Should I use sage hatch?

[Rex Lupus]

In my current run, I just got a sage hatchling egg from my normal hatchling in my ranch. Should I use them? I see that they can be used to get rid of slime and polluted dirt. Should I go on this or it's not worth it? My main concern is about the germs from handling polluted dirt.

[cswiger]

Sage hatches are fine if you are producing a lot of p-dirt for some reason, like ethanol production. But pokeshells are more useful for lime and sand if you have sufficient coal from normal / stone hatches.

PS: Germs don't matter, unless you are using a mod like Diseases Restored.

[Chogathmainop]

IMHO - in terms of slime and polluted dirt, there are better uses for them, but considering sage hatches convert 100% consumed mass to coal, it's not a bad use either if you're having power troubles.

If I were to grow a sage hatch farm, what I'd do is build a dirt farm (wild arbor trees with tamed pips) first, use the dirt produced by the pips to feed your hatches, as well as the polluted dirt from your ethanol distillers.

That said, assuming you don't need coal, you can largely give hatches a miss - there are other critters that are easier (albeit slower) when it comes to producing eggs and meat.

[Bobucles]

Sage hatches are convenient dumpsters for rotted food. It is better to not ruin your food in the first place.
Regular food is too precious to be turned into coal. Be sure to keep sage hatches out of your fridge.
It is possible to produce slime and polluted dirt in decent amounts. Transmuting excess stuff into coal isn't a bad idea, it's just a matter of what you need at the time.

[Rex Lupus]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Sage hatches are fine if you are producing a lot of p-dirt for some reason, like ethanol production. But pokeshells are more useful for lime and sand if you have sufficient coal from normal / stone hatches.

PS: Germs don't matter, unless you are using a mod like Diseases Restored.

Is sand that important? I'm still in the early game and coal seems to be in more need, but I just started to run a ranch, so it might sustain itself later on, especially once I can get the stone hatchling eating igneous rock. I mostly wanted to know if I should take advantage of the sage egg because it's supposed to be rare to appear and I couldn't find much use for polluted dirt or slime.

And won't germs spread and cause diseases?

Originally posted by Chogathmainop:

IMHO - in terms of slime and polluted dirt, there are better uses for them, but considering sage hatches convert 100% consumed mass to coal, it's not a bad use either if you're having power troubles.

If I were to grow a sage hatch farm, what I'd do is build a dirt farm (wild arbor trees with tamed pips) first, use the dirt produced by the pips to feed your hatches, as well as the polluted dirt from your ethanol distillers.

That said, assuming you don't need coal, you can largely give hatches a miss - there are other critters that are easier (albeit slower) when it comes to producing eggs and meat.

I'm still in the very early game (cycle 54 with little infrastructure). I was just thinking of using them to get rid of polluted dirt and slime as I explore more.

[Chogathmainop]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Sage hatches are convenient dumpsters for rotted food. It is better to not ruin your food in the first place.
Regular food is too precious to be turned into coal. Be sure to keep sage hatches out of your fridge.
It is possible to produce slime and polluted dirt in decent amounts. Transmuting excess stuff into coal isn't a bad idea, it's just a matter of what you need at the time.

IMHO, if you have polluted dirt, the best use is feeding it to pokeshells. Unless you're late in the game, lime is something you're generally going to want a lot of more than coal.

[Rex Lupus]

Originally posted by Chogathmainop:

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Sage hatches are convenient dumpsters for rotted food. It is better to not ruin your food in the first place.
Regular food is too precious to be turned into coal. Be sure to keep sage hatches out of your fridge.
It is possible to produce slime and polluted dirt in decent amounts. Transmuting excess stuff into coal isn't a bad idea, it's just a matter of what you need at the time.

IMHO, if you have polluted dirt, the best use is feeding it to pokeshells. Unless you're late in the game, lime is something you're generally going to want a lot of more than coal.

I haven't encountered pokeshells yet. I'm just starting to get to the edge of the initial biome and will start to explore soon, I'm just a little scared of the germs and pollution on the swamp, so I will soon have some slime with germs without a use.

[Chogathmainop]

Referring to your comment to CSWiger:

As important as sand is when harvesting Pokeshells, the big thing you want is the lime made from crushing their shells - 10kg of lime is needed when you make 100kg of steel (among other things), so unless you're playing on Ocenia, a pokeshell farm is going to be basically essential.

Don't worry about disease - if you're feeding your hatches rotten food, the worst they'll come into contact with is food poisoning. Just make sure they wash their hands before they eat, and you'll be fine.

