Botanist

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Botanist

Superiors: Head of Personnel
Difficulty: Easy
Guides: Guide to Hydroponics
Access: Hydroponics
Duties: Grow plants, provide ingredients for the Chef. That's all.

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As a Botanist (also known as Hydroponist or Botanical Researcher), it's your job to grow stuff for the Chef to keep the crew fed. There are plenty of vegetables to grow, and if you're feeling adventurous, there are some other less edible plants to experiment growing with. Other tasks that are likely to come up is providing the Science Department's RnD with particular mutated plants, and cargo with certain rare seeds for profit. For the most part, a botanist has a lot of free time to experiment, but don't forget that your first duty as a botanist is to keep the station fed.

Your First Shift

So you've just arrived to the station and you can't tell a potato from a killer tomato. Well, here's a little guide to get you started!

Initial Objectives

While you can grow food for the chef right from the start, if you don't do any setup you'll be stuck taking care of plants that grow slowly and produce very little. As such you should take some steps to improve your plants and environment first:

• Grab the plant disks from all the lockers along with a hydroponics HUD, cultivator, hatchet, portable seed extractor and spade
• Unsecure the grinder and drag it where it would be easy to access. There is no need to anchor it there.
• Decide which trays you'd like to use for mutating. Connect them with irrigation pipes and fill them with Mutrient(at least 40u per pour; alt-click the jug)
• Make a perennial growth disk
• Make a 50 Potency 1 Production speed core stat disk by growing a plant with these stats in a tray filled with robust harvest and no mutagens then extracting all the stats from its seeds. This disk will help with both production and mutation since more produce also means more seeds.
• Use Unstable Mutagen from the vendors or radium from glowshrooms to mutate Glowshrooms, Pumpkins and Ambrosia(Vulgaris to Deus and Deus to Gaia) to get access to unstable mutagen and ammonia, as well as the plants sci need.

Achieving these initial goals will give you the ability to make self sustaining trays and plants with okay stats, allowing you to easily keep up with the chefs demands without much effort. You will also have the genes needed to make unstable mutagen and ammonia yourself.

Tools of the Trade

You get a few fun tools as a Botanist that will make your life easier when growing plants; attainable from the NutriMax vendor and the closets in the back room:

Tools

• Portable Seed Extractor A plant bag that can also turn it's contents into seeds
• Plant Analyzer Use on plants or seeds to get information about their traits and stats. Use on a container containing unsorted seeds to sort them.
• Hydroponics HUD Shows you the level of weeds and pests on a soil plot and also when a plant is ready for harvest. Also allows you to see seed stats by hovering over them with your mouse.
• Cultivator: This one is meant to claw, or perhaps filter, out weeds from the hydroponic trays. If weeds are allowed to grow, they will eventually kill your plant and take their place!
• Spade Used to remove plants from trays and soil plots. Can also be used to dig sand to make sand piles, from you can make sandstones, and from those soil plots.
• Plant-B-Gone Spray bottle: Kills plants slowly and can be filled with other chemicals. Does minor toxin damage.
• Bucket: Fill these up and use them to water your trays.
• Wire Cutters Use them to connect trays with irrigation pipes.
• Wrench Use it to anchor or unanchor trays or other machinery like your grinder allowing you to move them about.

Things you should get from the outside:

• A multitool to hack your vendors with. You can ask cargo to make you one.
• Toxin Medical Kit: Just in case you eat something nasty.
• Various chemicals to mutate or treat your plants with.
• Beekeeping Equipment: Allows you to cultivate beehives and produce honey for the chef/crew to enjoy, as well as copious amounts of just about any chem. Do be careful though. Bees are dangerous once let loose.

Machines

• Seed Extractor: This machine extracts the seeds from plants and also stores them.
• Plant DNA manipulator: The bread and butter of hydroponics. This machine allows you to extract plant genes from seeds onto disks and insert those genes into other plants.
• Biogenerator: This machine can make a variety of items and reagents such as fertilizers, soil, milk, leather and monkey cubes from biomass gained by processing plants.

