Slime Rancher 2 is the much awaited sequel that sees you step back into the shoes of Beatrix LeBeau as she once more takes on the task of exploring unique lands and building a ranch to house the local slimes. There are three new islands to explore, secrets to uncover and a host of new slimes to find.
The basics of the game will be familiar to fans of the first title, but while some things remain the same others have changed. These tips will help slime ranchers new and old to find their feet on Rainbow Island, the beautiful new home of Bea.
Slime Rancher 2 is currently in early access. This means that some information may change over time. We will endeavour to keep you up to date as the game develops.
Check The Settings
Slime Rancher has only a handful of settings, but they can make a huge difference to the game, especially if you just want to focus on collecting slimes, rather than facing threats. Here's what you can change and the consequences:
- Tutorial: When enabled this will guide you through the basics of exploration, your Jetvac, and managing your ranch. If you've never played before it's worth enabling as it's helpful without being too intrusive and explains concepts including plorts, tarrs, and slime science.
- Tarrs: Tarr slimes occur when any slime eats two plorts that differ from its own. Tarr slimes are hostile and will consume food, slimes, and even ranchers who are in the way. If enabled they can also become very common very easily, since many areas contain three or more types of slime. You can only get rid of them by throwing them into no-go zones, getting them wet, or waiting until they eat everything in sight, turn on each other and explode.
- Feral: Feral slimes are those which have not been fed recently. While not as hostile as tarrs, they will attack you on sight, and can damage your health. While you cannot die, you will be sent back to the ranch and have your inventory wiped, so there are consequences for being cornered by them.
- Player Damage: There is no fall damage in the game, but you can take damage from feral slimes, tarrs, and hazards such as fire. This modifier allows you to set damage at 0.5x, 1.0x, 1.25x or 1.5x.
If playing for the first time we recommend disabling Tarrs and Feral slimes. Tarrs especially can overwhelm you easily and make the early game frustrating. It's so easy to have multiple save files that it's worth getting to grips with the basics before introducing these added dangers.
Start Off Slowly
When you first begin to explore there is a huge temptation to try and collect everything as fast as you can. The slimes are adorable, and your instinct will be to bring every single one back to your conservatory immediately. However, not all slimes are easy to contain and if you try to go too fast you'll set yourself up for failure.
You need to make sure you have suitable pens available before you start bringing all the slimes to your yard or there will be chaos. It's also a good idea to have a reasonable food supply, so you can keep your slimes happy once you've relocated them. Both these things are especially important if you have feral and/or tarr slimes enabled.
Go On Plort Collecting Missions
There is a lot of naturally generated food around Rainbow Island which means a lot of naturally generated plorts. While it's not as convenient to go and collect plorts from around the island, rather than in your ranch, you'll find it faster than you may expect. Pink and cotton slimes are in huge packs close by, and are joined by Phosphors when night falls. A little further South you'll also find tabby slimes.
While tarrs can get overwhelming at night when phosphors are introduced, there are large amounts of plorts to be gathered. Collecting a stack of each kind before circling back to sell them is a good way to make Nubucks early on and enable you to set up a basic ranch.
Even if you can't yet house every slime you can still collect valuable plorts from the islands. An upgraded vacpack capacity, a water canon and a daytime adventure is the easiest way to do this.
Feed The Gordos
Each island has a handful of gordos. These are large slimes who stay in one location and require feeding quite a number of items in order to become full and explode. The number of items required varies but on the initial island is around the 20-25 mark. You'll want to feed both the pink and cotton gordo slimes on the main island as soon as you can.
Both these gordos are hiding the portals to the other islands. Once you've unlocked them you can explore further and collect more valuable slimes and their plorts, increasing your profit and allowing you to expand faster. Just make sure you are equipped to deal with slimes and ferals, since they are both more abundant on the other islands.
Use Largos To Make Life Easier
If you allow a slime to eat the plort of a different slime it will turn into a largo, a large slime that combines the properties of the original and the slime whose plort it ate. Largo slimes will produce two plorts - one for each slime type - when fed, instead of one. This can make collecting plorts much easier.
When slimes are combined they also combine diets, meaning you can avoid having to feed slimes items that are difficult to collect. Use this knowledge to collect a wide range of plorts in a smaller area by combining to make life easier and more profitable.
Honey slimes are great candidates to make into largos. They eat nectar by default which currently cannot be farmed on your ranch so combining them with a slime that eats meat, fruit or veggies will make farming their plorts much easier.
Play The Plort Market
Every day the plort market changes its prices. If you've been selling a lot of the same type of plort you can expect to see its price drop the next day, since it works on a supply and demand system. This means you need variation in plorts to maximise profit.
Cycling which type of plorts you sell each day will help you get the most for them. Every plort will have arrows beside it to show you how the price has changed. Make sure to sell when prices are high to get the most out of your plorts.
Prioritise Jetvac Upgrades
This time around the jetvac is upgraded using plorts and science materials. Due to this the first upgrade you'll need is the one that allows you to collect the aforementioned materials. After this is completed take a look at what your biggest issues are before you start to upgrade.
If tarrs are an issue, you'll want to be able to shoot water at them and if ferals are killing you then increasing your health is a good shout. The jetpack is also incredibly useful as it makes reaching different slimes much easier. It will also make finding and activating the beacons that uncover the map easier as well.
Plan Your Ranch Carefully
As you start to house more slimes it's a good idea to plan our enclosures. One upgraded farm patch can keep 1-2 corrals of slimes fed, depending on the numbers. Making sure you group together slimes with the same diet and a steady supply of food will help you keep them fed much easier.
When making corrals it's also important to make sure you can upgrade them sufficiently. Slimes that bounce high will escape without high walls and a net, while slimes like phosphors cannot survive in regular light. You don't want to relocate slimes from a far away island, only to have them escape and jump off the nearby cliffs.