Dryads

Dryads are a caste based species that live symbiotically with a Gauranlen tree. All dryads are subservient to a dryad queen within said tree and cannot live without it. Colonist are able to exploit dryads by connecting with the tree itself, granting partial control of the dryads.

Summary

Dryads are mechanically animals. However, they do not need to eat, are immune to disease events, and have a 100% Toxic Resistance, rendering them immune to Toxic fallout and Toxic buildup. Dryads can bleed when injured, but cannot bleed to death. Dryads have a sleep need requirement and tend to sleep at night, but will also fulfill their sleep need at other times, thus giving them unpredictable sleep schedules.

Dryads heal abnormally fast, and can be commanded anywhere to enter a healing pod as long as they are not incapacitated. Once inside a healing pod, dryads will takes 3 days to heal all injuries, including scars, lost body parts, and bad conditions.

Dryads will automatically have training depending on their respective caste. The barkskin and clawer dryads start with Guard and Attack, and the carrier dryads starts with Haul, while the rest have no trainability. They can only have their Gauranlen tree's connected pawn as their master, but can form bonds when their master tends to them. They do not require regular handling to maintain tameness or other skills.

All dryad castes have a meat yield of 4 immature dryad meat, even if a caste has been selected for them.

Dryad spawning

See also: Gauranlen tree

All dryad castes will start off as an immature dryad. Immature dryads will spawn every 8 days, as long as there's a Gauranlen tree with an empty dryad slot for them to fill. An unconnected tree can support up to two immature dryads which will function as wild animals. Once connected, a tree can support up 4 dryads depending on the connection strength. If the connection strength drops below a threshold, a dryad may remove itself from the colony by "returning" into its tree, thus needing to be replaced by a new dryad once connection strength improves back. A dryad returning to the tree will not have any effect on the spawn timer.

Immature dryads will form into a cocoons once a caste has been selected, as long as their sleep need is met. It takes 5 days for them to specialize or change into a chosen caste. Players can choose the caste for each specific tree in which each can only support one particular caste, future dryads birth from the tree once a caste has been chosen will be immature and will have to undergo the 5 day cocoon phase each. Changing a tree's caste will cause it's dryads to form cocoons again, taking 5 days to morph into whatever caste is needed.

Behavior

Dryads don't stray far from their trees, even when they are part of the colony. They will meander nearby their Gauranlen tree when idle. Dryads may wander over fences and through doors, but will not wander through forbidden doors. Dryads will sleep near their tree and unlike other animals, cannot be assigned sleeping spots. They will use medical sleeping spots when needed however. In the event of a fire near the tree on Gauranlen moss, dryads can help put out fires. When following a drafted pawn, dryads perform identically to other animals.

In the event that one releases a dryad to the wild, they will remain connected to their tree despite not benefiting the colony. They cannot be re-tamed, they will still take up a population slot on their tree, and your pawns will lose control of them. Killing the rogue dryad will allow a new player controlled dryad to spawn.

Analysis

All dryads have a specialized purpose. Berrymaker, medicinemaker, and woodmaker dryads all create resources that may be difficult to obtain, depending on biome and Ideoligion. Barkskin and clawer dryads fight, carrier dryads haul, and gaumaker dryads can create more trees and thus more dryads.

Tree pruning is a time consuming process - colonists connected to trees will need to dedicate all their time managing their trees. For the three resource -makers, just planting crops (when possible) tends to give more yield per work. Haulers are more efficient than humans haulers, as 1 tree and 1 colonist will support 4 haulers who don't need to eat or recreate, and will work longer than prune time. Combat dryads are weak on their own, but have unique advantages and dedicated combat roles - see #Combat potential for details.

Economic potential

There are 3 dryads that offer creating items of value, the woodmaker, medicinemaker, and berrymakers. All three will create resources once every 2 days.

• Berrymaker dryads produce  38.2 of raw berries in Market Value.
  • Selling raw is most efficient, as packaged survival meals or pemmican require meat to craft.
• Woodmaker dryads produce  30 of wood in Market Value.
  • Wood can be fashioned into sculptures, valued based on Art skill. However, one harvest is not enough for a sculpture, and they take a noticeable amount of work. See Sculpture Production for more details.
  • Converting wood to chemfuel is a net loss ($2.4 wood makes $2.3 worth of chemfuel), but is 16x lighter.
• Medicinemaker dryads produce  30 of herbal medicine in Market Value.
  • It's best to sell raw - industrial medicine, their only product, isn't profitable as it requires buying neutroamine.