Egg variants aren't particularly rare, it just depends on the environment you're growing your critters in - different environments cause critters to have a higher chance of different eggs. In the case of sage hatches, if you feed regular hatches dirt, it'll increase the chance that they'll lay Sage eggs. (that said, the base chase is around 2%, so there will always be some slim chance no matter what you do).

[Chogathmainop]

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

I haven't encountered pokeshells yet. I'm just starting to get to the edge of the initial biome and will start to explore soon, I'm just a little scared of the germs and pollution on the swamp, so I will soon have some slime with germs without a use.

Okay, slimelung is a bit of a pain at times. The big problem is that slime can dissolve into polluted oxygen, and if it's infected, it'll release germs which infect the air around it. I reccomend using a liquid lock to separate the rest of your base from infected areas, try to build some mask stations going in as well as ore scrubbers going out, and make sure dupes wash their hands.

If you store infected.... anything really in an area that's surrounded by chlorine gas, it'll kill the germs off rapidly.

I will also mention that deodorizers can turn sand and polluted oxygen into clay and regular oxygen - slimelung germs die in regular oxygen, so there's a plus.

Personally, if you have the time and the skill, what I like to do is freeze the area since slimelung dies in temperatures between 50F and 212F, but for now just digging in an airtight area is probably your best bet.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

Originally posted by cswiger:

Sage hatches are fine if you are producing a lot of p-dirt for some reason, like ethanol production. But pokeshells are more useful for lime and sand if you have sufficient coal from normal / stone hatches.

PS: Germs don't matter, unless you are using a mod like Diseases Restored.

Is sand that important?

Sand is needed for Water Sieves. Those are critical, but they don't use up much sand over time so most biomes will have plenty. But Pokeshells will recycle the p-dirt from a Sieve back into sand, so that is an important self-contained loop.

And Pokeshells will provide plenty of lime, which is critical to steelmaking as noted in #7.
(Pacu or just ranching anything in general will also help with lime.)

I mostly wanted to know if I should take advantage of the sage egg because it's supposed to be rare to appear and I couldn't find much use for polluted dirt or slime.

P-dirt either becomes normal dirt via Compost, or coal via Sage Hatches, or sand as noted above. Slime can be used to farm Dark Mushrooms.

And won't germs spread and cause diseases?

Sort of. Dupes washing their hands or taking a shower removes germs, and even if a dupe gets sick, it is usually so minor that you don't notice any real downside.

Put a Washbasin, Sink, or Hand Sanitizer so that dupes clean up after handing p-dirt at a Compost or whatever and you are good.

[XceptOne]

Originally posted by Chogathmainop:

...
10kg of lime is needed when you make 100kg of steel (among other things), so unless you're playing on Ocenia, a pokeshell farm is going to be basically essential.
...

That has changed.
Besides pokeshell molt and egg shells the other way to get lime has always been fossil.
And (since very recently) fossil is renewable now, making ranching pokeshells or masses of other critters pretty much optional.

[AlexMBrennan]

And (since very recently) fossil is renewable now, making ranching pokeshells or masses of other critters pretty much optional.

Is it really? Seems to me that ranching pokeshells (find some wild arbor trees, turn them into ethanol, use the free power and feed the garbage to the pokeshells) is a lot easier than collecting diamonds from space POIs to turn them into a tiny amount of fossil which can be turned into an even tinier amount of lime.

Like how am I supposed to build all those rockets to collect diamond if I don't have any steel because I don't have any lime?

[OZFugazi]

hi.

i usually keep one sage ranch around for the little things. pdirt, spoiled food, a way to get rid of excess seeds or unwanted foods. i never use them for slime disposal. that job is reserved for my algae distillers. the algae and polluted water to water ratio is a far better resource recoup than coal could ever be. (opinion). coal is much easier and more varied to acquire/produce. algae.. not so much. even though algae is "more of a starting resource".. there is always use for oxygen. also.. controlling slime in a sage ranch environment.. can end up being a real pain.. if the appropriate precautions aren't met. just not worth the effort in my games.

all the best.

[XceptOne]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

...
Like how am I supposed to build all those rockets to collect diamond if I don't have any steel because I don't have any lime?

Now that you mention it...
I hadn't really thought about the diamond press not being available in the base game.
At least with SpacedOut! you can produce your own diamonds (which was useful before, as mining space pois already uses up diamonds in dlc)

Edit: fixed quote