Tribble
| Tribble | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | 🧷Normal |
| Value |
Unsellable* *At least by traders |
| Description | Cute, but cumbersome. |
A tribble is a small, furry creature that reproduces at an incredible rate; it's born pregnant (like Aphid:Reproduction). Although adorable, its ability to multiply (and the amount of food it eats) makes it indirectly very dangerous.
General Information
The tribble is a special artifact that cannot be sold, dropped, crafted or used for any purpose (except bingo where applicable.) Once a tribble finds its way into a hero's inventory, it will hog the space for a good while. The only way to get rid of them by force - aside from getting a full inventory - involves death.
Usually they come in pairs or threes at the beginning, but overtime the hero's loot bag will fill up with more of them until his inventory is almost full.
There are two kinds: regular tribbles and hungry tribbles (known as "tribbles" and "hungry tribbles" respectively).
History
For a brief period during April Fool's Day 2013, a wormhole opened between the Godville and Star Trek universes. A few tribbles slipped through, and they've been making a home in loot bags, Mystery boxes, and the like ever since.[1]
On the Halloween 2019 update, a new side job was introduced that - among others - would involve to 'breed a tribble.' It is considered complete once another tribble gets added to the hero's inventory.[2]
Behavior
While not on an adventure, the tribbles will occasionally multiply to fill up the hero's loot bag, preventing them from carrying more valuable treasures and resorting to return to town more often to try and sell them. While this is happening, an existing artifact might be consumed - replaced by either a different artifact or another tribble, though not always.
Because no trader - hero-trader, roadside, or otherwise - wants to be overburdened with tribbles in their inventories, the hero will have great difficulty selling them, ending up stuck with an increasingly full loot bag for some time.
After several fruitless hours and up to about a day - depending on the inventory's capacity, usually if a little above half of the inventory are tribbles - the hero will finally find someone who would graciously buy his tribbles, but it's rarely worth the loss of inventory space in the meantime. Rates go at about 250-320 gold per tribble just as the hero starts the selling phase while in town.
Hungry Tribbles
A hungry tribble is an alternate variant of the tribble that behaves similarly to their regular lineage.
However, unlike those regular ones, the hungry tribbles take on a more active role by being ferocious to both the hero and the monster he had defeated, and reproducing at an even faster rate by devouring most slain monsters - including their gold, loot, and perhaps even experience (although the latter is unconfirmed.) Special monsters are also included in their path of destruction (e.g., Bricked monsters will not yield any brick, Questing monsters will have their blueprints devoured, etc.) Wanted monsters may be the only exception that they'd still leave sufficient proof to collect, even if their regular loot can't be salvaged.
The hero will occasionally remark in his diary that the hungry tribbles would hurt the hero slightly by nibbling his ear with their sharp teeth, or most of the time that they'd leave nothing for him after killing a monster.
In addition, once the hero's loot bag had reached a critical mass of hungry tribbles containing ~75% of inventory space, they will evacuate all at once and flee to see the world - presumably on a family vacation. Upon doing so, the hungry tribbles typically leave large sums of gold (about 500 per hungry tribble) - most likely as overdue rent. In addition, some bold artifacts and even activatables (presumably around 5 in total) will appear in their stead as gratitude for mostly taking samples off of the hero.
Given this, while ordinary tribbles are almost always a burden on the hero, the gold received from carrying hungry tribbles may very well make it a worthwhile venture. Of course, the fact that these hungry tribbles also consume potential items and gold from defeated monsters may leave the answer of this debate to each their own opinion.
Acquiring
There are a few ways of obtaining these living artifacts:
- Opening a treasure box artifact (bag of trophies, orange box, etc.) obtained from a point of interest or by the end of fishing (2, either regular or hungry)
- Opening a black box artifact (mystery box, deus ex machina, etc.) (3 at a time, regular only)
- Defeating a Tribblemaker (one regular) or Tribbleshooter (one hungry)
- Defeating a Boss-monster that happens to have it in its inventory (hungry only)
- A newspaper coupon could yield a pair of tribbles when traded. (2, can be either regular or hungry)
Note that there's a higher chance of encountering tribbles if the Daily Forecast in the Godville Times mention a sudden increase of alien lifeforms.
If at any point both regular tribbles and hungry tribbles co-exist in the hero's inventory, then after about 15 minutes, the regular tribbles will get "assimilated" to become hungry tribbles instead.
Assorted diary entries