Tortoise

Tortoises are crawling omnivores which live in the moderate climates of the temperate forest and temperate swamp, and the sweltering humidity of the tropical rainforest and tropical swamp. Its thick shell gives it 35% blunt damage resistance and 50% sharp damage resistance. Their small body size, built-in armor, and moderate health means that a hunter will need several shots to take one down.

They can often be seen engaging predators in fighting, and unlike other prey animals, they can emerge victorious.

Analysis

When slaughtered, a tortoise yields 21 meat and 11 lizardskin as a baby; 36 meat and 18 lizardskin as a juvenile; or 70 meat and 25 lizardskin as an adult.

Tortoises do not lay unfertilised eggs, and as their fertilised eggs only provide 0.25 nutrition compared to the 1.05 nutrition of the butchered baby tortoise, they should always be allowed to hatch.

An adult female tortoise consumes 0.13 nutrition per day. If her offspring are slaughtered immediately, a female tortoise produces 0.32 nutrition of meat per day, giving a nutrition efficiency of 2.426. If the offspring are allowed to grow to adulthood before they are slaughtered, they will consume an additional 0.27 nutrition per day, but will instead yield 1.05 nutrition per day as they are slaughtered, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 2.605. When considering a population of equal numbers of male and female tortoises, these nutrition efficiencies fall to 1.194 for baby slaughter and 1.963 for adult slaughter.

Some care must be used when managing tortoise eggs, as tortoises themselves are omnivorous and do not seem to discriminate against eating their unhatched young. Make use of restriction zones and hauling labor to pull freshly laid eggs away from animal pens and into safe hatcheries to maximize yield.

While tortoises are the single most nutritionally efficient animal in the game, they are not blocked by fences and so require taming upkeep every 7.5 days. This can potentially be worked around by slaughtering the tortoises just as they would lose their tameness, but this might require heavy micromanagement.

Taming

Tortoises are fairly easy to tame. Tortoise ranching can be a rewarding experience as maintenance costs are low and fresh females can be constantly recruited in the right biomes. Though they will not explode into a dwarf fortress "2cat" style of overpopulation in the same way a few chickens can manage to, players can still build up large tortoise farms and use them as a steady source of income.

Alternatively they can be raised for doctors to train medical skills by euthanizing and/or for training the melee skill. Because of the creature's armor and low damage output, a well-armored colonist can land many blows without much risk, quickly raising the melee skill substantially. One strategy is to allow warriors needing training in melee to fight, (but not kill) the animal, then for doctors to mend the creature's wounds, allowing them to train their skill, too. Rinse and repeat a few times until the poor beast has been tenderized enough to be given to the cooks for a nutritious final disposition.

Training

This animal can be trained as follows:

Guard:
Attack:
Rescue:
Haul:

*As of version 1.1.2610, all animals can be tamed. The percentage of likelihood of success depends on factors such as the Animals Wildness Percentage, Pawn Handling Skill, and others. More information can be found on the animals page.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	15
Skull	15
Brain	6
Nose	6
Neck	15
Jaw	12
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	6
Ear (left, right)	6
Body	24
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	9
Lung^[2] (left, right)	9
Liver^[2]	12
Heart^[2]	9
Spine^[2]	15
Stomach^[2]	12
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	18
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	12

↑ Located inside of Head.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

Armor

Armor

Version history

0.7.581 - Added.
0.12.906 - Can now lay eggs.
0.18/1.0 - Now provides the new lizardskin, which merged its previous leather type, tortoise leather, with cobraskin and iguana skin.
1.0 - Tortoise armor was reduced from 50% to 30%.
? - Armor increased back up to 50%.

Animals