Pip

Pip is a critter that appears in the game as a small, nimble tree-loving animal with two morphs: the regular Pip and the Cuddle Pip. Pips are famous for their ability to plant seeds in natural tiles, which makes them one of the most useful critters for building farms without spending seed resources. They also interact heavily with Arbor Trees, from which they can feed, gather Arbor Acorns, and even convert wild trees into dirt through their ranching output.

In practical terms, Pips plant seeds only in natural tiles with Hardness below 150, and they can also plant in Farm Tiles, which immediately domesticate the plant. They carry seeds only about 30 tiles; if no valid planting location is within that range, they drop the seed instead. They will not plant where a building is planned, but this can be used to direct their behavior by briefly queuing and canceling construction in the desired spot. Pips also plant hanging plants from below, and they can freely move around a chamber by clinging to surfaces. They are not hostile, but they tend to wander out of open areas if they are not contained.

Their planting rules make layout important. Pips will not plant in a tile if there are already 3 or more plants in the surrounding area defined by 5 tiles up, 5 right, 6 down, and 6 left. For horizontal spacing, they can be arranged either one tile apart or in groups of 3 with 3 tiles between groups; over longer spans, the most space-efficient repeating pattern is 6n + 3 tiles. They can also create dense, resource-free farms by planting on alternating blocks and by working down rows from the top right in an enclosed room with Farm Tile flooring.

Pips are also useful in Arbor Tree setups. They can rummage through Arbor Tree branches and extract Arbor Acorns, and this is the only way to obtain additional acorns. A regular Pip requires either 0.325 wild Arbor Trees or 0.09 domestic Arbor Trees to stay fed, while a Cuddle Pip requires slightly more. A full-size regular ranch can be supported by 3 wild or 1 domestic Arbor Tree, while a Cuddle Pip ranch can support 9.5 wild or 3 domestic trees. Pips process wild Arbor Trees into dirt, which makes them a steady source of soil for farming and industry.

Their ranch output is valuable even beyond planting. A Pip can live for 100 cycles if kept happy and ungroomed conditions are avoided, and a fully productive ranch yields eggs that can be cracked for Raw Egg or hatched and slaughtered for Meat. This makes Pips a source of both food and dirt, though their main value is usually their planting utility.

The Cuddle Pip morph shares the same basic behavior, but it is obtained by feeding Pips Thimble Reed and consumes more food than a regular Pip. Cuddle Pips can cuddle eggs, which increases hatch rate by 5% per cycle, and they can also be hugged by duplicants to grant a temporary stress reduction buff. Because Cuddle Pips count as only 4 tiles for overcrowding, they can be ranch more densely than regular Pips, and their egg-cuddling makes them especially effective in incubator rooms.

A few quirks are worth remembering:

• Pips can plant several seeds on the same tile when manipulated to do so.
• They can occasionally plant in empty farm plots if they wander into them.
• They may knock debris out of storage containers when the pile exceeds 1 kg or one whole seed.
• Wild, happy Pips lay eggs when they are 65 cycles old.
• Their in-game file name is Squirrels.