Beefalo Domestication

[Maya]

I have a couple questions about beefalo domestication.
How long will it take?
How much grass do I feel the beefalo before I can ride it?

Thanks

[ListenDana]

I'm not entirely sure but when a beefalo is domesticated it's expression changes in a noticeable way and stays like that.

Also one of the traits it can gain is Ornery, which makes it do more damage. You get this by riding it into fights often. Theres another trait for doing nothing but feeding it until it domesticates, which causes it to give out a sanity aura like Glommer.

[Joki the Disco Bandit]

It takes roughly 20-21 days to domesticate a beefalo. This means more than one entire season if you're playing with default settings.

It doesn't matter how *much* you feed it, or even if you feed it at all. What matters is how *often* you perform "domesticating behaviors" with/on it. That includes feeding it, riding it, brushing it, etc.

At least once per day you need to perform one of those actions, for 20 or 21 consecutive days, after which you'll have a domesticated beefalo.

Riding it at any time is simply a matter of putting a saddle on it, which it will let you do after feeding it or brushing it for a relatively short time. Before domestication it won't let you stay on very long, however. It will buck you off, and a short time later it will buck off the saddle as well, causing the saddle to lose some durability. You can avoid that durability loss by intentionally removing the saddle before the beefalo has a chance to toss it off.

They'll develop one of 3 traits. Either Ornery as stated above, which will cause the *beefalo* to do more damage with its attacks, but not the player. Docile, which will allow you to ride it a bit longer as well as travel slightly faster. Or Pudgy, which emits a sanity aura but moves slower as well as doing less damage.

That's been my experience with them. In general I find them more of a pain than they're worth, especially considering the length of time it takes to get them domesticated vs. season length and how often they're in heat. They're cool and all, but the novelty wears off very quickly.

*edit: My wife says I may be mistaken that feeding it isn't strictly necessary. She thinks you have to at least keep its Hunger "above 0", which would mean feeding it just a few pieces of grass or vegetable or whatever, at least once per day. I'm not positive and neither is she, but there's an alternate take on it for what it's worth.

[_edx_]

IMO klei should make some tweaks about this domestication feature, cause is kinda broken at the moment.

Once i tried to domesticated a beefalo, i've wasted my resrources to feed him, also had to remove away my traps, search for grass, find the steel wool (almost die because the ewecus), anyway i spent hours doing this things, till one day the freak animal goes into heat and attacks me (wasn't supposed that we were friends), this animal forgot about our friendship and all the thing that i've made for him so quickly

Since that time i don't have any intention to try it again, is just worthless, indeed if you achieve to tame one, you will have to take care of him forever, this mean you wouldn't be able to explore the caves cause if you spend too much time into caves when you come back to the surface you'll find that the beefalo never was tamed so you'll have to do it all over again , and that is the better scenario, you can end up with a herd of angry beefalos

Originally posted by Hotblack Desiato:

That's been my experience with them. In general I find them more of a pain than they're worth, especially considering the length of time it takes to get them domesticated vs. season length and how often they're in heat. They're cool and all, but the novelty wears off very quickly.

[Maya]

Originally posted by Hotblack Desiato:

It takes roughly 20-21 days to domesticate a beefalo. This means more than one entire season if you're playing with default settings.

It doesn't matter how *much* you feed it, or even if you feed it at all. What matters is how *often* you perform "domesticating behaviors" with/on it. That includes feeding it, riding it, brushing it, etc.

At least once per day you need to perform one of those actions, for 20 or 21 consecutive days, after which you'll have a domesticated beefalo.

Riding it at any time is simply a matter of putting a saddle on it, which it will let you do after feeding it or brushing it for a relatively short time. Before domestication it won't let you stay on very long, however. It will buck you off, and a short time later it will buck off the saddle as well, causing the saddle to lose some durability. You can avoid that durability loss by intentionally removing the saddle before the beefalo has a chance to toss it off.

They'll develop one of 3 traits. Either Ornery as stated above, which will cause the *beefalo* to do more damage with its attacks, but not the player. Docile, which will allow you to ride it a bit longer as well as travel slightly faster. Or Pudgy, which emits a sanity aura but moves slower as well as doing less damage.

That's been my experience with them. In general I find them more of a pain than they're worth, especially considering the length of time it takes to get them domesticated vs. season length and how often they're in heat. They're cool and all, but the novelty wears off very quickly.

*edit: My wife says I may be mistaken that feeding it isn't strictly necessary. She thinks you have to at least keep its Hunger "above 0", which would mean feeding it just a few pieces of grass or vegetable or whatever, at least once per day. I'm not positive and neither is she, but there's an alternate take on it for what it's worth.

Thanks for your help. I started the tame. Aiming for docile.

One last question. If I don't feed him for a day, does the taming reset?

Edit: Seems so. When I tried to put a saddle on the beefalo tried to attack me.
oh jeez

Edit 2: holy moly this is hard. I fed the beefalo 3 carrots. Half a day later, I try to put the saddle on and the beefalo tried to headbutt me.

[Joki the Disco Bandit]

There are mods that change the behavior, if you're so inclined. For that matter you can mod your server's files yourself.

And yeah if you miss doing any kind of domesticating behavior for a day it resets the timer.

One thing you can do that helps, in a way, is to make your season lengths longer, so that you have time between heat cycles to actually work with the beefalo.

[Maya]

Originally posted by Hotblack Desiato:

There are mods that change the behavior, if you're so inclined. For that matter you can mod your server's files yourself.

And yeah if you miss doing any kind of domesticating behavior for a day it resets the timer.

One thing you can do that helps, in a way, is to make your season lengths longer, so that you have time between heat cycles to actually work with the beefalo.

The timer resets? Ouch. I really hope that changes.