The 5-Day Challenge

[Nick]

The 100k newbuck challenge that we posted last week was hugely successful. Thank you all who participated in it. It provided exactly the data we were looking to acquire.

So, we've got a new challenge aiming to acquire new data and would welcome your participation once more.

This one will be faster to complete so we're hoping even more ranchers participate.

The 5-Day Challenge!

On a fresh save file begin the game and see how many newbucks you can have on-hand by 12:00pm of the 5th day.

Some rules:
- No cheating, using mods, etc. This is NOT a contest between other players. We're looking to collect accurate data here, not award medals for time.

- When you hit 12pm on the 5th day, take a screenshot and post it here so we can confirm your newbuck count and see the Day/Time on your HUD.

- Please also include anything you think would be of interest to the devs in terms of HOW you went about your challenge. i.e. 'I immediately bought the jetpack because...' or 'I got super lucky and found 10 gold plorts...'

Good luck to anyone that takes on this challenge and thanks for participating!

[Enaio]

Really excited to do this again :D



Nothing really special here.

First day - Focused on getting slime key from Pink Gordo and unlocking next area. Got Rock Slimes and Honey Slimes. Mixed them in first Corral. Had a total of 8 Rock/Honey Largos. Got all upgrades for the corral minus the Sun shield. Picked up various Plorts during exploration.

Second day - Planted Heart Beats in two different fully upgraded gardens. Collected 2 Puddle Slimes and made a Pond. Picked up various Plorts during exploration.

Third day - Mainly explored and picked up various Plorts. Made a second max upgrade corral and put Honey/Tabby Largos in it. Also made a second max garden and planted Mint Mango.

Forth/Fifth Day - Picked up various Plorts during exploration.

Hardest thing here was trying to do this without "crashing" the market on the types I wanted to focus on. I probably could have saved one type but I did this on the first attempt so didn't really "try-hard" on maximizing my efforts on getting more for the 5th day. I do think that almost 10k is a pretty good amount, specially with two fully upgraded corrals, three fully upgraded gardens, and a pond.

[crazyman185]

7 days to 100k in previous challenge

Now almost 40k in 5 days!



-Again stuck to Honey/Boom Largos and Mint Mangos only.
-Again only 15 Largos per corral cause of easier feeding and less likely damage from explosions.
-Found a gold slime within the first day and sold it for 200, that was very helpful!
-No need the cave expansion since it meant too much running around and spending for just 5 days.
-Honey and Boom Plorts ranged from 24-37 NB.






Day to Day Happenings

Day 1
Bought Dash Boots
Slime key Obtained
Encountered Gold Slime (obtained 1 gold plort)
15 Honey/Boom Largos (1 Corral with High Walls)
2 Mint Mango Trees (no upgrades)

Day 2
45 Honey/Boom Largos (3 Corrals High Wall, Air Net, and Plort Collector upgrades)
4 Mint Mango Trees (Sprinkler and Nutrient Soil upgrades)
Bought Tank Booster, Health, and Energy Module

Day 3
60 Honey/Boom largos (4 corrals all upgraded)
Bought Open Range expansion
8 Mint Mango Trees (all upgraded)

Day 4
Spent whole day at ranch (1st time) to start saving NB
Saved around 21,000 NB by midnight

Day 5
Spent night/morning at ranch
Bought Tank Boost and Energy Module Mk II
38,872 NB at 12:00 pm

[hsidnomeL]

This was a fun challenge and I quite enjoyed doing it. It also gave me an idea for a feature request, if I may be so bold. :)

First, how my run went:


Details
Player Upgrades
- 2 Tank upgrades
- 1 Health upgrade (Kept almost dying to booms... >.>;)

Main Farm
- 4 Corrals, all with Plort Collector, Higher Walls, and Air Net upgrades. 10 Honey/Boom hybrids in each Corral.
- 4 Gardens, all with Sprinkler and Nutrient Soil upgrades, growing Mint Mangoes.

Cave
- 5 Gardens, all with Sprinkler and Nutrient Soil upgrades, growing Mint Mangoes.
- Roughly 60 - 70 Honey/Phosphor hybrids free roaming.

Overgrowth - Not Unlocked

My Plan
I basically rushed Honey/Boom Largos as fast as possible, making sure to plant Mint Mangoes as soon as I was able. Once I had a stable food situation, I opened the Cave zone and pumped as many Phosphors in as I could collect and fed them Honey Plorts. After that, I planted more Mint Mangoes in the Cave and spent most of my time frantically trying to collect all the Plorts I was raking in. Sadly, I came across no Gold Slimes during this run and I did a few things that wasted a good portion of time. Still, at the deadline of day 5, I was netting about 15-20k per day without ever leaving my farm. Not too shabby I'd say.

