Animal Husbandry Questions

Because there are too many crafting/profession skills for each to have its own forum.
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Husbandry Questions

Post by Irylia »

Would it be possible for the special livestock merchant to make another appearance soon? It seems there was some interest in rabbits, but I think that's the only way to acquire them. Alternatively, would animal breeding be a possibility for certain species and/or husbandry skill level? It could be an intentional thing on a long cooldown or similar rather than constantly having babies pop up on the farm.

Also - has there been any further thought into adding in some kind of crafters/farmers/ranchers type guild so that we can finally increase our skills beyond 400?
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Rias
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Re: Animal Husbandry Questions

Post by Rias »

Animal breeding is definitely planned for animal husbandry eventually, but there are a lot of considerations to make for something like that.

I haven't thought a whole lot more about he Fourth Guild, since the crafting and professions can already do quite a lot on their own. Which isn't to say I'm considering not doing it, but just that it's lower priority than some other things.
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Husbandry Questions

Post by Irylia »

Would it be possible to increase skill training caps then in the meantime? I know it's not really something "necessary" but it would be nice to get practice applied while leveling.
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Rias
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Re: Animal Husbandry Questions

Post by Rias »

It's going to have to wait for the guild's implementation, unfortunately. I'd hate to give a general increase to skill caps for everyone, and then lower them again once the guild is released. I could see that causing some definite grumpies.
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Husbandry Questions

Post by Irylia »

Since mounts have started making their way into the game (YAY MOUNTS!), and it seems animal breeding is a to-doed thing anyway, I wanted to go ahead and see if you had in mind mount breeding or if it would be reserved for livestock or other types of animals. If you do intend to let husbandry experts breed general livestock, it could be great for cooking. People could finally feel comfortable butchering for meat if they knew they could breed their own herds at a bit of a more reasonable rate than buying each animal flat-out for a huge profit loss. And then you could add things like pigs, ducks (which could be there anyway), or exotics.

Anyway, we'll use horses as an example just in case you were to allow horse-breeding - as kind of an idea of what it might look like with something a bit more complicated than general livestock (since they usually only have one offspring per year as opposed to potentially many per season or cycle - I'm looking at you chickens, squirrels, and rabbits). So, brood mares and/or stud horses would be added to the farming office. Neither would be broken enough to ride and will not be used for any manual labor, but would be able to be led. They would essentially be expensive poop machines that you can get foals from and give no other benefit to the breeder financially aside from the long-awaited and hard-worked-on offspring. You could have it set up in a few different ways:

Method 1:
Players are allowed to purchase both brood mares and studs (stallions) and breed them however they want. There would probably have to be some assumed fencing separation to breed with intent instead of just randomly.

Method 2:
Players are able to purchase only mares OR stallions and must work with other animal husbanders or horse owners to successfully breed their livestock.

Method 3:
Players are only able to purchase brood mares and must pay a stud fee to the stables, the Warrior Guild, or any traveling merchant that might keep stallions.

Alternatively, if a player wants to breed their horse they've grown attached to to try and get a foal with similar traits or if their horse needs to retire for whatever reason, they can loan the animal to the animal husbander to breed them and would not have access to the horse for regular use until the foal is old enough (in the case of mares) or for some other determined time-frame (for stallions) - like maybe they're not allowed to be used a week before and after or something. Players with geldings (if those exist here) obviously can't use them for breeding. If horse-racing comes into play, maybe these can only be bred when they are retired from racing (for mares) or stud fees can be exorbitantly high (for stallions).

Breeding horses with certain physical attributes might result in a foal with attributes similar to either parent or some combination of the two. Foals would then need to either be trained by the breeder or could be auctioned to the stables or sold to other players with high enough skill to train them. Horses bought from stables could potentially be converted to breeding stock, but breeding stock maybe can't be converted into riding or work horses.

A brood mare will go through some gamified version of a normal breeding cycle (usually they can only breed once a year in late winter/early spring and have about 11 months gestation). I guess remove the usual breeding window and just have an in-game indicator that "she's ready", then add a long gestation (maybe like... 3-4 weeks?), then the foal will be weaned after another week or two and can either be sold or training can start (usually foal training starts at about a year for anything more than socialization), then riding training takes however long you want (usually riding doesn't start until year 2 at earliest, but the actual training doesn't take that long) and the horse can be sold or kept. You can add more or less time depending on the type of training and specialization the horse turns out as based on its breeding. Or maybe players can have the option to just add the horse to their breeding herd. Either way, it should be a pretty long, intense process with big anticipation and potential for big rewards based on stat outcome and training applied, but definitely be a bit of a gamble as far as stats. There is no sure thing with breeding.

