Beefalo Domestication Guide

Feeling lonely? Have a ton and I mean a ton of resources to spare? Got nothing better to do? Why not tame a beefalo?

Beefalo - Drops

Beefalo are creatures found in the world of Don't Starve. Initially, they are neutral, meaning they won't attack you if you don't attack them. Beefalo, for most players, are considered a source of protection, food or poop.
What beefalo look like:
Beefalo give several items including:
When killed:
4 meat
3 beefalo wool
33% chance of a horn

When shaved (with a razor)
3 wool

Periodically:
Manure

Stats:
34 Damage
500 Health (1000 DST)
During spring, or periodically during winter/autumn, becomes hostile, also known as going into heat. Beefalo that are not yet fully domesticated will go into heat aswell. During this time, new baby beefalos will spawn. They mature into adult beefalos in around 15 days. Beefalo will not go into heat during summer.

Note: Beefalo will still drop 3 wool when killed, even after being shaved! Use this to maximize wool gains if you want that beefalo hat.

Beefalo wool can be used for a few different items aswell as fueling a fire by 1/4 (the same as a log), however a few of these uses are less useful then others:

Winter hat: 4 beefalo wool, 4 silk, 120 insulation from the cold.
Beefalo hat: 8 beefalo wool, 1 beefalo horn, 240 insulation from the cold, beefalo will not attack you during mating season.
Puffy Vest: 2 beefalo wool, 8 silk, 1 winter koalefant trunk, 240 insulation from the cold.
Carpet: 1 beefalo wool, 1 board, turft, prevent eyeplants from spawning.
(Willow only) Bernie: 2 beefalo wool, 2 beard hairs, 2 silk, when shadow creatures become hostile, bernie will come to life to draw aggro for the player.

But by far the most useful item item for beefalo taming is the saddle. After all, why tame a beefalo if you can't ride it? There is a section later on in the guide for saddle recipes.

Beefalo - Taming: Introduction

Before you go out to tame a beefalo, make sure you have crafted a saddle. I reccomend a basic one, as beefalo can (and probably will) buck off their saddles if their obedience drops too low (I'll get to that in a minute), causing damage to the saddle. Since all tamed beefalo will never buck off their saddle, using special saddles on them will preserve their durability, pretty much forever.

Beefalo can be found in savannah biomes, or the biomes with yellow ground and lots of grass tufts. They spawn in herds, and will defend each other if one of them is attacked.

To begin domestication, feed your desired beefalo anything that is a plant, fruit or vegetable, however, all stats start at 0, so I reccomend feeding 1 cut grass or 1 twig.

Everytime you feed a beefalo, their obedience goes up by 0.1, and beefalo have a maximum of 1 obedience.

Obedience:
10% or lower: Beefalo will attack you if you try to saddle them.
<40%: Beefalo will shake off their saddles. Beefalo will not let you ride them.
50% or higher: Beefalo will allow you to ride them.

This is by far the most simple stat. When feed your beefalo, they become more obedient. Furthermore, if you brush a beefalo, they will gain 40% obedience and you will get one beefalo wool along with some domestication. You cannot gain more domestication/wool by brushing your beefalo more then once. You can only brush a beefalo once per day, so save your durability and brush at the start of every day. Il explain how to get a brush in the next part of the guide.

Domestication:
This is the most important beefalo stat. The higher your beefalo's domestication, the closer it is to being domesticated. This means that with a higher domestication, you will be able to ride your beefalo for longer amounts of time. You will start off only being able to ride your beefalo for ~50 seconds, but when fully domesticated, you can ride your beefalo for 13 minutes. When fully domesticated, your beefalo will have a tendency locked in based on how you tamed your beefalo.

Beefalo - Taming: Tendencies

A beefalo's tendency will deside what stats your beefalo has/will have when fully domesticated. Currently, there are 4 possible tendencies:

Default: This is a standard beefalo. It's stats are the same as a wild beefalo, and a beefalo that is partially domesticated, although partially domesticated beefalo will not have a minimum obedience level. It has a minimum obedience of 80%. Obtained by balancing all other tendencies. It's essentially a jack of all trades.
Reccomended saddle: War Saddle or Glossamer Saddle, depending on what you want your beefalo to be doing. Feel free to swap between saddles for when you need different things.




