Here’s a guide on the goo color mixing, if you need additional information feel free to ask and I will update the guide accordingly.
The mixing is based on the LAB color space meaning that in laymens terms we mix contrast not brightness.
When for example mixing dark red with white we would expect in RBG space for the color to move towards pure red. In LAB it walks towards the browner or dark rose shades, this is because we mix greyish/whiteish contrast into red/blackish color and infact lose on red contrast.
An example of color mixing towards red:
Mixing towards red has an appearance like this:
--------------------------------------outside------------------------------------------- outside ↔ orange ← red → cherry ← red → fuchsia ↔ outside
--------------------------------------outside---------------------------------------------
outside on top and bottom mean that there is not enough true red color inside the mix
If you know your way around Gimp or Photoshop this might help you (do not know if the conversion to .png made the pics colors useless apologies if so)
Use the select by color feature to see where your color is positioned in the plot on the right, with this you get a good idea of which colors are close to your color.
Close colors are best for mixing, finding the right combination is only a matter of distance on the plot.
Credit goes to @Firehazurd for the plot. No idea who made the other one sorry^^’
Anchor means your goal colors weight in total.
Mixing tip 1: You can use unrelated color pigments to increase your output as long as your anchor outweights the unrelated pigments.
Mixing tip 2: From experience, if you use a combination of different shades to mix your goal you can burn more unrelated color since the anchor is more stable if the color is produced by mixing more close colors.
Mixing tip 3: It helps to have a stack of your goal color in the mix to further strengthen the anchor.
I have had some experience over the last months and highly recommend if you are looking to get a certain color scheme to use the side colors of it on the circle. Blue for example go from lavender and cerulean, the ones left and right of blue in the circle.
You will also want high stacks of black and white those are very useful pigments.
The luminous colors are hard to obtain as well as all colors that are on the farthest outer circle. Here it helps to have other near luminous to mix with and white.
There were no questions concerning the guide. So I changed the title
and put in the last bits of useful info I could think of. It can dissapear into oblivion, to the other guides now lol
Does goo still randomly mutate when planted in stone or sponge? My original goal had been to have gleam set up to produce the correct seeds, then move it to stone when I had them right - but I regularly had a good 20-30% of my seeds change color when they weren’t in gleam. On top of the chance to lose the seed completely, it’s more than a little frustrating.
I have recently transferred my farm to “on gleam” from previously using gleam to transmute and rock to grow and to be honest I’m not sure if I’m happy with the change… the extra 5% seed loss really hurts whereas the random mutations were always to a nearby colour which means that they were usually useful for mixing with whatever colour I was targeting anyway.
Yeah both of them contribute to making goo farming overall less desirable, and it’s already quite a lot of work. The mutation rate in rock/sponge needs to be either heavily reduced or removed entirely. I’d strongly support that change.
I think random mutations still have their use and their purpose, for example discovering what the mutation possibilities are for a specific colour of kernel. And as I say each pigment is still worth 1.24 cans of paint regardless of what colour it randomly mutates to when mixed, I can still throw in a handful of warm blue pigments with enough of the right colours to make shadow blue for instance.
With anything there will always be a trade off, on gleam you get faster grow times, no random mutations, but more seed loss. On sponge you get much more pigment, but high seed loss. With rock you get a balance and good seed return but the random mutations of course. You do have choices but no one choice can excel in all 3 areas or else that would be the only option.
Personally after playing around with all methods I am starting to lean towards the growing on rock method as I found this gave me the most satisfying results, I don’t mind the random mutations as I can use the pigments and I can re-mutate the seed. I find what hurts me most, in terms of negative feelings, is losing the seed and having to mutate from base again.
Honestly all forms of farming will feel like a chore after a time as they are a repetitive task. I do at least enjoy the goo farming over others as there is so much variety, so much to experiment with, so many options in terms of farm set ups. And the results of the hard work and experimentation have definitely paid off financially and it’s nice knowing that I now have access to as much of all 255 colours as I want and probably with just as much work as it would require of me to go and mine the rocks and wood of all 255 colours if they were available.
I agree that all farming can very much feel like a chore, but goo farming is unique in how many ways you can ‘lose’ your seeds and have to start over - not just from the raw seed% but also from mutation on top of that. Given the exo requirement to replenish your raw seed stock, that makes it even more punishing.
