Botany Enjoyers Please Stand Up

[DrAmazing343]

I've always avoided Botany until a recent streak of Clown/Tider games in which I've embraced the public gardens trying to grow high-potency bananas for the eternally just-out-of-reach Funny, and while that was satisfying, especially after learning barebones mechanics, it was like gazing into a Lovecraftian abyss. I saw the King in Yellow, and his eyes scorched my spirit, nay, my very sovl with a sense of autistic hyperfixation to figure out the rest of the system as, round by round of stupid fucking tider round, I figured out how much depth Botany actually had.

Then, I made a brain-tumor felinid static, and had some of the most fun I've ever had in Botany because someone named Ruth Lowstetter showed up seemingly out of nowhere the first true Botany shift I tried, and taught me ratios, mechanics, techniques; All I needed to, at at least an intermediate level, succeed in Botany!

I've made densified chems death nettles, hypodermic holymelons, bluespace tomatoes and bananas galore... and the best part is? I've still got, far, far lengths to go! My current hope is to figure out crosspollination in order to create a plant combo that will grow Mannitol for me so I don't have to do the shame-shuffle to medbay and talk to the chemist each round, but I've had very little luck getting mutations sometimes. When I do, though, for cases like Tower-Caps into Steelcaps, it truly feels like Botany becomes self-sufficient in the same way Cargo can, and it's incredibly gratifying.

I've lost track of this whole thread, but I wanted to share good times in recent spessmens and also how fucking good this Dwarf Fortress song is for enjoying Botany to.

Give me all ye broken combos and good advices, Botany Enjoyers. I'm counting on you.

[dendydoom]

botany is the one job in the game that could straight up just be its own game. it's so deep and there's so much content, and there's no correct way to play it, you can make your own goals and do whatever you want. the silver lining is that for people to think you're good at it, you basically have to click 2 buttons and wait a while. so everything above and beyond that is extra credit.

it's also WITHOUT A DOUBT the strongest job. it can do anything with enough time and rng on your side.

[kinnebian]

ive always found botany and atmospherics is the final frontier for players, when i went through the game, i learned every job before botany and atmos, and theyre by far the most deep and engaging. i only like atmospherics more right now as it is easier to make goals for - like reaching a specific gas

[Constellado]

I...

Got bored of botany content after 200 hours of it a year and a bit ago.

That's why I don't play botany anymore. I got tired of waiting for specific chems to cross into the specific plant I want and grafting a few things on. It ends up feeling the same, just with different plants, but the same buttons pressed.

There is probably more interesting stuff now after the year that I havnt been playing botany. It's probably got quite a few hours extra left in it now probably. (Like seedlings TF are those?)

[CMDR_Gungnir]

I've always avoided Botany until a recent streak of Clown/Tider games in which I've embraced the public gardens trying to grow high-potency bananas for the eternally just-out-of-reach Funny, and while that was satisfying, especially after learning barebones mechanics, it was like gazing into a Lovecraftian abyss. I saw the King in Yellow, and his eyes scorched my spirit, nay, my very sovl with a sense of autistic hyperfixation to figure out the rest of the system as, round by round of stupid fucking tider round, I figured out how much depth Botany actually had.

Then, I made a brain-tumor felinid static, and had some of the most fun I've ever had in Botany because someone named Ruth Lowstetter showed up seemingly out of nowhere the first true Botany shift I tried, and taught me ratios, mechanics, techniques; All I needed to, at at least an intermediate level, succeed in Botany!

I've made densified chems death nettles, hypodermic holymelons, bluespace tomatoes and bananas galore... and the best part is? I've still got, far, far lengths to go! My current hope is to figure out crosspollination in order to create a plant combo that will grow Mannitol for me so I don't have to do the shame-shuffle to medbay and talk to the chemist each round, but I've had very little luck getting mutations sometimes. When I do, though, for cases like Tower-Caps into Steelcaps, it truly feels like Botany becomes self-sufficient in the same way Cargo can, and it's incredibly gratifying.

I've lost track of this whole thread, but I wanted to share good times in recent spessmens and also how fucking good this Dwarf Fortress song is for enjoying Botany to.

Give me all ye broken combos and good advices, Botany Enjoyers. I'm counting on you.

