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!
Home on the Range
As a Xenobiologist, you’re not going to get out much ever. You’re the most autonomous area on the entire station if you know what you're doing, and nobody ever bothers you (usually).
First, get familiar with your new home.
The workplace includes a couple of closets with bio-hazard suits, a monkey recycling machine, a slime processor, and an All-In-One Grinder with several sheets of plasma. Also included is a smartfridge modified to hold slime extracts within easy arm reach from the slime processor, a wrench which can unanchor all the machinery (so you can reorganize your workspace), a few containment units and a disposal unit that leads to space.
The lab also contains a slime containment area with pens, some of which start with a baby grey slime. There is also a special containment pen that's larger and more secure than the rest. This is ideal for containing and experimenting on other alien lifeforms should the station manage to capture/produce one. Usually though, it's just for storing extra slimes. You can read more about your workplace for each map by clicking here.
Slime Console
Due to CentCom budget cuts, on most stations these consoles are no longer readily available on shift start, Boxstation has one available. Circuit boards to build them can now be printed in research after researching bluespace technology. It is recommended that you do so, as it makes your job roughly a hundred million times easier. With it you can move slimes, kill them, feed them, and process dead monkeys with mere clicks of a button!
It's strongly advised grabbing the wrench (usually located next to the shield projectors) and moving the fridge and slime processor within close range of the console you're using as to cut out a lot of unnecessary movement.
Safety Advice
Before you start breeding the slimes, make sure you have a fire extinguisher in your backpack. You'll rarely meet a ravenous, hungry slime if you're using the console, but it still happens and having an extinguisher could very well be the difference between a dead slime and a dead you.
If you aren't using the console, then this goes doubly so as you'll be near a lot of slimes, usually before you cull their numbers, and while they're normally docile towards you whom are effectively their "God", they occasionally grow resentful for their species' exploitation and try to kill you for no particular reason. In that case, kill the blasphemers with a clear conscience, DEUS VULT!
Breeding slimes
Feeding
If you are using the console, simply insert the monkey cubes from the boxes into the console. The console can now teleport monkeys directly inside the slime pens! If you are not using the console, then use the monkey cube on a water source and feed it to the slimes using the pen disposals units. Slimes need one monkey to become an adult and another to split.
- You can send both monkeys at once into a baby slime's pen, so you don't have to think about it until they split.
- Do NOT enter the pen and bash the monkey, the only thing that will happen is slime will get less food.
Once they're fed enough, after a while the adult slime will split into 4 baby slimes.
Culling
Time to kill your darlings. Decide which baby slimes you don't want to keep.
If you are using the console then proceed to warp them up. The console can hold up to 5 slimes at a time. Teleport them onto the kill pen; it's the one with the blue floor, connected to a freezer. The sharp cold will kill the slimes quickly: when they stop moving they're dead and you can pick them up for the next step.
If you are not using the console then get out your fire extinguisher and blast the slime to death. You should refill the extinguisher at a water tank after every use. You could also choose to drag the slime into the kill pen - just make sure you're wearing warm clothing!
Grinding
Collect the dead slimes and drop them above, or next to, the slime processor. It will automatically suck in the slimes; when it's done, activate it to grind them. It will, after a while, drop a slime core of the respective color for each slime grinded.
- Upgrading the grinder will make it go faster and give more cores per slime.
- A Bio Bag from any biohazard locker can mass-collect slime cores and easily drop them into the fridge for easy access.
Friendship and Slimes
If you've been following the guide and diligently breeding and culling the slimes, you may have noticed that while the slimes very quickly attack and eat the monkeys you offer them, they have little to no interest in eating you. This is because you've become their "friend", a status that can be earned by simply being the one sending them monkeys. To check if slimes are friendly, say "Hello slimes"; all the slimes that consider you their friend will say hello.
There are some commands you can issue as a slime's friend, including "follow", "stop" and "attack". Keep in mind that these commands are exceedingly finicky, and are rarely used for a reason. Slimes will not attack other slimes or friends.
Defending against slimes
So either by you not feeding the slime enough, the slime being an dick, or reasons, a slime has tried to kill you. If the slime is a baby, this is annoying. If the slime is an adult, you may die if you don't know what you're doing.
Slimes have two attacks: A glomp that does brute damage with adults dealing more and a chance to stun, and the far more dangerous feeding attack which deals cellular damage and empowers the slime, a rare and very difficult to heal type of damage. If a slime starts feeding on you, wrestle it off with disarm intent and spray it down with an extinguisher (You DID get an extinguisher, right?) when you get it off until it dies. After that, hobble off to medbay for healing.
