Slime Breeding

[jameskuyper]

I've been reading the Stardew Valley Wiki article on Slimes, and I'm confused about how Slime Breeding works. Here's my understanding:
Slimes have types, and the types of Slimes that drop eggs always drop Eggs of the same type. If hatched, those eggs produce a Slime of the same type; this is also true of Eggs created by using a Slime Egg Press. So far, so good.
The Mating Color Results table says that each component (Red, Green, Blue) of a Slime's color is inherited separately, according to the following rules:

25%	Male Parent Component +/- random 25%
25%	Female Parent Component +/- random 25%
25%	Maximum of (Male Parent Component or Female Parent Component)
25%	Average of (Male Parent Component and Female Parent Component

The first two rules mean that even if you start out with an absolutely monochrome population of Slimes, if you let them breed long enough each component could have any permitted value, from 0 to 255. If you have variation in a given color component, the fourth rule tends to reduce that variation, producing a peak in the middle of the distribution. The third rule biases the result slightly to higher values.
The drop tables indicate that Red, Purple, Yellow, Black Slimes have color based drops. Iron Slimes have color-based drops for Grey Slimes, while Green, Blue, Copper, Tiger, and Special Slimes don't.
The Color-based drop table is only needed because the breeding rules can result in Slimes having colors different from the characteristic color of each type. The Color-based table doesn't have any entries for Green, Blue, Copper, Tiger, or Special Slimes, and for a great many possible combinations of color components, doesn't select any special drops.
But, my question is, when two slimes mate, how is the type of the child slime determined? To put this into practical terms, if I kill the child, which drop table would be used?
I'm particularly interested the possibility of breeding Purple Slimes to get Iridium. From what I've read, even if I start using only Purple Slime Eggs, keeping the children purple will require regular culling of the least purple ones.

 

[MogBeoulve]

I had to read your post twice to even understand what you're asking, so I'm afraid that I can't answer. However, I do have some suggestions:

It's not that rare/hard to get purple slime eggs from the slime egg press, so if your goal is to breed slimes for their drops and not for slime egg profit, then it won't hurt to keep some purple slime eggs to hatch whenever your herd needs to be nudged back toward purple.

You're going to be killing the slimes to get their drops anyway, so culling in your case really just means making sure you don't kill ALL of the purple ones. So, sure, you'll have do some culling, but it shouldn't be difficult.

Interesting idea. Hope you can pull it off!

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Yeah and problems arise with finding ones that have the perfect rgb values too, you usually have to resort to using external tools.
It’s a pretty inferior way to get iridium, your best bet off of making money with slime breeding if you are spending that much time and effort is breeding white slimes for diamonds, something like rgb value 253/253/253 and some other variations though namely not 255 for some reason I’ve forgotten in the years that it’s been since I did any research on this.

 

[jameskuyper]

I had to read your post twice to even understand what you're asking, so I'm afraid that I can't answer. However, I do have some suggestions:

It's not that rare/hard to get purple slime eggs from the slime egg press, so if your goal is to breed slimes for their drops and not for slime egg profit, then it won't hurt to keep some purple slime eggs to hatch whenever your herd needs to be nudged back toward purple.

You're going to be killing the slimes to get their drops anyway, so culling in your case really just means making sure you don't kill ALL of the purple ones. So, sure, you'll have do some culling, but it shouldn't be difficult.

Interesting idea. Hope you can pull it off!

At this point I haven't decided what I want to do, I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of how it works, so I can decide what I want to do. Slime Ranching seems a potentially profitable but dangerous activity, and I plan to avoid Combat to the extent possible. That means that my Combat skill is not going to rise very fast, and it would be a long time till I qualify for the Slime Charmer RIng, which will inhibit my ability to pursue that option. However, I want to be able to forage in the Secret woods, and to plant crops on Ginger Island West, so fighting Slimes seems to be unavoidable, and Slime Ranching would allow me to put the slime and Slime Eggs that get dropped to profitable use. As long as I'm doing that anyway, I can supplement it by maintaining Slimejack and Lionfish Fish Ponds. My plan is:

