The recent update introduced 3 new facilities: the Hand-Crank Generator, Incubator, and Bait Box.

The third one I got my hands on was the Bait Box, and I wanted to share a mini tutorial on how it works along with some initial thoughts.

So far, I've found Bait Boxes twice in Evergreen, once in Highbanks and then I purchased 2 from the online marketplace(super expensive on my server!) because I wanted to test more! 

The Bait Box can be placed in the wilderness and allows you to add food as bait to attract nearby animals. Once an animal is successfully captured, you need to return to the area and withdraw it from the bait box.

A few things I noticed while testing it:

• You can only have 1 bait box placed at a time. If you place a second bait box, the first one disappears and is not refunded to your backpack.
• Each bait box is single-use and disappears after 60 minutes regardless of whether it successfully captures an animal or not.
• The game gives a brief text notification when the bait box is close to expiring (5 minutes before expiration). You'll only see this reminder if you're online.
• If you're not able to collect the captured animal before the bait box disappears after its 60min expiration duration, the captured animal is sent via ingame email.

 

My overall experience was a bit underwhelming, with 3 out of 5 attempts failing to capture anything. Though there was one funny thing that happened during my testing, I received the "bait box expiring soon" notification and rushed over to collect it. As soon as I reached the bait box, the animal (an ewe) got captured right in front of my eyes. 

The bait box is quite difficult to obtain, is consumed after a single use, can only be placed one at a time, and there is no guarantee that it will successfully capture an animal even after waiting for up to 60 minutes. 

Personally, I found the traditional method of capturing animals to be much faster and more reliable.

What has your experience been with the Bait Box so far? Have you had better luck with certain locations or bait types?

~zi

Hi! 

The dev talks just revealed two new enemies arriving after the July 9 update: Acting Physician and Lady Sea Nettle. I'm quite excited to see new content being added to the game and these 2 seem pretty interesting!

Acting Physician

These have been sighted in the medical facilities and hospitals in the workshop area. They appear as unattended blue medical coats lying on the ground, with faint blue sparks occasionally visible at the edges.

When you get closer, the coat lights up with a soft blue glow and reveals its true form i.e. a mechanical figure with a glowing computer terminal across the chest, a medical headlamp, and four tentacles extending from the coat. They seem especially interested in the gastric health of Metas. Its research appears to focus on how starvation affects energy and overall physical condition

They can stick to walls and ceilings,and if one grabs you, you can break free by quickly pressing the prompted button.

In combat, the computer terminal is the real weak point. It only shows itself during certain attacks, so you’ll want to destroy it when it appears. If left intact, they can recover health later. Their attacks also drain your Energy to heal themselves, so keeping your Energy topped up is very helpful. Once the terminal is destroyed, it loses both its recovery ability and grabbing ability and can be defeated normally.

Lady Sea Nettle

Lady Sea Nettle has a near-human silhouette with a graceful figure and a dark flowing gown that resembles ‘Mother of life’ a lot in my opinion. Her entire head is enclosed within a transparent sea nettle jellyfish that serves as a water sac. At the center is a glowing blue core that slowly pulses deep within the water sac.

Everything Lady Sea Nettle does is powered by water. The fuller her water sac, the more active and aggressive she becomes. When her water level drops, her condition visibly worsens.

She constantly seeks water from any available source, including rivers, rainwater, and nearby prey. When she finds a target, she will first drain their Hydration. If the target's Hydration becomes insufficient, she will then begin draining HP.

Staying well hydrated yourself gives you better chances to escape and fight back. The best opportunity to deal strong damage is when their water sac shrinks or gets damaged, that’s when the core becomes exposed. Keeping them from refilling water seems to be the key.

I found both their designs and mechanics quite interesting. It feels like they’ll offer very different kinds of fights. I’ve always liked how Mother of Life looks, and I feel the same about Lady Sea Nettle.  She looks just as pretty and elegant in the previews. and I find her mechanics really fascinating as well.

Which of these two new enemies are you most interested in fighting?

~zi

The recent update introduced 3 new facilities: the Hand-Crank Generator, Incubator, and Bait Box.

The second one I got my hands on was the Incubator, and I wanted to share a mini tutorial on how it works along with some initial thoughts. 

So far, I've found Incubators in Highbanks (Manibus) and Evergreen. They cannot be crafted and can only be found in the wilderness.

The Incubator allows you to place a single egg inside and start an incubation process. Each incubation takes 2 hours to complete, and only one egg can be incubated at a time.

If the incubation succeeds, you'll receive an animal hatchling. If it fails, you'll get a Cracked Egg instead. You can eat those Cracked Eggs and they restore 20+ Energy.

A few things I noticed while testing it:

• Each Incubator can only be used 5 times before it is scrapped.
• If you break the facility, it is destroyed and does not return to your backpack.
• Pristine Eggs cannot be added.
• Every incubation I tried showed a fixed 20% success rate.

For testing, I tried:

• Crocodile Eggs - failed 3 times.
• Bird Eggs - failed 2 times. The output preview showed a Flamingo both times, which I guess is obvious as Flamingo is the only tameable bird in the game. 
• Turtle Egg - succeeded and gave me a Turtle Hatchling.

My overall experience was that it took more than 5 attempts to get a single successful result, with each attempt taking 2 hours. Personally, I can go out and capture the animals directly in less time, so I don't see much practical use for it right now.

For me, it's mostly a decoration piece at the moment... just a bigger-looking microwave for my kitchen. 😄

I hope they will add some other useful features to it in future! What is your take on this? How many tries did it take for you to get a successful result?

~zi