Taym's Flora and Fauna

Details

This mod aims to make the world more vibrant by adding new plants and animals to discover while wandering about the world, each with their own unique gimmicks and uses. Everything in this mod adheres (or tries to adhere) to the vanilla style and balance. All sprites / animations were made by me, and I tried hard to make them not look too far off from anything in the base game. If any numbers seem odd to you, feel free to customise the mod using the many mod options or leave feedback below!

Contents

One of the very first enemies you may encounter while playing with this mod enabled is the Clockwork Tower. Without spoiling too much, this enemy has a special attack that will only activate if it has been hit a certain number of times by a player, as telegraphed by the red lights on its body. The Tower’s drops are very similar to any other clockwork, but on defeat, its scanned data will (magically) upload into the last player attacker’s brain to reveal a large portion of the map. Defeating the Clockwork Towers scattered across the map should make early game exploration slightly more interesting, which I personally find to be repetitive. If you disagree, feel free to reduce the size of the revealed area or the number of Clockwork Towers that are spawned in the mod options.

The Bee-tle is a new mob that spawns from Bee-tle dens found clumped throughout the ocean. These dens cannot (currently) be relocated or remade if they are destroyed, so avoid mining them unless you want to get rid of Bee-tles forever. Bee-tle dens can be harvested like Bee Boxes and will net you a big ball of honey, wax, and bee spit. This so-called Honey Boulder is very heavy, but will never spoil, so keep some around! When you’re ready, pick the Honey Boulder to get honey, a tiny chance for beeswax, and sometimes even undigested fish! Yup, you heard that right. Bee-tles can be found hunting and bringing fish back to their den to process into the big ball of honey you’re stealing. Just don’t let Wurt know… that poor merm thinks they’re just bringing the fish home to keep as pets.

Like their land cousins, Bee-tles will turn killer when someone upsets the colony by attacking their family or stealing their hard work. Unlike their land cousins, Bee-tles are willing to accept you into their family! … but only if you have a big enough fish. In other words, by offering a Bee-tle a sufficiently heavy fish, and only a sufficiently heavy fish, it’ll follow you forever! If a Bee-tle is already following you and you’d like it to stay put, feed it some honey to permanently put it to sleep. If you’d like it to start following you again, get up close and feed it honey again.

Tip: Although each den only contains three Bee-tles, fighting all three at once on a tiny boat is a death sentence! Try to pick at least one Bee-tle off as it is out hunting for fish to turn their numbers to a manageable two, or, even better, befriend one of the Bee-tles to turn the fight into two one-on-ones.

The Jaid Plant is a new oceanic plant that gives Plant-Aids on harvest that can be used to heal a tiny amount of health to the player. Since Plant-aids are so plant-y, they will spoil very quickly, so make sure to use them before they all rot! If you really want to stockpile Plant-Aids, try “sterilizing” them by hanging them on a drying rack to make them never rot but slightly decrease their healing. Again, feel free to tweak the spawn rates of the Jaid Plant in the mod options however you see fit.

If you’re looking to relocate Jaid Plants to your base, it won’t be nearly as easy as Bullkelp. You’ll have to take down the vicious, merciless, monstrous Garden Slug!

The Garden Slug is a new animal whose hiding spot can be rarely revealed by reading Message in a Bottles. While completely defenceless on their own, Garden Slugs will spawn and hatch Sluglings to protect themselves if they are ever in danger. Sluglings can be nigh impossible to fight with conventional methods, so get creative! If you don't feel like fighting them, every 20 days (configurable in mod options), Garden Slugs will shed either a sapling or grass tuft, giving players a new way to farm these plants without needing to switch to Wormwood. Sadly, Garden Slugs will never shed Jaid Plant roots. To get these, you must actually take the Garden Slug down!

A max of 3 (configurable) Garden Slugs can be on the map for Message in a Bottles to reveal more. If you want, you can also enable a setting to make Garden Slugs initially spawn in caves, or a setting for Garden Slugs to spawn as a hunt surprise

Note: Garden Slug hunt surprises are not currently compatible with the Insight mod. I believe this is an issue that needs to be fixed on their end, so keep this setting off if you’re using both mods.

Don’t be fooled by their cuteness - these strange, mobile formations of rock are completely soulless. Flintchick’s can be found in rock biomes and deep in the ocean where they will slowly but continuously respawn. Mined Flintchicks will drop generic rock items, but buoyant. This means that their drops will temporarily float on water rather than sink to give players a consistent way of getting these resources out on the ocean. There is a catch, though. Flintchicks are mysteriously formed by the fusion of minerals in the ground, so most of the Flintchicks you find will only give you flint, which is in abundance. Every so often you may also find a Flintchick that formed itself from stone that will drop nitre and rocks, and very rarely, a golden Flintchick that will drop gold nuggets and a red/blue gem!