Ornery: Ornery beefalo have their damage increased to 50. Combined with the war saddle, an ornery beefalo can do 66 damage per hit, 2 less damage then a dark sword. However, it only has a mimimum obedience of 45%, meaning you will have to feed it something to mount it. Obtained by attacking/taking damage while riding your beefalo.
Reccomended saddle: War Saddle




Rider: Rider beefalo only do 25 damage per hit, however they have a run speed of 8, making them the fastest of the beefalos, and the fastest way to travel accross the map (without any character bonuses). They have a miminum obedience of 90%. Obtained by riding on your beefalo.
Reccomended saddle: Glossamer Saddle




Pudgy: Pudgy beefalo have the lowest damage at 20 and the lowest run speed at 6.5, however they do give off a sanity aura of 6.25+, close to that of the tam o' shanter. They have a minimum obedience of 60% and are obtained by overfeeding your beefalo or by keeping their hunger over 50%.
Reccomended Saddle: Glossamer Saddle

Beefalo - Taming: Items

There are several items related to beefalo taming.

Saddles:

Basic Saddle:
Recipe: 4 Pig Skin, 4 Gold Nuggets, 4 Beefalo Wool
Perks: +40% movement speed while riding beefalo, 5 uses
Notes: The easiest and most basic saddle to craft (hence the name) It's pretty solid, you won't even need to replace it if you don't want to, however there are better options.










Glossamer Saddle:
Recipe: 2 Living Logs, 4 Silk, 68 Butterfly Wings.
Perks: +55% Movement speed while riding beefalo.
Notes:Yes, thats not a mistake, you need 68 butterfly wings to craft this. This may seem like a waste of time, but if you use a construction amulet, you can half that price to 34 wings, making this a much better option. You can also use bundling wraps to keep butterfly wings from spoiling.










War Saddle:
Recipe: 4 Logs, 4 Rabbits, 4 Steel Wool
Perks: +25% movement speed while riding beefalo, +16 damage to your beefalo.
Notes: This saddle is obviously best on ornery beefalo, and while you are losing out of 15% movement speed by using this saddle, doing almost dark sword damage with no durability and having a requirement of 1 cut grass or 1 twig is well worth it. Now, what is this steel wool? Well, let me explain the next item crafted with steel wool, and then I'll talk about it.










Brush:
Recipe: 1 Steel Wool, 1 Walrus Tusk, 2 Gold Nuggets
Perks: When used on a beefalo, grants 1 beefalo wool, 40% obedience and 1.7% domestication.
Notes: Using a brush everyday while taming a beefalo will shorten the time it takes to tame the beefalo to 15 days, allowing you to tame a beefalo in just one season, even winter/summer if planned accordingly.











Ewecus: While not an item used to tame beefalo, this mob drops items that are used exclusively in beefalo taming. I'm putting this here as it fits in with the topic of brushes.
Ewecus has 500 hp (800 in DST), does 60 damage and can fire mucus spit at you, stunning you in place and dealing 5 damage. Ewecus is unable to use her mucus attack if you are riding a beefalo, (possibly because only beefalo tamers would hunt this mob?) making her fight pretty much just a tank fest.




Salt Lick: This item is a structure that when placed down, will attract mobs such as no eyed deer, koalefants, volt goats and you guessed it, beefalo. When in use by any mob other than a beefalo, nothing will happen, and only beefalo that are/ are being tamed will be effected by it. When a beefalo that is/that is being tamed is next to a salt lick, they will not lose domestication unless attacked by a player. They will still lose obedience and shake of their saddles, however this allows you to "pause" your beefalo domestication if other more important matters pop up.
Recipe: 4 Nitre, 2 Boards

Beefalo - The Taming Process

It's important to know that taming beefalo will take a long time, usually 1-2 seasons, a lot of food, and a pretty big time investment. You need to know that you have the resources for both you and your beefalo, and possibly other friends playing with you. If there is anyone I'd reccomend playing for taming beefalo, it'd have to be Wickerbottom, as she can produce insane amounts of berries for fistfulls of jam for your beefalo.

