What bees require special biomes?

[Recon]

In my bee breeding efforts, I find the most irritating thing to be when I know a mutation should occur but for some reason it just doesn't, simply because I'm breeding in the wrong biome. An example would be the Ocean bee which can only be bred in an actual vanilla ocean biome (the apiary does not have to be underwater). Or the Rural bee which can only be bred in a Plains biome. My understanding is also that some species can only be bred on a certain specific day of the year?!?

Since the game doesn't actually indicate these things and the only way to find out is to happen upon a wiki article after numerous frustrated attempts (and wasted mutigens) to get that dang mutation to work, is there a master list somewhere of all the "special" bees which have unique circumstances required in order to breed them?

 

[Hydra]

Funny, I ran into exactly the same issue. Currently the best bet is the FTB wiki that is somewhat up to date in this regard (not the unofficial ftbwiki.org), but other than that there isn't. Atleast nowadays NEI shows you which bees breed into what.

 

[Recon]

Indeed, NEI does give this now, which really changes the game of bees if you think about it. The whole "bee database" bit with the "unknown" mutations possible from whatever combinations. I actually manually did that for about a month, and discovered quite a few mutations purely from trying. I even built a spreadsheet to mark down combinations which I had already tried, in an attempt to locate the ones which the database said should be there.

Now with NEI, it seems kind of pointless to try and do it that way, and just go look up the kind of bee you want and breed it directly (which is HEAPS faster I have to say). It doesn't take all that long to get Emerald and Distilled if you give it a focused effort. These are clearly two of the most important bees. Both require locating a water hive, which is very cool, in that you can't typically get it too soon.

Last night I discovered how amazing the Thaumcraft frames are. Had I known that three necrotic frames will kill a bee in one time tick, I would have skipped making dozens of chocolate frames and gone straight to this for my early bee efforts! Don't even really need Alvearies for mutations once you got the Metabolic frames. Very different game than it used to be.

 

[Yosomith]

Indeed, NEI does give this now, which really changes the game of bees if you think about it. The whole "bee database" bit with the "unknown" mutations possible from whatever combinations. I actually manually did that for about a month, and discovered quite a few mutations purely from trying. I even built a spreadsheet to mark down combinations which I had already tried, in an attempt to locate the ones which the database said should be there.

Now with NEI, it seems kind of pointless to try and do it that way, and just go look up the kind of bee you want and breed it directly (which is HEAPS faster I have to say). It doesn't take all that long to get Emerald and Distilled if you give it a focused effort. These are clearly two of the most important bees. Both require locating a water hive, which is very cool, in that you can't typically get it too soon.

Last night I discovered how amazing the Thaumcraft frames are. Had I known that three necrotic frames will kill a bee in one time tick, I would have skipped making dozens of chocolate frames and gone straight to this for my early bee efforts! Don't even really need Alvearies for mutations once you got the Metabolic frames. Very different game than it used to be.

Oblivion Frames are also really good for bee breeding, similar to the necrotic frames (kills in one tick) but doesn't draw from the aura, which I think necrotic frames do. Downside is you only get them from dungeon chests.

 

[MilConDoin]

Oblivion Frames are also really good for bee breeding, similar to the necrotic frames (kills in one tick) but doesn't draw from the aura, which I think necrotic frames do. Downside is you only get them from dungeon chests.

The frames from Magic Bees don't drain the aura anymore since the renaming Thaumic Bees -> Magic Bees happened.

 

[Hydra]

Oblivion Frames are also really good for bee breeding, similar to the necrotic frames (kills in one tick) but doesn't draw from the aura, which I think necrotic frames do. Downside is you only get them from dungeon chests.

And spoils bags. Which get dropped by mobs from an MFR autospawner.

It gives a needed speedup in getting the species you want. I'm nowhere in being 'complete' with all the species and I've spend days on it on our current world. Making stuff take longer in 1.6.2 is a stupid change IMHO. It's already very time-consuming.

 

[Recon]

Holy cow, just LOOK at these crazy conditions!

http://wiki.feed-the-beast.com/Ethereal_Bee

Special Notes

• The Windy Bee can only be bred, if a block of vanilla Leaves is under the housing.
• The Watery Bee can only be bred, if a block of Water is under the housing.
• The Earthen Bee can only be bred, if a block of Bricks is under the housing.
• The Firey Bee can only be bred, if a block of still Lava is under the housing.
• The Praecantatio Bee can only be bred, if a Vis Crystal cluster is under the housing.
• The Vis Bee can only be bred in proximity (75m) to a Node.
• The Wispy Bee can only be bred around the new moon.

This is what I'm talking about, as the game does NOT give any indication about this stuff. Without a wiki, you are doomed never to achieve any of it.

 

[thephoenixlodge]

Actually, the game does give indications of these. Use the Escritoire to get research notes; these list all the specific conditions, as will the apiarists database upon using the notes, it's what it's there for.