1. Set up a Slime Hutch relatively early, preferably before the first time that I need to fight Slimes, so they always have a chance of dropping Eggs.
2. Save up my first 99 slime for the Adventurer's Bundle, buying it from Krobus if possible and necessary. After that I would save up all slime I find for conversion to Eggs using a Slime Egg Press, or for construction of a Slime Incubator.
3. Save the purplest Eggs I can find, and sell the rest (including all Green ones). If the only Egg I've found is either Blue or Red, that would be acceptable; especially if I have one of each, but actual Purple Eggs would be best. I'm not sure how I should rank Tiger Slime Eggs.
4. If and when I get the Slime Charmer Ring, I will craft a Slime Incubator and hatch the best eggs I've found inside the Hutch. I will collect all the slime they drop to create new eggs.
5. Whenever I've got as many Slimes as I want to have, I'll cull the least purple one; the Slime heard should slowly get more and more purple, until even the least purple one should qualify for Purple color-based drops, at which point I'll start collecting iridium.
6. Whenever I get a new Egg, by any means, I will compare its color to my least purple Slime. If it's more purple, I'll incubate the Egg and cull the least purple slime, if necessary, to make room for the Egg to hatch.
My target is Red=255, Green=0, Blue=255. Hitting that target may be difficult (particularly with no direct way of measuring the color components), but the closer I get to that target, the less likely it will be for a new child slime to fail to qualify as Purple for color-based drops. From my understanding of Slime genetics (which may be inaccurate), as long as I have at least one slime with a non-zero Red component and at least one with a non-zero Blue component, I will be able to get close to my target so long as I breed them long enough.

 

[jameskuyper]

Yeah and problems arise with finding ones that have the perfect rgb values too, you usually have to resort to using external tools.
It’s a pretty inferior way to get iridium, your best bet off of making money with slime breeding if you are spending that much time and effort is breeding white slimes for diamonds, something like rgb value 253/253/253 and some other variations though namely not 255 for some reason I’ve forgotten in the years that it’s been since I did any research on this.

To get diamonds, all of the components need to be either even, or 255. That's sufficiently difficult to arrange that I don't intend to bother. Since I intend to avoid Combat, Iridium is going to be in short supply, and therefore correspondingly more valuable to me than it would be to a combat specialist. However, Super Cucumber FIsh Ponds may be a better way to go.

 

[Jayamos]

Re iridium, early game it’s difficult no matter what, but if you get enough points in Grandpa’s Evaluation at the end of Year 2 you can get a reliable iridium source, which I think is how my first farmer got all her iridium, because combat was not my strong point. Early game, going hard on the Super Cucumber fish ponds might be a way to get iridium in a better time frame.
I am currently wrestling with a slime hutch—second farmer, L10 combat, good gear—and the above-spoiled method strikes me as way easier and very reliable. Once the slimes start reproducing you get swarms of them and the whole glob attacks. Also, you only get slime eggs after you build your hutch, so if you are mostly avoiding slimes and only kill an incidental few, you could just use some slime for oil makers and trash any left over.
That said this is a really interesting route, and slime eggs are pretty lucrative. If you go that way be sure to get your fencing and flooring set up per the wiki before you start incubating.

 

[MogBeoulve]

Some things to consider:

The slime hutch will max out at 20 slimes. If you want to breed them in larger numbers, you will need to do it elsewhere. Maybe a large shed?

You can actually set up your slime hutch such that you will be protected from the slimes even without the slime charmer ring. Slimes in the hutch will drop slime balls (which you will harvest to get slime and petrified slime). They will only drop these slime balls on tiles that are not covered with flooring. Therefore, you can fence off an area, cover that area with flooring, and only hatch slimes into that area. The slimes will stay cooped up there and you can enter at your leisure to collect slime balls. Note that slimes don't need to be able to reach the watering troughs in order to be happy, and that you can use sprinklers to keep the watering troughs full.

Slime eggs only come in green, blue, red, purple, and tiger. Tiger slime eggs are only available as drops or from the lionfish pond. The slime egg press will only produce colored slime eggs. You can just press slime until you get purple eggs, and then incubate those eggs.

You don't need more than 2-4 eggs to get started, since slimes will breed as long as you have one male and one female. You could start with some red and blue eggs, or just go straight for purple ones.

I don't recommend waiting until you have a hutch before starting to fight slimes. You can't get into the Adventurer's Guild without fighting 10 slimes, after all. The chance for a slime egg drop is really low, anyway; you're better off collecting slime to put into the press, especially if you want purple slime eggs.

As others have noted, this will be an extremely inefficient way to obtain iridium. Don't do it if you are just looking to get iridium ore, just do well in the rest of the game so you get that reward.