While this is generally more a tip for you when NOT playing Xenobiologist, in the event of a very rare slime outbreak, perhaps of sentient slimes, get an extinguisher and hide. A horde of angry slimes can multiply fast, and while slimes are normally unintelligent and docile, outbreaks of them are nearly always done on purpose by someone wanting to destroy the station, and are thus paired with usage of red extracts enraging slimes and light pink or black extracts making very deadly intelligent slimes. Pray that the AI is able to stop them, and that the xenobiologist who released the slimes doesn't follow up with something worse.
Slime Mutations
There are a lot of 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.
Every time a slime splits by being fed enough, it has a chance to mutate based on it's individual mutation chance, a stat discovered by taking a slime scanner from the fridge and using it on the slime. The mutation chance is usually around 5%, so you will have to rely on miners to fetch the rarer colors for you. Think carefully about what colors you want and which slimes to keep. If you're breeding greys for monkeys, you'll want less chance of mutations, and if you want to get adamantines you will want to increase it!
NOTE: You can increase a slime's chance of mutation by injecting it with slime mutation potions from red slimes and decrease it with slime stability potions from blue slimes.
This flowchart shows the results of each slime's mutations when splitting, with options labeled "2x" having twice the chance of occurring.
Formulas
All injections require one unit of reagent. Dropper is your friend. You can also dilute your plasma by, for example, filling a beaker with 40u of water and 10u of plasma; a syringe will collect exactly one unit of plasma this way (and the water doesn't react).
Luminescent effects are a result of the slime person mutation into a Luminescents absorbing said core.
Tier 0
Grey Slime
- Extract creates a grey slime when injected with plasma. Useful as a backup grey slime.
- Extract creates three monkey-cubes when injected with blood. Useful if you want to do your job for more than five minutes.
- Extract creates Epinephrine when injected with water.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a monkey cube into the user's hand.
- Major: Spawns a grey baby slime.
Tier 1
Orange Slime
- Extract creates a small plasma fire when injected with plasma. Also increases the pressure of the air a fair amount.
- Extract creates capsaicin (pepper-spray) when injected with blood. Usable as a 'ghetto stun' if you can find a good way to apply it to to your
victimtest subject. - Extract creates a small cloud of smoke when injected with water. It'll carry any other reagent already inside the slime extract.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Infuses you with capsaicin, heating the user.
- Major: Spawns smoke around the user. The smoke will purge chemicals in the user's body and infuse itself with them.
Purple Slime
- Extract creates a bottle of slime steroid when injected with plasma. Slime steroid is a potent chemical mix that will cause a slime to produce one more extract when processed, for a maximum of five. Useful when used on dark purple slimes for that plasma or grey slimes for monkeys. The extract only works on live slimes.
- Extract creates regenerative jelly when injected with blood. Regenerative jelly is a chemical that gradually heals all types of damage.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Restores blood volume and nutrition.
- Major: Gives some regenerative jelly, healing the user.
Blue Slime
- Extract creates frost oil when injected with plasma.
- Extract creates slime stabilizer when injected with blood. Reduces a slime's mutation chance by 15%, and carries through across generations.
- Extract creates foam when injected with water. It'll carry any other reagent already inside the slime extract.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Cures cellular damage, purges the dna, and reduces radiation on the user.
- Major: Creates foam from the user, infusing itself with the chemicals in the user's body.
Metal Slime
- Extract creates 5 sheets of plasteel and 15 sheets of metal when injected with plasma. Expect the roboticists to want the products. Grinding plasteel will generate plasma and iron, making it a perfect substitute to dark purple slimes.
- Extract creates 5 sheets of reinforced glass and 15 sheets of glass when injected with water.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Creates 5 sheets of glass in the user's hand.
- Major: Creates 5 sheets of metal in the user's hand.
Tier 2
Yellow Slime
- Extracts become 10k Charge Powercells when injected with plasma. These cells are self-charging, and very useful for cyborgs or APCs, for example. Valuable for R&D.
- Extract 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. They can be squeezed to increase the light emitted.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Temporarily increases the user's light range and intensity.
- Major: Emits a short-ranged EMP.
Dark Purple Slime
- Extract creates 3 sheets of Solid Plasma when injected with plasma. Yessir, NT can link anything to the production of plasma. Also useful for further experimenting.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a plasma bar in the user's hand.
- Major: Spawns a cloud of plasma around the user.
Dark Blue Slime
- Extract creates a large burst of cold when injected with plasma. Useful for countering those red slimes.