So based on those timelines (being very loose and all that) - to get a fully functioning horse from breeding could take anywhere from 2-4 months. So you could breed 3-6 animals each year. I feel this wouldn't make them take over from the general stock in-game, and maybe these player-bred horses (depending on skill and training amount) could have some special bonuses. So they would be in-demand, but still very rare. I would suggest, however, that if you do make the process this long, there be some leniency as to care and poop in case someone needs to take a break for a while or can't login every day. That way it doesn't get dragged on ages if a life situation happens. These animals would likely be pastured anyway for most of the duration. Maybe this is the one situation where you can hire an NPC stablehand to check on the horses while you're gone, even if all the other animals don't get the same attention.

Example horse types:
a large muscular brood mare/stud horse (heavy draft/war riding)
a tall lean brood mare/stud horse (racing/war riding)
a short stocky brood mare/stud horse (cart pulling/light draft)
an average-height flighty brood mare/stud horse (pleasure riding/racing)
a short spirited brood mare/stud horse (pleasure riding)

So if someone wanted to breed their tank of a warhorse that's super uncomfortable to ride with a pleasure riding horse, they might get a slightly smaller, but still very capable warhorse that's very comfortable to ride. Or if they bred a racing horse with a pleasure horse, they might get a slightly speed-boosted general riding horse. Or something.

Also, since it came up a few times - retiring horses could become a thing (either to breed or just not use). Even if permadeath isn't, maybe after a horse has served a certain amount of time (could be years) or if they suffer a truly catastrophic injury multiple times, then the player could be given the option to retire the animal to a farm to live out its life in peace. Then you could have an NPC "Sanctuary" farm that's just for retired animals and players could visit them. I know they're already massively expensive, but this could be a way to make sure it's not a 1-time massive expense.

Anyway - just wanted to throw this out there as a possible way this could be implemented (for horses at least). For other livestock it would likely be a lot simpler of a process since no training is required and they would probably only be mass-bred for byproduct production. Also, it's late and I'm tired - so sorry if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense or if I missed something obvious. Thanks for reading and I appreciate any feedback.
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Husbandry Questions and Suggestions

Post by Irylia »

I snagged a lot of these from the poop thread. Bringing them here to keep things organized:

Wool processing steps to add:
1) Skirt wool (trim out matted/damaged/unusable areas)
2) Clean wool (soak in a tub, swish/swirl to remove debris - scrub, rinse, repeat)
3) Card wool (comb it out)
4) Roving (trimming the wool into strips before spinning into yarn/thread)
Steps 1-3 or 1-4 could be required before wool is able to be sold at the market and each could take multiple steps/roundtime. Step 4 could apply to weavers or husbanders.

Milk already has a butter-making process, but that could be given more steps to complete or otherwise drawn out. As more food items get introduced, steps can be added for making other dairy products (sour cream, whipped cream, yogurt, cheese), though that might be reserved for cooking. Milking itself already takes a significant time investment.

Animal Care - would require new recipes or tools:
1) Hoof trimming (all species). This could be a once a week thing maybe and have stages of progression like wool growth.
2) Brushing/grooming (for cows and horses). This could be morale-related or like poop - they won't produce if too dirty.
3) Tooth floating (all species - trimming teeth that have uneven wearing). This could also be a once a week thing.
4) Shoeing (horses). This would be as needed. Not required, but maybe could add some benefit and need replacement over time like armor repairs.
5) Deworming/vaccinating. Whatever schedule you like or maybe it could be a chance effect related to certain activities.

Animal Enrichment:
1) Standing massage rollers (for medium-large livestock).
2) Large leather balls for animals to kick around.
3) Training to do tricks or just tricks by skill level to show off.
4) Petting/grooming to raise morale for them and us (comfort animals).
5) Feeding treats/treat toys they can play with.
6) Giving exercise.
7) Tug ropes.
8) Salt licks.

New animal types:
1) Duck
- Can eat low-lying pests off trees/the ground to keep plants healthy.
- Lives in coops.
- Provide eggs, pest control, feathers.
- Colors: pure-white, tawny-brown, blue-gray, blue-black.
2) Goose
- Guard property (theoretically).
- Lives in coops.
- Provide eggs, feathers.
- Colors: light-gray, striped-brown, striped-gray, snowy-white
3) Angora Goat
- Lives in small animal shelter.
- Provides mohair. (basically softer, more lustrous wool)
- Colors: white, silvery-white, light-gray, dusky-brown

Feather uses:
- Padded armor/clothing.
- Pillows, quilts, comforters, mattresses/upholstery padding.
- Fishing lures.
- Tailored/leathercrafted goods adornment.
- Toys.
- Hair accessories/jewelry/hats.
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