 

[jameskuyper]

Re iridium, early game it’s difficult no matter what, but if you get enough points in Grandpa’s Evaluation at the end of Year 2 you can get a reliable iridium source, which I think is how my first farmer got all her iridium, because combat was not my strong point. Early game, going hard on the Super Cucumber fish ponds might be a way to get iridium in a better time frame.
I am currently wrestling with a slime hutch—second farmer, L10 combat, good gear—and the above-spoiled method strikes me as way easier and very reliable. Once the slimes start reproducing you get swarms of them and the whole glob attacks. Also, you only get slime eggs after you build your hutch, so if you are mostly avoiding slimes and only kill an incidental few, you could just use some slime for oil makers and trash any left over.
That said this is a really interesting route, and slime eggs are pretty lucrative. If you go that way be sure to get your fencing and flooring set up per the wiki before you start incubating.

I'm the kind of guy who spends a lot of time analyzing this type of game developing my strategy before I start playiing. I've done a lot of reading on the Wiki, and in particular, I knew about the Spoiler. The other problem I have is that it's far easier for me to find bits and pieces of time that I can use to browse the Wiki, and very hard for me to find large chunks of time suitable for actually playing the game. Something I can't find out until I actually play is how long it will take before I can take advantage of that, and I don't have a good idea how much iridium I'll be needing, so I wasn't sure whether I would be able to take advantage of that soon enough.

 

[jameskuyper]

Some things to consider:

The slime hutch will max out at 20 slimes. If you want to breed them in larger numbers, you will need to do it elsewhere. Maybe a large shed?

You can actually set up your slime hutch such that you will be protected from the slimes even without the slime charmer ring. Slimes in the hutch will drop slime balls (which you will harvest to get slime and petrified slime). They will only drop these slime balls on tiles that are not covered with flooring. Therefore, you can fence off an area, cover that area with flooring, and only hatch slimes into that area. The slimes will stay cooped up there and you can enter at your leisure to collect slime balls. Note that slimes don't need to be able to reach the watering troughs in order to be happy, and that you can use sprinklers to keep the watering troughs full.

Slime eggs only come in green, blue, red, purple, and tiger. Tiger slime eggs are only available as drops or from the lionfish pond. The slime egg press will only produce colored slime eggs. You can just press slime until you get purple eggs, and then incubate those eggs.

You don't need more than 2-4 eggs to get started, since slimes will breed as long as you have one male and one female. You could start with some red and blue eggs, or just go straight for purple ones.

I don't recommend waiting until you have a hutch before starting to fight slimes. You can't get into the Adventurer's Guild without fighting 10 slimes, after all. The chance for a slime egg drop is really low, anyway; you're better off collecting slime to put into the press, especially if you want purple slime eggs.

As others have noted, this will be an extremely inefficient way to obtain iridium. Don't do it if you are just looking to get iridium ore, just do well in the rest of the game so you get that reward.

My plans for the Slime Hutch require me to periodical cull some of the slimes - how safe would that be to do without the slime charmer ring?
I wasn't planning to join the Adventurer's Guild. I'm not planning to try to achieve perfection, just a subset of those goals - in particular, I've accepted that I won't be able to get Ostriches or Obelisks other than the Farm Obelisk. There's a bunch of combat-oriented achievements and quests that require combat which I don't intend to attempt. From what I've read in the Wiki, I can get a lot of the things that would otherwise come from Combat by using the Hilltop Farm, Fish Ponds, Panning, and buying stuff from Krobus and the Travelling Cart. I believe that I can achieve my desired goals while restricting my fighting to the Secret Woods and the Tiger Slime Grove. I plan to rely upon the Galaxy Sword and Emily's Boots, both of which I can get without joining the Adventurer's Guild, for my fighting equipment. My 8-year old son, who has done a lot less studying and lot more playing of this game, and enjoys combat, doesn't believe that it's possible. I hope to someday find enough time to find out which of us is right.
I don't plan to put much effort into this activity - I'll just use the Slime and the Slime Eggs that I collect as result of defending myself while foraging in the Secret Woods and farming in Ginger Island West, I won't go out of my way to find them. Setting up Slimejack and Lionfish Fish Ponds will be a low priority. There do in fact seem to be a few other easier ways to get Iridium.

 

[Jayamos]

I'm the kind of guy who spends a lot of time analyzing this type of game developing my strategy before I start playiing. I've done a lot of reading on the Wiki, and in particular, I knew about the Spoiler. The other problem I have is that it's far easier for me to find bits and pieces of time that I can use to browse the Wiki, and very hard for me to find large chunks of time suitable for actually playing the game. Something I can't find out until I actually play is how long it will take before I can take advantage of that, and I don't have a good idea how much iridium I'll be needing, so I wasn't sure whether I would be able to take advantage of that soon enough.

Okay, I won’t worry about spoilers! I’m remembering that Farmer 1 got a lucky meteorite and got a bar or so of iridium out of that. But was otherwise quite happy without any until a second round of Grandpa’s Evaluation, sometime in year 3. Iridium is helpful but you don’t really need it early in the game.

