Cow/doc

Finding a cow

Cows can be found on Farms, inside barns. There is also a Dairy Farm where cows can be found. If you find one, you're in luck - cows are the only renewable source for post-apocalyptic dairy products. In addition, you can use them as pack animals, though they're currently rare enough that this probably isn't ideal to risk them like that. Lets hope you didn't pick Lactose Intolerance as a starting trait.

Taming a cow

To wrangle a cow, craft some cattle fodder. activate it on the cow to become friends. You'll get a message stating "The cow seems to like you! It lets you pat its head and seems friendly."

Now you're in.

This animal will gleefully follow you around the cataclysm, staying within 1-2 tiles of you if it can. Though quite wary, the cow can and will assist you in combat against monsters and can do surprising amounts of damage. Still, they are rare enough that this is a bad risk for the player, so unless you're doing a "Beastmaster" build of some kind, most players will prefer to keep them safely tied somewhere out of the way.

Using your cow

examine the cow to open a menu of available actions:

• swap positions
• push cow
• Rename
• Attach bag
• aEquip cow with armor
• tTie
• milk cow
• rMount cow

Swap and Push both work exactly like they would with an NPC.

Renaming the creature (ex: Bess) will change it from cow to cow: Bess.

Attach a bag to give the cow some storage space; You'll receive a message like "You mount the military rucksack on your cow, ready to store gear." Now upon examination, your cow will have new options: gPlace items into bag, and drop all items. Placing items into the bag will store them on the animal - the only way to retrieve them is to drop all items onto the ground. This will displace the cow by 1 tile and the items will appear where the cow was standing, including the attached bag.

Tying up the creature can be performed anywhere as long as the character is holding a short rope. Once tied, the cow cannot move from that tile until you examine it again and choose rUntie. This will return your rope and free the friendly cow.

You can milk the beast to produce fresh, delicious milk. Each cow can store up to 4 charges of milk at once (10 in 0.D Danny), regaining 1 charge every 6 hours, making for a very reliable food source. Milking an empty cow will return the message "The cow's udders run dry." Make sure to refrigerate or use the milk immediately as it is highly perishable.

You can rMount cow and ride the cow to your base. To dismount the cow simply press the ^ key

You can slaughter and butcher a cow for a lot of meat. enough for about 20 days if well preserved, this makes getting milk pretty hard however.

Transporting your cow

If you have a vehicle, cattle can find it difficult to keep up on foot. You should install a Livestock Carrier on your vehicle and put the cow in there for easy transport, else the cow might experience some problems keeping up, you can also always tie them down in one spot.

Losing your cows

It has been sadly experienced that portal storms might kill your valuable lifestock in the case that you have been seeking shelter nearby in a dairy farm building (preferably in the reasonable save milk tanks room). Two from six cows were killed, two alive outside the fences, two could't be found anymore. So better not chosing a dairy farm for living room. As long as you are far away from the farm the animals won't suffer any damage.