Botanist
| SUPPLY STAFF | |
  Botanist |
Access: Hydroponics, Morgue Additional Access: Bar, Kitchen Difficulty: Medium Supervisors: Head of Personnel Rank: Not defined Duties: Grow plants for the kitchen, mutate them in the name of science, grow less legal substances Guides: Guide to Hydroponics, Guide to Plants |
It is like... you know man, when you grow little... the little plants in the ground? And like, you go and grow happy mushrooms? And like, when people harsh your mellow, you can just take a nettle out, and whack them to death with flower power, maaaaaan.
Well, ahem, yes! You are a hippie. You can make some of the best healing foods in the game, and the most lethal too. Also, you can grow hallucinogens and toxins! Just make sure you know what plants you are growing, or you will wind up dead from eating a bad shroom, total bummer.
Plants are people too!
For the full chart with plant types, what they look like, and what they do, please check out the Guide to hydroponics.
Fertilizer types
E-Z-Nutriment: Makes your plant mutate once between harvests, resulting in different stats or even species. Does not affect yield.
Left-4-Zed: Makes your plant mutate twice between harvests. Downside: Plants take longer to germinate, and you'll need another fertilizer to actually harvest things.
Robust Harvest: Doubles the amount of plants you'll get when it's time to harvest. Does not affect stats.
THIS'S WHERE TH' SEEDS LIVE! GIT YOU SOME!
Head to the vending machine, get some seeds. There may be hidden seeds in the machine, if you know how to PROPERLY HACK IT, then do so and collect the rewards.
The Chef
Take your yummy vegetables to the fridge on the left side where the chef will be, then have him cook them up! There are many different dishes the chef can make from different foods you grow. Only YOU can prevent all-burger diets!
Tools of the Trade
You get a few fun tools as a botanist that will make your life so easy when growing plants:
- Hatchet. It's a rather robust small cutting tool used to
murder peoplemake wood planks, pumpkin helmets and corn cob pipes. - Mini Hoe. NOT THAT KIND. This one is meant to claw, or perhaps filter, out weeds from the hydroponic trays.
- Plant-b-Gone Spray bottle. Kill hydroponic plants, kill alien weeds too, can be filled with other chemicals. Does minor toxin damage, but absolutely devastates plant persons.
- Plant analyzer. It tells you basically everything about your plant, including its killing / drugging / healing properties.
- Backpack irrigation system. Makes watering the plants much less annoying.
- Buckets, in case you want to water the plants the annoying way. These function as beakers, so you can mix chemicals inside them too.
- Chemical grinder and a large beaker, so you can extract chemicals from your plants.
There is a crate in the back room. It contains:
- A bucket.
- A screwdriver. To set up the irrigation system.
- A wrench. To rearrange the trays.
Things you should get from the outside:
- A multitool. To hack the seed vendor. If you can't get one, use two signallers.
- Toxin Med kit. Because sometimes you can get TOO high.
- Insulated Gloves. In case you fail to hack it the first time.
- An engineer. Because electricity will fucking kill you.
- Poly acid, in a spray bottle. It will melt down your fail crops.
- Space cleaner, in a spray bottle. It will clean the goo left behind from the acid.
- Various chemicals from chemistry to mutate or treat your plants with.
- A dropper. So you can mutate plants more precisely.
So Harsh, Bro
People like to break into hydro and steal your spray bottles, because they can fill them with water polyacid. Keep all the bottles in a safe enough spot in hydro, or actually stay in the hydroponics bay. You can also hand them out like candy. It's not like you need all of them.
Chemicals
BEG the chemist to make you stuff, namely unstable mutagen. You will go through this stuff fast, so make sure they aren't stingy. If chemistry is helpful they can also give you a dropper for more precise mutations.
Different chemicals do different things to your plants when injected. Experiment until you find a blend you like!
Most of your crops can be blended down into chemicals themselves. Keep this in mind.
An alternative to chemicals is a floral somatoray. You can get it from the scientists unless they and/or the shaft miners are being lazy fucks (which is always). It is a gun that shoots mutation rays that either increases yield or tries to change the plant's stats. (Guide to hydroponics).
Dirt
If you happen to come across a Shaft Miner that hasn't taken a hardsuit and gone off to explore space, then you're halfway there. Get some sand, use it to make sandstone, then take three sandstone to make dirt. Another method is to grow grass in your existing hydroponics trays, then plant the grass tiles and dig them up with the spade found in the back room! This will dig up some sand. Congratulations, you are no longer restricted to tiny water tubs for growing now! Be warned though, it is not the most efficient method of planting, as there are no lights to indicate needs for water, fertilizer, etc. Have fun surrounding theatre with bananas and watching the clown collapse in sheer joy.
Little Shop of Horrors
As a traitor, if you are lucky and fast you have access to so many horrifying things: death nettles that are as strong as e-swords and automatically disintegrate, plants that slip people, multiple robust poisons, koibeans to grind for free parapen juice, bluespace tomatoes for breakins and getaways, and so much more! If you have an easy objective, quickly rush out and get it out of the way, head back and get your plants growing. Your leather gloves give no prints onto a crime scene, so if you ditch your equipment (or hide it) you should be fine enough so no one knows it was you. You can also intoxicate some food with a syringe from your vending machine -- just hope whoever you want to die eats it.
Tips
- When attempting to increase the potency of a plant, consider making intermediate-stage seeds in case something goes horribly wrong. Using Mutagen/Radium can act erratic.
- You can fertilize your trays via applying harvested plants to a Hydroponics Tray with something already planted in it.
- The Biogenerator can process excess plants loaded into it into Biomass - This can be used to fabricate gloves, belts, Botany chemicals, and even kitchen products such as meat and milk
- You can perform species mutations with >5 units of Unstable Mutagen/Radium - Anything less will mutate other stats
- Remember you can boost a plant back to health long past its normal lifespan by providing lots of nutriment or healing chemicals.
- Hatchets are extremely effective against Space Vines. Similarly, scythes will destroy them in a 3x3 radius.
- A goat is effectively a weapon of mass destruction against vines: They will instantly destroy any vines that they walk over (They can't get any under flaps or on tables, though!)
- Anti-Plant spray and grenades are also, of course, very effective at vine control
Traitor Botanist
- Potency 100 Deathnettle is the best melee weapon on the station, boasting higher damage than an Energy Sword and a very high knockdown chance. It even fits in your pocket! It will break after a few uses, though.
- If you buddy up with a Traitor Chef, you can make some meals to die for with the myriad of deadly chemicals you can produce.
- Chemists with a plant tray, or Botanists with some sugar, can make kudzu:
- Apply Sugar to raise the weed level to 6 or above.
- Apply Mutagen in doses of 5u. This has a 10% chance of giving you a rare weed (Deathnette, Destroying Angel, or Kudzu). Repeat until the desired plant mutates.
- Botany can make Nitroglycerin grenades without having to leave Botany for reagents, which can all be ground from plants: Nettle for Sulphuric Acid, Death Nettle for Fluorosulfuric Acid, and Corn for Corn Oil.
- You can produce Amatoxin and Lexorin from Destroy Angel, both of which are extremely lethal in small doses!
