite a large number of them breeding to maintain any sort of defense force of them since it takes nearly a year to replace one.

Contrary to popular belief and natural expectation, megasloth hunger rate is not very high, they eat the same amount as a single colonist, so it's fairly easy to keep them fed on most maps. The 1.3 update drastically reduced the hunger rate of the big animals making them a lot more feasible to keep around. Even the thrumbo only eats ~60% more than a colonist these days.

If you use them for external hauling on a cold map (create a low priority everything stockpile outside for them to haul to while your colonist haul it inside), and shear them for their wool to keep colonists warm on that map, they are probably more than worth the sunlamp needed to keep them fed. Assuming you have the skill to tame them and keep them trained.

[👁]

Are you sure megasloths can't be used as pack animals? When I send one on a caravan my pawns seem able to carry more stuff but I'm not sure if that makes them pack animals.

[glass zebra]

Pack animals display their pack weight in the caravan formation window. They should show nothing for you.

[👁]

Originally posted by Astasia:

You need quite a large number of them breeding to maintain any sort of defense force of them since it takes nearly a year to replace one.

Contrary to popular belief and natural expectation, megasloth hunger rate is not very high, they eat the same amount as a single colonist, so it's fairly easy to keep them fed on most maps. The 1.3 update drastically reduced the hunger rate of the big animals making them a lot more feasible to keep around. Even the thrumbo only eats ~60% more than a colonist these days.

If you use them for external hauling on a cold map (create a low priority everything stockpile outside for them to haul to while your colonist haul it inside), and shear them for their wool to keep colonists warm on that map, they are probably more than worth the sunlamp needed to keep them fed. Assuming you have the skill to tame them and keep them trained.

Yah I tamed a female and then later a fame and they've been producing megasloth babies, They aren't picky about eating fungus and can even eat raw plants so they're super low maintenance. My colonists hate fungus so hunting and ranching has been their main source of food (boreal forest maps are hard)

The Megasloths have kept everyone warm and safe through several raids and do all the hauling work, and since they're zoned out of everywhere but the storage area and freezer animal filth hasn't been a problem. If one of them dies it's just more food and leather.

[👁]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Pack animals display their pack weight in the caravan formation window. They should show nothing for you.

Ah ok, they're not pack animals then but they do seem to increase the amount my colonists can carry

Not sure how that works the whole caravan system is something I barely pay attention to.

[Cryptic]

Megasloths are my dream pet irl lol