Alpaca

Alpacas are easily tameable herbivores that provide wool and act as pack animals.

Obtaining

Alpacas can be found in temperate forests, temperate swamps, tropical rainforests, and tropical swamps. They can either be tamed by a handler or self-tame in a random event.

Alpacas can be bought and sold in other faction bases and from bulk goods traders. Alpacas purchased from traders will be already tamed.

Summary

Alpacas are pen animals. Once tamed, pen animals cannot and do not need to be trained any further. But if left outside of a pen or caravan hitching spot, pen animals will eventually roam outside your colony. Making a caravan is not required to tie animals to a caravan hitching spot.

Alpacas can be sheared for 45 alpaca wool ( 171) every 10 days for 1,700 ticks (28.33 secs) of work. Note that yield and shearing time are modified by the shearer's Animal Gather Yield and Animal Gather Speed respectively.

Alpacas are also pack animals, and will carry up to 35 kg of weight in a caravan. They cannot be ridden.

Analysis

Pack animal

Alpacas are the smallest pack animal, carrying the least weight and consuming the least food. But, as early-game pack animals, alpacas are strictly inferior to donkeys.

Donkeys are easier to tame, carry more weight, and can be ridden for up to 130% caravan speed. Even when you standardize for nutrition consumption, donkeys still carry more weight.
Horses are slightly harder to tame than alpacas, but horses are even faster (160% caravan speed) and carry even more weight.

Alpacas can be useful for early-game caravans, in absence of the other options. In a tropical biome, donkeys and horses are not available. The other native pack animal there is the elephant, which is much harder to tame. Later on, Alpacas can serve a niche for transport pods having the lowest mass out of all pack animals, allowing two adults with one pod along with any extra supplies to send to an on-going caravan.

And, unlike donkeys and horses, alpacas produce wool.

Wool

An alpaca produces the same amount of wool (at the same intervals) as a sheep, but sheep consume 18% less nutrition. Compared to sheep wool, alpaca wool offers 4 °C (7.2 °F) better insulation against Cold and 6 °C (10.8 °F) against Heat, and is 41% more valuable. Thus, the alpaca wool is superior to sheep wool. If the goal is to make bulk wool, regardless of stats, then sheep are more efficient when grazing is insufficient to feed the herds and equally efficient the rest of the time. If the sole purpose is to make money, then alpacas are better than sheep. In addition, alpaca are pack animals.

Alpacas are superior to other wooly animals (bison, muffalo, and megasloths) in terms of wool per nutrition consumed. Bison and muffalo would be better for wool per colonist work, though the amount of work to harvest wool isn't terribly large in practice. The insulation and market value of alpaca wool is also superior to that of both muffalo wool and bison wool. Megasloth wool offers superior cold insulation and protection, however due to the wildness and intelligence of megasloths, they are not directly comparable to other wooly animals. See their page for further analysis.

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	25
Skull	25
Brain	10
Nose	10
Neck	25
Jaw	20
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	10
Ear (left, right)	10
Body	40
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	15
Lung^[2] (left, right)	15
Liver^[2]	20
Heart^[2]	15
Spine^[2]	25
Stomach^[2]	20
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	30
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	20