- Extract creates a three-use chill potion when injected with water, which fireproofs anything it's used on. Be a firebug without looking like one! Miners can make good use of this, as it will make them storm-proof.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Infuses the user with Frost Oil and Cryoxadone.
- Major: Spawns extremely cold air around the user.
Silver Slime
- Extract creates a small amount of random food when injected with plasma, bork bork bork. Expect anything from a roburger to death berries.
- Extract creates a small amount of random drinks when injected with water, bork bork bork.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a random drink in the user's hand.
- Major: Spawns a random food in the user's hand.
Tier 2.5
Bluespace Slime
- Extract will, if injected with plasma, spawn a Bluespace Crystal. They will teleport you when crushed in your hand and teleport anyone you throw it at. It also has some good research levels.
- Extract will, if injected with blood, create 25 Bluespace Floor Tiles, which speed up movement drastically.
- Extract will, if injected with water, spawn a Bluespace radio potion. Use it on a sentient animal to let them speak on the radio!
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Randomly teleports the user a few tiles away.
- Major: Saves the user's position on the first use. On the second use, it will warp the user back on that position. The extract can change user in the meantime.
Sepia Slime
- Extract stops time when injected with plasma. How?
SpessSlime Magic! - Extract creates some Film and a Camera when injected with water. Fuck this is so useless.
- Extract creates 25 Sepia Floor Tiles when injected with blood. They slow movement speed above them.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a camera in the user's hand.
- Major: Stops time for a few seconds around the user.
Cerulean Slime
- Extract creates a bottle of extract enhancer when injected with plasma. When used on a extract it adds one use to it. You can start laughing madly now.
- Extract creates a one-use blueprint when injected with blood. Renaming an area with it will turn the floor blue. Renaming an area to Xenobiology Lab will let the console work on that area.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Infuses the user with salbutamol, making them able to survive without air for some time.
- Major: Spawns a large amount of breathable air around the user.
Pyrite Slime
- Extract creates a can of paint when injected with plasma. For the love of all that is holy,
don'tgive it to the clown! - Extract creates a random crayon when injected with blood.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a crayon in the user's hand.
- Major: Spawns a spraycan in the user's hand.
Tier 3
Red Slime
- Extract creates a bottle of slime mutation potion when injected with plasma. Makes slimes 12% more likely to mutate, the opposite of the slime stabilizer.
- Extract makes nearby slimes rabid when injected with blood. Has some fun uses.
- Extract creates a bottle of speed potion when injected with water. The speed potion will negate slowdown from any item of clothing or vehicle it is applied to.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Infuses the user with Ephedrine, greatly increasing their speed temporarily.
- Major: Enrages slimes around the user.
Green Slime
- Extract creates some slime mutation toxin when injected with plasma. Having at least 4u in your system will eventually turn you into a random jellyperson. They have several pros and cons, but what is important to xenobiology is that slimes will never attack you and your blood is no longer valid for blood-based reactions, as it is replaced by slime jelly. Ingesting more slime mutation toxin when you're already a jellyperson will turn you into another random subspecies.
- Injecting the extract with radium creates some lizard mutation toxin instead, which will turn whoever is injected with it into a lizardperson.
- Injecting it with blood creates human mutation toxin, which turns whoever is injected with it into a human.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Turns the user back into a human.
- Major: Turns the user into another slime subspecies.
Pink Slime
- Extract creates a bottle of docility potion when injected with plasma, a potent chemical mix that will nullify a slime's hunger, causing it to become docile and tame, and will let you name it. You too can have your own pet, just like the HoP!
- Extract creates a bottle of gender changing potion when injected with blood, which changes the gender of any living, gendered thing it is used on.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Switches the user's gender.
- Major: Temporarily pacifies creatures around the user, making them nonviolent for some time.
Gold Slime
- Extract spawns five random dangerous hostile mobs when injected with plasma.
- Extract spawns three random dangerous mobs when injected with blood. These mobs are not immediately hostile, but may be provoked by certain actions, proximity to other creatures (such as your slimes) or if they encounter a construct or mech.
- Extract spawns one random friendly critter when injected with water. Now you can fill xenobiology with mobs even if you're a giant pussy!
See here for the list of summonable mobs.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a friendly mob.
- Major: Spawns a dangerous mob. If the user is on harm intent at the moment of use, the mob will be hostile.
Tier 4
Oil Slime
- Extract creates an explosion after a moment when injected with plasma.
- Extract creates Corn Oil when injected with blood.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: User vomits slippery oil.