 

[Recon]

oh weird. I haven't heard of Escritoire before, thanks

 

[Recon]

Well. I finally got Aura bees! Now I can grab the "Fastest Productivity" serum from them. Yay! Its the only bee in the game which has this as far as I know.

 

[Airship]

sorry about the slight necro, but I'm wondering, how does these special conditions translate to using alvearies? is it enough to keep a block of the required material underneath a corner of the alveary, or does it need to be under the center block? Or do I need to place a 3x3 square beneath the entire alveary?

 

[JarinArenos]

These requirements should ONLY apply to the initial mutation from the parent species. Once you have a purebred drone and princess of the species, the special requirements don't matter anymore.

 

[Zealstarwind]

These requirements should ONLY apply to the initial mutation from the parent species. Once you have a purebred drone and princess of the species, the special requirements don't matter anymore.

This man has words, they are correct. When breeding it can be under any part of the alveary as long as it's there. 1.4.7 was where I learned my bee breeding and that... that was utter hell. The wiki's weren't really helpful at all which is what made me cranky on many occasions. I've also found 1.5.2 to be harder to get the bees and sometimes a bit more complicated but with a bit of work and a great gaming partner I've beenable to learn from what I've done and fix what I messed up in last time.

 

[JarinArenos]

Oblivion Frames are also really good for bee breeding, similar to the necrotic frames (kills in one tick) but doesn't draw from the aura, which I think necrotic frames do. Downside is you only get them from dungeon chests.

One of the bee mod plugins (extra bees maybe? Possibly magic bees) allows you to craft Oblivion frames, but it's rather involved, requiring significant resources from two different bee lines, INCLUDING the draconic species, which requires breeding and pollinating near a dragon egg.

 

[PhantomRage]

One of the bee mod plugins (extra bees maybe? Possibly magic bees) allows you to craft Oblivion frames, but it's rather involved, requiring significant resources from two different bee lines, INCLUDING the draconic species, which requires breeding and pollinating near a dragon egg.

Its Magic Bees, and yes, oblivion frames do consume a dragon egg as one of the components to make them. Draconic Bees can create parts for the creation of a dragon egg (Bees ftw!). I stick toward using spoils bag though, as they are much easier imo to obtain
If you are looking for something that might reproduce the effect, I would go with necrotic or chocolate (not as good as it once was).

 

[Zealstarwind]

Its Magic Bees, and yes, oblivion frames do consume a dragon egg as one of the components to make them. Draconic Bees can create parts for the creation of a dragon egg (Bees ftw!). I stick toward using spoils bag though, as they are much easier imo to obtain
If you are looking for something that might reproduce the effect, I would go with necrotic or chocolate (not as good as it once was).

..but back in non-silly ftb where spoils bags dont exist getting them dragon eggs is harder then normal but not THAT hard. Certain Bees can help you manufacture them better but all in all I dont even need them, I've already done all the grunt work on all the bees I needed.. getting an oblivion frame now would just be overkill which kinda makes me question needing a dragon egg in the first place.. besides looking cool of course.

 

[Roachy]

I can't help but comment that the original question is still unanswered, except for a resounding "eh, not really."

I too have been meticulously keeping a spreadsheet to keep straight all the mutation combinations I've tried. I decided when I first started on bees that I would try to do it the "proper" or "in-game" way, without simply looking up the combinations to instantly get what I want. I knew it was going to be a haul, but so far things have been going well.

It's been helpful using deductive logic to eliminate many potential combinations. e.g.:
- If you've found a species' only further mutation, then you can eliminate the need to breed it with any other species ever again, or
- if a species' only further mutations require a bee you have yet to discover, then you know it doesn't need to be bred with any of the species you have already discovered.

However the mutator alvearies that I'm using are located in a vanilla normal/normal Ocean biome, thus all of the possibilities that I'm eliminating manually (i.e. breeding with 100% mutation chance and seeing that no mutation occurred) must necessarily come with the caveat that they could still possibly work in a different biome.

I already pushed myself to do everything without looking up the mutation recipes, and that was more than I really wanted to do to begin with. I am definitely not going to retry ALL of these eliminated mutations AGAIN in various biomes. But I also don't want to give up all the work I've done so far and just start looking at recipes. From all of my wiki and forum readings, I've gathered that there's not actually very many mutations that do require specific biomes. So the obvious option is just to exempt biome-specific mutations from my "don't look it up" policy. But therein lies the problem. I can only do that if I know which species require specific biomes to be discovered by mutation, and that's going to require this mystical master list.

This data IS out there, but not in a spoiler-free form. As far as I can tell the only way to find out these biome-specific mutations is to look through ALL of the mutations and note down which require specific biomes, but a that point, you've already looked up the mutation. It's a catch-22.