My interpretation of the process is that mutating a seed from base is itself very lossy, requring multiple steps that can take realtime weeks to achieve with higher risk to the seeds throughout - and that once you finally succeed, the intended payout is being able to produce your desired pigment with them with only the threat of seed % loss, letting you weigh whether you’d rather higher crop % or seed %. Having to take the mutated seeds back to gleam is basically a step backwards that incurs higher risk again. I could agree to there being SOME mutation for variety’s sake, but right now the rate averages between 20-30% - it’s simply too high at the moment. 5-10% might be a better range. Alternately they could have the mutation rate be a function of how the seed color differs from the rock color - same rock color being zero or near-zero rate, and scaling up from there to some maximum.
I also believe that the random mutation happens on top of the gleam mutation as well - that when growing in gleam both the intended step toward your desired color and the random mutation can occur at the same time. This I have less problem with; being in gleam is when it feels like the seeds are meant to be more volatile.
It’s possible the devs intend goo farming to be intimidating and frustrating to the point where it turns away all but the most dedicated players, but I dont think that’s a terribly wise course if they want the game to feel inviting and full of potential.
I do very much agree with all that you say. To be honest I haven’t actually quantified what percentage of crops randomly mutated, I just always assumed it was around 10-15% without actually ever bothering to count them, I guess I have, as you no doubt noticed, always just taken the random mutations in stride and tried to see them in a positive light. But if they realistically are in the 20-30% range, then yes that probably is getting excessive. I still believe their is a use though for the random mutating farm, for someone who has no access to gleambow gleam for instance and does just wish to make some random pigments (they’re all useful), or someone just experimenting, I’m yet to actually make a farm with the intent of randomly mutating myself though to be honest.
So maybe an alternative to this would be a modifying “near to” block that reduces random mutations by 5% but increases maturity time by 5% that you can max out at 20%… just as an off the top of the head suggestion. This would also have the drawback of adding to layout complexity meaning it cannot be done so compactly.
I like to think they have tried to make it possible for anyone to get some use and enjoyment out of.
A relatively new player with no idea of what he/she is doing can just start planting on rock and harvesting whatever happens to mature. With some experimentation in the mixer they may be even be able to make some really sweet colours from what they have grown. This costs them nothing but a trip to an exo to gather some kernels.
To a casual veteran with access to some fancier gleam colours. They can make moderate quantities of most colours but not all, but by cooperating/trading/shopping with other, they can still effectively get access to most if not all.
To the most dedicated players, myeslf personally I love complexity, the more complex the better. It’s what keeps me entertained in a game and I love finding new, better and more efficient ways to do things. The result being I can truly make this a large scale and rewarding thing. If it was simply a case of plant, wait 2 days, harvest, repeat. I’d tire of it quickly.
But I think what you say here is in reality what has happened whether it was their intention or not.
I could get behind something like this - either a near-to material as you describe, or an alternate planting block that matches Rock’s seed and produce %'s but has a mutation/maturity speed tradeoff as you describe. Perhaps planting in Black Glass to achieve that effect, or alternately having that be the ‘near to’ block. As a side benefit goo seeds would really stand out against black glass, making them visually pop.
Alternately you could have the goo seed check if the planting material matches the goo seed color - i.e. the rock/sponge/gleam - and if they match, reduce or remove the mutation rate. So planting red goo on red rock would either not mutate or would mutate significantly less, but any other color on that rock would mutate as normal. It’d give people a reason to paint their planting areas as part of farm setup, which would not be unwelcome. I might almost like this one better…
While I don’t disagree that there can be a benefit from letting colors intentionally mutate - possibly to get colors you cannot create from permanently-available gleams - it feels like if someone is going for a random mutation setup then that should be an explicit choice you build your farm toward as opposed to the default. For myself I know I was shocked that mutation happened at ALL when I planted in rock for the first time; it was a surprise and not a welcome one. When planting in gleam it’s very explicit that a color change will occur because it shows the “Color ___ towards ___” dialog, but you don’t get that indication in rock or sponge.
I think that goo growing and pigment mixing already entails a decent bit of complexity due to the roundabout way colors mix and jump - it’s definitely not intuitive or fully understood yet, which is possibly a good thing. A tradeoff is how much pigment you really need to make an appreciable impact on a build - it all but requires goo farms be large scale, which magnifies all the % problems we’ve been talking about with seed loss and mutation rates. Gathering goo from exos is not always as straightforward as one would hope, and you need a ‘close enough’ base seed to your target color(s) or you’ll be spending a lot more iterations mutating. So I definitely think it’s one of the more complex systems currently in the game already!
Thank you for your responses as well, it does help to talk this out - and hopefully the discussion can be enlightening for others to read too.
