Dryads

Dryads are connected to and spawned by a Gauranlen tree. They begin as immature dryads and then specialize into different castes:

• Carrier: These chunky helpers will haul things where they need to go.
• Clawer: Vulnerable but fearsome, the clawer specializes in damage dealing.
• Barkskin: Slow but tough, the barkskin soaks hits for your other fighters.
• Woodmaker: Generates wood over time.
• Medicinemaker: Generates herbal medicine over time.
• Berrymaker: Generates berries over time.
• Gaumaker: Produces Gauranlen sprouts to make new Gauranlen trees.

Dryad Spawning

All castes will start off as an immature dryad that will spawn up to every 8 days according to an invisible bar. If there are empty dryad slots, a timer will show counting down to the spawning of the immature dryad. The timer will still run even if there aren't empty dryad slots and will be picked up once a new spot becomes available, either by a previous dryad dying or maintaining a higher connection status with the tree.

An unconnected tree will produce up to two immature dryads, which can immediately enter cocoons upon the tree gaining a connection.

Behavior

Dryads will automatically have the Animals training up to their trainability level upon emerging from their cocoon. The barkskin and clawer dryads have an intermediate trainability, the hauler dryad has advanced trainability, and the rest have no trainability. They can only have their Gauranlen Tree's connected pawn as their master and can form bonds with their master. They do not require regular handling to maintain tameness or other skills.

They have a sleep need requirement and tend to sleep at nighttime, not maintaining a normal sleep throughout the day.

Dryads will attempt to put out fires on nearby Gauranlen moss that is in the home area.

Immature dryads will attempt to immediately form into a cocoon upon spawning, as long as their sleep need is met.

While not following a drafted pawn, dryads will meander nearby their Gauranlen tree.

Upon releasing a dryad to the wild, absolutely nothing will change, they remain connected to the tree and maintain their behavior. They cannot be re-tamed and your pawns will lose control of them.

Dryads cannot be assigned to any areas, and thus movement is only affected by proximity to their gauranlen tree, or if following a drafted pawn.

Following a drafted pawn, dryads will perform identically to other animals, they follow regardless of needs or health.

Changing caste

Upon changing the caste of dryads on a tree, the connected dryads will form cocoons nearby and spend 6 days morphing into the new selected caste.

Health

Dryads heal abnormally fast, and cannot bleed to death (though they still leave blood while bleeding). They are immune to disease events. They cannot regenerate lost body parts on their own, but can fully recover after going into a cocoon to switch castes.

Dryads also have a button attached to the dryad(not the tree) to enter a healing cocoon, which will heal all present injuries to full (not including lost limbs)

Gauranlen tree connection interaction

See also: Gauranlen tree

If there are more dryads than the "mother" tree can support (i.e. by going under the minimum connection limit to support a number of dryads) the dryad will "return" to the gauranlen tree. A dryad returning to the tree will not have any effect on the spawn timer.

Economic potential

There are 3 Dryads that offer creating items of value, the woodmaker, medicinemaker, and berrymakers.

• Berrymakers produce  38.2 of raw berries in Market Value.
  • Selling raw is most efficient, as packaged survival meals or pemmican require meat to craft.
• Woodmakers produce  30 of wood in Market Value.
  • Wood can be fashioned into sculptures, valued based on Art skill. However, one harvest is not enough for a sculpture, and they take a noticable amount of work. See Sculpture Production for more details.
  • Converting wood to chemfuel is a net loss ($2.4 wood makes $2.3 worth of chemfuel), but is 16x lighter.
• Medicinemakers produce  30 of herbal medicine in Market Value. It's best to sell raw - neutroamine must be bought from others, and industrial medicine isn't profitable to begin with.

Therefore, berrymakers are the most efficient money dyrad, giving the most value for no extra work. However, berries expire after 14 days, which may necessitate woodmakers instead.

Berrymakers create $11.46 (at 0 Trade Price Improvement) per day, per dryad. If you are pruning 2 trees with a 20 plant-skill colonist, they can support 8 dryads (working 11 hours a day), and thus make ~$8.33 per hour of work, plus transportation. To maintain at least one dryad, ~2.5 hours of work is needed per day, so more dryads per tree are more efficient than more trees.

For comparison, corn can be planted and harvested to make $605 per hour with the right bionics. This makes dyrads a fairly poor method of making money, and more useful for their situational or Ideoligion benefits.

Combat potential

Only Barkskin and Clawer dryads are capable of combat. Either dyrad can follow their tree's connected pawn into battle, much like a trained animal. Dryads have special advantages over normal animals: they can't die of blood loss (so don't need to be tended to), can heal otherwise permanent injuries in 3 days, and do not contribute towards colony wealth (making raids smaller). However, they are limited to colony defense, unable to be brought off the map from caravan or pod launchers.

As individual fighters, dyrads perform rather poorly in combat. However, they are good at doing their role, supporting colonists and other pawns in combat:

• Barkskin dryads boast high defense, with similar armor to a thrumbo (70% sharp, 40% blunt), but with around 9x less health. They can take roughly 3-4 shots from most firearms. With 3.16 DPS, they are fairly weak, but their armor and aformentioned healing make them useful. With such high armor, these dryads are good at distracting enemies while your colonists fire from afar. Alone, they are roughly equal to dogs in combat.
• Clawers have a great DPS, outdamaging scythers and thrumbos, and their first attack will stun for a short duration. The opposite of barkskins, clawers have poor durability. This makes them strong when combined with other melee attackers (including other clawers), in a cramped hallway, or when facing a small number of powerful enemies like centipedes or thrumbos. Alone, they are typically capable beating gun-wielding human pawns.

Conclusion: Even though they require a large amount of a pawn's time, dryads don't need food or training. With strong healing and immunity to blood loss, players may find them easier to keep than other pets. If they die, the tree-connected pawn only recieves a -2 mood debuff, and a new dryad can take their place in 12 days.

Meat

Contrary to their individuals, all dryads have a meat yield of 3 immature dryad meat. The exception is immature dryads, which have 4.

Trivia

• Immature dryads still appear as adults on the animals tab.
• When entering cocoons, the dryads will maintain the appearance of their previous caste.
• If a tree with dryads has its connection to the connector severed, such as by kidnapping or death, all specialized dryads revert back to immature dryads.
• Dryads can be taken off of the map when choosing animals to take with you when starting a new colony after obtaining a piece of the archotech map, and a master that is taken with them remains as their master. Dryads function without their Gauranlen tree if taken off the map in this way, but despawn after a period of about a little longer than a season.

Version history

• Ideology DLC release - Added
• 1.3.3069 - Fix: Dryads can show up as animals for hospitality quests.
• 1.3.3076 - Fix: Dryads are affected by disease incidents.