Thrumbo

Thrumbos are large, powerful animals not native to any biome, instead appearing in all biomes through a random event.

Diet

Thrumbos are both herbivorous, eating both plants and harvested vegetables, and dendrovorous, eating live trees. Note that unlike the other dendrovore, the alphabeaver, thrumbos will not eat anima or gauranlen trees.

Analysis

Thrumbos are difficult, but rewarding, to kill. They are extremely powerful and a rampaging one can threaten the entire colony. Take precaution when attempting to hunt them. They can move faster than a colonist and their horn inflicts massive damage. Never, ever engage them except on favorable terms.

However, should you kill one, the rewards are significant. They yield the most meat of any animal when butchered, tied only with Elephants and Megasloths. The horn is both valuable, worth 800 silver, and a fairly powerful melee weapon equivalent to an excellent steel longsword. Note however that Juvenile thrumbos will not drop horns. Their fur is itself valuable to sell, but also makes some of the most valuable and highly protective clothing in the game - a Thrumbofur duster is worth over a thousand silver, is almost as protective against sharp damage as a steel plate armor and can be worn with a flak vest.

In the early game, acquiring a psychic shock lance from an exotic goods trader, shocking a thrumbo, and assigning a hunting job to it can jump-start a player's silver stockpile since the ~600 silver lance can be converted into two 1000 silver dusters (assuming normal quality), a 500 silver horn, and enough meat for 56 simple meals. Alternatively, a psychic insanity lance can be used to get even more thrumbos, though they might be damaged. Aim for the healthiest thrumbo so it can cause the most mayhem among the herd.

An incapacitated thrumbo is an excellent opportunity to train healing skills as they can sustain dozens of treatable wounds and still survive. There is also a small chance the doctor may bond with the animal, netting you a free pet thrumbo.

Armor

Armor

Hunting tactics

Spike Traps: Make sure to aggro only a single Thrumbo - by shooting at it with a rifle. Escape back into your base, leading the Thrumbo through at least 3 spike traps. That will hurt it badly enough so it will bleed out within 9 to 11 hours. Time you can spend hiding behind a steel door, researching, sleeping, etc. while the Thrumbo slowly bleeds out.

Trap: By building a room around while it sleeps, you can inebriate it by storing beer within and it will eventually pass out / die. Another option is to set the room on fire to kill it from burning or heatstroke. However, the second way is less profitable since the horn will catch fire (losing HP thus decreasing its value) and is also not reliable as the thrumbo may break out before you successfully down it. Starving it does not work for the same reason.

Kiting: Using a fast colonist (at least 120% Moving; use bionic legs, Go-juice, or a colonist infected with Fibrous mechanites) as bait, lure it through a firing squad or turrets laying fire from a distance. If your colonist is fast enough he can even land a few shots before running again. Just make sure your kiting colonist is always the closest to the raging beast otherwise it may give up and attack something else instead.

Turret overhaul: You can easily get a lot of firepower against the thrumbo. It's rather cheap, but effective. Place many turrets in a chosen area, maybe your crop fields or just an empty area. Then, trigger the thrumbo to attack and escape inside the colony (Make sure all colonists are drafted/ restricted to minimize death risk). The automatic turrets will do the rest shredding our target to pieces. You can lose a turret or two, but even if they are destroyed, they may explode, dealing damage. Just make sure that the explosions don't destroy the other turrets.
- It's possible to combine ranged ganking with turrets, but do it ONLY if you are trusting your firepower.

Peek-a-boo: Have all your colonists shelter inside, then have pawns take turns peeking out of doors and taking potshots, then retreating behind the doors when the Thrumbo closes in. Repair the doors as the thrumbo pounds them until it gives up, then rinse and repeat (many, many times). Be careful with doors made of weaker materials as the thrumbo may break them down before the constructors can repair them in time, and enter your base to cause absolute mayhem.

Melee ganking: If and only if you have enough melee fighters with good equipment, you can rush the thrumbo down. You will need at least 4 very well-armored colonists, or 6 modestly armored colonists. Have all your fighters be fully armored, and equip the highest damaging melee weapon they can find, such as the Longsword. You can combine this with a firing squad to chip at the thrumbo while your brawlers cut it down; in this case, it's best that you outfit them with shield belts to prevent friendly fire. Note that your colonists are bound to lose a hand or two so have a replacement ready.

Animal ganking: Similar to melee ganking with your colonists, except with your more expendable battle animals. Draft a trainer who has animals trained with Release assigned to him, provoke the thrumbo with ranged fire, then hit 'Release animals' for the trainer, and watch as the thrumbo is helplessly swarmed by your angry horde of whatever. Ranged fire provides good support for this, but remember never to let your bonded animals into battle as they have a great chance of dying and giving their master a long-lasting poor mood.

