I've never done anything with bees, what's the appeal?
- Thread starter Wizaerd
- Start date
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Dunno, it's just fun. One of the things I like to do irl is growing flowers - for some reason. It's nice to see something grow and prosper thanks to your effort.
This is similar I guess, kinda like a tamagochi, with genetics. So your smarts play a role too. It's challenging and nice. Worthwhile.
This is similar I guess, kinda like a tamagochi, with genetics. So your smarts play a role too. It's challenging and nice. Worthwhile.
Haven't done much with the bee's here either. I view them as a bit of micromanagement hell (rightly or wrongly) and since I run up to 10 quarries at a time into my raw resource storage facility ores really aren't a big deal. Nothing is really a big deal quite honestly after long enough doing that. Some point I'll tinker just because it'd be nice to have a steady source of materials that are located in the base itself for compactness reasons but otherwise their learning curve is rather high up front.
I kind of stayed away from the bee's myself, but I think I'm going to give it a try in the near future. I'd like to make some stained glass for my builds and that is the only way to get it done. I just got done watching Etho's episodes where he builds his bee factory and it was just interesting enough that I want to give it a try.
There are a few other nice perks that require bee products, too - using the rainmaker to start/stop rain, upgraded forestry backpacks, etc..
1. It's something new to fiddle and experiment with, and has a solid system to figure out.
2. Backpacks. It's like having a Heward's Handy Haversack once they're all done.
3. Resources. It's not the fastest, but it can supply a (mostly) steady low-output (or, I should say, low-density) stream of resources that doesn't tear up the landscape, and can circumvent the need for mob spawners. Mob spawners still have a higher output and yield experience, but you can get mob drops from bees.
4. Resources again. You can (infrequently) get a few things from bees that are otherwise difficult to obtain.
5. Mob spawners. Apparently. No where near Soul-Shards level, but we accidentally found species of bees that spawn mobs.
6. Giant Tanks of Liquid DNA look cool, and Liquid DNA itself is the topic of (nearly) endless jokes.
7. I'm not sure, but I think they're required for this tree-breeding I've passingly heard about and want to get into later. A big walnut orchard would be cool, especially if you can use walnuts for fuel. A power plant I worked for a while ago burned massive piles of walnut shells because they have great caloric density.
2. Backpacks. It's like having a Heward's Handy Haversack once they're all done.
3. Resources. It's not the fastest, but it can supply a (mostly) steady low-output (or, I should say, low-density) stream of resources that doesn't tear up the landscape, and can circumvent the need for mob spawners. Mob spawners still have a higher output and yield experience, but you can get mob drops from bees.
4. Resources again. You can (infrequently) get a few things from bees that are otherwise difficult to obtain.
5. Mob spawners. Apparently. No where near Soul-Shards level, but we accidentally found species of bees that spawn mobs.
6. Giant Tanks of Liquid DNA look cool, and Liquid DNA itself is the topic of (nearly) endless jokes.
7. I'm not sure, but I think they're required for this tree-breeding I've passingly heard about and want to get into later. A big walnut orchard would be cool, especially if you can use walnuts for fuel. A power plant I worked for a while ago burned massive piles of walnut shells because they have great caloric density.
Bees allow you to make a few cool items in forestry. large backpacks (45 slots vs 15 with normal backpacks), candles, stained glass. With extra bees installed, you can also make tool and armor wax dies to use in the thermoinic fabricator and save materials. Most of the cool forestry items can be made with the standard bees found in-world without having to worry about breeding. If you do get into breeding bees, you can make pretty much any resource in the game, including diamonds. Bees are also required to breed the new forestry trees and get all the cool wood colors.
There is even one bee (from Forestry), which will give you XP when standing nearby (Effect: Explorer).
bees, in short, offer renewable resources. In addition to the basic forestry stuff that lets you get backpacks and such, extra bees lets you make basically anything in the game. Ender pearls, emeralds, gunpowder even diamond can all be renewed through bees.
For me it's mostly just the fun and challenge of collecting/breeding all of the different species. The 28 bees from Forestry are a bit underwhelming in terms of resources you can get from them (woven backpacks are probably the most notable), but the ones from ExtraBees and ThaumicBees ultimately look quite a bit more useful. I'm particularly interested in having bees produce copper for me, since I'm not finding an adequate amount of it from caving, and my only other options are Thaumcraft transmutation and UU-matter. Bees are a lot less expensive than either of those, they just take more initial investment to get the breeds you need. Getting Thaumcraft shards from bees is also quite appealing.