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Farm animals

Keep animals on your Home's land, breed them for better stats, and use what they give in cooking and crafting. Hale, the stable master in Aldhearth, sells four kinds in crates. You can also tame them in the wild: on the land, and in burrows under it, where two kinds live that Hale has never seen. And eggs fall from the great ones of the Deep, from bosses and from geodes: some of them hatch better animals than any crate, and one kind comes only from an egg.

Getting them

• Hale sells a crate of each kind, and shears, by his stable in the south-west of Aldhearth. His menu has Farm animals: crates and shears.
• Let one out: stand on your Home's land (or the land of a Home that lets you build), with its Home Stone lit. Hold the crate and right click. The animal stands where you are. See Homes and land.
• They stay on that Home's land. By the Edict of Ash nobody holds land under the open sky, so your animals live underground with you, inside the Home Stone's circle. They wander about it and never leave it, and no Grown is born there to hunt them.
• How many: a Home holds 6 animals at tier 1, 10 at tier 2 and 16 at tier 3, young ones included.

Wild animals

The four farm kinds live wild in the open world, in small herds, by the land:

They keep away from towns (and the land just round them) and from a Home's land, and they go when nobody is near.

Two kinds live only under the land, in burrows. You find a burrow by digging: now and then a block you break opens one, and the animal is in it, curled up asleep (see Digging deeper). The stonemole lives from 30 rows down. In the Deep a burrow holds a stonemole or a lanternback.

Their stats show before you tame them. Right click one and Look at it. The deeper it was found, the better it is:

A crate's animal has 2 to 5.

Taming

• Hold its food and right click it, or pick Tame it from its menu, standing within 3 tiles. It eats one, and one time in three it is tamed. Hearts mean it worked; a puff of dust means it backed away, so try again. Its food is what it breeds on (in the tables here).
• A tamed animal follows you on a lead, three at most. It keeps up with you. It comes with you when you travel, and when you log out and back in. In a town, on a floor or in a dungeon it waits, and is beside you again when you come out.
• Bring it home. Walk onto your own lit Home's land with room for it, and it settles there, with the stats and the coat it had. On another Home whose land lets you build, its menu has Settle it here.
• Let it go (its menu) and it is wild again.
• Title: the Tamer (Uncommon): tame ten wild animals.

Clear of the ways in

No herd is born, and no animal wanders or is led, onto the doorstep of a way in: within 6 tiles either side (and 4 rows up or down) of a rift, a dungeon's portal, a sky gate, the crypt's stair, a blood altar or a delve gate. One that finds itself there (a rift that opened beside it) only steps away. With an animal on a lead, it waits off the doorstep while you stand at the way in, and comes to heel after.

Three kinds you cannot buy

• Lantern honey is a food: eat it and you glow for 8 minutes (a deep glowcap gives 2). Two of them, two wheat and an egg bake a Honey cake at the Cauldron: well fed Strong-armed, +20% mining speed.
• Glass silk: eight of it, a pale wing dye and two crystals make the Glasswing wing dye at the Cauldron. Your wings go pale and shimmer in every colour as they beat (see Getting started for wing dyes).
• Hale buys them all, by their stats, but sells no crates of them.

Eggs and nests

• Use an egg on a Home's land (your own, or one that lets you build, with its Stone lit) and it is laid in a nest there. A nest takes one of the Home's places for animals.
• It hatches in 10 minutes (mottled), 15 (deep) or 20 (ancient), into a young animal that grows up in 20 minutes as any young one does. The Home's people are told what hatched.
• Coats: an egg's animal more often has an uncommon or rare coat than a crate's. An ancient egg's is never plain. Now and then (about one in seven) it has an ancient coat: an opal hen, a moonlit woolback, a starred milkhorn, a bronze rootsnout, an obsidian stonemole, an ember lanternback, a prism glasswing. Only ancient eggs give one, but a young one can take its parent's.

Tending them

• Right click an animal (or press F beside it) for its menu: collect what it has, feed it, or look at it.
• When it has something for you, it shows over its head: an egg, a tuft of wool, a drop of milk or a truffle. A woolback's fleece grows thick again too.
• How often: a brood hen every 6 minutes, a milkhorn every 10, a woolback every 12, a rootsnout every 15. A good pace makes this shorter. The time runs while you are away, but only while the Home Stone is lit: a cold Home's animals wait.
• How much: a woolback gives 2 wool and the others 1, and one more for every 5 points of yield (with a chance of one more again).
• Look at it for its stats, when its next product comes, whether it can breed, its parents, and how many animals its Home holds. There you can also name it (up to 20 letters) and sell it to Hale. Hale pays by its kind and its stats, so a well-bred animal is worth more.
• Only the people of its Home (the owner, and those the Home lets build) can collect from it, feed it or name it. Only the owner, or whoever brought it, can sell it.
• If its Home is given up or lapses, Hale's drover brings the animal in to his stable and sends whoever brought it what it was worth, by letter.

Stats and breeding

Every animal has three stats from 1 to 20, and a coat:

• Yield: how much it gives each time.
• Pace: how soon it has something again. At pace 1 it takes about half again as long as the kind's time; at 20, a little over half the time.
• Fertility: how soon it can breed again (20 minutes at fertility 10, 10 minutes at 20), and its chance of twins (up to 30%).
• Coat: its colour. Most coats are plain and some are uncommon. A few are rare (a golden hen, a rose woolback, a silver milkhorn, a golden rootsnout), and fewest of all are ancient (from ancient eggs). A rare or ancient coat goes in the animal's name.

A crate's animal is grown, with each stat from 2 to 5 and a plain coat.

To breed: feed two grown animals of the same kind their food, on the same Home. Once fed, an animal is in the mood for half a minute (a heart over it) and walks toward another of its kind that is in the mood too. When the two are within 4 tiles of each other, a young one is born: a chick, a lamb, a kid or a piglet, or now and then twins.

• Each of its stats is the average of its parents' (rounded), plus a step: one lower (1 time in 5), the same (about 1 in 3), one higher (about 1 in 3) or two higher (about 1 in 7). On average it comes out a little better than its parents, so breeding the best to the best climbs, slowly, toward 20.
• Its coat is one parent's (9 times in 10), or a new one at random, now and then a rare one.
• It grows up in 20 minutes. Until then it gives nothing and cannot breed. Then it gives its kind's product, by its own stats.
• The parents rest before they can breed again, by their fertility.
• There must be room on the Home for the young one.

Titles: the Shepherd (Uncommon): raise ten animals from birth. The Breeder (Rare): breed an animal with a stat at 20. The Tamer (Uncommon): tame ten wild animals. See Achievements and titles.

Meat

The four kinds Hale sells give meat too: a brood hen raw fowl, a woolback raw mutton, a milkhorn raw goat and a rootsnout raw pork. Raw meat is not eaten as it is: a furnace grills it, and a Cauldron grills it or makes it into a dish. The stonemole, the lanternback and the Glasswing give none.

• Hunt a wild one. Strike it with a weapon (a blade, a hammer, a flail: not a bow or a wand). A hen falls at its second blow, the others at their third, and it leaves its meat for you: one raw fowl, or two of the others, and now and then one more. Struck once, it runs from you for a few seconds, so keep after it. A wild one's look window says so too.
• Butcher one of your own. Grown, on your Home's land: its look window has Butcher it, and asks once more. It is gone for good, and gives more than a hunt: three of its meat (two for a hen), and one more for every five points of yield. Only its Home's owner, or whoever brought it, may; a young one may not be.

What they give, and what it makes

Truffles are worth the most at the Trade Post. As with everything you make, nothing sells for more than what went into it. See Weather and cooking for meals.