Malymin
Cowpoke
One thing that makes me a little sad is that the Barn has less variety than the Coop. In large part, this is because the Coop has access to a lot of "secret" animals. I define a "secret" animal as an animal that cannot be bough directly from the livestock purchase menu from Marnie... or that requires the player do steps separate from *just* upgrading the coop/barn to unlock them.
Now, there's an obvious reason secret animals tend to be limited to the Coop, and 1.5's introduction of a secret barn animal required putting an incubator in the barn. Putting an item (eggs) found via gameplay or granted by events into a machine (incubator) is an intuitive way to obtain an animal not purchasable directly; there's no real logical equivalent for live-birthing animals.
There's also an intuitive reason why the Ostrich required the creation of its own, special barn-incubator, rather than using the coop incubator: Ostriches, depicted even remotely life-size, would not be able to fit through the door of the chicken coop. They're larger animals than chickens and ducks, and thus require a larger door, larger housing etc.
However, the in-game reason you can't put an Ostrich Egg in the chicken incubator is that... the egg is too big. This is kind of funny, considering that the Dinosaur Egg apparently fits just fine.
Now, *removing* dinosaurs as a coop animal just for lore consistency is a bad idea. They've been coop animals since the original, unpatched build: removing them would break countless save files.
However... wouldn't it be fun, to reward the same "I wonder if..." lateral thinking that coop-Dinosaurs involve, by creating a slightly "upgraded" version of the Dinosaur that's available later in gameplay than the coop-Dinosaur?
1.4's introduction of the Pepper Rex enemy, a dinosaur-like creature that drops Dinosaur Eggs and is found alongside foragable dinosaur eggs, strongly implies that the fictional dinosaur species we keep as a coop animals has the potential to grow to the size of a barn animal. In-universe, there could be a rationalization that the Ostrich Incubator's conditions better promotes Dinosaur growth - that the species grows larger in response to different incubation conditions. (Did you know incubation temperature influences the sex of many irl reptiles?) This isn't a scientifically rigorous game, it's a fun little fantasy, so it doesn't need to be overtly grounded in scientific reality.
Perhaps Barn!Dinosaurs could resemble somewhat friendlier, more domesticated Pepper Rexes, just as the Pepper Rex itself is designed to be a large, monstrous version of the Coop!Dinosaur.
Because it would be "redundant" with the small dinosaur, people could easily choose to only keep one or the other based on personal preference - like how I know some players only keep rabbits or sheep, instead of both, for their wool. It would also add a nice bit of minor symetry with the Coop - the coop is a bird shelter that can also host two species of non-bird livestock, while the Barn is a mammal shelter that currently hosts only a single non-mammal species.
I think its egg-laying rate should remain the same as small dinosaurs and ostritches. Perhaps, to compensate for needing more food than a small dino, it could get some pig-esque item-spawning behavior when outdoors (Fiddlehead Ferns? Artifact spots? Bone Nodes? Some kind of Ginger Island item like Cinder Shards or Dragon Teeth?), tuned to be much less... *reliable* than the pig's truffle-finding. Alternatively, it could have some sort of "Deluxe" product akin to Duck Feathers and Rabbit Feet, though I'm not sure what a thematically fitting + valuable alternative to the Dinosaur Egg itself could be.
In conclusion:
This is my vision. We have a big bird in the Mammal House and a little mammal in the Bird House so let me have two sizes of non-avian archosaur for fun. Friendly Pepper Rex In The Barn 202X.
- From the very moment the game launched, version 1.0 in 2016, the coop already had two "secrets": hatching a witch-cursed Void Egg into a Void Chicken, and hatching a seemingly fossilized Dinosaur Egg from a treasure chest or artifact spot into a Dinosaur. These required both luck and a degree of lateral thinking (you certainly aren't explicitly told that Dinosaur Eggs can hatch). Later versions of the game have added more means to obtain these eggs, but the fact remains - these forms of livestock require non-standard means to obtain.
