Once Human: How to Tame Animals? — Ranch Guide [Patch 1.1] ByteMag (2024)

Once Human is arguably the best survival-crafting game of 2024, and it keeps getting better with each new update. Apart from the regular grinding, scavenging, and crafting mechanics, this game offers so much content to keep you hooked for a long time. In this regard, if you game to relax your mind, you will find a plethora of fun activities and taming animals is the absolute best of them.

The ranching animals feature was introduced in the 1.1 patch, along with many other additions. The only problem is that the game doesn’t really care to explain how this new system works. However, breeding animals in your base is a crucial task as it gives you free animal byproducts that would otherwise require countless hours of grinding. Therefore, in this article, we will walk you through how to tame animals in Once Human and everything else that comes with it, let’s get started:

• Once Human: Ranch Guide
  • Unlock the Memetics
  • Craft the Tranquilizing Needles
  • How to Capture Wild Animals in Once Human?
    • List of Tamable Animals in Once Human
  • Build the Animal Ranch in Once Human
  • Start Taming your Beasts
• Once Human: Animal Tameness Level Guide
• Can You Breed Animals in Once Human?
• Conclusion

Honestly, when we first started playing this game, our plan was to check it out, give it a review, and move on. However, we just kept playing without getting bored. It’s been 3 months now, and we have discarded all our other games. According to the mid-august patch notes, Once Human now includes two new Memetics to support the animal breeding system. You can capture many species of wild animals, bring them back to your base, and tame them by looking after them.

In return, your tamed animals will yield animal byproducts like fur and feathers that you can use in various crafting recipes. Furthermore, certain tamed predators will also accompany you to the outer world and help you in battles, much like Combat Type Deviants. In any case, learning how to tame and breed animals in Once Human can be a game-changer if you are looking to craft all those high-tier recipes. Here is a step-by-step guide to tame and breed various animals in Once Human:

Before we start explaining all the basics of this new system, we’d like to apologize to the Devs for saying that Once Human doesn’t have enough relaxing activities in our Fishing Guide. Okay, so the first step is to update your game to the latest patch to unlock these new features, but that goes without saying. Next, open the Memetics Cradle menu and navigate to the Logistics Tab. Here, scroll down to the fourth Tier and unlock the two new Memetics, i.e., Animal Capture and Animal Taming.

• Animal Capture: The Animal Capture node unlocks the recipe for the Tranquilizer Throwing Needle that you can use to sedate injured animals and capture them.
• Animal Taming: This node unlocks 3x animal feed recipes, Animal Trough, and, of course, the animal byproduct system. You will need all these recipes to successfully tame all tiers of tamable animals.

Once you unlock both Memetics Nodes, the next step is to craft your sedative weapon, i.e., the Tranquilizing Throwable Needles. For this task, you will need an Intermediate Supplies Workbench (hopefully, you already have one). Next, head to your Workbench and craft at least 10x Tranquilizer Needles before going on each hunt. You will need the following materials to craft a single throwable sedative:

• 8x Engineering Plastic
• 5x Rubber
• 3x Steel Ingot
• 3x Stardust Source

Technically, you can immobilize any animal with one or two Tranquilizer Needles. However, you will need a perfect headshot aim to achieve such perfection. In reality, wild animals tend to run away when provoked and predators will chase you in retaliation. Therefore, you should craft as many Needles as possible to prepare for the worst-case scenario and hope for the best results.

Well, you now have everything you need for the hunt except for just one more thing. By the time most players unlock the Taming Memetics, they have high-level weapons that can kill any beast with a couple of shots; we don’t want to do that to our potential companions, right? Therefore, you should craft a Tier 1 weapon like MP5S to avoid accidentally killing your pets.

Next, you must choose which animal you want to tame and head to their designated spawn locations. While you can randomly encounter any animals on your way there, it’s best to always aim for the primary den to increase your chances. Once you spot a tamable beast, take out your weakest weapon and start firing until their HP drops below the white line. At this point, you can now take out your Tranquilizer Throwable Needles and aim for the head. The animal will quickly get sedated with a perfect shot and lie flat on the ground. Finally, approach the immobilized beast and hold F to capture the animal.

