Slimes
| Slimes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Monster |
| Location | The Mines, Skull Cavern, Quarry Mine, Secret Woods, Tiger Slime Grove, and Volcano Dungeon |
| Floors | All |
| HP | Varies |
| Damage | Varies |
| Defence | Varies |
| Speed | Varies |
| XP | Varies |
Slimes are the monster every farmer meets first and the monster still worth killing at the end of a save. They all share one sprite with a colour laid over it, and the colour is the whole character of the thing: a Green Slime on the opening floors dies in two swings, a Tiger Slime in the Volcano Dungeon carries more than seventeen times its health. Colour also decides what falls out, so a slime hunt doubles as an ore run, with Iridium, Gold Ore, Refined Quartz, Coal and Hardwood all coming off slimes of the right shade. Killing a thousand of any colour earns the Slime Charmer Ring from Gil, which switches slime damage off for the rest of the game. On top of that sit the oddities: the Prismatic Slime the Wizard asks for, the Gold Slime that pays in coins, and the Big Slimes that burst into a crowd of smaller ones.
Behaviour
A slime notices the farmer from four tiles away in any direction, and from then on it has two moves. It bounces slowly forward, or it flattens itself against the ground, charges, and leaps the gap. The leap is the one that catches people out, because it covers ground the bounce never would. An obstacle in the flight path makes the slime ricochet off it, sometimes several times in a tight corridor, which looks comic and still costs health. Being struck slows the farmer down for a few seconds on top of the damage.
Attacking one can make it angry. A hit has a small chance of sending a slime into a rage: the eyes turn red and it moves far faster than before. Male slimes, recognisable by the pom-pom antenna wobbling over the head, carry a quarter more health than the base figure and hit a point harder, and a passive male struck once may shake itself and raise its own damage by half.
Knockback is the key to the fight. Every hit shoves a slime out of sword range, so a farmer who stands still ends up swinging at air. The answer is to close in before the charge is ready and pin the slime against a wall or, better, into a corner of walls and rock, where the knockback has nowhere to send it and the slime is held in place from one swing to the next. A sword's block also stops both the bounce and the charge, and a well-timed block buys a free opening.
Two variants break those rules. A Special Slime wears a small yellow star on its antenna, triples the health of whatever it replaced and doubles its damage. A Big Slime takes the same approach as its smaller cousins, but most of the time it splits into two to four small slimes when it dies, so one kill becomes a brawl. In the dangerous Mines slimes sometimes arrive stacked on top of each other, and striking the stack flings the top slime off as a projectile that the Slime Charmer Ring does nothing about.
Location
The colours follow depth. Green Slimes hold the first stretch of the Mines and the Secret Woods, Blue Slimes take the frozen middle, and Red Slimes own the lava floors near the bottom. Purple Slimes are a Skull Cavern rarity, turning up on about one floor in a hundred. Copper and Iron Slimes belong to the Quarry Mine and to the quarry-themed floors that appear at random in the Mines. Tiger Slimes live in the Tiger Slime Grove, a scrap of land in the west of Ginger Island, and in the Volcano Dungeon.
Slimes also come to the farm. The Wilderness Farm spawns them at night by default, and any other layout can be opened up by offering a Strange Bun at the Dark Shrine of Night Terrors or by enabling monsters when the save is created. Which colour appears depends on the farmer's Combat level, Green Slimes early and Purple Slimes once the skill is maxed. Kills on the farm hand over only a third of the usual Combat experience.
A Slime Hutch keeps them permanently. Robin builds it, Marlon sends over a Green Slime Egg once it stands, and a Slime Incubator hatches eggs indoors while males and females pair off on their own. A child slime's colour is mixed from its parents, sometimes the brighter of the two values and sometimes the average, which is how a hutch drifts towards shades nobody chose.
Drops
Slime, the item, comes off almost every kill, and it is the reason a Slime Hutch pays for itself: a Slime Egg-Press turns a hundred of them into an egg. Sap falls from nearly all of them too. Once the hutch is standing, any Green, Blue, Red, Purple or Tiger Slime met anywhere can hand over an egg of its own colour.
The interesting part is the colour-based table, which pays out on the exact shade the game rolled. Brown slimes carry Wood and sometimes Hardwood. Near-black ones drop Coal every time, with Neptunite and Bixite on top. Yellow gives Gold Ore, red gives Copper Ore, grey gives Stone, and purple gives Iridium Ore in pairs. White slimes are the prize: Refined Quartz or Iron Ore as standard, and a guaranteed Diamond when every colour value comes up even.
Each colour has its own extras beyond that. Green Slimes in the Secret Woods drop Mahogany Seeds, which is the simplest way to start a hardwood plantation. Blue Slimes carry Jade and Winter Root. Purple Slimes in the Skull Cavern throw out Iridium Ore in a chain that keeps rolling until it fails, and occasionally an Iridium Bar. Tiger Slimes pay in island goods: Ginger, Taro Tuber, Pineapple Seeds, a Mango Sapling and, on a lucky swing, the Tiger Hat. Dwarf Scroll I comes from Green Slimes, Dwarf Scroll II from Blue, and Dwarf Scroll III from every colour from Blue downwards, so the Museum set fills itself over a long dig.
The best single roll is the Gold Slime. Any slime in any mine or the Secret Woods has a tiny chance of turning gold, and a gold one always leaves behind a coin worth two hundred and fifty gold. It can drop more than one, and the odds of the extra coin creep upwards the longer the save has been running.
Items this monster can drop when it is defeated, with the chance of each.
| Item | Image | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 
|
0.05% |
| Prismatic Shard | 
|
0.05% |
Notes
The eradication goal is the long game. A thousand slain slimes of any colour buys the Slime Charmer Ring, which stops all slime damage and the slowing effect with it. Big Slimes are left out of the count, but the small slimes that spill out when one dies are counted, so splitting them is a better use of time than avoiding them. Slimes raised in a hutch never count towards it.
Accepting the Wizard's Prismatic Jelly order from the board outside Mayor Lewis' house puts a Prismatic Slime into the spawn pool of the Mines, the Quarry Mine and the Skull Cavern. It shifts through every colour as it moves, carries a thousand health and hits for thirty five, and it always leaves the Prismatic Jelly the Wizard wants. Daily luck nudges the odds either way. Handing the jelly in pays well and teaches the Monster Musk recipe.
Marlon sets up a booth by the Skull Cavern entrance during the Desert Festival, and one of the challenges he offers is to slay ten Purple Slimes for Calico Eggs. Since Purple Slimes are scarce down there in the first place, that challenge is worth taking only on a day when the cavern is cooperating.
Dangerous slimes wear sunglasses and a grin, carry double health and double attack, and appear throughout the Mines once the Shrine of Challenge is on. During Mr. Qi's Skull Cavern orders the Big Purple Sludges down there sometimes hold an extra item, and a sludge that is carrying one looks semi-transparent with the prize visible inside, so it is obvious which ones are worth the fight.
All Slimes
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Location | HP | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slimes | 
|
The Mines, Skull Cavern, Quarry Mine, Secret Woods, Tiger Slime Grove, and Volcano Dungeon | Varies | Varies |