WaffleMelon wrote:What's your opinion on Dervish Slimes? I tried to ranch them once but even with High Walls and a net they seemed to create a bunch of chaos so I gave up on then.
oh, I use Dervish Slimes as my main Largo base on the ranch! having a split in the main area between Dervish/Tangle and Dervish/Mosaic has worked well for me; the split makes it a little quicker to gather their plorts up since I'm using a third inventory slot. high walls and air nets are definitely a prerequisite with Dervishes, but I haven't had much trouble with them besides that - might be because I also use plort collectors with them.
(those plort collectors might be a bit of a crutch, now that I think about it... might have to try playing without 'em and see if it's faster to just scoop plorts up off the ground instead of parking in front of the output for 30 seconds at a time)
WaffleMelon wrote:do you fill your corrals with slimes that are not from the desert, or do you get your plorts without ranching them?
I do keep a few other types of slimes on the ranch. when I'm first heading through the Dry Reef, I usually grab some Tabby and Rock slimes and put them in the starter corral. after they've mingled for a while, I usually have enough plorts for a bonus. once I'm done with them, I just chuck them over Bea's house to clear the space for more Dervish largoes.
for the first night, I make about a dozen Phosphor/Boom largoes - I can keep them overnight in a relatively normal corral in the Wilds, feed them with foraged cuberries and briar hens, and let them disappear on their own around 6:00 AM the next morning. that knocks out two sorta-difficult-for-me plort bonuses without much effort and saves me most of the cleanup.
later on, I'll grab a Hunter Slime (or plort, if I'm unlucky and have to feed the ferals) and pair it off with either a Quantum or Crystal slime. after that... I sort of just wing it. usually I end up with six fully-stocked corrals at the end of a game, at least four of which are Dervish-based, with one or two other valuable plorts. whatever's left over, i'll grab from the wild over the course of a couple of visits to their respective areas.
oh, and I also keep a Pond and Incinerator on hand for Puddle and Fire slimes. I try to grab 'em before the end of Day 2 to make sure they produce enough plorts for their bonuses. otherwise, they're not worth much on their own, sadly. (try scooping up stray puddle plorts in fresh water and selling them with the Market Link!)
WaffleMelon wrote:What is your opinion on jetpacking over these gates too?
not a fan. I like to keep those areas open in the event that I get an oddball request from the Range Exchange (those Odd Onions never seem to show up when I need em to!).
by my count, you need four keys to have open access to every area. one for the "back doors" of the Moss Blanket and Indigo Quarry, one for the teleporter room of the Ancient Ruins, and one to reach the back half of the Glass Desert without having to do a bunch of jetpack manoeuvres each time. the first two - entering from the Moss Blanket and opening the teleporter room - are easy to get from the Pink Gordo and Phosphor gordo, no problems there.
for the other two, I usually go after the Dervish and Mosaic gordos - which I would want to do anyways, since they both award about 8-10 very valuable slimes of each kind after popping them! this lets me quickly populate my ranch once all of my corrals are built. so: get the Dervish gordo done first to open up the back half, drop a teleporter pad somewhere and drop off those first Dervish slimes, and then finish the Mosaic gordo.
i'll be waiting to hear how your attempts go with the new strategies!
also, an update from this evening:
need to start finding ways to get better gold gordo results, methinks