Some advice needed from menagerie users.

I'm doing my absolute best not to go off on a huge angry tangent about these items. I put it on the back burner when they were first introduced although I do remember some hefty outrage over them. I didn't pay attention since I didn't feel I was at a place to need or use them. Now it's coming back to haunt me.

In an uncharacteristic move for me I sort of blundered ahead without really looking at the details. I did the first level of animal donations and then came to my senses and looked at the rest. Now I have to ask is it worth moving forward? Are you guys happy you have this thing?

High level breeding animals are scarce and expensive in the market and super hard to get via breeding so I'm not exactly eager to toss mine away. Is there any path to making it less painful than either bankrupting my farm or gutting my breeding barn?

I'm incredibly upset with myself for rushing in without reading the fine print.

 

Do one layer/level of breeding animal donations and concentrate on the other layers for the blueprints

 

Hi Clashstrummer! I use the menageries all the time, when there is not an event going on. I have all 4 of them on main and 3 on baha. You can put 8 stables in each menagerie!!! That's a huge space saver!!!! I get 32 stables in total. My goal has been to get 8 neons of each breeding animal....so that's 32 animals per harvest in a menagerie!!! Plus they generate a huge amount of fertilizer!!!
I would definitely invest in them!!! Plus the manufactories as well.(same reasoning) The arboretums aren't as rewarding....as you are only saving 8x1 spaces.
Good luck with the blueprints!!!!

 

I am very happy with my menageries and manufactories, the arboretums are not that beneficial. Besides increasing the amount of stuff you can produce on your farm they also help with drops. I always leave mine up during an event. Even though a menagerie only takes up a 2x2 plot, you can get drops from all the stables inside. If you have several storage houses the extra drops really add up. Another thing is that they are labor efficient if you don't have the harvest helpers. When I wasn't playing much I would often harvest my menageries when I stopped by the farm, leaving the rest of the field.

First of all, upgrading the storage houses is a long process and very expensive, but a good long term investment in my opinimon. Here are a few things I think is worth noting:

• You don't need to donate breeding animals to the animal part of the quests, you can use regular animals, though you'll need a lot of them.
• As Banjo already said, only do the first animal step and leave the others till last.
• The quests for the regular menagerie and the baha menagerie give the same blueprints, so you can choose if you want to deliver normal items or baha items.
• If you have trouble with the tool donation step, look into refinements. Wooden mallets have a very high EV, and I can recommend the wooden mallet refinements for cauliflower and/or iris. I got so many wooden mallets using those that I now only donate wooden mallets whenever tools are required. It takes a while to get there though, so I'd recommend anyone wanting to upgrade storage houses to start researching the refinements now.
• The power drills can be very few and far between in the beginning, but the more storage houses you have, the more you'll get and after a while you'll have plenty.
• My biggest problem with upgrading the menageries is the extremely high requirement of wood boards. When menageries first came out I immediately stopped using wood boards for any other purpose (like building upgrades), but I'm still waiting for more wood to upgrade all of them patience required

Good luck, hope you'll get defrustrated soon

 

I also use them all the time and opened them as Banjo suggests: do the first step of animals and then move on to the steps that give the blueprints.

Are you looking to buy the animals or raise them yourself? Depending on your answer will depend on which ones to donate.

I used normal farm animals to donate rather than rare animals just because of quantity of stables. I didn't put in my breeding animals as I use those for breeding events and to make upgrades for stables/workshops.

Before I opened seals, I used koalas. Jasmine bubble tea gives you additional koalas when you harvest. Now, would use seals. Seals have a better EV than any level 1 breeding animal.

If you use the market and compare animals to feed and feed ingredients, you may find something else works better.

I keep my menageries/manufactories/arboretums out all the time, even during events and work around them. They help me to work on long term projects without interruption. The do give good drops and manure to help with events.

I, like Mir, am short of wood boards for the upgrades, as well as mallets. It is why toolboxes are my favorite gift outside events.

 

Thanks so much for the advice. I've already done the first animal step so I guess I will try to move on. I've got about 70 toolboxes stored in addition to what's in my barn so I hope to be able to at least get up and running. I guess I'll pop them all and see where that gets me. I've only 20,000 boards in my barn at the moment as I've just built quite a few things recently. I'm assuming that if I have parrot feather trees that using feather collectors would also be a good idea in addition to the mallets.

