Other barn animals should be as good as pigs

[M0thim]

If you think better pigs are the best farm animals, and most of the players completely discard any other barn animal to have as many pigs possible for max money production, they're not just the most expensive and best animals, but they can also find multiple truffles per day which are worth a lot of money, of course that it won't be available during winter and rainy days but we still get a lot of valuable truffle every day while other barn animals just produce once per day whitout even being that worth

If you compare to coop animals, while chickens are the first available producing an egg each day, ducks produce a better egg but with a 1 day delay, so it's better to have both, i know that there are still recipes and stuff to use the products from the other barn animals for but they're not worth for most players considering the how good truffles are

I think that the best that could be done to change this situation is nerf pigs or truffles, maybe make they less common, so we could either find none, 1 or multiple truffles per day, or worth less money, and i haven't mentioned yet that sheeps are available as soon as pigs, besides being way more cheap, but once again worthless comparing to pigs

[Bobywan]

Also truffles are considered foragable so you can get only iridium truffles with the correct foraging skill.
Milk and eggs are necessary for a lot of recipe but not really profitable
I like to make golden cheese for a cheep food source in the mines and cavern.

[I Kinda Fail]

Pigs in theory are fine, the main problem imo is that truffles work with the Foraging profession... They're an animal product, but you have a chance (20%?) to get 2 truffles per harvest, AND they're guaranteed to be top tier.

A happy sheep will, on average, give you about 1k per day from the silk. Sheep really aren't THAT bad, arguably better than cows and goats. They buffed sheep in one of the newer updates so that higher quality wool has a chance to be spun into 2 silk.

So, for example, a maximum happiness sheep has around a 75% chance per day of giving 1 iridium wool, and 20% chance of giving gold wool, if you take the Shepherd perk.
With Artisan, you'd be getting 55% iridium and 25% gold.

So, with Shepherd, you can sell the iridium wool for 816g, OR you can spin it into wool for a 50% chance of getting 2 cloth. 1 cloth sells for 564g, so you'd actually lose money by spinning it, but if you get 2 cloth, you'd earn 1128g. So you risk losing 252g by spinning it, but can stand to gain 312g by spinning it. So you can sell 2 wool for 1632g, or theoretically spin it into 3 cloth and sell it for 1692. So I guess that'd mean a sheep would "usually" give you around 850g per day.

Anyway. My point is that I think animals need a buff, and nerfing pigs isn't exactly the way to do it. I don't personally think that pigs should benefit from Foraging professions, but rather just have them give more truffles the happier they are... Or, ideally, have pigs find MORE truffles when it rains. Pigs love getting muddy! Let the player use truffles to make rain totems, to water their crops and boost truffle production! Nerf pigs in one way, but offset this by buffing them another way! Making pigs just as good profit-wise, while also allowing players to not need sprinklers, would be a great tradeoff.

I think cows and goats are fine where they are. Cows are more profitable, but require more processing and time. Goat cheese is better if you like to age the cheese. I'd love it if casks got a buff, to give cheese an edge on wine, though - many people don't bother with casks at all, and instead just put kegs in their cellar.

Ostriches are... a bit confusing. I'm not sure if anyone's sure yet where they fall on the Shepherd/Coopmaster spectrum. Coopmaster seems to boost their egg incubation time, but which profession affects their mood? It seems silly to have one perk boost half of ostriches, and the other boost their money-making aspect.

I also think chicken coops need a major buff. Ducks seem to produce a LOT more feathers than before, which is great if your duck is extremely happy and produces gold/iridium feathers constantly. But the bottom 2 tiers of feather are worth less than mayonnaise, even moreso if you took Artisan rather than Coopmaster, so buffing feather production made ducks less profitable overall for the average player by my math. Rabbits are horrible moneymakers, and dinosaurs are hands-down the worst animal in the game. It'd be nice if the coop were changed to have a bigger door, and allow dinosaurs to "age up" and produce large eggs more frequently, or even put ostriches in the coop. But yeah, coop is HORRIBLE money; void and normal chickens are decent at best.

[M0thim]

Originally posted by I Kinda Fail:

Pigs in theory are fine, the main problem imo is that truffles work with the Foraging profession... They're an animal product, but you have a chance (20%?) to get 2 truffles per harvest, AND they're guaranteed to be top tier.

A happy sheep will, on average, give you about 1k per day from the silk. Sheep really aren't THAT bad, arguably better than cows and goats. They buffed sheep in one of the newer updates so that higher quality wool has a chance to be spun into 2 silk.

So, for example, a maximum happiness sheep has around a 75% chance per day of giving 1 iridium wool, and 20% chance of giving gold wool, if you take the Shepherd perk.
With Artisan, you'd be getting 55% iridium and 25% gold.

