A week ago, I bought Slime Rancher as I couldn't resist its $6 price tag, penning my first impressions in my other post here. Here's my continued journey of making money off wild slimes.
Since the last time I played Slime Rancher, I had a mishmash of underfed slimes in my small farm. They were constantly escaping their corrals because they were hangry and they wouldn't stand up to the abuse that I was dishing out to them.
For a quick recap on what Slime Rancher is, it's a game where you aim to become the wealthiest person around by getting your hands dirty with slimes. Feeding slimes with food yields plorts which can be sold for money. That's it!
Most of the slimes that you encounter in the wild are initially small little cute things that can be sucked up by your trusty little vacuum, but if a slime eats the plort of another slime, it will grow in size and become un-suckable by your vacuum, becoming much harder to handle and corral. I didn't do much planning for my farm initially and now all of them are big slimes. I had to do something to get my farm in order.
The first order of business was to cut down the number of slimes I had on my farm. Without an ample food supply, these poor slimes would be constantly hungry and angry. So I did what any ethical slime rancher would do - fire them off the ledge into the big blue sea.
After cleaning up my farm a little, I gathered the remaining slimes into other respective corrals and ensured tried to ensure that they were well-fed. By adding in some food into each corral's Auto-Feeders, the slimes in that corral would be fed periodically to produce plorts.
Every slime has different dietary restrictions - the common Pink Slime could eat everything, but the fussy Tabby Slime would only eat meat. And meat was a resource that was hard to find! Since Tabby plorts were worth much more than Pink plorts, I desperately tried to think of a way to keep these money-making machines on my farm.
Remember when I said that when a slime eats the plort of another slime, it becomes big and harder to manage? It turns out that I could use this feature to my advantage and solve the previous problem of Tabby Slimes being hard to feed. When a Tabby Slime eats a Pink plort, it becomes a combination of the two slimes - a Pink Tabby Largo slime. A Pink Tabby Largo isn't fussy with its food and can eat everything, but it generates both Pink plorts and Tabby plorts when fed. Amazing!
With this newfound knowledge, I quickly fed all my Tabby Slimes with Pink plorts and made them all into Pink Tabby Largo slimes. Now, I could feed them carrots and cranberries which were way easier to procure as compared to the meat that Tabby Slimes fed on.
While I was busy transforming all my Tabby Slimes into Pink Tabby Largos, I also came to the realization that large slimes produce more plorts for the same amount of food. I could feed a Pink Slime with a carrot to get 1 measly Pink plort, but feeding a Pink Tabby Largo with the same carrot would yield 1 Pink plort and 1 Tabby plort. Surely, feeding larger slimes was more profitable!
So I went ahead and fed Pink plorts to the rest of my slimes, making them large. I rub my hands in glee as I thought to myself that this must be the key to riches.
While managing the farm, I also took periodic breaks to explore the wild and scavenge for plorts, food, and other interesting things. No matter where slimes may be, they are always looking for food. Feeding slimes in the wild can be much less stressful since they despawn after a while if you leave them alone. The mistakes that you make aren't permanent but the plorts that you collect are.
Also, since fruits and veggies also grow in the wild, slimes in that area may simply help themselves to them to produce plorts. Getting them plorts without having to lift a finger sounds great, but...
The wrong combination of plort eating may result in a Tarr Slime. These ugly grey things destroy everything they eat, and they also deal damage to you if you go close to them. See what it eats in the upper right-hand corner of the screen? It eats Ranchers. I'm still not sure what makes a Tarr Slime, but I ended up with a field of Tarr Slimes that hounded after me after trying to feed some slimes with regular food. As usual, my only defense was to send them flying into the great blue sea. Ta-ta!
I did some more exploration, trying to go into places that I haven't been into before. There was this cave that was near the starting area with a rather intimidating sign with a skull on it. Cautious, I moved forward to find...
A bunch of feral Pink Phosphor Largos which would attack me on sight. Look at those crazed eyes! If I ended up dead here, I don't think anyone would be able to find my body. Not knowing what to do, I decided to retreat.
At the entrance of the cave, I realized that I had skipped a very important message that was left behind by another rancher, H.
Clearly, I should have been more attentive to these messages and brought some food here before entering the cave. It seemed like I haven't learned my lesson dealing with all my hungry slimes back at the farm. Only this time, they weren't as nice as those domesticated slimes and dared to hurt me.
I then took some time to scavenge for some food around the area. Now armed with food, I went back into the cave to see what those slimes could offer me when they weren't hangry. Well, they just turned into regular happy slimes once they were fed. I guess the mindset of a slime is really simple - get fed, be happy.
Exploring a little further, I found this giant stationary Pink Gordo. I'm not too sure what it does yet, but I think feeding him enough food may unlock some things in the future. There were these locked doors that required a Slime Key to open, so maybe this friendly Pink Gordo may be the one that gives me the key once he's full. I fed him my whole inventory of food, but he didn't respond with anything. Guess I'll just have to bring more food the next time around.
And that's it for this! I seem to be hitting a roadblock in my explorations, so I feel like I'll need to do a little more money farming to unlock new areas. The game has been pretty fun so far, although I don't think I've been an A-grade slime rancher to my slimes 😂
I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you're interested in purchasing the game, you can head down to the Steam Store to buy it!
Post header image from Slime Rancher's IGDB Press Kit, divider image made from the Pink Slime image in the Fandom Wiki.
Screenshots and GIFs are taken in-game by me.