Slime Science Walkthrough
Slime Science is the second main game play loop of Slime Rancher, in addition to farming Plorts to sell on the market you'll also need to farm them to use in Slime Science. With Slime Science you're able to make a variety of gadgets that can be used for many different things. Arguably the best thing you can make with Slime Science is Drones which can be setup to fully automate your entire farm.
Along with Drones you can make Market and Refinery Links which will allow you to deposit plorts or items into either from anywhere in the world (and your drones can use them too). You're also able to make teleporters that you can place anywhere in the game along with much more. For a complete list of every useful Slime Science Gadget follow the link provided.
When you are just getting started with Slime Science I recommend you put a couple of Corrals around The Lab and deposit every single Plort you get from those Corrals into the Refinery. Basically you want the slimes that are surrounding your lab to be the most commonly used ones in Slime Science.
Here is what I like to do for my initial setup:
The Lab Initial Setup:
- 100 Pink Slimes in one Corral
- Rock/Tabby in one Corral
- Boom/Rad in back Corral
- 2 Gardens with Heart Beets
The 100 Pink Slimes are never turned into Largos because we need a mass amount of Pink Plorts. It's easier to keep them as basic Pink Slimes because we can hold more of them that way. You'll want to treat the Pink Slimes like pigs, they get thrown all of your left over scraps on the farm.
As far as what to build first... here are the most important things we can make with Slime Science for a good long while.
Pump: Primordy Oil, Spiral Steam, Lava Dust (Rare)
Drill: Jelly Stone, Slime Fossil, Strange Diamond (Rare)
Apiary: Buzz Wax, Hexacomb, Royal Jelly (Rare)
Each of these resources are used in future Slime Science recipes. Basically how the grind goes is you make a bunch of Pumps/Drills/Apiarys to grind out the above mentioned resources. Then you use those resources along with more Plorts to make different inventions.
But wait, there's more! If you place the Pump/Drill/Apiary in a specific zone on the map there's a good chance you will get area-specific resources. There is another set of unique resources that can only be mined in the Glass Desert too but we'll cover that later. For now, the most important thing you can do is get a Drone.
Here are the 3 unique resources and where they are collected/what they are collected with.
In order to make our Drones we'll need to place some Apiaries into the Moss Blanket so that we can collect their Wild Honey. Other than Moss Blanket Apiaries we'll also need to place some Drills anywhere so that we can collect Jellystone from them.
Drones are what we want to make first but Market Links, Refinery Links and Teleporters are going to be just as important. Each of these inventions is going to require different rare resources as well as different area specific resources along with some Plorts to create.
After you have made one or two Drones for your Ranch you will want to start making Market Links and Refinery Links. These two inventions are required if you want your Drones to deposit what they collect directly into the Refinery or Market. Both require Royal Jelly as the hardest material which is a rare drop from Apiaries.
You should expect to go through 100+ Drills/Pumps/Apiaries until we get all of the resources we want to make the items we want. It'll be a long grind but very worth it once we can start automating parts of our farm. Until you get the Market/Refinery Links I recommend using the Drones in the main area of the Ranch that way they can deposit directly into the Market.
Once you've made it to the Glass Desert you'll have access to another batch of Slime Science resources. Basically the 3 main gathering devices, Pump, Apiary and Drill all have unique resources that they will gather up when placed in the Glass Desert. A list of these resources is below along with what machine you need to use to gather them.
Along with these 3 new resources you'll unlock a couple more recipes - but not many. The only other Slime Science resource in the game I didn't mention is Manifold Cubes which are obtained by helping Viktor in Viktor's Workshop. These are used to make Advanced Drones and other recipes.
If you'd like to see a list of what I believe to be every useful Slime Science Recipe in Slime Rancher follow the link provided. For those interested it makes a good check list of all the useful stuff you can make.
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