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, and a slime processor. Also included is a smartfridge modified to hold slime extracts within easy arm reach from the slime processor. These can be wrenched and moved. 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.

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 with a 25-35% chance of mutating each. 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.

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.

Population Control

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

If you need more extracts put one monkey in the disposal and 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! You might want to 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 one or more. 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?)

Select 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 them there, simply spray with water. Once the ones you don't want are dead, feed the remaining slimes, harvesting extracts as needed.

Do not worry, as long as you are regarded as a 'friend' (Which you should be, if you feed it and kept in sight) and they are not extremely hungry, the slimes should not feed or glomp you.

A slime wants to be your special friend

So you managed to piss it off, eh? Your safest bet here is to push it off (Help or Disarm Intent on the Slime) you and leg it, quite simply. Hide in a locker and yell for help if you can't get out of xenobiology itself.

Extract harvesting

Grab the dead slime, click on the slime processor and then click on it again to turn on the processor.

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 varies between 25% and 35%. 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

• Extracts creates a grey slime when injected with plasma, could be useful if you have to many slimes, but want to make sure you don't run out of them.
• Extracts creates three monkey-cubes when injected with blood.

Tier 1

Orange Slime

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

Purple Slime

• Extracts creates a bottle of slime steroid when injected with plasma, a potent chemical mix that will cause a slime to generate more extract. Useful when used on dark purple slimes for that plasma or grey slimes for monkeys.
• Extracts creates slime jelly when injected with sugar, a highly toxic substance.

Blue Slime

• Extracts creates frost oil when injected with plasma.

Metal Slime

• Extracts 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.
• Extracts 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

• Extracts 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

• Extracts creates a burst of cold when injected with plasma. Useful for countering those red slimes.

Silver Slime

• Extracts creates a small amount of random food when injected with plasma, bork bork bork. Expect anything from a robo-burger to death berries.
• Extracts creates a small amount of random drinks when injected with water, bork bork bork.

Tier 2.5

Bluespace Slime

• Extracts will, if injected with plasma, teleport anything in the room not nailed down to a random beacon in the world when injected with plasma.
• Extracts 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 is used in telescience and has some good research levels.

Sepia Slime

• Extracts creates a Camera when injected with plasma. How? SpessSlime Magic!
• Extracts creates some Film for a Camera when injected with blood.

Cerulean Slime

• Extracts 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.

Pyrite Slime

• Extracts creates some paint when injected with plasma. For the love of all that is holy, don't give it to the clown!

Tier 3

Red Slime

• Extracts creates Slime Glycerol when injected with plasma.
• Extracts makes nearby slimes rabid when injected with blood. Has some fun uses.

Green Slime

• Extracts creates one unit of mutation toxin when injected with plasma. Injecting yourself with it will turn you into a slime-(wo)man which results in the slimes never attacking you. 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.

Pink Slime

• Extracts 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

• Extracts 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!
• Extracts spawns one random mob when injected with blood. These mobs are not immediately hostile, but may be provoked by certain actions or if they encounter a construct or mech. NOW you might be able to fill xenobiology with actual xenomorphs without killing yourself!

Tier 4

Oil Slime

• Extracts creates a explosion after a moment when injected with Plasma.

Black Slime

• Extracts creates one unit of advanced mutation toxin when injected with plasma. Turns you into a baby slime.

Light Pink Slime

• Extracts creates a bottle of sentience potion when injected with plasma, a potent chemical mix that will bring human level intelligence to any animal, slime, or ape you feed it to.

Adamantine Slime

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

How to make an efficient slime farm

First of all: Get that extinguisher and kill one of the two baby grey slimes. This ensures that in the case your slimes die, you are assured to have a backup grey slime extract available to start over. Then, bring a monkey cube over and soak it in water, and place the monkey in disposals. Engage the disposal and watch as the slime eats the monkey. Do NOT enter the pen and bash the monkey, the only thing that will happen is slime will get less food. After the slime is done, try talking to him! Just say "Hello" and his number, or "Hello, slimes". If it 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.

Important detail: after feeding on a monkey, a slime may befriend the person who was the last one to grab or bump into a monkey. So don't put two monkeys in at the same time, since if one of them bumps another, the slime may consider it a friend and refuse to feed on it!

So You're a Traitor

Sadly, 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 turning you into a xeno or 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.

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.