As you can see, I managed about 20k, with a ton of Plorts uncollected. Free farming is insanely tedious to do, especially with the floaty Phosphor Largos. This brings me to my request. Please, please, please make some way to gather Plorts without sucking up slimes. Perhaps an upgrade that adds a secondary function to the Vac? Hold a hot key while sucking to drastically cut the range but avoid sucking in slimes? I really enjoyed free farming in this run, it was my first time doing so, and I'd love to see some way to make it less annoying. :p

Plus, a cave full of happy Phosphors is a beautiful sight to behold! :D

[ImpossibRu]

Does "cheating" include the current key skip?

[FarmerYuuma]

-Gotta Re-do it-

[Nick]

Does "cheating" include the current key skip?

I'm not familiar with what you mean but if you are referring to getting around a slime gate via using a jetpack then no, that's fair game. If somehow there's some method of extracting a slime key from a gordo for nothing then that's cheating. But I'm not aware of anything like that.

Cheating in this case = deliberately and obviously breaking the game for illicit means.

[tundrachic]

slime-rancher-5-day.jpg (123.49 KiB) Viewed 28107 times

Day 1:
Collect Slime Key From Pink Largo
Collect 10 Honey/Boom Slimes
Collect Mint Mangos
Create 10 Honey Boom Largos
Expand Corral to have High Walls and Net
Build 2 Mint Mango Garden

Day 2:
Collect more Slimes, Mangos, Briar hen/chicks, and Roostro
Build Coop and upgrade Vitamizer.
Add another pen make more Honey Boom Largos total (24) Expand Corral to have High Walls and Net
Add Plot Collector to both Corrals
Collect food to feed to Slimes
Collect Puddle Slimes
Find Gold Plot

Day 3:
Collect and make more Honey Boom Slimes (36)
Collect Puddle Slimes
Build Pond
Find Another Gold Plot

Day 4:
Collect Puddle Slimes (11)
Expand Farm Overgrowth
Plant 1 Mint Mango Garden
Collect Food for Slimes

Day 5:
RUN AROUND LIKE MAD TO FEED SLIMES AS MUCH AS THEY CAN EAT.
Collect Plorts Turn them in!

[Tribune]

5 days?! No time for corrals! 66K



- ~100 free range Boom/Honey Largos spread across the main ranch and grotto
- As a safety precaution, I bought the first health upgrade (It saved me once)
- No gold slimes were found this play-through
- Every plot was used as a mint mango farm
- Every mint mango farm had a sprinkler upgrade except for 2 in the grotto (due to less largos in that area; less food demand)


Side note: With this method, there's no doubt I could have made 100k in 6 days for the previous challenge.

[hexis]

I ended up doing this twice. First with corrals, then when I realised you could easily free-range without buying the expansion areas I couldn't resist trying that too :p

Corrals:

Days 1-3: Got Slime Key from Pink Largo first. Rest of the time went into running around getting tabbies, boomers, honeyslimes and food and trying to scrape enough money for 3 corrals (high walls + airnet + plort collector) and 3 mint mango gardens. Built a pond, plopped down some pond slime.
Days 4-5: Started off day 4 with 20 bucks. I now have 3 mint mango gardens with sprinklers, one corral with 15 honey boomer largos and two corrals with maybe 40-50 honey tabbies total. Spent these days collecting plorts, feeding slimes and running off to get pogofruits and hens whenever there wasn't anything else to do at the farm.

Free-range:

Day 1: Cleaned up the pink slimes/plorts from main area. Got Slime Key from Pink Largo. Grabbed all the boom, honey and puddle slimes plus mint mangoes I could find. Dropped all of the slimes in the main area, built a pond and 6 mint mango farms with sprinklers and soil upgrade. Also bought jetpack, first health upgrade for safety and tank upgrade.
Days 2-4: At this point I have no clue how many honey/boom largos I even have. Collected plorts, occasionally ran back to get more honey/boom/puddle slimes, eventually bought second tank upgrade.
Day 5: Ran around like crazy hoovering up as many plorts as possible. Also forgot how fast the time goes so took screenshot a little late :p

(Also, doing this method I noticed the plort prices didn't change at all. Guess they only start changing once you build/upgrade a corrall? Unless it was just a coincidence.)

[Tribune]

(Also, doing this method I noticed the plort prices didn't change at all. Guess they only start changing once you build/upgrade a corrall? Unless it was just a coincidence.)

I've noticed this too on a few of my game startups. I'm not sure what causes it but to fix it I have to fully exit out of the game and start it back up.

