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 growing 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, but will eat polux trees.

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.

Analysis

Thrumbos are difficult, but rewarding, to kill. They are extremely durable, with natural armor and a health scale of 8, extremely dangerous with powerful attacks and high DPS, and can move faster than a colonist. A rampaging thrumbo can threaten the entire colony. Take precaution when attempting to hunt them, as average firearms can take 4 or 5 dozen shots to down one and never engage them except on favorable terms.

With the right strategies, they can be reliably killed. Their horn is worth 800, and a powerful melee weapon, equivalent to an excellent steel longsword. Their fur is valuable, worth a thousand silver, and protective. The duster alone is almost as protective as steel plate armor, but can be worn over a flak vest for incredible protection. Note that juvenile thrumbos do not drop horns.

While a number of hunting stategies are viable, the use of a psychic shock lance bears specific analysis. After the thrumbos are downed, assign them to be hunted, and the hunter will perform a neck cut without damaging the body. Before difficulty modifiers, Butchery Efficiency, and Trade Price Improvement:

The lance costs 550. It can down 2 thrumbos.
The horns alone are worth 2x 800.
The fur is worth 2240 - before it is processed.
- This is enough to create 4x, worth 1155 each at only Normal quality.
They also yield enough meat for 112 simple meals.

As the colony always buys and sells at a disadvantage, these numbers will always be smaller in practice. Depending on the skills of the colonists, the exact numbers can vary by a lot.

Tending and bonding

If you can down a thrumbo with weapons, it will often have dozens of wounds to tend. This makes an incapacitated thrumbo a great opportunity to train healing skills. There is also a small chance the doctor may bond with the animal, netting you a free pet thrumbo.

With a 0.4%, or 1 in 250, chance to bond with each wound tended, that can add up to something worth pursuing; tending 40 wounds results in a ~15% chance of bonding while also providing a significant amount of Medical skill experience. However, this is dangerous for the thrumbo. There is a high risk of permanent brain or eye injury, let alone the chance of just killing it.

Tending as medical training represents a risk if you are after the horn/fur/meat, where you might not want a bond to form - the mood penalty for the death of a bonded animal is significant, -8 for 20 days.

Hunting tactics

Firing line: The most basic approach. Draft a large amount (half-dozen or more) with high damage, line them up at maximum range, and unload. For safety, you should have an escape route with multiple doors/autodoors, all spaced at least 1 tile apart so the door can actually closed. Weapons with a larger burst like the LMG or (if you are confident) minigun are perfect, due to the accuracy increase against a large target. As the chance to hit it in the leg(s) multiple times and slow it down is good, you can easily combine this with the "kiting" approach, below, without needing anything more than a healthy pawn (and a little luck).

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.

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.

Armor vs. weapon types

Armor

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