In Slime Rancher, you play as Beatrix, a rancher on the Far Far Range out in space somewhere. You explore a world filled with creatures called Slimes, which create valuable Plorts that you can harvest and sell for money. Explore the world to find rarer, more valuable, and more dangerous slimes, expand your ranch, and unlock new abilities and equipment.

Review

I love Slime Rancher. From the moment I saw it, I was intrigued, but I didn’t have very high expectations. I bought it thinking it would be fun for a little while. Little did I know it would become one of my favorite games. If you enjoy farming games, games like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon, or base-building games like Minecraft or Don’t Starve, I highly recommend Slime Rancher.

You will not regret buying Slime Rancher. You certainly get your money’s worth. I bought this game thinking all there was to do was explore the world, find some slimes, and bring them to my ranch. There’s so much more! Upgrades, expansions, lab construction, the 7Zee Club, not to mention Ogden’s Retreat and Mochi’s Manor. There’s a lot of game to be had here, and it’s so much fun. Just the gun that you use to suck up and shoot out slimes is ridiculously satisfying.

My Ranch

I’m at the end-game of Slime Rancher. I have almost bought and unlocked and found everything (that I know of at the time of this post) that the game has to offer.  My ranch has changed throughout the game. I did at least three major overhauls of plot arrangement as I learned, and my priorities changed. What I have now is the result of much trial and error, but I am very proud.

Food Production

My first farm layout had about 1 crop for every 2 corrals. After I was making enough money for automatic feeders to be standard fare, though, I realized that for maximum efficiency of plort production, each corral needed its own food source. Since slimes produce twice as many plorts when fed their favorite food, I made the crops associated with each corral a favorite food of the slimes in the corral.

I always had chickens on my farm because I like them, but I never really used them to great effect until I got access to the Warp Depots. Now, I have 4 Warp Depots set up around 2 chicken coops in my main area. The other side of the Warp Depots are next to the corral of each slime that has a type of chicken as a favorite food. I periodically cull the chickens and put them in the appropriate Warp Depots so that I can periodically give my slimes a tasty chicken snack, and I don’t have to remember which type of slime likes which type of chicken because I just take the ones out of the depot nearest their pens.

Layout

I have 2 corrals per area and 2 crops. I have a warp from each extension to the main area. I then have several warps in the lab area leading out into the world where my extractors are. I have a Refinery Link and Market Link in every area.

My Main Ranch area has undergone the most updates as my needs changed and more space became available. As of now, I have 2 silos up on the hill leading to the Lab. One for food, the other for plorts, and misc. I have 2 chicken coops leading to the Overgrowth.

I have my incinerator for my fire slimes in the fifth lab plot. I will turn the fifth plot in the Grotto into a pond for more puddle slimes (my current puddle slimes are only in the Docks waterfall area).

Currently, I keep my ‘money makers’ -Honey  Mosaic and Crystal Hunter slimes- in my main ranch area. These are new, and I have yet to ‘vet’ them for ease of ranching.

I keep my pink rock slimes in the lab area. The other corral I used as storage for ‘non-largo’ slimes, so I have easy access to them should I need them. However, I felt bad not feeding them, and they looked so sad and forlorn at the food left over from the pink rock slimes next to them. So I decided to free them, and now I need to decide what to put here instead. Most likely, tabby phosphors for easy plort production.

The Largos

I went with largos rather than purist slimes because they are more efficient and profitable. For one piece of a favorite food, a largo will produce four plorts. Also, I like the combinations. They’re fun. I chose my largo combinations based on a couple of factors.

First, I wanted as few repeats as possible. This means with 14 types of slimes, I have 7 largos.

After that, the most important consideration was diet. Raising chickens as food was much slower than cultivating crops, so I made sure not to combine any of the meat-eating slimes together. The Saber and Pink slimes, which have no favorite food, also weren’t combined with a meat-eating slime. Also, since odd onions have much lower yields than other crops, I didn’t combine Crystal slimes with the meat-eating or no-favorite-food slimes.

After diet, I took into consideration the dangers of each type of slime and had many trial-and-error combinations.

The last and most important factor: aesthetic.

