Spawning Animals Manually?

[Topplenaut]

I am trying to figure out how I want to go about building a city in my new YouTube series, and I need to know this: If I spawn a character or animal into a world that is not their native habitat, will they always still be there when I return? And will they stay near where I spawned them? In other words, can I create a custom world via sandbox mode, set it so that no animals spawn naturally, and populate the world manually as I discover creatures in the regular mode?

[hymn]

I've never done anything like what you describe but I will try to answer on what I think I know.

Originally posted by Topplenaut:

If I spawn a character or animal into a world that is not their native habitat, will they always still be there when I return?

Yes unless something causes them to despawn, obviously death will do that so keep out the hostile NPCs and lava, but there also appears to be a cap on player spawned NPCs that can be in a certain area simultaneously, last I checked it was 20 in something like an 8x8 chunk cluster. When the cap is exceeded the oldest NPC despawns. This does not affect world generated NPCs but given that you don't intend to have any it's something to keep in mind.

There probably is a way to remove the cap by modifying game files as there didn't appear to be one during Early Access, but I haven't looked into that at all.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=937878161

Originally posted by Topplenaut:

And will they stay near where I spawned them? In other words, can I create a custom world via sandbox mode, set it so that no animals spawn naturally, and populate the world manually as I discover creatures in the regular mode?

Some NPCs appear to have a greater tendency to roam about than others, at least town, village, and frontier characters seem to stay within the boundaries of their city, so you may want to look into that. Perhaps search for a world with a large city, remove it and use it as a foundation for your own city.

As for a custom world without NPCs, sure, but as mentioned above, when manually populating it the cap on player spawned NPCs will be the limiting factor.


Sorry for the speculative info, I above all suggest to do your own experiments, if you really want definitive answers you can try figuring out what the Developer's Bat-Signal is.

[Cory the guy]

I don't know about all animals, but I think not. Most of the time when I spawn dragons they just fly away and I never see them again.

[Topplenaut]

Thanks guys! I think what I am going to do instead is build a temporary base with animal pens and put them in there as I find them. Then once I earn 100 gold bricks I will create the perfect world with animals built in and start building my city.