The most fun thing to do in Botany is to get some Harebell seeds (You can often steal a harebell from the Chapel and turn it into seeds), fill them with as much instability as you can get, and just watch them mass-mutate chems out the ass until you find something hilarious.

Like Restorative Nanite Harebells. The golden goose that you will always chase, desperately hoping to finally lay your hands upon it, until one day you do and it is just as glorious as you'd always hoped it would be, and then you are chasing that high forever again.

[yttriums]

..until you've also optimized that process and made so many restorative nanites/android mutation plants that you're desensitized to the high.. then you're left chasing TaTP and Nitroglycerin 15% on your antag rounds...

[DrAmazing343]

God, yeah, all this shit is seriously sky's the limit tier stuff. I'll have rounds that frustrate me, zero mutations, all weeds, plants dying forever- but then, sometimes three plants mutate in ten minutes, and I have all my mainstays READY. I haven't even gotten into crosspollination bullshit but I'm SO excited to try. It's gonna be insane when I figure it all out, just you WATCH!

[PapaMichael]

Release goodzu to piss off the entire crew as a nonantag without a chance of a bwoink
Sounds like a win to me...

[kinnebian]

I...

Got bored of botany content after 200 hours of it a year and a bit ago.

That's why I don't play botany anymore. I got tired of waiting for specific chems to cross into the specific plant I want and grafting a few things on. It ends up feeling the same, just with different plants, but the same buttons pressed.

There is probably more interesting stuff now after the year that I havnt been playing botany. It's probably got quite a few hours extra left in it now probably. (Like seedlings TF are those?)

Thats still a crazy amount of time, you know? 200 hours of content before you get bored? thats around 8 and half full days of botany

[DrAmazing343]

Release goodzu to piss off the entire crew as a nonantag without a chance of a bwoink
Sounds like a win to me...

I'm never gonna become a goodzu enjoyer. I'm sorry, but it looks like HOT SHIT.

[Cheshify]

Botany is incredibly fun. I remember working with a lizard botanist before and finding an RDX strange plant, so we worked the entire shift to make a 500u RDX 500u Teslium Chem bomb that we detonated on the icebox ordnance launch site.

The blast itself was small, but the fireball it made reached all the way to departures and cooked us alive.

[kinnebian]

Release goodzu to piss off the entire crew as a nonantag without a chance of a bwoink
Sounds like a win to me...

ive seen situations where it lags out server and/or you get bwoinked for doing it every other round

[mrmelbert]

Botany Enjoyer here.



Once you discover random chem mutation you unlock the key.

How about a tree that literally GROWS MONKEYS? Well, all you need is Liquid Gibs, Water, and Banana Juice...

Maybe you're not too famliar with niche chemical reactions, how about just making a plant that contains the 5 most potent speed boosting chemicals? Or one that contains the 5 most strongest alcohols?

My personal all time favorite was a plant that automatically grew GOLD INFUSED METALGEN and used Gaseous Decomposition and Liquid Contents to deploy it easily. Unfortunately anti-fun coders removed Metalgen from botany.

How about mixing thermite in a densified Omega-weed leaf and giving it Liquid Contents so you now have a plant that can melt walls?

If you're too impatient for chem rolling, look at all chemicals available to you. Synthflesh is possible out of the box, and yes it works with Liquid Contents. Or... maybe grow some Life? Just be careful...

I've embraced the public gardens trying to grow high-potency bananas for the eternally just-out-of-reach Funny

Your next step is to graft Laughing Peas onto your bananas to give your peels Hallucinatory Feedback.

My current hope is to figure out crosspollination in order to create a plant combo that will grow Mannitol for me

Lucky for you, Mannitol is very simple and all the components are easily available without even requiring mutations.

[DrAmazing343]

-incredibly based bert snip-

The tip about the mannitol crosspollination is kinda huge, actually; there's definitely a way to make it without mutations, considering grass is straight-up hydrogen(?) and melons have hydrogen, meaning I just have to find a sugary fruit(?) to steal off of! That's easier than I'd thought. Thank you!