Hunter stealth: A pawn with sufficiently high hunting stealth and range (from a sniper or bolt-action rifle) can inflict fatal wounds on the thrumbo with a relatively low risk of aggroing. After 4 or 5 hits the animal can be left alone to slowly bleed to unconsciousness.

Sniper: A pawn with a sniper rifle and bionic eyes can take down a thrumbo alone, totally undetected even when maddened and passing by relatively close.

Food as bait: On maps with no trees, thrumbos, like all other animals denied their food source, will seek out any available food to consume. Thrumbos can therefore be lured into areas with food, through traps, into kill boxes, into slowing terrain etc. making it easier to kill.

Beer as bait: Beer sates a small amount of hunger, so it can be used as bait as above. But it also takes 35 beers to satisfy a thrumbo, which is enough to get it to 96% drunk, and thus induce unconsciousness. For 35 beers per thrumbo, it is perfectly safe method of killing them, but only on the right type of map.

Artifacts: Shoot with a psychic shock lance, rendering it unconscious. Assign a colonist to hunt it and they can slit its throat with no danger and no risk of damaging the valuable horn.
- Alternatively, shooting with a psychic insanity lance will make the thrumbo attack anything on sight including other thrumbos around, meaning that they will kill or at least incapacitate each other. Maddened thrumbos will attack and even kill other animals until they die or get incapacitated, this could be used on your advantage to get dead animals without actually sending your colonists to hunt them, provided that the thrumbo is downed or you can outrun the thrumbo.
- If you're really feeling like overkill then shoot the thrumbo herd with an orbital bombardment targeter or orbital power beam targeter. Even then, thrumbos are so tough they may survive.

Raid Baiting: Attacking a thrumbo during a raid can, with a long range weapon and good timing, cause it to attack the raiders instead of your colonists. Either the raid will kill the thrumbo, or the thrumbo will force the raid to flee - at which point you can finish off the weakened loser.

Psycasts: If Royalty is enabled, psycasts such as Stun, Burden and Skip can make kiting the thrumbo significantly safer and easier.

Taming

Thrumbos' 98% wildness makes them one of the hardest animals to tame, as even at level 20 you may only have a 1% chance to tame it. Previously, the best method of training a thrumbo was capturing a wounded one and healing it, as your doctor has a 0.4% chance of bonding with the animal per wound treated and there was significant risk to being in melee range of a now-manhunter thrumbo. However, with the elimination of their manhunter-on-tame chance, there is now little risk in taming besides wasting food and the handler's time. Note, however, that 9 hours must elapse between taming attempts. Ideally, a taming inspiration would be used, assuming the inspired pawn has sufficient skill to attempt it.

Successfully tamed thrumbos are of little everyday use to a colony when compared to ordinary dogs, sporting a voracious appetite and a high resistance to training. Their high wildness means keeping them trained and tamed will require an inordinate amount of handler time. Carry mechanics do not allow the thrumbo to carry multiple stacks of items despite its strength.

Still, thrumbos have significant utility in combat. Being extremely tanky melee fighters, they can be used as a last line of defense against an infestation or mechanoid drop. Additionally, Doomsday rocket launchers are highly dangerous in the late-game, capable of one shooting colonists from a long range. With thrumbos, however, one can release them and let them tank these rockets. A thrumbo can tank 5-6 volleys without being downed due to their high hit points, making the raiders exhaust their rockets for some easily treated wounds. Thrumbos usually manage to charge into groups of raiders, which can even cause the raiders to use their rockets in friendly fire, single-handedly dispatching raids while your colonists remain completely safe themselves.

Although extremely difficult to achieve, taming one thrumbo of each sex will allow the colony to breed yet more thrumbos, resulting in a potentially inexhaustible source of their valuable fur and horns. However their long gestation period makes this more time intensive than other animals. Also keep in mind that keeping them tame to build a sufficient breeding herd will likely totally monopolize your handlers' time.

Thrumbos are slaughtered in one hit like any other tame animal, so killing them this way is not dangerous at all.

Thrumbos may be affected by the "<Animal> Self-tamed" or "Manhunting <Animal>" events.

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	200
Skull	200
Brain	80
Nose	80
Neck	200
Jaw	160
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	80
Ear (left, right)	80
Body	320
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	120
Lung^[2] (left, right)	120
Liver^[2]	160
Heart^[2]	120
Spine^[2]	200
Stomach^[2]	160
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	240
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	160

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

Version history

0.12.906 - Added.
0.12.910 - Now much more powerful in combat
Beta 19/1.0 - Hunger rate 4.5->3.5
1.1 - Changed rare thrumbo incident to send from 2 to 6 thrumbos. Previously could spawn with only 1 thrumbo
1.3 - Revenge chance on tame fail 1.8%->0%; Meat yield 360->560; Leather yield 120->160; Hunger rate 3.5->2.8; Gestation time 60 days->20 days.
1.3.3074 - Prevent thrumbos from eating Gauranlen trees in addition to anima trees.

Animals