We have been researching on this topic for quite a few days, and currently, we have tamed the following animals. While this list isn’t conclusive, we believe that these are all the tamable animals as per the latest Once Human patch. Currently, there are 10 tamable animals in Once Human, and each has a rating ranging from Tier S to C. Higher Tier animals are hard to tame, they yield better byproducts and offer more features at around 80% taming bar. Here is a list of all tamable animals in Once Human:

Docile:

• Rabbit
• Ewe
• Deer
• Buck
• Lamb
• Ram

Aggressive:

• Boar
• Crocodile
• Wolf
• Bear

Keep in mind this list isn’t complete and may never get completed as the Devs have announced plans to add new animals in each update. Maybe this will keep on going until we can finally tame and play with all the animals in the game (we will keep you updated on it). Oh, and don’t forget to check out other animals; you can easily identify the tamable beasts by the white line in their HP bar. We’d really appreciate it if you could provide us with your findings so that we can add more beasts to the list.

Now that you have your favorite animals in your inventory, it is time to head back to the base camp. At this point, you can release the beasts without any more protection, but untamed beasts will attack you, damage the base, and even try to run away. Therefore, it is important to build a Ranch for each type of animal before releasing them.

To build an animal Ranch or Pen, open the build menu by pressing Z and look for the Fence. Next, build a rectangular pen without leaving any gaps between the walls and don’t forget to install a door if you’d like to interact with the beasts. Finally, install one or two Animal Troughs inside each Pen to keep them well-accommodated and quickly raise their taming bar. You can build the Animal Trough by going to Build Menu > Facilities > Function Facility > Agriculture and each construction requires the following ingredients:

• 50x Log
• 12x Sintered Brick
• 15x Aluminum Ingot
• 15x Adhesive

The final step is to release your captured animals, feed them, and look after them until you earn their respect. The game judges each animal’s progress in terms of their Tameness Levels, ranging from 0% to 100%. The higher the percentage, the better benefits you will get from each animal. Oh, and you don’t need to go an extra mile like Taming in SoulMask, instead, all you need to do is to keep them well-fed and well-hydrated, that’s where the Animal Taming node becomes handy.

You can significantly increase each animal’s Tameness Level by giving it their desired foods and drinks. You can check each beast’s preferences by hovering over it and pressing F to check their Diet details. Finally, cook up their preferred Animal Feeds and place them inside the Animal Trough along with some drinking water. Currently, you can only tame 10 types of beasts in your base camp, but this number will increase in future updates. Hopefully, if you keep looking after them regularly, their Happiness and Tameness Levels will increase, and they will start dropping rare materials.

Here is a list of all types of Animal Feeds in Once Human and their uses:

• Body Boost Feed: This Animal Feed boosts the attributes of all types of animals to level 50.
• Meat Pellet Feed: This Feed is designed to keep your meat-eating carnivores like Alligators, Wolves, and Bears well-fed.
• Grain Concentration Feed: This feed is suitable for all grain-eating animals like Boars, and it will keep them healthy with a regular supply of water.
• Herbal Green Feed: This Feed is suitable for grass and herbs-eating herbivores like Rabbits, Ewes, and Rams. You must feed such animals twice a day to keep them well-fed.

As mentioned earlier, Once Human tamed animals behave according to their Tameness Levels. Initially, this level will be zero for all newly captured beasts; however, it will gradually fill up as you look after them. Basically, the animals will get tamed if you keep their Happiness, Energy, and Hydration levels above 30%. Moreover, you can also boost their moods by supplying them with their desired foods. Here is a list of all the features that you unlock at different Tameness Levels:

• 0% to 20% Tameness: At this stage, the animals won’t produce anything, may try to escape, and even attack you if they are predators.
• 20% to 50% Tameness: The animals still won’t produce anything, but they won’t try to escape, and the predators will cease their attacks.
• 50% to 80% Tameness: Animals will start producing byproducts, predators will accompany you in battles, and sometimes obey combat commands.
• 80% to 100% Tameness: Animals will reach their full potential, unlock their Grade-related benefits, and efficiently produce byproducts.

Additionally, the behavior of your tamed animals is also directly linked to their Grade. Each animal will randomly receive a Grade from Tier S to C at the time of capture. The higher-tier beasts will yield better byproducts, offer additional combat commands, and even give additional benefits if certain conditions are met. However, these Grade-based features are only unlocked after you unlock 80% or higher Tameness Level with that particular animal.

Unfortunately, not yet! The Animal Taming system is still a work in progress and a new concept in Once Human. So, it isn’t possible to breed your tamed animals in Once Human as per the latest mid-August Patch 1.1. However, the Developers have promised to add Breeding in future updates along with more animals, better resources, and many other things that we’d really love to see in our lifetime.

Hopefully, the Breeding update isn’t far and we can expect it within the next two game patches before the end of 2024. We will keep you updated with news on this topic and with any luck, we will be the first ones to let you know when it is finally released. In the meantime, make sure to populate your base camp with a pair of each Grade S animal so that you can start breeding them ASAP.