Dovecote
| Dovecote | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| Vital statistics | ||
| Size | 1 x 1 | |
| Storage Size | 6 x 8 | |
| Skill(s) RequiredSpecific needed skills.<br>The default skills every hearthling starts off with, Oral Tradition, Primitive Tools & Wilderness Survival), are ignored. | Animal Husbandry | |
| Object(s) Required | Stone x20, Board x5, Block of Wood x5, Thatching Material x10, Rope x2, Bone Glue x2 | |
| Required By | (3) Dove Droppings, Rock Dove Egg, Rock Dove Squab | |
| Can be Lifted | No | |
| Soak Value | None | |
| Go to Objects | ||
Build > Buildings & Construction > Houses & Buildings > Dovecote
After building a Dovecote, wild Rock Doves will begin flocking to it so long as it is filled with fodder and water. If a Rock Dove Egg hatches inside of the Dovecote, it will then hatch into a Domesticated Rock Dove, which you can then place into your Birdhouse and Homestead it. Doves will not reproduce inside of a Birdhouse.
Doves will be attracted to Dovecotes with a plentiful supply of food, water, and space and will be discouraged from staying in Dovecotes which are overcrowded or often raided for birds and eggs.
Attending to occupied Dovecotes may incur HHP damage in the form of Bird Lung, which incurs a -5AGI/CON penalty and slowly heals over time.
Multiple Dovecotes
Unlike one might expect, a dovecote itself has no effect on the generated doves in the surrounding area. As such building multiple dovecotes in the same spot will not capture more doves. The available doves in that case are spread-out over the available dovecotes. (potentially preferring the ones with a high score. Although distance and some randomness might also play a part.)
The potential dovecote vs rock dove interaction tile-range is currently a bit unclear. A distance of ~25 tiles seems to be in effect (ie: ~50 tile between two dovecotes to make them non sharing/competing.)
Uses for Homesteaded Doves
Domesticated Doves may be given any single-tile item, allowing a Hearthling to transport an item easily between any location and the Birdhouse which the dove is currently Homesteaded to.
See the Birdhouse page for additional birdhouse specific info.
Caring for your Birds
Rock Doves require feeding and watering and Dovecotes have space inside for this. To fill them, have fodder material (seeds, produce, etc -- see Swill for more details) in your inventory, then lift it up with a left-click and right-click on the coop. This will fill the fodder bar a bit. You will not be able to recover any seed or plants used in this manner. Fodder and water each fill up their own meter inside the coop. As the doves eat, the amounts that will be diminished are proportionate to the number of doves contained therein.
Inspecting the Dovecote with Inspect:
Adventure > Inspect
will show a "dove score" that tells you how hospitable your Dovecote is to Rock Doves. As your Dovecote's score drops into the negatives, it will stop attracting birds. Generally, you want to avoid interacting with the Dovecote too often (especially as it can give you Bird Lung), but also keep it tidy. Removing any Dove Droppings, un-incubated Rock Dove Eggs, or stray Rock Dove Feathers will make the Dovecote more attractive and higher scoring. Adding doves, or looking into the Dovecote, will make your Dovecote less attractive by lowering the dovecote score.
| Action/Item | Points | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Looking | -1.0 | ~10 minutes penalty-free looking. |
| Dove | -1.0 | At least for domestic dove. Min:(-14.0 old) |
| Wild Dove: Remove | 0.0 | |
| Wild Dove: Add | -1.0 | Ie: Moving wild doves to potential better positions should be done with care. |
| Fertilized Egg | -1.0 | (fertilized chicken egg timer-caveat probably also in effect here.) (Can't be placed in bird house!) |
| Stale/dead Egg | -2.0 | +2.0 when removed. |
| Feather | -1.0 | +1.0 when removed. |
| Dropping | -1.0 | +1.0 when removed. |
| Chick | +2.75 | (-2.75 when removing). (A chick turning into a mature dove should give a detectable rating change.) |
| Food(Swill)/Water | +0.17~ | Per unit. But rating will not go above 9.0 with refilling. (Barrel of seeds equals 200 swill, ... but no refilling sound.) (Seems something else(rnd?) might be is in play here. (min-max: 0.16249, max-min: 0.17500)) |
- (max seen: +9.3, minimum seen: -18.6)
- (Dove rating only shows one decimal. Which seems to be rounded (can show as -0.0).)
Unsure:
- Flying off doves seem to count as +1.0 (at least in one case(A), assuming those where wild doves.)
- ? Removing 1 shit & 1 feather did not result in a rating change (same case(A), where looking gave 1 Bird Lung damage)
Unclear:
- How potential damage is build up. (seems changed(rarer) compared to old data)
How to Acquire
A Dovecote can be built, generally on a 1x1 paved area.
Tips
- There is a trick to filling a Dovecote much more quickly than normal. Click to pick up a unit of food, then with it floating on your cursor, hold down the shift key and right click the trough. As long as you keep the shift key held down, another unit of food from your inventory will automatically be placed on your cursor, ready to right click again!
- Warning: Edible forageables, like for example, Candleberry or Bloated Bolete also count as fodder, so be careful when shift-right clicking as you can lose them.
- Water can be taken out of coop with an empty bucket or barrel if it has no swill in it, or if the coop is fully filled with water and the bucket or barrel also (still) contains some water.
Notes
- Domestic rock doves placed in a dovecote do not stay.
- When inspecting the Dovecote, some Rock Doves might fly off. This include potential domestic rock doves. Which, if tracked down, don't fly away when trying to re-captured them.
- Unlike one might expect. Fully functional dovecote is not limited to top level only.
- (Technical) The dovecote inventory window has an auto close mechanism (~10min). This is probably also the time limit that allows for re-looking into the dovecote without the looking penalty.
Appearance
Game Development
- Color Wheel (2024-05-27)◎ >"Reduced building cost of Rabbit Hutch, Chicken Coop, Dovecote, Log Cabin, and Timber House."
- Tough Jugs (2022-06-05)◎ >"Can now inspect "Dove Cote"s to get an indication of how the doves are doing."
- Homing Dove (2020-09-20)◎ >"Added "Dovecote", building. Local wild Doves may settle for a time in Dovecotes, especially if provided food, water, space, and privacy. The attractiveness of the Dovecote to the local doves will increase with space available, food, and water, and decrease when cluttered, or raided for doves or eggs."