Pink Rock – My first ever largo, a classic. The Pink Rock largo fell out of style in my Ranch for much of the mid-game as the plorts didn’t sell as well as any of the other slimes I had access to. Once I unlocked the Lab and realized that the ‘cheap’ plorts were the most needed for fabrication, I went back to tried and true pink and blue. Originally housed in the main part of my ranch, I moved them to the Lab area after I unlocked it for easy access to the refinery.

Quantum Tangle – My favorite largo currently on my farm.

The tangle slime is my favorite of all the slimes. I loved the quantum slimes as well until I had several bad trials. I combined them with everything, including Pink and Tabby, but they just would not stay in their corral. I grew to despise the quantum slimes for their escape artistry and had a long stint on my farm with not a quantum slime to be found.

Then, one day, my Tangle Tabby slimes all tarred because my boom rad slimes threw one of their plorts within grabbing distance. I was very sad, but it gave me the opportunity and inspiration to try Tangle Quantum largos. I put them in the Overgrowth so they had chickens to reach for rather than escaping if they got hungry, and they would be relatively secluded from other slimes so they didn’t accidentally reach for plorts. Just in case, though, they have a Hydro Turret next to their corral.

So far, this combination has worked out fantastically. I have only 6 to ensure that they never want for food, but they often have uneaten food rotting in their pen, so I may add another.

Saber Dervish – The dervish slime also had many failed combinations. I initially planned to combine the dervish with something more volatile since it’s relatively safe to be around. However the chaos it causes when hungry was way more damaging than I expected. I didn’t want to deal with explosions on top of that.

My normal slime count per pen is 10. However, I found it impossible to keep 10 dervish slimes fed. For a long time, I didn’t receive a single plort from my dervish largos because they sent them flying into the air before the plort collector could suck them up. So I have only 6 of them, and they are much happier. Even so, I have them in the most secluded part of the Overgrowth in case someone throws a tantrum.

Boom Rad – Another combo that lasted from early to late-game, the boom rad is one of my favorites.

I kept this largo combination mainly due to personal preference. I originally had boom rocks, and I hated them with a passion. While radiation is annoying, it wasn’t nearly as annoying as contact damage. So once I got boom rads, they felt infinitely easier to deal with.

After this, I started getting more difficult to deal with slimes like Hunter, Crystal, and Quantum. While other stuff went wrong everywhere else on my ranch, my boom rads just sat in a corner (I originally had them in the overgrowth before I needed that space for the dervishes) and minded their own business through all of the mid-game. I grew attached to the boom rads because they lasted and never caused trouble. So even in late-game, I kept them. I have 10, and they now live in the cave, so I can see them in all their glowy glory, and they never cause a ruckus.

Phosphor Hunter – The phosphors are my most well-tested slime. I like the way phosphors look, and I used every opportunity to try them. I settled on phosphor hunters because they look so dang cute, and they are one of the few combinations that don’t make hunters more dangerous. I had 10, but recently noticed that they have been disappearing and I’m down to 5. Not sure how this is happening, but I assume that they’re escaping somehow.

Honey Crystal – I had a few combinations with crystal and honey before I settled on honey crystal. Honey was easy enough that I could try it with pretty much anything. Crystal was the opposite. I hated everything I tried it with for reasons of difficulty dealing with its attitude. Still not my favorite, but very profitable. I originally had them in the caves but found them obnoxious, especially with the hunters in the other corner also exploding all over the place, so now I keep them in the Docks so they are far away from anything else I need to do.

Mosaic Tabby – I enjoy the Mosaic Tabby. It’s a very easy largo to deal with, and it looks cute and pretty. This was the first combination I tried with the mosaic slimes, and it stuck. I’ve since tried a few other mosaic largos, but none is as cuddly, likable, and safe as the mosaic tabby.

The End?

And that is my ranch! I love playing this game, and I have put too much thought into playing it. I’m at the end game and starting to get disenchanted since I have explored the world and reaped all the rewards. Now, I’m just farming plorts for money for the 7Zee Rewards Club, and doing the Nimble Valley and The Wilds quests. I expect I still have many hours left in this game, but I see the end of the journey drawing near. I’ll look back on these days with fondness and be proud of what I have accomplished here in this virtual realm of the Far Far Range.