- Major: User violently explodes.
Black Slime
- Extract creates some advanced mutation toxin when injected with plasma. Turns you, or others, into a sentient grey baby slime. Beware, slimes are still not harmless. This mutation can be prevented with frost oil, if you are quick enough. Acts instantly on slimepeople.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Turns the user into a slime.
- Major: Turns the user into a shadowperson.
Light Pink Slime
- Extract creates a bottle of sentience potion when injected with plasma, a potent chemical mix that will bring human level intelligence to any animal, slime, monster or generally active thing you feed it to. Make Ian sentient! Create an army of gold slime minions! The possibilities are limited only by your own deviousness and the number of ghosts in the round.
- Extract will spawn a simple mob renaming potion when injected with water.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Spawns a slime docility potion.
- Major: Spawns a sentience potion.
Adamantine Slime
- Extract creates an adamantine bar when injected with Plasma. It can be sold at cargo for a high amount of credits, or it can be used inhand to craft a golem shell. Golem shells can then be finished with ten sheets of any material, which will affect the golem's properties. After completion, a ghost can possess the shell to spawn as a golem. It will follow the orders of who finishes the shell above anything else, and inherit conversion antagonist status, such as cult, from their owner.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Temporarily increases the user's armor, reducing overall damage taken.
- Major: Turns the user into an adamantine golem.
Special Slimes
Rainbow Slime
To attain this rare slime you must breed a slime with a 100% mutation chance!
- Extract will spawn a random slime when injected with less than five units of plasma.
- Extract will explode into randomly-colored slime cores when injected with at least five units of plasma.
- Extract will explode into randomly-colored slime cores with water, plasma, and blood in them when injected with slime jelly. This will trigger their reactions unpredictably and chaotically, and almost certainly cause mayhem wherever it happens.
- Extract will generate a mind transference potion when injected with blood. You can use it to transfer your mind into a creature. This is not reversible and will result in your old body's instant death.
- Extract will spawn a flight potion when injected with 5u of Holy water and 5u Uranium.
- Luminescent Effects
- Minor: Changes the user's color randomly.
- Major: Spawns a random slime core.
Crossbreeding
The powerful crossbreeding that gifts you with godlike power! You need an adult slime which is the "base" and 10 slime cores of the same type, which are the "effect".
For example, you have an adult green slime and you add 10 yellow cores. That makes a Green Charged Core which can be activated in hand and mutates you to a slime person, letting you choose which strain to turn into. Also these special slimes are normal sized items. They fit in backpacks.
Slime cores: Orange
Activation: Fill it with 10u plasma, and then click it in your hand.
Base Slime | Description | |
---|---|---|
Grey | Produces a hungry, faster slime that will follow your orders. | |
Orange | Makes a burst of pepper spray smoke. Careful, or you'll also be affected. | |
Purple | Creates an injector of regenerative jelly and methamphetamine. | |
Blue | Briefly freezes the flooring in a large radius, and decreases the body temperature of everyone in that radius but the user. | |
Metal | Instantly destroys walls that are next to the user. | |
Yellow | Electrocutes nearby creatures, except the user. | |
Dark Purple | Makes a burst of plasma gas. | |
Dark Blue | Creates a puff of frost oil smoke, chilling everything touched by it. Gives the user cryoxadone, as well! | |
Silver | Spawns foods that have slime jelly in them. Only half of the foods have a tell for it, until eaten. | |
Bluespace | Teleports anyone directly next to you as if they were hit with a bluespace crystal. | |
Sepia | Creates a Sepia-Tinted Camera, a special, one-use camera that stops time for 5 seconds where it takes a picture. | |
Cerulean | Creates an extract duplication potion, which copies a normal extract, as well as its extra uses. | |
Pyrite | Overloads and shatters all lights in the room, as if the lighting was overridden in the APC. | |
Red | Akin to the normal red extract, but also makes those slimes hostile to their friends. | |
Green | You grow a slightly lower damage armblade in the hand you used the extract in. | |
Pink | Makes a small beaker with 5 units of synthpax in it, for manual application. | |
Gold | Creates a number of hostile creatures that will not attack the user. | |
Oil | Explodes after a few seconds. It has the same radius as normal, but does more damage. | |
Black | Temporarily transforms you into a slime, with the ability to transform back at will once. | |
Light Pink | Gives everyone in sight a bit of Pax, bringing combat to a halt for a few moments. | |
Adamantine | Creates the Adamantine Shield, a large shield that blocks most attacks, but makes you much slower, and takes both hands. | |
Rainbow | Creates the Rainbow Knife, a transparent, rainbow-glowing kitchen knife that does a completely random type of damage per attack. |
Slime cores: Yellow
Activation: Use it in your hand.