Useful Chemicals and Where to find them

There is an expanded list of chemicals in the guide to hydroponics, but these are some of the most useful and common:

Doping chems:

• Saltpetre

  1 part Potassium
  1 part Nitrogen
  3 parts Oxygen
  : Increases mutations strength for Potency. Can be produced by filling a compost bin also available in a hacked Nutrimax Vendor.

• Ammonia

  3 parts Hydrogen
  1 part Nitrogen
  : Increases mutations strength for Yield. Produced by Blumpkins.

• Diethylamine

  1 part

  Ammonia

  3 parts Hydrogen
  1 part Nitrogen

  
  1 part Ethanol
  Temperature 374 K
  : Increases mutations strength for Production Speed. Can be made in a chem dispenser(requires heating)

• Cryoxadone

  1 part Plasma
  1 part

  Acetone

  1 part

  Oil

  1 part

  Welding Fuel

  Found in welding fuel tanks.

  
  1 part Carbon
  1 part Hydrogen

  
  1 part

  Welding Fuel

  Found in welding fuel tanks.

  
  1 part Oxygen

  
  1 part

  Unstable Mutagen

  1 part Chlorine
  1 part Plasma
  1 part Radium

  
  1 part

  Cryostylane

  1 part Water
  1 part Plasma
  1 part Nitrogen
  : Increases mutations strength for Endurance. Can be made in a chem dispenser. Mebay uses it, so they should have some lying around.

• Omnizine

  Found in warm Donk Pockets or rainbow cotton candy.
  : Increases mutations strength for Lifespan. Produced by Lifeweed.

• Saline-Glucose Solution

  1 part

  Sodium Chloride

  1 part Sodium
  1 part Chlorine
  1 part Water

  
  1 part Water
  1 part Sugar
  : Weed Growth Rate and Weed Vulnerabiliity. The ingredients can be found in Olives, Watermelon and White Beet.

Fertilizers:

• E-Z Nutriment: Doesn't increase mutation level or affect yield.

• Robust Harvest: Does not increase mutation level. It increases yield by 30%. Doesn't increase the stat itself, just the harvested amount.

• Mutriment: Increases mutation level by 10.

• Left 4 Zed: Increases mutation level by 15. Will drop yield to 1, so change fertilizer once you are content with the stat changes.

All fertilizers can be found in the Nutrimax vendor, and the biogenerator can make more of them.

Hover over each of the chemicals to learn how to create them, for further details check Guide to Chemistry.

Mutagens:

Mutagens fill up the mutagen tank, which increases mutation level by 1 per 1u in it, up to 15. Goes down by 1 each harvest and needs to be replenished.

• Unstable Mutagen

  1 part Chlorine
  1 part Plasma
  1 part Radium
  : Does not poison the tray. 2 bottles can be found in a hacked Nutrimax vendor, and the ingredients can be found in Blumpkins and Glowshrooms.
• Uranium: poisons the tray. Found in Glowberries.
• Radium: poisons the tray. Found in Glowshrooms.

To cultivate

Now that you know your tools and materials, it's time to get familiar with how you actually get plants growing:

Making things grow

The MegaSeed Servitor gives you the seeds to start growing. There are a couple of hidden seeds too if you get the tools to hack it, though you could also ask an engineer or scientist to hack it and they'll probably have the tools and knowledge to do it for you. Plant the seeds in a tray and begin your cultivation journey.

You can drop anything edible you make in the fridge for the chef, though you may want to plant whatever they need frequently in the chef's garden. You can also use the fridge to store anything that isn't restricted or dangerous, for those experiments you'd want a second fridge. Anything you don't want to store can go into the biogenerator(except for certain plants like death nettles) and be turned into biomass that can be made into a variety of things.

• Perennial growth is the most important trait, and the first one you should extract to a disk in the DNA Extractor. This is what makes your plant not disappear as you harvest it.

Doing your part

As you can see, getting something going isn't too difficult. But if you want to be useful, you need to grow the right stuff, and make it grow well.