- Version 1.1 added the Blue Chicken. Blue Chickens are a bit different from other "secret" animals: they don't produce or hatch from a "special" kind of egg, and you can purchase them from Marnie. What makes them "secret," IMO, is that their existence is not foreshadowed on the livestock purchase menu, and that they require seeing Shane's 8 hearts event to purchase or hatch. The difference between a Blue Chicken and a White Chicken is purely cosmetic - really, not unlike how the difference between a White Cow and a Brown Cow is purely cosmetic. (I would *love* a third variety of purely-cosmetic Marnie-purchasable cow that requires special steps to unlock, just to vary my ranch a bit, but that's not what this post is about. Yes there are mods... but I initially started playing on console, and mods aren't available there.)
- Version 1.5 added the Golden Chicken. Golden Chickens are more similar to Void Chickens than they are to Blue Chickens - they lay and are obtained from a special type of egg, which can either be purchased for a steep cost (Void Egg from Krobus, Golden Egg from Mr. Qi or Marnie) or bestowed upon a player by a Witch event. Unlike other secret animals, they're a reward for 100% completion, and thus can neither be purchased nor event-granted until Perfection is achieved. In a way, they are "event locked" like the Blue Chicken is.
Now, there's an obvious reason secret animals tend to be limited to the Coop, and 1.5's introduction of a secret barn animal required putting an incubator in the barn. Putting an item (eggs) found via gameplay or granted by events into a machine (incubator) is an intuitive way to obtain an animal not purchasable directly; there's no real logical equivalent for live-birthing animals.
There's also an intuitive reason why the Ostrich required the creation of its own, special barn-incubator, rather than using the coop incubator: Ostriches, depicted even remotely life-size, would not be able to fit through the door of the chicken coop. They're larger animals than chickens and ducks, and thus require a larger door, larger housing etc.
However, the in-game reason you can't put an Ostrich Egg in the chicken incubator is that... the egg is too big. This is kind of funny, considering that the Dinosaur Egg apparently fits just fine.
Now, *removing* dinosaurs as a coop animal just for lore consistency is a bad idea. They've been coop animals since the original, unpatched build: removing them would break countless save files.
However... wouldn't it be fun, to reward the same "I wonder if..." lateral thinking that coop-Dinosaurs involve, by creating a slightly "upgraded" version of the Dinosaur that's available later in gameplay than the coop-Dinosaur?
1.4's introduction of the Pepper Rex enemy, a dinosaur-like creature that drops Dinosaur Eggs and is found alongside foragable dinosaur eggs, strongly implies that the fictional dinosaur species we keep as a coop animals has the potential to grow to the size of a barn animal. In-universe, there could be a rationalization that the Ostrich Incubator's conditions better promotes Dinosaur growth - that the species grows larger in response to different incubation conditions. (Did you know incubation temperature influences the sex of many irl reptiles?) This isn't a scientifically rigorous game, it's a fun little fantasy, so it doesn't need to be overtly grounded in scientific reality.
Perhaps Barn!Dinosaurs could resemble somewhat friendlier, more domesticated Pepper Rexes, just as the Pepper Rex itself is designed to be a large, monstrous version of the Coop!Dinosaur.
Because it would be "redundant" with the small dinosaur, people could easily choose to only keep one or the other based on personal preference - like how I know some players only keep rabbits or sheep, instead of both, for their wool. It would also add a nice bit of minor symetry with the Coop - the coop is a bird shelter that can also host two species of non-bird livestock, while the Barn is a mammal shelter that currently hosts only a single non-mammal species.
I think its egg-laying rate should remain the same as small dinosaurs and ostritches. Perhaps, to compensate for needing more food than a small dino, it could get some pig-esque item-spawning behavior when outdoors (Fiddlehead Ferns? Artifact spots? Bone Nodes? Some kind of Ginger Island item like Cinder Shards or Dragon Teeth?), tuned to be much less... *reliable* than the pig's truffle-finding. Alternatively, it could have some sort of "Deluxe" product akin to Duck Feathers and Rabbit Feet, though I'm not sure what a thematically fitting + valuable alternative to the Dinosaur Egg itself could be.
In conclusion:
