Taming Thrumbos or Megatherium

[SpaceDorf]

Has anybody ever succesfully tamed one of those ?

I just want to know out of curiosity. I have to Megas in a enclosed area for two years now .. and still no success in taming the f....rs .
I had a similiar setup for Thrumbos in A13 until some pirate blew a hole in the wall. Also for several ingame years without success.

[Darth Fool]

I believe that the problem is that you need food to train these creatures, and at least for the thrumbos, they only seem to eat trees and bushes.  Lumber just doesn't cut it, so there is no way to train them.  This is purely based upon observations from an earlier build, so it could have changed since then.

[Vegtamr]

i have 2 "auto tamed" thrumbos XD pretty useless tho

[Gadg3t]

Pump a couple full of bullet holes and hope for an incap.

When you go to rescue the handler has so much work that it will probably bond and auto-tame.

Worked for this guy lol

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=23252.msg247139#msg247139

[SpaceDorf]

Did not work, that is how I got the Megatharii in the enclosure in the first place.

Incapped them with the Melee-Log Squad, then "rescued" them.
The only thing is, when they are no longer unable to walk, I can't treat them anymore.


Also Thrumbos eat nearly everything, including trees. I had/have a huge kibble/hay storage for them to don't starve.

[SpaceDorf]

i have 2 "auto tamed" thrumbos XD pretty useless tho

Yeah I too thought you could shear that valuable fur they have .. since I found out I can't
I shoot them on sight, they are worse than beavers

[lorebot]

I've tamed Megatherium before, but never successfully tamed a Thrumbo without cheating. The chance of success is incredibly low even at max Handling.

Since you get Thrumbo fur from them when you kill them I too had assumed you could shear them for it as livestock, but sadly that is not the case. They also have voracious appetites so they're difficult to care for. But they make amazing combat animals and can be trained to be released on enemies. They also have the greatest carry capacity of any animal in the game if you can manage to train them to be haulers.

They can be bred and do butcher for a ton of meat and their horns are very valuable so if you can afford to keep them as livestock there are perks for doing so, but i wouldn't try it till you're very well established on the map and are secure in your ability to keep them fed. They will eat just about anything from live trees (not lumber), to bushes, to grass, hay, and any crops, as well as kibble. So they're not hard to find food for, it's just hard to find enough of it to keep them fed. If you only have 3 or 4 of them you can usually allow them to wander the map they'll eat trees and bushes in the wild, just try to keep them out of your crops or they'll eat all your plantings before they can be harvested.

[SpaceDorf]

I know that, I know .. I recruited Tribals with worse chances

And the hauling max only matters with hay, anything else is capped at max stacksize, so hauling weight does not matter.
I had Hauling Elephants once, and employ six Grizzlies to haul at the moment .. which took less time to tame and train than I have the megatherium now.

[Vegtamr]

well the chances of success in train are incredibly low too ... like 1%? at lvl 20 i think

[ArguedPiano]

I once watched a streamer try and tame Thrumbos using a similar method of capturing them. After two years he had no success although one did self tame so that's something.

[Skaliri]

Welp, I am the person who managed to tame one while healing them. I tried it some more, it is really luck dependant. I think it's either because the animal has to nuzzle you, which is completely random, or it has to do with just the low base chance of taming it (I have no idea how the mechanics work while healing, but lets say 1 roll for every time you heal a wound with 0.5% chance is still pretty shitty and purely luckdependant.

Still, I seemed to have been able to sort of replicate it a buncha times, but it's fickle and really hard to figure out how it works. Luck has it though, that just this save I still have 1 thrumbo locked in a cryptopod, so I might just crack it open and do some experimenting. I'll keep you informed of anything I found. 

PS: My very first thrumbo was actually manually tamed afaik. Exact story:

first thrumbo event: one single thrumbo. Incapped it, nursed it back to health, nothing happened, but it stayed around and my main animal handler (lvl 16-17 at that time) tamed it after a looong time by pure luck.
Second thrumbo event: got 2 thrumbo's, tried to capture them, but was too late, both escaped.
third thrumbo event: got 3 thrumbo's, managed to incap them all. 2 of them bonded while I healed them up with my main healer (healing 16-17, animals 10). One of them died in an infection shortly after unfortunately.
Fourth Thrumbo event: got another 3 thrumbo's, incapped 2 of them, converted one of them while healing, other one died of infection while wandering off after being halfway healed.
Fifth thrumbo event: 3 of em, killed 2, incapped one, stored it in the cryptopod.

I am currently also trying to continually melee them so they keep being incapped. I'll keep you up to date.

PS: Baby Thrumbo's are cute as fuck, but all Thrumbo's look so saaaad =(

Also, last thing:

i have 2 "auto tamed" thrumbos XD pretty useless tho

Thrumbo's (or The MEGASLOTHS for that matter) are indeed almost impossible to properly train (So far, none of my thrumbo's has anything except follow). But, you can give them manual zones in your poorly protected flanks during raids: the raiders will get distracted by them and engage them. If you can get them to melee your thrumbo even better. It might be a bit dense, but usually after a buncha hits it will start retaliating, and ooh boy did that save my ass once during a sapper event once... I had an entirely enclosed base, except for a small 2 thick wall pregenned building part. Put my thrumbo in there, sappers walked into the ruins, threw a grenade at my thrumbo which proceeded to chop of the legs of 3 of the fuckers.

[RimJimMcGee]

I've successfully tamed both, with maybe 2-3 colonists with enough animal handling to attempt it trying pretty regularly, so it can definitely be done.

On the other hand, there was a megatherium sat outside the colony for about 2 years which was having absolutely none of that "being domesticated" shit, so I feel like I probably got pretty lucky getting a megatherium and a thrumbo relatively close together.

[8roads]

With enough patience, hurt and heal and bond. Then you can ambush raiders or block main entrance with them. (assigned area)

[SpaceDorf]

Yeah, I had a 4 Thrumbo event, 2 died while capture, the other two died of infection.

2 days of healing did not work

The megatherium raged and got gunned down too, then died of infection .. crappy.
Now I have to wait until some new ones show up

[Skaliri]

I believe high damage guns work better (relatively less wounds to patch up and to get infected) and as soon as those are half way patched up, order an euthenasation on them, focus that but interrupt it: they should get anesthatics, letting you heal them up for another few hours, after which you should be able to melee them back into shock. Rince and repeat :p