So, with Shepherd, you can sell the iridium wool for 816g, OR you can spin it into wool for a 50% chance of getting 2 cloth. 1 cloth sells for 564g, so you'd actually lose money by spinning it, but if you get 2 cloth, you'd earn 1128g. So you risk losing 252g by spinning it, but can stand to gain 312g by spinning it. So you can sell 2 wool for 1632g, or theoretically spin it into 3 cloth and sell it for 1692. So I guess that'd mean a sheep would "usually" give you around 850g per day.

Anyway. My point is that I think animals need a buff, and nerfing pigs isn't exactly the way to do it. I don't personally think that pigs should benefit from Foraging professions, but rather just have them give more truffles the happier they are... Or, ideally, have pigs find MORE truffles when it rains. Pigs love getting muddy! Let the player use truffles to make rain totems, to water their crops and boost truffle production! Nerf pigs in one way, but offset this by buffing them another way! Making pigs just as good profit-wise, while also allowing players to not need sprinklers, would be a great tradeoff.

I think cows and goats are fine where they are. Cows are more profitable, but require more processing and time. Goat cheese is better if you like to age the cheese. I'd love it if casks got a buff, to give cheese an edge on wine, though - many people don't bother with casks at all, and instead just put kegs in their cellar.

Ostriches are... a bit confusing. I'm not sure if anyone's sure yet where they fall on the Shepherd/Coopmaster spectrum. Coopmaster seems to boost their egg incubation time, but which profession affects their mood? It seems silly to have one perk boost half of ostriches, and the other boost their money-making aspect.

I also think chicken coops need a major buff. Ducks seem to produce a LOT more feathers than before, which is great if your duck is extremely happy and produces gold/iridium feathers constantly. But the bottom 2 tiers of feather are worth less than mayonnaise, even moreso if you took Artisan rather than Coopmaster, so buffing feather production made ducks less profitable overall for the average player by my math. Rabbits are horrible moneymakers, and dinosaurs are hands-down the worst animal in the game. It'd be nice if the coop were changed to have a bigger door, and allow dinosaurs to "age up" and produce large eggs more frequently, or even put ostriches in the coop. But yeah, coop is HORRIBLE money; void and normal chickens are decent at best.

epic

[Quizzer]

I agree that either animals or the associated skills need a buff, but I hate pigs. I hate playing "find the truffle". I hate the way truffles block movement. I hate the barfing noise as they hock one out. I hate their snorking when you pet them. I know I can turn animal noises off, but why bother when you can simply not have pigs on your farm? The other animal noises are pleasant.

Pigs are overrated, especially in comparison to how easy it is to make money over all. I'd run a year-long experiment with a mature sheep and shepherd skill vs a pig with max foraging so you always get purple truffles. But then I'd have to live with a pig for a year. No. Way.

You know what a better animal is? Anything else.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by Quizzer:

I'd run a year-long experiment with a mature sheep and shepherd skill vs a pig with max foraging so you always get purple truffles.

The quality of the truffle makes no difference if you are turning it into oil. And you should be turning into oil to make the most of it. Even a purple quality truffle sells for a fair bit less than truffle oil with the artisan perk.

*Edit: I just did the math for you and it turns out that per sheep you would get as much as 105,938g, per year. That assumes 1 wool per day for the entire year, and assumes you turn all of it into cloth and have the artisan perk. It also assumes that 75% of the wool will be iridium quality and 25% gold quality, as the quality determines how much cloth you get per wool.

For truffles you will roughly make 128,226g, per year, per pig. That assumes 1.2 truffles per day (from gatherer perk) for 3 seasons, minus an estimated 12 days of rain for the year.

So 105,938g vs 128,226g.

[lizardmang]

Originally posted by Quizzer:

I agree that either animals or the associated skills need a buff, but I hate pigs. I hate playing "find the truffle". I hate the way truffles block movement. I hate the barfing noise as they hock one out. I hate their snorking when you pet them. I know I can turn animal noises off, but why bother when you can simply not have pigs on your farm? The other animal noises are pleasant.

Pigs are overrated, especially in comparison to how easy it is to make money over all. I'd run a year-long experiment with a mature sheep and shepherd skill vs a pig with max foraging so you always get purple truffles. But then I'd have to live with a pig for a year. No. Way.

You know what a better animal is? Anything else.

Haha I'd have to agree. I like to keep a couple of each animal just for variety and access to all of the items they produce (especially as I'm still fairly early in my first playthrough), but pigs are by far my least favorite. In addition to everything you mentioned, they're just so ugly. I cringe a little every time I see them. All of the other animals are adorable in a very cartoonish way, and pigs can be really cute irl, but it's as if the dev went out of his way to make them look absolutely grotesque in this game. They don't even completely fit the visual style of the other animals imo.