Also, laughing peas and liquid contents shenanigans sound absolutely incredible. I accidentally created flourosulfuric bluespace tomatoes when growing deathnettles next to them, which lead to a funny telltale acidic sound whenever I jumped with one (a lot!). A shitload of your tips and ideas here are fantastic— shame about metalgen removal, though I can understand why, it also sounds INCREDIBLY fun.

Whoever said that Botany could be it's own game is 200% right, because holy Christ is there so much to do, and so little time in round to do it! I love it dearly, and I've barely scratched the surface.

Once again, the game provides for me a new system that interlocks with other systems I've grown to know and love (Chemistry, Cooking, Bartending) and both enhance them and make learning about the new system much easier. One of the greatest strengths of SS13 is that interlocking— I'll never get tired of seeing one system interact with another in a new, novel, yet entirely sensible way that brings a smile to my face.

To reflect threads from December; MAYBE EVERYTHING IS NOT WORSE ACTUALLY!!! MAYBE WE ARE CURRENTLY IN PEAK FICTION AND WE HAVE NO IDEA!!!

[DrAmazing343]

I MADE MANNITOL BY PUTTING DOWN GRASS AND THEN PUTTING MELONS DOWN TO POLLINATE THEN JUST UPROOTING THE MELONS AND THROWING DOWN GRAPES SO WHEN I GROUND UP THE GRASS IT MADE MANNITOL YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[RedBaronFlyer]

I don’t really enjoy botany but I appreciate good botany players.

Except “goodzu” botanist. All my homies hate “goodzu.”

[mrmelbert]

I MADE MANNITOL BY PUTTING DOWN GRASS AND THEN PUTTING MELONS DOWN TO POLLINATE THEN JUST UPROOTING THE MELONS AND THROWING DOWN GRAPES SO WHEN I GROUND UP THE GRASS IT MADE MANNITOL YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Are ya winnin' son?

You can take it a step further to get genes a bit closer in quantities.
The largest hydrogen gene we can get is 5%, which is about perfect for us, because it will mix us 15u mannitol.
But watermelons have 20% water, making mixing mannitol leave behind 15u water in addition to our 15u mannitol, which is not ideal.
So what else can we use? Peas have a perfect 5% water! That means we leave no water behind.
And for sugar? Well, Laughing Peas ALSO have 5% sugar! We can get a perfect mix of mannitol in one plant, meaning you don't even need to grind it down - you can just pick it off the vine and eat it directly, no need to grind.

Bonus Tip:
Using a pen on a packet of seeds lets you rename what the plant it produces is named. This can be useful for organizing the plants you make, especially if you plan on handing it out to the crew.

[Critawakets]

There's a bit more to getting some nice botany than chem mixes. Nowadays the purity of the chems you produce is based on plant stats so figuring out how to max it out quickly is a step of the learning process. Don't want to give people 25% purity Libital/Aiuri plants now don't you? It's 50% + (lifespan / 4) + (endurance / 4) +- (instability / 4), the instability effect is random and can either go down or up.

Also, not the biggest fan of strange chem mutations since they're RNG and I have a frothing hatred of that, but there's some insanely good stuff you can do with the chemicals. If you know what you're doing, botany can produce regenerative jelly which is insanely good for healing.

I kinda do wish there was more variety in fertilizers for botany to use though. Right now not using a chemical dispenser is more of a self-imposed challenge than a valid way to play the game. There's nothing that increases production speed (without making your plants die instantly to weeds, which there's no way to combat against aside from pure RNG which could make it worse) and no way to rapidly decrease instability without the chem dispenser. That last one especially is huge and can be absurdly painful if you don't have a dispenser since your only alternative removes -0.25 instability per tick. For context, there's a chemical that decreases instability by -1 PER UNIT per tick, while also giving a bunch of other bonuses.

[DrAmazing343]

HUGE info from both of you, thank you! I did find out how much of a pain in the fucking neck working without a dispenser is; it really cuts down on a lot of the waiting and tedium. So much so, actually, that it felt like cheating and I strayed away from it at first. Of course, this was a hilariously wrong notion, considering the alternative is getting very lucky or waiting upwards of twenty minutes for a mutation.

I think my next big hurdle to get my hands on the “cheats” early is figuring out how the fuck to actually DO the Botany experiment. Current version thought is to use a mutated plant plucked straight off the branch, instead of one produced off of a new pack of seeds, but it’s quite confusing anyway.

