Guide to xenobiology

Xenobiology is the breeding and harvesting of slimes and their extracts for scientific purposes. This all takes place in the xenobiology lab where you spawn, and is ~~arguably~~ more dangerous than making bombs if you don't know what you are doing. Which is a good reason to read this!

Familiarize Yourself

Xenobiology

First, get familiar with your new home.

The workspace in the centre includes a couple of closets with bio-hazard suits, a monkey recycling machine, a slime processor and an All-In-One Grinder with several sheets of plasma. Also included is a smartfridge modified to hold slime extracts within easy arm reach from the slime processor. To the western end is a disposal unit that leads to space.

To the south is the slime containment area with six pens. Two of these pens start with a baby grey slime.

To the north is a special containment pen that's larger, more secure and better equipped than the rest. This is ideal for containing and experimenting on other alien lifeforms should the station manage to capture one.

Get equipped

Before you start breeding the slimes, make sure you have a fire extinguisher in your backpack or hand and a water-tank ready nearby. Both of which are luckily available right here in Xenobiology!

In addition, you also want a supply of monkeys, available through the monkey-cubes on the table. Simply unwrap them (click on them in your hand), dip in the sink or spray with water, and shove into the disposal tube into the pen.

There is a wrench by the secure pen, which you may want to use to move the smartfridge, slime processor and monkey processor within reach of the pens. You might also want to drag the watertank and grinder nearby as well.

Gotta catch em' all!

There are several different types of slime. You begin with two grey slimes but, you can breed them to catch all the ~~pokèmon!~~ slimes! Each kind of slime has its own powers from its extract.

When well fed an adult slime will split into four slimes, usually with a 25-35% chance of mutating each -- some of the more evolved slimes mutate less frequently. You can increase a slime's chance of mutation by injecting it with plasma and decrease it by injecting the slime with inaprovaline. This flowchart shows the results of each slime's mutations when splitting, with options labeled "2x" having twice the chance of occurring.

Recommended Slimes

While this part is purely optional to follow, it is HIGHLY recommended to breed at least one or two dark purple slimes as fast as you can for additional plasma, seeing how miners will end up dead most of the time.

In addition, making sure to keep at least one pen producing grey slimes is a very good idea in order to have a sustainable monkey flow. You can always order more monkeycubes at cargo, but they are not always reliable. It's a good idea to save one of the grey extracts in case you get unlucky and all your greys mutate at once.

Purple slimes are a likely by-product of trying to get Dark Purple slimes and have the added benefit that injecting the slime steroids into the Greys and the Dark Purples will significantly increase plasma/monkey amounts gained. Try out harvesting one baby purple and then using the steroids from it on a second baby purple! Repeat as necessary.

A slightly harder but very much worth it alternative to Purple slimes would be Cerulean slimes. They have two primary benefits:

They do not evolve further, meaning you are assured without using steroids or enhancers three cerulean extracts and one breeding slime.
The result of injecting their extract with plasma is extract enhancer, which allows three uses of any given extract. The benefit of this is that you do not need to decide ahead of time which extracts you want more uses of like steroids. And combined WITH Steroids, a single slime can give nine uses.

How to Make an Efficient Slime Farm

THIS IS GOING TO BE YOUR BEST FRIEND, HAVE ONE AT ALL TIMES

You should always have 1-6 slimes, depending on how many pens you are using. More and you can't control them properly. Less and your job is over.

Decide how many you can handle at once, keeping in mind the adults split into four when sated.

All slimes dead

~~Job's over, man. Job's over!~~ Hope you have a grey slime extract, if not, then your job's over, man. Job's over!

1-6 baby slimes

Soak a monkey cube in water, preferably in the sink, and place it in the disposal of the slime pen you want to feed. Engage the disposal and watch as the slime eats the monkey. Wait for the slime to grow, then another and wait for the slime to split.

As tempting as it may be, do not send in two monkeys at once. The slime might decide the second is a friend and refuse to eat it!
Do NOT enter the pen and bash the monkey, the only thing that will happen is slime will get less food.
Make sure to stay in sight of the slimes to keep a eye on when they grow and split.

Adult slimes have split

Time to kill your darlings. Warning: This is the part of the job that's most likely to get you killed.

Ideally, you want to do this the EXACT moment after the slime in the pen has split. (You ARE keeping only one adult slime per pen, right?)

