Overview
Glitch Slimes can be tricky little buggers, but here’s some hints that I’ve found that help me to get around 100+ Bug Reports per trip into the Slimeulation!
Intro
Since it came out, I’ve been playing the heck out of the Slimeulation. I loved the whole thing: the 8-bit music, the secrets, and those cute but tricky little glitches! And most of all, I like challenging myself to get as many of those slimes as I can before ultimately fleeing from the infestation of Tarr!
After some time, I’ve gotten to the point where I could get around 100 per trip into the program, give or take. If you’re wanting to grind those Manifold Cubes for some advanced drones or some of the other new blueprints, this will equal about 5 cubes per visit.
Here, in my first-ever guide, I’m hoping to maybe share some hints to some who might not be as into the simulation as I am, and are frustrated with those glitches.
Basics and Terminology
So, just as a quick rundown, here’s how the Slimeulation works:
This new area is an incomplete, digital recreation of the Far, Far Range. It isn’t a perfect replica: some areas are not present, typically either being walled off and inaccessible, or being absent entirely. Primarily, it is made up of the same 3 major segments of the classic Range: the Dry Reef, the Indigo Quarry, and the Moss Blanket. The Ancient Ruins and the Glass Desert are not present in any form, and neither is there a replica of your own range (that’d be a bit creepy of Viktor).
For the most part, the areas in the simulation are identical to their counterparts, aside from a few areas Viktor hasn’t textured properly. Ground, water, rocks, plants, even chickens will be present just as they are in reality… aside from a few anomalies that we’ll cover shortly.
And of course, slimes! Our gelatinous friends will spawn and behave just as they do in the real Range, with a few exceptions. Slimes in the simulation do not eat, and thus don’t produce plorts. However, to compensate for this fact, largo slimes can randomly spawn just like normal ones. Besides that, they’ll still move about like normal, and can be manipulated or even vacuumed by Beatrix. (although as these are still not real slimes, they and anything else you vac up besides Glitch Slimes will not exit the simulation with you)
And speaking of Glitch Slimes, they will appear too! But you won’t see them quite so easily. These little bugs don’t just appear out in the open: developers could only dream it was that simple! Instead, they will appear in disguise, and you’ll need to find them! For this guide, I have two unofficial terms I’ll be using for disguised Glitch Slimes.
“Dittos”: Glitch Slimes that are disguised as other slimes.
“Anomalies”: Glitch Slimes disguised as environmental objects.
Debug Spray
Before we get to the slimes themselves, you need to learn about your new best friend in the world of the Slimeulation: Debug Spray!
This stuff will replace water during your stay in the virtual world. There’ll still be freshwater ponds and water spouts, but they won’t go into your tank here. Instead, you’ll want to look out for something like this:
Vac that up, and in your water tank you’ll get 15 uses of Debug Spray (you can hold a maximum of 30 uses at once). When used, it’ll shoot out a green orb that’ll dissipate on the first surface or object it hits. This has two major uses: revealing Glitch Slimes, and destroying Virus Tarr. While you can reveal Dittos without using spray, you’ll want it for Anomalies. And when the Tarr show themselves, it’ll be a life-saver if you get cornered on your way to the exit! Hold onto as much as you can!
Catching a Ditto
This will be the simplest and most basic method of catching Glitch Slimes.
As you wander the Range and see our adorable slimy friends bouncing around like usual, keep a close eye on them, primarily their faces. Most will have the same puppy-dog eyes and wide smiles that we know and love, and these will be normal slimes and largos, but some of them will look… off.
I’m sure the first time any other Pokemon fans saw that face on a pink slime, they had the same thought I did. Thus why I chose the name Ditto.
But anyway, a slime or a largo with this face will, indeed, be a glitch in disguise. If you see one, you’ll either want to attempt to vac it up, or shoot some Debug Spray at it.
If you attempt to vacuum it, it will “glitch” and reveal its true self once it makes it to you. If struck with Debug Spray, it will reveal itself right there. At this point, the glitch slime(s) will start moving, usually away from you if you tried to vac them. They are much quicker than most slimes (not as fast as quicksilvers though), and have a habit of changing directions on the fly, even while in your vacuum stream! However, they leave trails behind them so they can be tracked.
If you reveal a Ditto of a normal slime, then they will in turn reveal themselves as one glitch slime. But if you reveal a largo Ditto, they’ll “burst” and become several glitch slimes. Typically 3 or 4 from what I’ve seen. Be sure to try and get them before they scatter, especially if you’re near a cliff overlooking the Slime Sea!
Lastly, make sure to keep your eyes and ears open! Some rare and valuable friends may pop up…
Yep, gold and lucky Dittos! Don’t be fooled, they’re still glitches and not the real thing, so go against your chicken-throwing instincts and vac them up ASAP! They’re holding a LOT of glitch slimes in them! But you need to be fast, because unfortunately they copy gold and lucky slimes in the worst way: they vanish after too long!
Spotting Spacial Anomalies
Catching Dittos in the act and snagging those glitches is all well and good, but those aren’t the only ones hiding around you. That tree you just passed, maybe a rock you leaped off of, or even that giant mushroom in the Moss Blanket, they can all be glitches too!