May I suggest incremental strategy? A blend of wiki and experience is optimal. Nail down your Spring Year 1 strategy as much as possible, play it through, repeat for Summer, building on your improved understanding, etc. If a day takes you 15 min you can play a season in 7 hours, and the daily structure of the game makes it easy to play in short spurts if that’s all you have (though I much prefer being immersed for several hours; I’m just saying you have options). The wiki helps immensely in not making the very few mistakes that are hard to recover from, and the random drops in the game can change your strategy.

My plans for the Slime Hutch require me to periodical cull some of the slimes - how safe would that be to do without the slime charmer ring?

I plan to rely upon the Galaxy Sword and Emily's Boots, both of which I can get without joining the Adventurer's Guild, for my fighting equipment. My 8-year old son, who has done a lot less studying and lot more playing of this game, and enjoys combat, doesn't believe that it's possible. I hope to someday find enough time to find out which of us is right.

Given that you are trying to do this with purple slimes and expect to have minimal combat experience, I would say not very safe. And if you don’t like combat, probably not very fun.

Whether or not you or your son are right depends a lot on randomly getting the prerequisite for the Galaxy sword. If you are not going into the Mines then your odds for that drop considerably, and then things get grindy. It looks like slimes killed in the Secret Woods can also get you into the Adventurer’s Guild, so you could upgrade to a reasonable sword without too much slime shed.

I’m curious about your overall goal. Do you want a pacifist save, a laudable goal? Are you trying to avoid the Mines as well as combat?

 

[Jayamos]

Thinking about it from another perspective, iridium is not required to pass Grandpa’s Evaluation and not even that helpful. It’s nice to have iridium sprinklers but not necessary. I think you could focus on other things your first couple of years and have an enjoyable game without too much grinding. If you have your early crop and money making strategy figured out then I think you’re ready to play. You probably won’t be able to get to Ginger Island until after Grandpa’s Evaluation but you can complete the boat within one season after that at worst.
If you are staying out of the Mines and avoiding combat you’re basically doing a challenge run for your first play through, and I think it’s very possible, but it will take longer for certain goals.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

To get diamonds, all of the components need to be either even, or 255. That's sufficiently difficult to arrange that I don't intend to bother. Since I intend to avoid Combat, Iridium is going to be in short supply, and therefore correspondingly more valuable to me than it would be to a combat specialist. However, Super Cucumber FIsh Ponds may be a better way to go.

Yeah I was explaining the rgb values for diamonds already.

Are you avoiding combat or mining because I thought the whole point of this was killing slimes for materials which is close to the opposite of avoiding combat.

Also fish ponds are horrid for getting iridium. Unless you have some challenge against mining it’s far better to just do skull cavern.
And if you are then it’s best to just speedrun easy eval goals and get statue of perfection which is far more reliable iridium with not that much effort.

 

[jameskuyper]

I’m curious about your overall goal. Do you want a pacifist save, a laudable goal? Are you trying to avoid the Mines as well as combat?

i want to avoid combat because I have a strong preference for games where you build things over games where you destroy bad guys - and while this game allows combat, and provides some rewards for doing so, my impression is that it's playable as building game.

 

[jameskuyper]

Are you avoiding combat or mining

Combat. I plan to do as much mining as possible in the Quarry and the mini-Quarry on the Hilltop farm. However, as I understand it, the best mining opportunities are, oddly enough , in the Mines, where combat appears to be pretty much unavoidable. From all I've read, and my son's experience, Skull cavern is even worse in that regard.

I do have a definite preference for Farming over Foraging, FIshing, and Mining. With Farming, you control what you harvest by planting it, which makes planning (my strong suite) a lot easier. With the other three skills you are at the mercy of random chance. Fishing, in particular, demands good hand-eye coordination, which I'm not especially good at.

because I thought the whole point of this was killing slimes for materials which is close to the opposite of avoiding combat.

My understanding is that, with the Slime Charmer Ring, I could kill them without risking get hurt in combat. It's literally the same as slaughtering farm animals. That is something oddly missing from this game - it appears to have been designed by a pescetarian. You can buy young animals, raise them to maturity, and sell them for a profit, but there's no hint in the game mechanics that anyone might want to buy a warm-blooded animal in order to eat it.

 

[Ereo]

You need to kill 1000 slimes before you get the ring. That is a lot of combat. I think I have only managed this once, and I was very actively pursuing it.