Decide which baby slimes you don't want to keep and proceed to drag them into the tiny 'airlock' of the pen with you.

Once you have the slimes in position, simply spray them with water. They should die immediately if you're spraying them in the enclosed space.

Extract harvesting

Grab the dead slime, click on the slime processor and then click on it again to turn on the processor. After a few seconds, it'll output two extracts of the color of slime in the processor at the time. You can put more then one dead slime in at a time, however, this will increase the processing time.

So a slime wants to be your friend

As long as you are regarded as a 'friend' and they are not extremely hungry, the slimes should not feed or glomp you. After feeding on a monkey, a slime may befriend the person who was the last one to grab or bump into a monkey.

If you're not sure whether a slime has friendzoned you, try talking to it! Either say "hello" and an individual slime's number, or "Hello, slimes". If the slime replies, congratulations, you've got a friend! This slime and its offspring will never attack you. If that didn't work, you'll have to repeat it. They can be immensely stubborn sometimes, however, more so if more then one person is around.

Slimes who regard you as a friend will also respond to certain commands, such as "follow" and "stop." Experiment! If they can't find a path to you, they'll typically respond with a 'i won't follow' or similar.

So a slime wants to be your SPECIAL friend

So you managed to piss it off, eh? Your safest bet here is to push the slime off with disarm intent and leg it, quite simply. Either spray it with your fire extinguisher (you are holding one, right?) or hide in a locker and yell for help if you are unrobust or can't get out of xenobiology itself.

Normal slime attacks ("glomps") do damage that can be healed simply with a first-aid kit, but if a slime starts actually feeding on you, you will have to visit Medbay to be healed.

Slime scanner

There are two of these neat devices in the extract storage. They don't provide a lot of useful info, but pay attention to mutation chance! It usually varies between 25% and 35%, but sometimes you will encounter slimes whose mutation chance is more like 15% to 17.5%. Choose carefully which slimes to keep! If you're breeding greys for monkeys, you'll want less chance of mutations, and if you want to get adamantine golems, you want to evolve them a lot!

Formulas

All injections require one unit of reagent. Dropper is your friend.

Tier 0

Grey Slime

Extract creates a grey slime when injected with plasma. Useful as a backup grey slime.
Extract creates three monkey-cubes when injected with blood. Useful if you want to do your job for more than five minutes.

Tier 1

Orange Slime

Extract creates a small fire when injected with plasma. Also increases the pressure of the air a fair amount.
Extract creates capsaicin (pepper-spray) when injected with blood. Usable as a 'ghetto stun' if you can find a good way to apply it to to your ~~victim~~ test subject.

Purple Slime

Extract creates a bottle of slime steroid when injected with plasma. Slime steroid is a potent chemical mix that will cause a slime to produce three extracts rather than two when processed. Useful when used on dark purple slimes for that plasma or grey slimes for monkeys.
Extract creates slime jelly, a highly toxic substance, when injected with sugar.

Blue Slime

Extract creates frost oil when injected with plasma.
Extract creates slime stabilizer when injected with blood. Significantly reduces a slime's mutation chance, and carries through across generations.

Metal Slime

Extract creates several sheets of plasteel and metal when injected with plasma. Expect the roboticists to want the products.

Tier 2

Yellow Slime

Extracts become 10k Charge Powercells when injected with plasma.
Extract creates an EMP when injected with blood. It's a quite big blast as well, useful if that AI is onto your tricks.
Extracts emit light when injected with water.

Dark Purple Slime

Extract creates several sheets of Solid Plasma when injected with plasma. Yessir, NT can link anything to the production of plasma. Also useful for further experimenting.

Dark Blue Slime

Extract creates a burst of cold when injected with plasma. Useful for countering those red slimes. Will kill most slimes dead, if you have 'population issues'.

Silver Slime

Extract creates a small amount of random food when injected with plasma, bork bork bork. Expect anything from a roburger to death berries.
Extract creates a small amount of random drinks when injected with water, bork bork bork.

Tier 2.5

Bluespace Slime

Extract will, if injected with plasma, teleport anything in the room not nailed down to a random beacon in the world when injected with plasma.
Extract will, if injected with blood, spawn a Bluespace Crystal. They will teleport you when crushed in your hand and teleport anyone you throw it at. It also has some good research levels.

Sepia Slime

Extract stops time when injected with plasma. How? ~~Spess~~Slime Magic!
Extract creates some Film and a Camera when injected with blood. Fuck this is so useless.

