How hands-off can I make animals?

[Sparky]

I really don't want to feed, collect, and pat every animal every day so I've never gotten any before. But now I kind of need a bunch of cloth and some other animal products. Can I just set up a coop/barn over in a grassy part of the farm and let them do their thing?

[ChrillBill]

Two things.
1) Once you have upgraded a coop or barn to deluxe, it will keep the animals automatically fed as long as you have a good stock of hay in your silo/s.
2) Once you have reached level 10 farming, Marnie will sell the auto-grabber for 25k each. They will suck up every animal product (even wool) and collect it on a daily basis. You can then collect everything from the auto-grabber whenever you want.

The actual "having to pat" is a different matter. There is another machine called the auto-petter. It is quite easy to obtain if you went with the Joja route. But if you went with the Community Center route, it is only obtainable through treasure chests in the skull cavern. It can also be obtained by killing monsters or breaking crates/barrels in the mines during a late game quest called "Danger In The Deep" and after activating the "Shrine of Challenge" which you can only do once you have finished the "Danger In The Deep" quest.

I hope this helps

[ChrillBill]

Oh and if you are interested in mods, there is one in particular that adds the auto-petter to Marnies shop called: Expanded Shop Inventories[www.nexusmods.com]
You can also spawn it if you want to obtain it in a more cheesy way by another mod called: CJB Item Spawner[www.nexusmods.com]

If you are interested in modding and new to it, I would recommend studying this guide: Modding/ Getting Started[www.stardewvalleywiki.com]

[Sparky]

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

Two things.
1) Once you have upgraded a coop or barn to deluxe, it will keep the animals automatically fed as long as you have a good stock of hay in your silo/s.
2) Once you have reached level 10 farming, Marnie will sell the auto-grabber for 25k each. They will suck up every animal product (even wool) and collect it on a daily basis. You can then collect everything from the auto-grabber whenever you want.

The actual "having to pat" is a different matter. There is another machine called the auto-petter. It is quite easy to obtain if you went with the Joja route. But if you went with the Community Center route, it is only obtainable through treasure chests in the skull cavern. It can also be obtained by killing monsters or breaking crates/barrels in the mines during a late game quest called "Danger In The Deep" and after activating the "Shrine of Challenge" which you can only do once you have finished the "Danger In The Deep" quest.

I hope this helps :brownchicken:

Thanks that helps a lot!

[Mist of Majora]

One last bit - the auto grabber is definitely useful, but it's not COMPLETELY hands off. It harvests and stores up to 36 items, meaning that once it fills up, no one will be picking up after your animals anymore.

Of course, you can plan ahead and make extra auto harvesters later depending on how often you want to check on the animals and how many you have (3 animals in your barn with an auto grabber gives you 12 days of 'hands off time')

[ChrillBill]

Originally posted by Mist of Majora:

One last bit - the auto grabber is definitely useful, but it's not COMPLETELY hands off. It harvests and stores up to 36 items, meaning that once it fills up, no one will be picking up after your animals anymore.

Of course, you can plan ahead and make extra auto harvesters later depending on how often you want to check on the animals and how many you have (3 animals in your barn with an auto grabber gives you 12 days of 'hands off time')

That's incorrect. While it's true that the auto-grabber has 36 slots, meaning it can store up to 36 different items, it can hold huge stacks of those 36 different items.

If you have a coop with say 6 chickens (3 white and 3 brown) and 6 ducks, that can result in a total of 24 different items if you take into account the quality and also the size of the chicken eggs which will change once you have reached a sufficient level of friendship with them. Running out of space is usually not an issue at all when it comes to the auto-grabber :> I usually empty mine at the end of each season when I have a good income from other sources on my farm.

[Mist of Majora]

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

Originally posted by Mist of Majora:

One last bit - the auto grabber is definitely useful, but it's not COMPLETELY hands off. It harvests and stores up to 36 items, meaning that once it fills up, no one will be picking up after your animals anymore.

Of course, you can plan ahead and make extra auto harvesters later depending on how often you want to check on the animals and how many you have (3 animals in your barn with an auto grabber gives you 12 days of 'hands off time')

That's incorrect. While it's true that the auto-grabber has 36 slots, meaning it can store up to 36 different items, it can hold huge stacks of those 36 different items.

