Domesticated Animals Guide

Species Roles at a Glance

• Field utility companions: Dog, Cat (tracking/hunting support when set to Follow and kept in good condition)
• Mobility and load animals: Horse, Donkey (carry bonus, travel-time improvement windows)
• Renewable producers: Chicken/Duck (eggs), Goat (milk), Sheep (wool via manual shearing cooldown)
• Conversion livestock: Pig (high-yield slaughter path into rawMeat)

Pick by bottleneck: route pressure, calorie pressure, textile pressure, or raw meat demand.

Upkeep and Appetite Reality

Animal care is a live stability check, not flavor text. Each feeding action consumes one suitable food, cuts hunger by species feedGain, and restores a small health bump. If that rhythm slips, your herd quietly falls out of performance bands.

Practical meaning:

• keep animals inside working thresholds: utility and production reliability are strongest when hunger stays under ~70 and health above ~35
• do not expand herd count beyond feed inventory reality
• build feed reserves before market expansion
• treat medicine/antibiotics as herd recovery budget, not emergency-only luxury

Production Timing

Production runs on real interval clocks in game.js, not on demand. Treat each species like a timed line in your camp economy:

• Chicken: eggs every ~24h window
• Duck: eggs every ~28h window
• Goat: milk every ~30h window
• Sheep: wool is manual and long-cycle (720h shearing cooldown)

Utility animals (Dog/Cat/Horse/Donkey) pay out through travel/support performance instead of direct resource ticks.

Plan recipes and trade loops around what is actually off cooldown, not what you wish was ready.

Market and Reputation Gating

Settlement animal markets are rotating opportunities, not permanent shelves. In game.js, each market refresh runs on a 72h cycle, rolls up to three offers, and filters access through value cost plus minimum settlement reputation.

What this means in practice:

• reputation opens species tiers; low trust reduces what you can reliably buy
• prices and stock are dynamic per refresh, so timing matters
• if all rolls miss, the system still injects a fallback basic offer (dog-tier entry point)
• each completed purchase adds a small local trust gain (+1 settlement reputation)

If purchases keep failing, fix trust and economy first. If purchases succeed but your feed/medicine line is weak, hold. The trap is not being unable to buy; it is buying before you can sustain.

Utility Activation Strategy

In game.js, utility only turns on when conditions are met. Think of it as a deployment stance, not passive ownership.

Activation requirements:

• animal must be assigned to Follow (camp-assigned animals do not grant follow utility)
• health should stay above ~35
• hunger should stay below ~70
• utility must be enabled for that animal state

Role-driven deployment:

• run Horse/Donkey on heavy logistics legs (carry bonus + faster movement windows)
• run Dog/Cat on scouting and hunt-tracking loops
• keep production-first species focused on feed/health stability when route utility is not needed

If the route does not need animal utility right now, park the animal at camp and preserve supplies for the next real pressure window.

Common Mistakes

• buying herd size before feed and treatment throughput exists
• leaving utility animals on camp role and expecting follow bonuses anyway
• letting hunger drift above ~70 or health sink below ~35, then wondering why utility/performance collapses
• planning eggs/milk/wool around wishful timing instead of real cooldown windows (especially sheep)
• forcing high-rep market purchases before trust and value economy are ready

Practical Rule

Recruit an animal only when it fixes a live bottleneck now: route load, tracking pressure, food flow, or textile supply. If it cannot earn its feed and care inside your current plan, leave it in the market.