[yttriums]

Easiest way to get the wild mutation needed for the botany experiment is just to plant something with a mix of lfz/robust harvest and turn on auto-grow. Plants with higher starting instability/lower maturation times are going to get you there quicker. You can also add in saltpetre or liquid earthquake to increase the frequency of your harvests, or set up bees to get doubled harvests.

I will say - my main pet peeve with the botany experiment is that you cannot see which trait is needed for the discount experiment until the coroner has completed human dissection. This makes the discount experiment completely worthless, since it almost always requires multiple samples of a mutated plant, which is generally gonna take like 5-10 additional minutes for a 3k point discount... that's just never worth it. If you could see the discount experiment from roundstart, you could actually plan ahead to get the trait needed.

[Annihilite111]

Lots of good advice ITT. I'll add some cool tips and tricks I've picked up over the hundreds of hours I have in botany.

Tip 1 (IMPORTANT): Plumbing is incredible for botany. Go to chemistry and ask for their spare plumbing constructor, then set up a factory using the gamer mix recipe (15 ethanol, 15 hydrogen, 15 nitrogen, 10 potassium, 10 oxygen). This lets you pump a 50/50 mix of saltpetre and dielythamine directly into any trays you connect to the factory. Keeps plants alive, potent and healthy forever.
For mutating i like to use left4zed. It works per unit so using plumbing is very good for keeping the trays topped up at all times. We can't actually automate the synthesis, but we CAN connect a chem tank to an input pipe and manually fill it with several hundred units of left4zed. It'll automatically refill the trays until the buffer runs out, which means you only have to refill the tank once or twice instead of refilling each tray every few minutes.


Tip 2: Different plants have different base reagent capacities. The base is 100u, but Omega Weed has 420u, which can be doubled with the densified chems trait for a total of 840u, effectively multiplying the amount of chems you get per plant by 8.4. This is very FUN to combo with stuff like acid...

Tip 3: If you crosspollinate a chem into a podperson pod, that chem becomes the resulting podpersons' blood type. I mostly use this whenever i roll felinid mutation toxin so i can ask medical to health analyse me, but there are lots of cool applications for it aside from memes.
For one, you become immune to the effects of whatever chemical you have as your blood type. Comboing it with toxic gaseous decomposition plants for instance..

Tip 3.1: Podpeople are also immune to Kudzu. If you're evil and need a way to keep sec off your ass, plant a few seeds on the ground and wait. You can even speak to and ally with the venus mantraps that bloom from the flowering variant.

Tip 4: olive tree grafts extend a plants lifespan to 150. Very good for making high quality wine when used on grapes.

Tip 5: directional glass windows prevent adjacent trays from crosspollinating eachother. Just remember to screw them onto the floor or they'll go flying whenever gravity shuts off.

That's all i can think of right now. I'll post again if i come up with anything else

[DrAmazing343]

Fucking FANTASTIC tips! I think I've put together the way to doobiecap; is it just Omega Weed with everything but the gunpowder snipped off, then densified chems, then stats for Gunpurity?

Also, what sort of toxic gaseous decomposition plants are there???

[yttriums]

I personally think people should figure out botany's bomb strats on their own, don't want things to get trivialized and overdone and nerfed because someone posted a guide that gives everything away. Half of the fun of botany is figuring things out for yourself.

[dendydoom]

honestly, most people looking to grief will choose 900 easier options before landing on botany. you can generally get the outcome you want but it can take a long time to get there if your rng is cursed and requires constant attention.

most of it has already been trivialized with things like The Spreadsheet and i still never see wacky crazy powerful botanist plays - they are more often than not just trying to help the station. every major battle i've had against an antag botanist has been the classic deathnettles, bluespace tomatoes and combustible lemons because they don't want to spend the entire traitor round fine tuning their botanical superweapon for an hour.

[yttriums]

I think that's largely because people don't know how easy this can be

[Annihilite111]

The Spreadsheet.

Is this like the fermichem sheet? Sounds like a useful asset for us lazybones who cant be arsed to wrote things down

[DrAmazing343]

I'm signing up for more Botany today. My main goal is to hotbox the shit out of the Toxins test range, I think.