If you have a coop with say 6 chickens (3 white and 3 brown) and 6 ducks, that can result in a total of 24 different items if you take into account the quality and also the size of the chicken eggs which will change once you have reached a sufficient level of friendship with them. Running out of space is usually not an issue at all when it comes to the auto-grabber :> I usually empty mine at the end of each season when I have a good income from other sources on my farm.

Oops I stand corrected - thank you for catching that!

[glitzerpaillette]

According to the wiki, the auto-petter does not increase hearts for the animals, it just keeps their love from decreasing

[Seftak]

Originally posted by glitzerpaillette:

According to the wiki, the auto-petter does not increase hearts for the animals, it just keeps their love from decreasing

Yup. No efforts no gain. You HAVE to take care of your animals.

[ChrillBill]

Originally posted by Seftak:

Originally posted by glitzerpaillette:

According to the wiki, the auto-petter does not increase hearts for the animals, it just keeps their love from decreasing

Yup. No efforts no gain. You HAVE to take care of your animals.

Well the wiki is wrong in that matter. I have tested this myself on several occasions and you WILL increase the hearts with the animals by just having the auto-petter. But it is a very slow process though, and will be much faster if you combine normal pet with the auto-petter.

[ChrillBill]

Out of curiousity I looked up the wiki page and this is actually what is says about the auto-petter and friendship: The Auto-Petter will prevent animals from losing Friendship or Mood due to lack of petting and animals will gain approximately the same Mood boost compared to manually petting. However, they will only gain approximately half the normal Friendship points from petting this way. Both the Mood boost and Friendship boost from the Auto-Petter stack with regular pettings from the player, so the Auto-Petter can be used to reach maximum Friendship & Mood faster than normal.

So yeah, you can rely entirely on the auto-petter when it comes to gaining hearts with your animals. But expect it to be a slow process, like I mentioned

[Seftak]

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

Out of curiousity I looked up the wiki page and this is actually what is says about the auto-petter and friendship: The Auto-Petter will prevent animals from losing Friendship or Mood due to lack of petting and animals will gain approximately the same Mood boost compared to manually petting. However, they will only gain approximately half the normal Friendship points from petting this way. Both the Mood boost and Friendship boost from the Auto-Petter stack with regular pettings from the player, so the Auto-Petter can be used to reach maximum Friendship & Mood faster than normal.

So yeah, you can rely entirely on the auto-petter when it comes to gaining hearts with your animals. But expect it to be a slow process, like I mentioned :brownchicken:

Must be in one of the recent updates. The auto petter used to prevent lost of friendship only.

[ChrillBill]

Originally posted by Seftak:

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

Out of curiousity I looked up the wiki page and this is actually what is says about the auto-petter and friendship: The Auto-Petter will prevent animals from losing Friendship or Mood due to lack of petting and animals will gain approximately the same Mood boost compared to manually petting. However, they will only gain approximately half the normal Friendship points from petting this way. Both the Mood boost and Friendship boost from the Auto-Petter stack with regular pettings from the player, so the Auto-Petter can be used to reach maximum Friendship & Mood faster than normal.

So yeah, you can rely entirely on the auto-petter when it comes to gaining hearts with your animals. But expect it to be a slow process, like I mentioned

Must be in one of the recent updates. The auto petter used to prevent lost of friendship only.

Nope, it was like that from when it was introduced in 1.5 which is when I conducted my first tests. There was however a misconception that it was only preventing hearts from dropping and the wiki page looked a bit different than it does now.

[Seftak]

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

Originally posted by Seftak:

Must be in one of the recent updates. The auto petter used to prevent lost of friendship only.

Nope, it was like that from when it was introduced in 1.5 which is when I conducted my first tests. There was however a misconception that it was only preventing hearts from dropping and the wiki page looked a bit different than it does now.

Ohh well, nice. Thanks for the info!

[ChrillBill]

Originally posted by Seftak:

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

Nope, it was like that from when it was introduced in 1.5 which is when I conducted my first tests. There was however a misconception that it was only preventing hearts from dropping and the wiki page looked a bit different than it does now.

Ohh well, nice. Thanks for the info!

No problem. Honestly, I think the misconception that the auto-petter only prevents hearts from dropping was born from CA's description of the auto-petter in the 1.5 log;
"auto-pets animals in a coop or barn (this keeps your animals content, but can't replace the full benefit of human touch)

Especially that last part. It was also quite the machine let me tell you, causing the game to crash if you went to bed and had placed the auto-petter outside of a barn or coop :>

But that was fixed in 1.5.1