Papillon Plants
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Plants, when purchased, begin with full resources. As the pets nibble on them, the resource count gradually lowers until it reaches zero, and can no longer supply food. Plants will turn black when all resources are fully expended, and will return to their normal color once resources are restored.

When the plant is originally rezzed, it will choose a random plant texture from its type, creating a varied garden. Anthriums, for example, come in over twenty different types. They all are still anthuriums, however, despite how they may look.

Food Supply

  • Small plants have a one-month food supply for a single pet.
  • Medium plants have a three-month food supply for a single pet.
  • Large plants have a six-month food supply for a single pet.
  • Giant plants have a one-year food supply for a single pet.

The larger the food supply, the larger then plant itself initially is; ie, giant plants are much larger than small plants. Small plants are appropriate for terrariums and very small gardens, medium plants are more appropriate for planters and average-sized gardens. Large and giant plants are fairly large and more appropriate for outdoor gardens.

Plants can be double-clicked to change their ownership setting; either owner-only, group-only, or allow-anyone to nibble.

Plant Accessories

You can use pruning shears and bee hives to extend the plant's maximum resource cap. Only watering sprayers and worker butterflies restore the actual resource count that's been consumed.

Your plants can be pruned to increase their maximum potential, by using pruning shears. Once pruned, they can be watered with a water sprayer to fill in the gap between their current and potential values.

Spiders

Plants occasionally attract a spider, based on how many butterflies are buzzing around. The more butterflies you have, the better the chances of your pretty plants acquiring some webbing.

Spiderwebs trap your butterflies momentarily and hurt their poor little delicate wings. Spiders are scared away with gardening rakes, Soldier butterflies, and bee hives. Damage caused by spider webs can be healed by Priest/Priestess butterflies. Babies are, of course, immune to spider webs because they're still too tiny to get trapped! When spiderwebs are cleaned away the plant regains a small amount of its resources while the busy little butterflies tend to it.

Patches

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Patches are special plant types that start as very low-resource food-types for your pets. Unlike normal plants, these patches cannot be watered or pruned, but they CAN be tended to by workers. Patches can be actively tended using a gardening rake/spade/hoe to replenish a percent of their total, and have a visible indicator (the texture changes) as they're nibbled on and tended to. A starter patch begins with enough resources to feed a pet for a couple of cycles (~ an hour).

Obviously patches aren't intended to be a 'main' source of food for your pets early on. However, they gradually increase in total resource potential over time and can potentially hold thousands of resources similar to normal plants (potentially gaining as much as 100 resources per day). After a few months of care, each of your patches could potentially have as many resources as a small plant, and be easier to replenish than plants that require constant watering.

Given a large amount of time (several months), patches are the most cost efficient way of maintaining your pets. After six months of time, your patches could potentially each hold 10,000-15,000 resources, and restore a quarter of their resource total with every use of a rake/spade/hoe. That's 2,000 resources every charge of a rake (a butterfly only consumes 1500-1700 per day on average); with 50 charges in a basic rake, that's potentally 100,000 resources restored, as much as two small plants worth of resources, at half the cost of replacing those plants. After a year worth of cultivating…the patches will hold around 25,000 resources (tiny plants in themselves now), restore 6,250 per use of the rake, for a total of 312,500 resources from a full rake… more than one large plant!

HOWEVER; early on there's no practical way for your pets to live on patches alone. Their resource count begins too low for them to keep up with the hungry little pets unless you're constantly refilling them. It's HIGHLY recommended that you supply a plant or two along with patches early on to make certain that they have enough to eat.

As a side note, it's possible to create a side-business out of growing and selling high-content patches. They're by far the most cost-effective way of maintaining your pets. It will certainly take time before any of the patches are worth any real amount, but after three-to-six months the cost ratios begin to favor the patches, and after six months they're undoubtedly worth more than normal plants.