Duties

Your main duties are supplying the chef, getting science their plants and keeping the biogenerator stocked with biomass to be more specific:

• For food, make whatever the chef asks for, and preferably plant it in his garden to save tray space. Don't forget to put Gaia branches in the soil plots.

• Science will ask you for plants they need for research. Glowshrooms, Glowcaps and Ambrosia Gaia are the most common ones.

• The Biogenenerator can take just about any plant, but the higher the nutriment and plant matter content the better, so watermelons are one of the best choices. Use the biogenerator to make products like cloth and leather for the crew.

Those however are only your basic duties, a good botanists can make all sorts of beneficial plants to suit the needs of a station. A few examples include:

• If you expect power issues, grow some potatoes. They can be made into potato batteries by clicking them with wires, and with high potency and the electrical activity trait from glow caps are as good as any power cell science can make.

• Healing plants are always useful, and there are countless varieties that can be eaten, thrown or squished to achieve their effect. And Medbay can always use some lazarus reagent, omnizine, bicaridine, kelotane and blood.

• Plant some Steelcaps near the ORM if the miners aren't getting enough metal in.

Actually Getting Set Up

Now that you know some basics let's run you down a more comprehensive to-do list for the beginning of the shift:

• Go to the backroom, grab a botany HUD and seed extractor from one of the closets, and the plant data disk box from each.

• Put the plant disk boxes near the DNA Extractor

• Get a multitool from tool storage or cargo and a screwdriver from the backroom and use it to hack your vendors.

• Extract perennial growth from a plant

• Plant 2 or 3 Glowshrooms and a plant with 1 production. Make sure you put perennial growth on all of them.

• While those are growing use a pair of wirecutters to connect the glowshroom tray to some others with irrigation pipes. Those will be for mutating for mutating.

• Fertilize the 1 production plant and one glowhsroom with robust harvest, fertilize the other glowshrooms with mutriment, using at least 30u at a time so the connected trays are also fertilized

• Harvest the plant and make a core stat disk from it

• Put the stats from the core stat disk on some pumpkin, grass and ambrosia vulgaris seeds, then plant and fertilize with mutriment

• Use either 15u of Mutagen or 3-4 glowshrooms on each tray. Use the analyzer to verify they are filled with mutagen.

• Harvest and sort the seeds to get Glowcap Blumpkin and ambrosia deus seeds. Repeat the process with ambrosia deus to get gaia, and plant the glowcaps to make some for sci.

• Put the core disk stats on grass or preferably carpet seeds(better if you have mutagen production since it cannot change species) and put ammonia from the blumpkins on them. Plant and fertilize with robust harvest

• Harvest the grass, plant 4-6 copies of it and fertilize with nutriment then fertilize with the grass(that should have ammonia on it).

• Harvest those grass plants, and extract seeds until you fill a seed extractor or plant bag

• Sort with an analyzer, keeping the grass seeds with the highest yield and 1 production

• Plant those seeds instead of the first grass plant and repeat until 10 yield.(If you have ammonia in the trays and they are filled with mutagen it would usually be the first time)

• Get saltpetre from the vendor, using a jug or dropper to dispense 1u into each tray or soilplot, then repeat the process until you get 100 10 1 seeds.

• Plant those seeds and use them to make a new core stat disk

• Make Mutagen grass by inserting the chems from Blumpkins and Glowshrooms and use it for the rest of the mutation.

• Remember to improve the stat of each plant before mutating so that it yield more seeds and grows quicker.

Would you look at that, you just made yourself useful! Good job!

As an aside, this is just a basic list. There are many improvements to be made, and many of the steps can be done in parallel, though that can be a bit overwhelming for a new botanist.

Helping other departments

Apart from cooking, plants are also useful for Research & Development, selling rare plants at Cargo, providing Medical department and chemists with ready-to-use reagents. Also, sometimes plants are needed for the DNA Vault station goal, in which case many different plants should be grown to be scanned.