[crazyman185]

Wow those non-corral numbers are crazy!

Must have been tedious to collect plorts tho.

[atoriv]

corrals are overrated

I did the free range thing with honey booms, which led to me being knocked out on day 4 (oops). If that didn't happen, I'd have probably gotten at least another 500 :P

Day 1:
- got slime key at like, 13:40
- grabbed ~30 slimes (honeys and booms)
- got a garden with a sprinkler, growing mint mangoes

Day 2:
- got the nutrient soil for the garden
- grabbed more slimes

Day 3:
- got another garden (sprinkler + nutrients)

Day 4:
- found a golden slime (the goddamn thing didn't want to eat the stuff i was throwing at it >:[) and got 1 golden plort
- got knocked out :U

Note that inbetween these I was going out to get more fruit + plorts from wild slimes!

[ZenofireX]

Free Range and Bust!


Day 1
Jetpack, jump fence method we found out in 100k challenge
30ish honeys and boom
1 Gold Plort (1st room in Moss Blanket on left ledge. Had to wait for it to come down to shoot at it properly and still only got 1)
Plant Mint Mango tree with Gold money. Free the rest of the mangoes and begin Honeybooms (kept them in pen on left.. mostly)
Used the money from first sales to buy Sprinkler
Went out and got 20 pink plorts and some pogofruit to tie the little guys over
End of day: 3 Mango Gardens, 2 with sprinkler, 1 without.
Day End Total: 72

Current Ranch (and one garden on the right [not planted])


Day 2
Health (For Safety)
Went out twice (one midnight/morning, one noon/evening) For more honey, boom, and mango
Got back to the farm and started the machine
Found myself laughing quite often as I shot the guys away while I was trying to collect
End of day: All main gardens are functioning, all with sprinklers and 1 with Enriched Soil
Day end Total:3124 (About to open Overgrowth)

This... This is madness...

Day 3
Opened Overgrowth, planted all trees with sprinklers
Transferred about 5 HoneyBooms before giving up and deciding I'd get more later.
Died at 3am while collecting plorts, woke up at 6am Day 4 (This was devastating)
(No picture)

Day 4
Went out early to let the gang eat all the mangoes that had fallen off the trees
side note: I've gotten pretty good at mastering that jump over the gate
Found a gold plort sitting in the river in the last room (Never saw the slime). This helped lift my spirits
Returned with 34 new honey and boom total
Bought second health upgrade as soon as I got home
Spent the rest of the day collecting and selling (Note: Had too mach Mint Mango laying around and some had gone rotten. Need Moar Slime!)
Officially named the group "Team Rocket" (Blasting off AGAIN!)
End of day total: 10,572

Too many Mangoes!

Day 5
Frantically went around collecting as many plorts as I could.
Had to Replant Mango Trees

Frantically tying to beat the clock for one more sale!

Final Total at 12:03 22452

Fin

Final notes:
Free Range is a Heck of a lot of fun! XD
It's crazy and I seemed to do well despite losing a full day. Those guys Sure do love to love on ya. The trick is to collect in a circle and not get every little thing. Have them follow you around to one side of the ranch then quickly dash over and grab as much as you can before the horde catches up!
Plort Market prices never changed. I definitely think it's tied to your first Corral upgrade.
Can't wait for the next challenge!



Edit:
Went ahead and did my Day 6, since I lost 26 hours. Just to see what I would get XD
Finished cleaning the farm (for the most part) then went out.
Got about 14 new members for the family to bring home
Bought the Repeller, but didn't seem to help too much. The Energy cost is too high for the weak effect in my opinion, though I did get better at using it as time went on. Still, I think it could use a buff.

The result is a more respectable 43,622, which I'm pretty proud of.

[RAJASTER]

1st
day get de key
found a glod slime and get a gold plort
5 hoeny slimes
5 boom slime
1 mango mint tree
1 Corral doble wall
2nd
15 hoeny boom slime
2 pound slime
1 pond
1 Corral doble wall air net
2 garden mango mint, nutrient soil and sprinkler
3rd
25 boom slime
8 pound slime
1 pound
2 corral doble wall air net
3 garden mango mint, nutrient soil and sprinkler
4rd
35 boom slime
11 pound slime
1 pound
3 corral doble wall, air net and music (I make a third corral beacasuse i dont whant to have a mess and put the upgrade of music beasue in thees way de hoeny boom slime only explouds after fed making the ari net mor durable)
5 garden mango mint, nutrient soil and sprinkler
5th
just collect all the plort that i could and preepare or the photo

[Seespotbitejane]

My over crowded pen. I went with Phosphor Honeys because I love them, but clearly from other people's results, Honey Booms are the way to go. Along with these guys I had two gardens and a pond.