I'll look into those refinements you suggested Mir. I've got other refinements but I've not worked on those two specifically.

Bottom line is it's good to know it's worth the effort and that they are useful items in the long run. I don't mind having to be patient to get there as long as the payoff is worthwhile.

 

Yes, feather collectors are good tools to donate too

 

Sometimes it really does help to READ the FAQ's before you just rush in. I had it in my head that I had to do that FSQ I before I could even use the menagerie at all. At least when I get around to being able to do an upgrade with those power drills I will have done the quest already for the blueprints.

Anyway it's one thing to see it in theory it's another to see it in action. I also thought you had to put all the same kind of animal in each slot. I'm telling you I didn't do my homework on this one. Now I can see how with just the 4 slots it can help me with some FSQ's being able to either speed up one animals production or putting 4 different animals in all at once will really help without taking up so much space .

For anyone else reading this let me really spell this out. You only need the 500 stars to be able to use the one menagerie you get from the tree. It's all the upgrading for extra slots that requires the scary amounts of other stuff.

Now one last question I didn't see anywhere. Do buffs apply to the stables in the menagerie?

 

Buffs do work on whatever you have stowed away in the menageries, manufactories and arboretum.

It's also a big plus winning the 200% bonus.

 

In the beginning I felt they were too costly (still do) Now I think I would be lost without them. I have all of them...menagries, manufartories and arboretums. All of them are always full. They are a great way to plonk in those money makers such as seals (all orange) and rake up EP / TEP. manure etc rather quickly....& to stock up the barns. It is a painful investment but sooooooooo worth it
Happy investing and farming
P.S...refined Iris will get the mallets in no time flat...I have over flow and only planted Iris a couple of times! Working on other refinements for the rest

 

Happy to see you Mir. After a long time. I was wondering.


I too used rare tools to donate. They have high EVs and are not required in exorbitant amount. After the store houses, I stopped building workshops unnecessarily as I needed lots of common tools for the houses. The wonder stables I get from events are enough for me as give some sort of pens/workshop & upgrades. So saving tools.

 

I wrote a bit about the actual value versus cost when it first came out. You can find that post here: https://board-en.farmerama.com/inde...on-theory-and-observations.24886/#post-143105

It did not discuss the added benefit of increased drops, and despite the fact that they will never recoup their cost to upgrade they are quite handy to have should a farm be able to absorb the cost.

 

The situation is a bit changed since you did your calculation though Decree. If I am not mistaken the total amount of both mainland and baha menageries in the game is currently 7. Fully upgrading those take 12*7=84 blueprints. We also have 4 menagerie quests rewarding a total of 96 blueprints. If we take banjo's advice of only completing the first animal donation steps in each quest, and filling all the tool donations and all the fruit donations we get exactly the 84 needed blueprints.

This means that you can fully upgrade 7 menageries donating a total of

• 2.2M EV of mainland animals
• 2.5M EV of baha animals
• 5M EV of mainland fruits/crops
• 6.2M EV of baha fruits/crops
• 1M EV of tools

If you redo the cost of upgrading 7 menageries with those donations, the result will be much more favorable

This of course means that if and when an 8th menagerie becomes available, it will be extremely expensive to upgrade it. But I don't think that should figure in the decision of whether or not to upgrade the first 7. One should also remember that it takes a total of 144 000 wood boards to fully upgrade 8 menageries, and personally I am far from there yet

 

I had a hard time refining plants. Literally I had every other bonus for asparagus before I got the mallet, plus I was trying iris and cauliflower too. For me that was a costlier investment than the Fsq. But I agree it's really useful! You can buy extra animals and manure for countrycoins, but even drops you can only buy for barnyardbills and a storagehouse can help you a lot with that. Note that you have to put in the same duration stalls to maximize the result, and if you harvest once a day then make it so that they are ready in 24 h with water.

 

I haven't got any of these for baha. So I can buy 1 for 299 BB's and the other one I can get unlocking the temple with 45 GB's? I'm a little confused