Base Slime | Description | |
---|---|---|
Grey | Produces a slime revival potion, bringing a slime back from the dead. | |
Orange | Makes a large burst of flame for a brief moment. | |
Purple | Creates a packet of 15 units of Omnizine. | |
Blue | Creates a potion that instantly neuters the mutation chance for a slime. | |
Metal | Spawns 25 sheets of metal and 10 sheets of plasteel. | |
Yellow | Creates a charged slime cell with twice the capacity, and it auto-recharges 1.5 times faster. | |
Dark Purple | Spawns 10 sheets of plasma. | |
Dark Blue | Creates a two-use pressure-shielding potion, making a suit and helmet spaceworthy. | |
Silver | Spawns a slime cake and 10 random drinks. | |
Bluespace | Spawns 5 sheets of bluespace polycrystal. | |
Sepia | Creates a camera obscura. | |
Cerulean | Creates an extract maximizer, instantly boosting the uses of a normal extract to 5. | |
Pyrite | Spawns 5 sheets of bananium. | |
Red | Creates a three-use lavaproofing potion, rendering items immune to burning in lava, and a suit and helmet able to protect the wearer from it. | |
Green | Lets you pick which slime subspecies you want to turn into, rather than a random selection. | |
Pink | When fed to a creature or human, gives them your faction, making simple animals friendly to you and anyone else you fed this potion to. | |
Gold | Spawns 10 hostile mobs, at a slow rate. | |
Oil | Produces a smaller explosion, but it is extremely devastating, ripping a hole in the station. | |
Black | Randomizes the user's species! Careful, you can end up as a plasma person with this. | |
Light Pink | Produces a pacification potion, which will pacify simple animals, and give humans the pacifism trauma. | |
Adamantine | Spawns a completed adamantium golem shell. 11 sheets worth of adamantium! | |
Rainbow | Spawns 3 living slimes of random colors. |
Slime cores: Dark Blue
Activation: Fill it with 10u plasma, and then click it in your hand.
Slime cores: Silver
Activation: Feed extract with enough nutriment and it will produce special slime cookies.
Slime cores: Metal
Activation: When filled with plasma dust, slowly absorbs it and uses it to produce items.
Slime cores: Pyrite
Activation: Use on tile.
- Works like an infinite-use paintbrush, letting you dye tiles a new color.
- Each slime base results ins a "brush" of the corresponding color.
- Grey extracts clean any colors off.
- Rainbow extracts let you choose any color!
Slime cores: Cerulean
Activation: Use like a normal extract, but gains an extra use every few seconds, as long as you don't use it up!
Slime cores: Purple
Activation: Use on yourself or someone else like a legion core, fully heals with a special effect.
Slime cores: Grey
Activation: Spits out cores from the chosen colour when you feed it monkey cubes.
Slime cores: Dark Purple
Activation: Produces four extracts, which can be activated in your hand to select which activation to use, removing the need for reagents.
Slime cores: Blue
Activation: Provides effect to whoever holds them, as long as it is on their person or in their backpack.
Slime cores: Adamantite
Activation: When used in hand, creates a small fragile crystal that provides an area effect. If another crystal exists in this area, both will shatter.
So You're a Traitor
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 CARPS 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.
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.
A full guide to ruining someone's day with slimes:
- Red - Makes all slimes within sight range hyper aggressive. Also makes glycerol with blood in case you want to make a stupidly large hole in the station with a bluespace beaker grenade.
- Green - Produces 1 unit of a chemical that turns people into different races including slime persons. Use it on someone and convince the AI that they're a danger to humanity. Needs at least 5 units for it to work in a smoke grenade.
- Black - Turns people into actual grey slimes, no fort save. Again, 5 units in a smoke or foam grenade will make for a very interesting shuttle flight.
- Orange - Ignites a large fire.
- Yellow - Huge EMP.
- Silver - Only way to get real roburgers (with nanites).
- Gold - We all know what this does.
- Sepia - Stops time in a small radius, allowing you to wreak many kinds of havoc.
- Oil - Explosion. One of the fastest ways to mass produce a large array of devasating explosions.
- Adamantium - Makes golems that can be converted to the cult/soul shard/revved. They have to follow orders given to them by their creator so feel free to make them suicide bomb with gold slime cores.
- Light pink - Enables you to make sentient beings, including anything a gold slime extract can produce. Magicarps included.