Based on some quick calculations, a pig will average around 250k/year (assuming the player has the Gatherer and Artisan perks and converts all truffles into oil; not considering rainy days), while a sheep will average around 110k/year (assuming the player has the Shepherd and Artisan perks and converts all wool into cloth). Both of these numbers take chances of bonus items into account, but I only accounted for the 66% chance of a pig producing an additional truffle once each day, not for subsequent attempts. As I understand it, a pig can make this attempt at additional truffles until it fails, so profits could potentially go beyond 250k/year.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by silentprotagonistsays:

Based on some quick calculations, a pig will average around 250k/year (assuming the player has the Gatherer and Artisan perks and converts all truffles into oil; not considering rainy days), while a sheep will average around 110k/year (assuming the player has the Shepherd and Artisan perks and converts all wool into cloth). Both of these numbers take chances of bonus items into account, but I only accounted for the 66% chance of a pig producing an additional truffle once each day, not for subsequent attempts. As I understand it, a pig can make this attempt at additional truffles until it fails, so profits could potentially go beyond 250k/year.

I must be unaware of certain factors with regards to the chance of truffles. Your results differ from mine substantially. Though My calculations still puts truffle oil above cloth profit wise.

[lizardmang]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

I must be unaware of certain factors with regards to the chance of truffles. Your results differ from mine substantially. Though My calculations still puts truffle oil above cloth profit wise.

It's possible I got something wrong, but I pulled all of my numbers from the wiki. The calculation I made for pigs was:

1,491(truffle oil value with Artisan) * 84(days) * 1.66(chance of additional truffle at max friendship) * 1.2(chance of double foraged items from Gatherer) = 249,486.048

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by silentprotagonistsays:

1,491(truffle oil value with Artisan) * 84(days) * 1.66(chance of additional truffle at max friendship) * 1.2(chance of double foraged items from Gatherer) = 249,486.048

Oh I see. I didn't see any mention of the 1.66 increase chance mentioned on the wiki. But also I tried to account for rainy days.

[lizardmang]

Out of curiosity, what number did you use for rainy day chance? I briefly skimmed the weather page on the wiki, but it looked more complicated than a quick estimate was worth.

[Vimpster]

I actually was just guessing by memory of what it seemed to be. But looking at the code on the wiki it seems that you can roughly estimate about a 15% chance of rain for the 3 seasons combined, and that does come to just over 12 days of rain per year. So my guess happened to be fairly accurate.

[lizardmang]

Ah, you're right. 15% seems close enough on a second look. That would bring my estimate down to about 212k. This still doesn't account for additional chances for a pig to find truffles each day beyond the first two, but it's as close as I care to get. Regardless, I'm a little surprised by just how much more profitable a pig can be than other animals.

[Maya-Neko]

The game is full of cheap low income objects for early game and expensive high income objects for the late game. It's not just the animals, but actually everything in the game, which is influenced by this design idea.

You're trading your time and convenience for more money. You've to collect the truffles yourself and can't just use an auto-grabber for it (and you definitely need to keep an area free for them on top of it). It's the same with crops, where some of the more profitable things like hops and coffee grow way faster than something like water melons. So it's not just about pigs being the most profitable, but also about you deciding, that you don't want to go with the more relaxed , but with the more profitable, but time consuming animals.

And ostriches are the most relaxed animals in the game, as they allow you to only care about selling/converting the eggs once a week. It's pretty much the same decision of why many people rather go with the kegs instead of the preserve jars, even when they're less profitable for some fast growing crop types.

[no1schmo]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

The game is full of cheap low income objects for early game and expensive high income objects for the late game. It's not just the animals, but actually everything in the game, which is influenced by this design idea.

You're trading your time and convenience for more money. You've to collect the truffles yourself and can't just use an auto-grabber for it (and you definitely need to keep an area free for them on top of it). It's the same with crops, where some of the more profitable things like hops and coffee grow way faster than something like water melons. So it's not just about pigs being the most profitable, but also about you deciding, that you don't want to go with the more relaxed , but with the more profitable, but time consuming animals.

And ostriches are the most relaxed animals in the game, as they allow you to only care about selling/converting the eggs once a week. It's pretty much the same decision of why many people rather go with the kegs instead of the preserve jars, even when they're less profitable for some fast growing crop types.

Agreed. All other animals are easier; go in each morning, pet them (unless you have auto-petter), grab their stuff out of the auto-grabber, throw them into a line of the appropriate machines (unless you have a hopper, then you just need one each, I suppose) while emptying out the previous days production, profit. It takes like an hour to do a maxed out barn and coop. But pigs? Yeah, you have to let them out, then wander all around looking for their truffles, and you might find zero, or one, or five. Then you have to process them. It's not like it's hard, but it just takes up that much more time. I like to spend my time adventuring, so I prefer things to be quick and easy so I can get to killing things.