Spent Day 1 setting up some Rock Tabby, dumped in some carrots and left them free range while I went to get the Slime Key. I second what somebody else said about some way to vacuum plorts. I envision a little plort collecting roomba that scoots around an area. I grabbed Mint Mangoes, Honeys and Puddles. I wasted really a lot of time trapped in fresh water unable to jetpack out. So, a swimming mechanic would be great!

Days 2 I was setting up this pen. I think for everything I spent on this one pen I'd have been better off just sticking them free range in the Grotto.

Day 3/4 I fed these guys and then went out to collect what I could from the range. I spent most of day 4 shuffling back and forth since my gun couldn't hold as many plorts as the collectors.

I didn't bother with the Jetpack or any vac upgrades. Found one gold plort. I'm definitely going to take another run at this.

[Wolfenite]

5daychallenge.jpg (79 KiB) Viewed 27571 times

Only got so far sadly. Went straight for the moss blanket to get honey's with no upgrades, but hardly any spawned. Didn't find any gold slimes and seemed to get unlucky on every harvest with no sprinkler or nutrient upgrades. Luckily, did not die or sleep.

[TC13]

5 Day Challenge Slime Rancher.jpg (140.07 KiB) Viewed 27568 times

Didn't do great, didn't do bad!

My plan:
Get key asap. Run through Moss Blanket for mango, honey slimes, and other better selling plorts.
Started with 12 honey and ended with about 30. Basically spent all 5 days running in a loop from home to Moss Blanket. Had 5 farms, no upgrades, one corrall with high walls and air net. Found one gold plort in the very beginning. A pretty fun challenge though!

[hsidnomeL]

Attempt number 2! This one went much better, and I learned a few tricks too!



Details
Player Upgrades
- 2 Tank upgrades
- 1 Health upgrade (For the Booms of course)
- Jet Pack
- 1 Energy Upgrade
- Pulse Wave (Way more useful than I had expected!

Main Farm
- 41 Honey/Boom Largos free roaming.
- 8 Gardens, all with Sprinkler and Nutrient Soil upgrades, growing Mint Mangoes.

Cave
- 5 Gardens, all with Sprinkler and Nutrient Soil upgrades, growing Mint Mangoes.
- Roughly 75 - 80 Honey/Phosphor Largos free roaming.

Overgrowth - Not Unlocked

Day by Day
Day 1
- Bought Jetpack immediately and used it to bypass the Slime Gate, allowing me to rush Honey/Booms. Saved about a couple hours over getting the key.
- Brought back 23 Boom/Honey Largos and about 10 Mint Mangoes
- Used Pogofruit to get enough money to purchase some Gardens to plant Mangoes. Made it to 7 Gardens by end of day.

Day 2
- Returned to get more Honey/Booms and Mint Mangoes, again bypassing the gate with the Jetpack.
- Managed to grab 18 more Honey/Booms.
- Started using Mint Mangoes to pump out Plorts like crazy.
- Bought final Garden and opened the Cave.
- Bought all 5 Gardens in the Cave and managed to grab 28 Honey/Phosphor Largos.

Day 3
- Purchased first Tank, Health, and Energy upgrades.
- Upgraded all Farms to have Nutrient Soil and Sprinklers.
- Grabbed another 45 Honey/Phosphor Largos for the Cave of wonder. :P

Day 4
- Farmed Plorts constantly.
- Discovered the Pulse Wave upgrade. Fell in love. <3

Day 5
- Purchased second Tank Upgrade because TOO MANY PLORTS!

Conclusion
This method worked out well for me, especially once I started using the amazing Pulse Wave. Seriously, if you're free grazing your Slimes, get this thing. It makes harvesting the Plorts infinitely easier by blowing away the Slimes that are getting in your way. I think I went overboard with the Garden upgrades and could have saved some money there. Might have bumped me up to 50k or so. Also, had I focused solely on Honey/Booms, I probably could have made closer to 60k, but I just love the look of the Honey/Phosphors too much to not get them! I think my next goal will be to fill the Cave entirely with Phosphors! :D

[atoriv]

Tried again and did a bit better!