Therefore, berrymaker dryads are the most efficient money dryad, giving the most value for no extra work. However, berries expire after 14 days, which may necessitate woodmaker dryads instead.

Berrymakers create $11.46 (at 0 Trade Price Improvement) per day, per dryad. If you are pruning 2 trees with a 20 plant-skill colonist, they can support 8 dryads (working 11 hours a day), and thus make ~$8.33 per hour of work, plus transportation. To maintain at least one dryad, ~2.5 hours of work is needed per day, so more dryads per tree are more efficient than more trees.

For comparison, planting a single psychoid plant gives $28 in flake. Corn can be planted and harvested to make $605 per hour with the right bionics. This makes dryads a fairly poor method of making money, and more useful for their situational or Ideoligion benefits.

Combat potential

Only Barkskin and Clawer dryads are capable of offensive combat. Either dryad can follow their tree's connected pawn into battle like a trained animal. Dryads have special advantages over normal animals: they can't die of blood loss (so don't need to be tended to immediately), can heal otherwise permanent injuries in 3 days, and do not contribute towards colony wealth (making raids smaller). However, they can't be brought away from colony normally via caravan or pod launchers. Other dryads (domestic or wild/unconnected) will attack when provoked, but have poor combat statistics. All dryads are small in size, and will be hit far less frequently by ranged attacks.

Dryads are good at fulfilling their role of supporting colonists and other pawns in combat:

• Barkskin dryads boast high defense, with similar armor to a thrumbo (70% sharp, 40% blunt). They can take roughly 3-4 shots from most firearms. With 3.16 DPS, they are fairly weak at damage, but their armor and aforementioned healing make them useful. With such high armor, these dryads are good at distracting enemies while your colonists fire from afar. Alone, they are roughly equal to dogs in combat.
• Clawer dryads have highest melee DPS of any non-human or ghoul in the game, out-damaging scythers and thrumbos and offering over double the AP, and their first strike stuns for a short duration. The opposite of barkskins, clawers have poor durability. This makes them strong when combined with other melee attackers (including other clawers), in a cramped hallway, or when facing a small number of powerful enemies like centipedes or thrumbos. Alone, they are typically capable of beating gun-wielding human pawns.

Conclusion: Even though they require a large amount of a pawn's time, dryads don't need food or training. With strong healing and immunity to blood loss, players may find them easier to keep than other pets. If they die, the tree-connected pawn only receives a -2 mood debuff, and a new dryad can take their place in 5-12 days.

Pawns

Dryad	Armor (S/B/H)	DPS	Move speed	Productivity	Additional Info
Barkskin dryad	70% / 40% / 0%	2.585	3.2 c/s	-	-
Berrymaker dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	2.585	3 c/s	40	-
Carrier dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	2.585	2.4 c/s	-	-
Clawer dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	7.44	4 c/s	-	-
Gaumaker dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	2.585	3 c/s	-	Requires Tree Connection Able to create more Gauranlen pods
Immature dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	2.585	3 c/s	-	-
Medicinemaker dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	2.585	3 c/s	4	-
Woodmaker dryad	0% / 0% / 0%	2.585	3 c/s	32	-

Trivia

• Immature dryads still appear as adults on the animals tab.
• When entering cocoons, the dryads will maintain the appearance of their previous caste.
• If a tree with dryads has its connection to the connector severed, such as by kidnapping or death, all specialized dryads revert back to immature dryads.
• Dryads can be taken off of the map when choosing animals to take with you when starting a new colony after obtaining a piece of the archotech map, and a master that is taken with them remains as their master. Dryads function without their gauranlen tree if taken off the map in this way, but despawn after a period of about a little longer than a season.

Version history

• Ideology DLC release - Added
• 1.3.3069 - Fix: Dryads can show up as animals for hospitality quests.
• 1.3.3076 - Fix: Dryads are affected by disease incidents.
• 1.3.3101 - Dryad spawn days reduced from 8 to 6. Reduced dryad transform delay from 6 days to 5 days. Fix: Wild dryads can wander in, only to leave right away.