General Ore Beetles have two stages, a larva stage and a adult stage. Ore Beetle larva look like a small white grub with sharp teeth and no visible head or eyes, only a mouth. Fully grown Ore Beetles resemble a june bug, they are medium sized and their bodies are flat against the ground (you can't see it's legs), with two antenna, which are curled at the tips, protruding from it's head. They can appear in any environment except arctic biomes and should be uncommon. For an Ore Beetle larva to spawn there must be at least 100 ores on the planet. Adult Ore Beetles do not spawn naturally and can only spawn when a larva reaches adulthood. Occasionally you will stumble upon an ore beetle lair which consist of 1-2 adults and some larva. Larva The larva would act like a worm, most of the time crawling above ground, but occasionally digging underground. In their larva stage Ore Beetles are very weak, 1 or 2 hits should kill a larva. But, they are peaceful in this state and will not attack, if you attack them, the larva will try to flee. If you do kill one the larva will drop the ore it ate and pixels. The larva become adults by consume a certain amount of ore like, iron, copper, silver, gold, etc. For example let's say the larva have to consume 5 ores to become an adult. After the larva consumes 5 ores of iron, or 5 ores of copper, etc., the larva will change into an adult Ore Beetle with the respective shell. The larva can only consume ore blocks. Adult Adult Ore Beetles come in many different types, one type for each type of ore. There could be an Ore Beetle with a Iron shell, one with a Copper Shell, one with a Silver shell, etc. For the most part they are peaceful, but if you attack them the Ore Beetle will retaliate. Adults will also become hostile when they see you mining whatever their shell is made of. An adult Ore Beetle has natural armor, how much defense they have depends solely on the type of shell they have. Ore Beetles will have with higher tier metals as a shell will have more defense. For example, an Ore Beetle with a copper shell would have less natural armor than an Ore Beetle with a gold shell. When a Ore Beetle is defeated it will drop it's shell. With the shell you can smelt it to get bars of the particular ore it is made of, make armor from it, or sell it to NPC's. Special Ore Beetles Queen Ore Beetle Larger than a normal ore beetle, has a longer abdomen and smaller head, her body is adorned with gems, and her shell is a random ore color. Weill always be found with other ore beetles, both adults and larva. Queen Ore Beetles do not have a larva form and have a low spawn rate. Queen Ore Beetle, along side the characteristics of a regular Ore Beetle, can ingest gems. Passive unless attacked, she can deal damage from a body slam and can power up the Beetles and Larva around her. She can also spawn larva on her own, and queen will be defended by very strong ore beetles, made from the strongest ore found on the current planet. Upon her defeat there is a moderate chance that she will drop an ornate shell, it can be sold for a nice price, or smelted for ores and gems. Captured Ore Beetles A capture larva won't do much to help you. But if you feed it enough ores it will mature into a fully grown Ore Beetle. An adult Ore Beetle will help you fight. Adult Ore Beetles shed their shell periodically (they would still stay and adult and the same type of beetle), you can smelt the shell for ores. Captured Queen Ore Beetles would allow you to breed Ore Beetles larva. Not sure what else they should do... Ideas? Credit: Dr. Death [Lexx] Credit: Crazyon Credit Tails7712- Suggested that Ore Beetle larva drop the ores they ate when defeated. cederjack- Suggested that Ore Beetles shed their shells periodically. Crazyon- Suggested that Ore Beetles could be found in small groups underground. Suggested Queen Ore Beetles and the dropping of their ornate shell, could spawn larva on its own. Suggested if captured you could breed Ore Beetles, queen could be defended by very strong ore beetles, made from the strongest ore. yabebto- Suggested that adults would become hostile when they saw you mining whatever their shell is made of. Images are on their way, but I would appreciate artwork because I'm not so great at it.
No, I think the adults should drop their shells instead, maybe make it 100% chance? But I think the larva dropping the ore they devoured is a good idea. I'll give you credit when I put it up there.
i like that idea. id rather use the shell as a sort of shield. or a armor set that when used with a jetpack makes you look like you have bug wings.
Nice idea. I've thought of an alternative way to use Ore Beetles, though. If you could capture them, perhaps you could create a device that could harvest all (or nearly all) of the ores that they've eaten. If you could twin this with a device that can draw in and trap Ore Beetles, you'd have a quick and easy way to collect useful ores from a beetle-infested area. This way, a player could mine a large area in a short time by capturing large numbers of Ore Beetles, setting them loose in an area with lots of ores, then setting up several beetle traps once they had finished feeding.
Or perhaps you could just craft a device that would make all captured ore beetles follow you when held, and when they are following you, they go into a "work" mode, which makes them gather the respective ore of their shell type that they pass by, in maybe a 7? block radius. The drawback, is that you must have the item held. No fighting unless you switch to a weapon, which will make the beetles scatter. And then, like Inferno said, you could construct a device to extract the ore. It would be like having little workers / miners.
Maybe instead of having to feed them ore to get ore, you could change that to be that they poop out better ore than what you fed them, or have each beetle only eat a certain type of block, and then poop out its respective ore. You only discover basic types of beetles at first, having to later cross breed them to produce higher-tier ones.
I like the breeding part, it could work like this maybe: You land on the planet, and you see an odd larva. (Surface - larva) You ignore it, and go maybe 30 metres underground. You see a copper - colored beetle. (Copper tier at near-surface) Etc, etc, the tiers could go like this: Copper, Tin, Bismuth, Iron, Rhodochrosite, Lapis Lazuli, Gold, Titanium, And then diamond at the very core of the planet. Maybe a few more in- between, etc. Rhodochrosite is a crystal, and i thought that maybe if Nirn's Glunaughts were implemented (which i would love), this would be very useful / valuable to them. Then, you could use those types of beetles to cross-breed into alloys. Copper and tin to make bronze, and they could make use of the procedural generator in order to make some totally non-existent types..Just take the colors and the stats from the parents, average them out, and depending on the mix, add or subtract from those new "base" stats, meaning that you could create an Uber-alloy or you could make something softer than gold. That would be nice, to have a failed experiment once in a while. The closer to infinite that this game has the better!
This is an interesting idea, before I clicked on the thread I thought this was something completely different, but I still love the idea !