First off, find yourself a beefalo, and feed it 1 cut grass or twig to start the taming process. Now depending on how much food you have, you have two ways to gain domestication:
A) Keep your beefalo's hunger above 0% at all times.
B) Ride your beefalo.
Both of these methods will grant you domestication, however only at 0.1% domestication every 10 seconds aslong as the beefalo has hunger above 0 or is being ridden. These methods do not stack. If a beefalo's hunger is at 0, and they are not nearby a salt lick, they will lose domestication, enough to lose 100% domestication in under 9 days, however, if you are riding a beefalo, they will not lose domestication, even if they are starving. This allows you to pretty much never feed your beefalo, so long as you are riding it or have it parked next to a salt lick.

And do not, I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT ATTACK YOUR BEEFALO! THIS WILL ADD ANOTHER 6 DAYS BEFORE FULL DOMESTICATION! Mobs can attack your beefalo though, it will only lose 0.01% obedience.

Since beefalo lose 300 hunger per day, and they have a maximum of 375 hunger, you will need to make up that hunger if you don't wish to ride your beefalo 24/7. 300 hunger is equivelent to 4 wilsons (or any other character with a standard hunger modifier). In order to replenish 300 hunger, you will need 4 dragon pies, 8 fistfulls of jam, 32 berries/twigs or a wopping 64 cut grass/reeds. This is why Wickerbottom is by far the best character to play while trying to tame a beefalo, food is especially abundant with her.

Also, it should be noted that beefalo gain 4x the healing benefits from food items. This means that dragon pies will heal your beefalo for 160hp, and blue caps will heal for 80, and since blue caps are much more available, they should be your go to healing item when fighting with your beefalo. Alternatively, you can let your beefalo regen their hp at 6.9 (heh) hp per 10 seconds, allowing for full regeneration after 3 days.

The Taming Process:
1) Find a beefalo. Give it 1 cut grass/twig/cut reed to start the domestication process.
2a) Either feed 300 points of hunger per day or ride your beefalo 24/7.
2b) If you have a brush, brush your beefalo every day until full domestication.
3) Repeat 2a) and 2b) until full domestication. Remember to train your beefalo in your desired tendency.
4) After full domestication, if your beefalo is not next to a salt lick, feed 10 twigs/berries per day, and ride for atleast 10 seconds per day.
Remember: you can park your beefalo if you need to do something else while domesticating.

Beefalo - Conclusion & Sources

Well that's the guide. Hope this helps you enslave a cow.

This guide also applies to Don't Starve, however there are no salt licks there (yet) so you will need to continue beefalo maintenance even after full domestication.

Sources:
Images: Don't Starve Wikia
Information: Don't Starve Wikia

https://dontstarve.fandom.com/wiki/Don%27t_Starve_Wiki

[dallas]

add shadow saddle, its new update

[Baarko]

the beefalo will have a "poof" animation

[youngVegeta2]

how do I tell when it's fully domesticated?

[Baarko]

if you try to attack while on a beefalo, the beefalo will attack for you, dealing its own damage and ignoring your own characters damage modifiers, so wendy and wes wont have their 0.75x multipler, but wigfrid and wolfgang wont have their higher damage modifiers. you can use ranged weapons such as staves, blowdarts and boomerangs while on a beefalo however. rider beefalo also arent very good for combat, only the regular beefalo and ornery beefalo should be used in combat.

[life268]

Can I attack WITH the Beefalo or being mounted to it? I mean, I have a rider one, and I can't attack if it is not with blowdarts or some ranged weapon

[Baarko]

@captain flint domestication is the stat beefalo have that decides how long you can ride them for, the stat that beefalo gain immedatley when they are fed is called obedience, a beefalo must have atleast 50% obedience in order to ride them, and they gain 10% obedience for every item fed to them. fully tamed beefalo have a minimum obedience from 45% to 90% depending on the type of beefalo, so feed a beefalo like 10 pieces of grass or twigs and it will have 100% obedience and you can ride it

[Captain Flint]

I read, and re-read, and still have some doubts.I am trying to domesticate for two main reasons:
1. To ride the beefalos from far away and bring to my base, to a small pen I built.
2. To ride and pick up the suspicious marble and bring them to the other marble pieces
So basically, i want to ride, but as soon as I feed grass/twig, it refuses to me let me ride for prolonged time. It lacks domestication, and your guide tells to ride to increase domestication, or full feed and wait a few days, is there any other way to do it fast? The beefalos are freaking far away from my base

[ninjahippi]

This is so incredibly helpful :D
Thank you so much!

[WendigoT33th]

thanks m8! great guide!