Science

Scientists at R&D can use plants in the Destructive Analyzer to get tech levels. Notable plants that help in that are:

• Tomato (biotech=5)
• Bluespace Tomato (bluespace=5)
• Killer-Tomato (combat=5)
• Bluespace Banana (bluespace=5)
• Glowcap (powerstorage=6, plasmatech=4)
• Glowshroom (plasmatech=6)
• Shadowshroom (plasmatech=4, magnets=4)
• Walking Mushrooms (programming=5)
• Glow-Berry Bush (plasmatech=6)
• Gatfruit Tree (combat=6)
• Death Nettle (combat=5)
• Ghost Chili (magnets=5)
• Golden Apple (materials=5)
• Ambrosia Gaia (biotech=6, materials=5)

Cargo

Cargo Bay department can sell a number of rare plant seeds for supply points. Most of the mutated species of plants are considered rare. Plant analyzer tells you if a plant seed is rare and its rarity score when used on a growing plant or its products (if the plant is not rare, there is no corresponding line). Only one sample of a plant is needed to gain points, more is unnecessary. The number of points awarded are the sum of the discovered plant's potency and rarity, and if you send in the same plant with better potency you will be awarded the difference between the new sample's potency and the previous one's.

Plant Values

Name	Type	Seed	Potting	Product	Rarity/ Discovery Value
Ambrosia deus	Normal				40
Ambrosia gaia	Normal				30
Blood Tomato	Normal				20
Bluespace Banana	Normal				30
Bluespace tomato	Normal				50
Blue cherry	Normal				10
Blue tomato	Normal				20
Blumpkin	Normal				20
Carpet	Normal				10
Cherry Bomb	Normal				60
Coffee robusta	Normal				20
Death berry	Normal				30
Death nettle	Weed				20
Deathweed	Normal				40
Destroying angel	Mushroom				30
Gatfruit	Normal				60
Glow-berry	Normal				20
Ghost chili	Normal				20
Glowshroom	Mushroom				20
Shadowshroom	Mushroom				30
Glowcap	Mushroom				30
Gold apple	Normal				40
Holymelon	Normal				20
Chilly Pepper	Normal				20
Killer tomato	Normal				30
Koibean	Normal				20
Kudzu	Weed				30
Lifeweed	Normal				40
Mimana	Normal				15
Moonflower	Normal				15
Novaflower	Normal				20
Omega weed	Normal				69
Poison-berry	Normal				10
Rainbow weed	Normal				40
Snapcorn	Normal				10
Space tobacco	Normal				20
Steelcap	Mushroom				20
Tea astra	Normal				20
Walking mushroom	Mushroom				30

Green Thumb, Bloody Hands

A competent botanist makes for a terrifyingly effective antagonist by virtue of how plants can be modified in the DNA machine. If you have an easy objective, quickly rush out and get it out of the way, then head back and get your plants growing. If not, getting creative with your plants may provide a significant advantage, and in the meantime other antagonists may open opportunities to use them. Mix dangerous plant traits such as Liquid Contents and Gaseous Decomposition or Hypodermic Prickles with plants that produce poisons, and suddenly you have access to a deadly weapon that can incapacitate victims with ease. Such examples include acid smoke bombs and powerful contact-poison fruits. You can also adulterate some food; you have access to syringes in the NutriMax vendor that can serve this purpose. Just make sure your give it to the right person! Your leather gloves give no prints onto a crime scene, so Detectives will have their work cut out for them to pin anything on you in particular.

Botanists can also grow powerful medicines that keep them healthy against Security. Traitor Botanists in particular have access to Ambrosia Cruciatus, which features a high amount of bath salts production (useful for anti-stun or poisoning via overdose!), as well as a briefcase of bees. The briefcase full of bees works for a powerful unique traitor weapon, although the classic NOT THE BEES sound file will tell everyone that you're probably an agent.

Notably for Vampires, the Biogenerator can make monkeys to stave off hunger; this is useful when you're working on your perfect killer fruit.

Roles on Paradise Station