Let the slimes loose again, but didn't get knocked out this time :P

Day 1:
- Bought the upgrade that reduces the amount of energy that sprinting uses
- Got out of ranch, immediately found a golden slime
- Got 1 golden plort
- Grabbed slime key
- Got some honey/boom slimes, +2 puddle slimes
- Built a garden with mint mangoes
- End day: 250

Day 2:
- Got a pond and put the puddle slimes in there
- Got sprinkler + nutrient soil on the garden, and bought another one with the upgrades.
- Unlocked Overgrowth
- Grabbed more slimes and threw some in there.
- End day: 335

Day 3:
- Got the health upgrade
- End day: 7544


Day 4:
- End day: 19603

Some pictures + a gif:

[Dreaxslar]

Day 1:
-Bought Jetpack, flew to the stone pillar by the first slime door, then flew over it.
-Collected 20 Tabby, 13 Honey, 8 Boom slimes, 5 Mint Mangos.
-Returned to ranch, let Tabbies and Honeys roam free while containing Booms.
-Fed Honeys, gathered Pink plorts, made 2 Mango gardens.

Day 2:
-Returned to Moss Blanket: collected 4 Honeys, 2 Puddle, plorts.
-Ranch: made Honey Tabbies, Honey Booms, 4 Gardens, Pond. Installed Plort Collector, Air Net, High Walls for Honey Booms.
-Gathered Mangos, Collected Plorts.
-Tarr Outbreak. 1 Puddle survives.
-Gathered 7 Honeys, 5 Tabbies, 2 Puddles.

Day 3:
-Demolished Corral, built Garden.
-Gathered 14 Honeys, 14 Tabbies, 3 Puddles, plorts over two trips.
-Collected Honey/Tabby Plorts.

Days 4, 5:
Collected Plorts nonstop.

Final Thoughts:

I read some of the other posts and saw that multiple people were using Honey Boom Largos, either free range or in a corral. Some also got knocked out by said Largos. I wanted to use Honey Tabby Largos since they can't harm the player but can still generate a decent revenue. However, I also wanted to have Honey Boom plorts, so I tried keeping some in a corral. One way or another, some Tarr formed in there and I got set back a lot. So, instead of losing time by K.O., I lost time by being greedy with 2 largo types.

Doing the math, I ended up with 6 Puddle Slimes and 40 Honey Tabby Largos. I suspect that those kitties were playing with puddle plorts, since I really didn't have much yield from the pond.

Overall, I had fun with this challenge.

(Image Resized to fit the KB limit. Time is 12:24, with 23,217 Newbucks.)

[Maryse]

Ah shoot, I didn't see the "12pm" thing until just now and I'm done haha.
I'll post what I got regardless.

(1) At the very start of day 5.


(2) At the end of day 5, start of day 6.


So comparing those 2, I'd guess that around 12pm, I would have been at 30k~.

In my ranch, I have:

• 4 corrals (10 Honey Boom Largos each, high walls, air net, plort collectors)
• 3 gardens (mint mangoes, nutrient soil, sprinkler)
• 1 pond (8 Puddle Slimes)

I didn't buy the Grotto or Overgrowth. Didn't buy any Beatrix upgrades.

Plort prices per day and which number corresponds to what type of Plort:
Boom/Honey/Puddle/Tabby/Pink/Phosphor/Rock

Day 1: 30/30
Day 2: 56/32/54
Day 3: 38/31/51/28/12
Day 4: 33/27/34/16/8/24/24
Day 5: 26/23/24/14/6/21/18

I added the new number each time I sold a Plort of that type.
When it comes to prices, this was definitely not my best run as everything kept on going down and, as you can see in my last screenshot, day 6 went down as well!

I might do another attempt or 2 and actually get the screenshot at 12pm.

[gabs999]

starting the challenge

[Nick]

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone. It's pretty interesting how varied the results are this time, compared to the 100k challenge which more or less settled pretty fast.

[Kitana]

5day1.jpg (255.8 KiB) Viewed 26615 times

I tried free ranging as well this time, and it was surprisingly easier than I expected! Granted, I was using Tabby Largos this time as practice, but next attempt will be with honey booms. I won't go over 15-20 as a general rule, maybe 30 if I'm feeling ambitious; too many largos (booms especially) causes my framerate to drop like crazy.

Beatrix Upgrades:
- 2 Tank upgrades
- Jet Pack
- Pulse Wave (pretty useless for corral-raising, but an essential for free-ranging)

5day1main2.jpg (254.81 KiB) Viewed 26615 times

Main Farm [ft. giant Mint Mango pile in the corner]
- 15 Honey/Tabby Largos (free range)
- 8 Mint Mango Gardens (Nutrient Soil+Sprinkler on all)

5day1grotto.jpg (214.11 KiB) Viewed 26615 times

Grotto:
- 15 Phosphor/Tabby (free range)
- 5 Cuberry Gardens (Nutrient Soil+Sprinkler on all)