Slime Rancher Beginner's Guide

Slime Rancher, a title that was initially released for Steam Early Access back in January 2016 is now finally released on Xbox One and Steam. In this game, you raise a farm of the native animals, Slimes and work towards building up your ranch by exploring and selling off your products. There is a lot to this game so here's a Slime Rancher beginner guide to help teach you what you need to know to get started with your very own slime ranch. 

If you're interested in more Slime Rancher content then you should consider checking out some of our coverage of the sequel Slime Rancher 2 over at the official game page. 

Slime Rancher Beginner Guide Overview

Your goal on The Ranch will be to travel the land collecting Slimes and supplies and returning to your base with them. Once you have collected Slimes you're able to feed them rewarding you with that Slime's Plort. A Plort is a byproduct of slime eating. After collecting these Plorts you're able to transfer them via the Range Exchange to earn yourself Newbucks, a currency you can then use to upgrade your farm and your equipment. The further you progress the more valuable Slimes you'll be able to farm.

All the Slimes of the Rainbow

Across Far, Far Range there are many different types of Slimes that you will encounter. By collecting these Slimes, feeding and even breeding them you'll be able to start your life as a rancher. While you will encounter many Slimes these are some that you might see closest to your ranch.

Most Slimes are able to eat the Plort of another slime to become a Largo, a combination of both. When combined the newly created Slime will gain the diet and characteristics of the Slimes it came from. For example, a Phosphor-Tabby Largo will be able to eat fruit and meat, have a Phosphor's glowing body with cat ears, but will also disappear when exposed to sunlight. Be careful because if you feed a third type of Plort to a Largo then it will become the Tarr, a sludge-like slime who will terrorize your ranch eating all of your Slimes turning them into Tarr's

Slime Rancher Beginner Guide: Farming Equipment

Before you start collecting Slimes from across the land you'll need to make sure that you have a place to keep them. Across your ranch, you have various plots of land that you can spend Newbucks on to turn into useful features. The plots available are:

Corral - This is a basic cage that needs to be created to keep your Slimes in. You can upgrade them in a variety of ways giving them higher walls, a roof, sun protection (important if you want to raise Phosphor Slimes), relaxing music, plort collectors and auto-feeders.

Garden - In the Garden you can deposit a fruit or vegetable and begin to grow your own instead of relying on venturing out to attempt to collect them. Here upgrades applied can speed up the growth of your crops allowing you to in turn generate more plorts.

Coop - The Coop is where you can keep all of your chickens to feed to your meat hungry Slimes. As long as you keep at least one Roostro in a Coop with other Henhens they'll continue raising more Chickadoos to keep your supply coming. Upgrades can be purchased to speed up the process.

Silo - If you find you're generating more items than you can carry then a Silo can be used to store these items. When first created it can only store one type of item but with more upgrades you can hold up to four.

Incinerator - You can use this to not only destroy any items that you don't need, but it can also be used on Tarr to help save your farm in case a Largo gets too curious about something it shouldn't be eating.

Upgrade Yourself!

Your farm isn't all that needs upgrading though. With more time spent farming you'll be able to upgrade various parts of your Vacpack, the device you use to collect Slimes and other items. Purchasing these upgrades will allow you to increase your maximum health, stamina, running speed, and carrying capacity. Some upgrades are more useful for navigating the environment such as the jetpack, a recommendation if you want to explore more of the environment.

The Great Plort Exchange

By now you know you need to collect Slimes, feed them to earn Plorts, and then dump your Plorts into the Range Exchange but you need to also be paying attention to the price that you can sell Plorts for. Much like a real life exchange if you sell too many Pink Plorts then there will be an oversaturation in the market dropping the price of them from their base 7 Newbucks price. The flip side of this though is that while some Plorts may be dropping in sell price others will be rising. It's good to start working on a healthy rotation of Largo Slimes to ensure that you're always able to feed your Range Exchange what it wants.

Now you should be ready to begin your farming adventure. There is more that will become available to you as you progress through the world so don't get worried if you encounter something that isn't in this guide, just take these Slime Rancher beginner tips with you and continue on. Good luck on your endeavor and happy ranching!