Avoiding most combat both in the mines and skull cavern is actually possible. You can outrun most things, either by being clever and keeping rocks between you and the monsters, or literally with speed boosts. Combat takes time, so I try to avoid it as much as possible, especially in skull cavern.

But building up your combat level gives you better health. I would not try to cull a mob of iridium slime without either the slime charmer ring or high combat level (plus good shoes and weapons, which you get in the mines). That is bound to get you killed.

I think @Tom once did a pacifist run? I don’t think it’s impossible, but it would be frustratingly slow for me.

I’m not sure what your objection to combat is, but since you mention hand-eye-coordination: combat is not very difficult in this game - facing the right direction and mashing the attack button is all you need to do.

 

[Jayamos]

Yeah, I was trying to get a Slime Charmer ring this save and found it grindy. I’ll get it eventually. But as Ereo said, it basically is a matter of killing a lot of slimes in order to not kill slimes.
In my first save I completely avoided the mines until Winter my first year and initially found combat difficult. I didn’t have Hilltop but was using the quarry. I finally realized there were things I wanted in the game that would be hard to get without learning combat. Once you learn the monsters’ patterns and get a decent sword (fast is good for flailers like me) it’s doable. As soon as I could get into the adventurers guild I bought the best sword I could afford, and it made a huge difference. Then I upgraded early and often.
That said I think I would have progressed faster in the mines if I’d dodged more and fought less.
My hand-eye coordination is not great either. The Training Rod helped immensely for learning fishing.
Re the randomness of fishing, foraging, and mining, they’re semi-random. You don’t know exactly what you’ll get, but you have a ballpark, and a little persistence gets you where you need to be. So you can’t plan exact numbers but you can get a range once you learn the patterns of where and when things are likely to show up.
You might enjoy speed-running videos. They have extremely tight schedules and plans but they also have backup plans for when the randomness doesn’t break their way. TheHaboo is a top player and a great improviser.

 

[MogBeoulve]

Ok, so let me see if I can offer any further ideas.

To outrun monsters in the mines, grow coffee for the speed boost. I can't remember how hard it is to get the crab cake recipe, but that is probably the easiest food to make that gives you a speed boost (plus it lasts all day), as you can get crabs from crab pots as opposed to catching fish with the rod. By the way, you can absolutely max out your fishing skill with crab pots and fish ponds. You can buy fish from the traveling cart or from Krobus to fill out the fishing bundles (I caught the easy fish but bought all the hard ones), so that shouldn't be a problem either.

You can also make your way through the mines and skull cavern with staircases. You'll get the rewards that way and should be able to avoid most monsters. Do bring a stack of food to heal with as you won't be able to tank many hits. I like cheese; salmonberries and blackberries may be free to gather, but don't restore much health.

Consider also the Four Corners farm. You'll still get a mini quarry, but the important thing is you'll also get one renewable hardwood stump. Then you only need the secret woods for forage. That's much less dangerous; you can outrun the slimes if you're not stopping to cut wood.

 

[jameskuyper]

You need to kill 1000 slimes before you get the ring. That is a lot of combat. I think I have only managed this once, and I was very actively pursuing it.

I'm not planning to pursue it, I'm going to let it happen when it happens, and if I achieve all of my goals without it happening, I won't mind. I'm just planning for what I would do if and when I get it.

I think @Tom once did a pacifist run? I don’t think it’s impossible, but it would be frustratingly slow for me.

I’m not sure what your objection to combat is, but since you mention hand-eye-coordination: combat is not very difficult in this game - facing the right direction and mashing the attack button is all you need to do.

I'm not a pacifist. I believe that violence, unfortunately, can be an effective way of achieving one's goals, unfairly so. I believe that it can be so effective that, sometimes, the only way to stop someone who is using violence to achieve their goals is to use violence against them.
However, I don't particularly enjoy even simulated violence against simulated bad guys. I enjoy designing things, including processes and procedures and schedules. To a lesser extent, I enjoy implementing my designs.
Designing for conflict is a very real thing, and the people who put the best thought into those designs are more likely to win the conflict, all else being equal. However, conflict means that each side is doing its best to thwart the designs of the other side, which makes it a very frustrating kind of design work, which makes it less interesting for me.

I'm much more interested in designing for cooperative play. For instance, I've given some thought to what could be done in a four-player Stardew Valley game. Initially, each player should specialize in a different skill, so that the group collectively benefits from high skill levels in all skills as soon as possible. In the long run, when all players have all five skills maxed out, each player should make a different choice from the other players in their level 10 profession in each skill, so the group collectively gains all the benefits of all 20 professions simultaneously.