As Viktor points out before your first venture into the Slimeulation, your knowledge of the Far, Far Range will be put to the test. You’ll want to constantly stay vigilant of anything that seems out-of-place as you wander around.
This is well worth your time as well, since these anomalies are often made up of huge swarms of glitch slimes! Typically if you’re fast and they don’t all leap to Davy Slime’s Locker, you can get upwards of 10 slimes from each one!
As for knowing what’s an anomaly and what isn’t, a majority of the time it’s up to you to deduce. Sometimes glitch slimes will be so jittery that they’ll give themselves away, leading to a very noticeable shaking rock or tree. But often they’ll be still, and you can walk right by one without noticing anything odd about it.
The trick is to think about if something seems out-of-place. Are there two trees there when you could’ve sworn there was only one? Is that a Cuberry tree in a section of the Dry Reef that only has Pogofruit? Why is that grey rock all by itself in that clump of red rocks?
While I definitely don’t have the memory to list every single location you can potentially find an anomaly, here’s the forms I’ve seen them in: Rocks, slime-shaped rocks, Pogofruit and Cuberry trees, crystals (in the Indigo Quarry), mushrooms and glowplants (Moss Blanket).
We Can’t Stop Here, This is Tarr Country
There’s no true time limit to how long you can remain in the Slimeulation. You can stay as long as you’d like. But eventually, the program will begin to lose stability. When this happens, you might start to see stuff like this happen:
Of course, ominous black holes are already pretty creepy, but not dangerous as long as you avoid them, right? Well, that is until there’s so many of them that you can’t see. And then digital entities sporting familiar unfriendly faces start leaping out.
Yep, our old friends the Tarr appear. Or as some have taken to calling them, Digitarr. Much more clever than anything I could come up with. But while these Digitarr have a unique cybernetic look, they’re just as mean and nasty as the real thing. Whether they’re another form of a glitch, a virus, or maybe even an ANTI-virus, they’ll still eat every slime, Ditto, and rancher in their sight.
Eventually, more and more Digitarr will appear. You can destroy them with Debug Spray, just as you would use water on the real deal. But there’s only so much Debug Spray, and so many Tarr. Eventually Viktor will open up an exit, and that’s your queue to leave. Unfortunately only one RANDOM exit will be opened, and while there’ll be arrows guiding you to it, it still means you might have to wade your way through Digitarr-infested areas.
As I said before, there’s no actual time limit on your stay. You could even hang out after the Digitarr have overran the place. But not only is this a risk to your health, but a risk to your earnings. Not only do Digitarr bites still hurt, but they’ll also EAT GLITCH SLIMES FROM YOUR VAC! The risk-to-reward ratio simply isn’t worth sticking around, so I highly recommend that you exit as soon as you’re able and come back later when the program starts anew.
Tips
Here I’ll just list a few tips to keep in mind while wandering the Slimeulation. Hopefully they’ll be as helpful to you as they are to me.
- Don’t be afraid to use your Debug Spray liberally. We probably all suffer from “But I Might Need It More Later” Syndrome with rarer, useful items in games, but exposing those glitches is well worth it.
- If you see big groups of slimes, suck them all up! The only items that stay in your vac when you exit the simulation are glitch slimes/bug reports, so there’s no reason to worry about the other 3 units. It’s much faster to vacuum up whole clumps of slimes to find those Dittos than it is to check every individual face.
- Trust your instincts! If you think something is out-of-place and might be an anomaly, check it with your spray! More often than not, it’s your subconscious noticing something off from your memory of that place, even if your conscious memory didn’t catch it.
- If you backtrack, scan the area for anomalies again. They aren’t set in stone per visit to the Slimeulation, glitch slimes might’ve spawned in and made a new hiding spot since the last time you checked it.
- While you’re in the Indigo Quarry or Moss Blanket sections, take a good, long look around the freshwater ponds. Glitch slimes move much slower in the water, so if you can find Dittos or anomalies near them, you have a great chance of catching more of them!
- While catching glitches, keep your eyes on them. With their higher-than-average agility, they can easily weasel their way out of the suction and get lost before you can turn and get them if you aren’t careful! It’s almost like first-person Luigi’s Mansion sometimes.
- Be on the look out for Treasure Pods. They contain new blueprints that make use of those Manifold Cubes, and some of them can be quite fun and useful!
- Explore! Even if it’s mostly a replica of the Range and kind of a “spot the difference” game, it’s still a new area. You never know what you might see!
Conclusion
And here I’ll end this first guide of mine. I really hope something in here helps someone out! I love Slime Rancher, and I love this new update and the Slimeulation. Whether you share this love and want to farm Manifold Cubes, you just wanna unlock the undersea lab as fast as possible, or you just want to build Chicken Cloners evrywer on hole range chickeNS
CHikKEN hellohello
ChiKkN helo
hello –
…want to build Chicken Cloners everywhere on your ranch, I hope you enjoy yourself and catch all those beautiful glitches! Peace out!
