Free Range Farming Style!

[Cblase]

I thought I would contribute my first posting with an idea I had for a different way to ranch.

Rather than keeping all the slimes cooped up in their sad little force field cages, why not let them run free in the ranch? So I tested this today by executing the following steps:
1) Collect lots of food for Pink Gordo slime. feed to acquire the slime key.
2) Run through mossy biome collecting as many puddle slimes available and return to base.
3) Setup puddle for the puddle slimes and instantly start making tons of easy money in no time flat (Pro-tip!).
4) Decide which Largos should live in which areas of the ranch. I decided to go with Tabby pinks in the main area, and cover the plots with nothing but chicken coops and fruit trees which auto feed the free ranging largos.
* For the Cave, I picked phosphors with Honey slimes for dark cave purposes, as well as the fact that I plant both Mangos and Cuberries and both will feed them well, with double the profits.
* Finally, I put the Boom-Rock Largos in the overgrowth area since it naturally produces chickens on its own as well as carrots, then planted only heart beets for optimal Plort production.

After finally setting all this up I noticed some immediate and eventual pros and cons with this style.
Pros:
- It's easy to keep all Largos fed, which means they are "Plorting" at maximum efficiency.
- I could fit many more Largos of each type in the ranch areas then I could in cages. I had about 20 Largos in each room, with plenty of room for more.
- The method produces way more plorts overtime and I noticed I reached end game status in a fraction of the time it took me on my first play through.
- It Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling knowing your slimes are free to roam the ranch without horrible cages.

Cons:
- The tricky part about this style of ranching, despite its improved plort production, is the fact that normal plort collectors are not usable. instead you must run around gathering all the plorts on the ground as frequently as needed.
- For some people who love a neat and tidy working environment for ranching, or otherwise, this style will drive you insane! With all the chickens, fruits/veggies, and giant Largos all over the ranch, it can get a little overwhelming.

Overall I thought this style of slime ranching was very enjoyable because it was a completely different way to play the game. their are some mechanics built in to the game which seem to promote this style as well. for example, after purchasing a ranch expansion, if you press E on the green button again it toggles a force field door to close off an expanded area. This works great for ensuring my three largo types don't accidentally mix together. One issue I ran into (I'm not sure if this is a BUG/ERROR or not) was getting random spawns of Tars in my overgrowth area. I made sure it wasn't a result of a contamination of my largos, instead Tars would just start falling from the sky whenever I went into check on them. I couldn't keep up with them all and eventually they cleaned out all my Rock-Boom Largos. once again, I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen or not, but it was really frustrating not being able to easily prevent or combat them.

I felt after reaching the end game and overall having a very successful farm using the Free Range method, that I should share it with the community. I figured this post could act as a place for players to post their new ideas and interesting ways to play this game. Perhaps the devs can use these ideas in further development and expand the game to better support a variety of ways to ranch slimes. Please post here if anyone else tries this method and comes up with any cool changes or tweaks to my free range, I'd like to hear what the rest of the community comes up with!

[Nakhryn]

This might surprise you but a large percentage of players do this. The most common type of free range is the Honey Phosphor largos in the grotto.