Cerulean Slime

Extract creates a bottle of extract enhancer when injected with plasma. When used on a extract it triples the amount of uses it has. You can start laughing madly now. This does not work on all extracts, notably Adamantine, so no creating a infinite army of hard to destroy golems.
Currently doesn't work in the current version of the code. Probably will get a new effect in the future.

Pyrite Slime

Extract creates a can of paint when injected with plasma. For the love of all that is holy, ~~don't~~ give it to the clown!

Tier 3

Red Slime

Extract creates a bottle of slime mutation potion when injected with plasma. Makes slimes more likely to mutate, the opposite of the slime stabilizer.
Extract makes nearby slimes rabid when injected with blood. Has some fun uses.

Green Slime

Extract creates one unit of mutation toxin when injected with plasma. Injecting yourself with it will mutate your race, for example turn you into a slime-(wo)man. This results in the slimes never attacking you, but keep in mind though that you are no longer technically 'human' as far as the AI and Cyborgs are concerned. The toxin is found in the used extract. Your blood also is no longer 'valid' for the purpose of blood based reactions with extracts.

Pink Slime

Extract creates a bottle of docility potion when injected with plasma, a potent chemical mix that will nullify a slime's powers, causing it to become docile and tame. You too can have your own pet, just like the HoP!

Gold Slime

Extract spawns a few random hostile mobs when injected with plasma. Aliens are common from this reaction, so you might be able to fill xenobiology with actual xenomorphs!
Extract spawns one random mob when injected with blood. These mobs are not immediately hostile, but may be provoked by certain actions, proximity to other creatures (such as your slimes) or if they encounter a construct or mech. NOW you might be able to fill xenobiology with actual xenomorphs without killing yourself!
Extract spawns one random friendly critter when injected with water. Now you can fill xenobiology with mobs even if you're a giant pussy!

Tier 4

Oil Slime

Extract creates a explosion after a moment when injected with plasma.

Black Slime

Extract creates one unit of advanced mutation toxin when injected with plasma. Turns you, or others, into a sentient baby slime.

Light Pink Slime

Extract creates a bottle of sentience potion when injected with plasma, a potent chemical mix that will bring human level intelligence to any animal, slime, ape, monster or generally active thing you feed it to. Make Ian sentient! Create an army of gold slime minions! The possibilities are limited only by your own deviousness and the number of ghosts in the round.

Adamantine Slime

Extract creates a Adamantine Golem when injected with Plasma. It will follow its creator's orders much like a construct.

Special Slimes

Rainbow Slime File:Slimerainbow.png To attain this rare slime you must breed a slime with a 100% mutation chance!

Extract will generate a randomly colored slime when injected with plasma. It's a good plan B if the slimes aren't cooperating in terms of colors. You can get any color slime this way, pray to the RNG!

So You're a Traitor

What you can get here that can't be gotten easier elsewhere is an EMP and ~~random hostile animals which include a few very deadly ones~~ BEACONS SPACE BEARS ALIUMS SPIDERS HIVEBOTS PINE TREES OH GOD IT'S HORRIFYING. Releasing the slimes is somewhat viable, but you will likely get caught doing so, and baby slimes are rather tame (Unless you have Red Slime Essence. Then it's a party.)

On the plus side, you do have a disposal chute that goes directly to space. Pretty handy for disposing of evidence, or people.

If you have a gold slime, you can try unleashing xenomorphs somewhere and hoping that either they end up killing your target or giving you the distraction you need to break into important places. This, however, may backfire and end up preventing your escape. If you're feeling particularly lucky, you could take multiple gold cores (a full backpack or so) OR one or two cores, and a few Cerulean Cores, and inject them all simultaneously, releasing a torrent of horrifying creatures upon an unsuspecting crew.

Need a buddy? Adamantine golems are required to follow your orders, and sentience potions can be used on any of the creatures mentioned above.

Also, Bluespace Slime Cores can be used for a quick getaway, as long as you don't mind taking half of the room you're in with you.

Also remember the havoc with grenades and bombs you can cause! If you can get access to chemistry as well you can make some interesting grenades. Advanced mutation toxin with sugar in one beaker, phosphorus and potassium in the other. Set a timer in the Medbay and drop it and listen to all the people turning into Slimes. This is when you laugh to yourself and realize it backfires when all the slimes attack you.