Slugcat

Slugcats are both the primary protagonists and the main playable characters of Rain World. They are small creatures that can come in various colors, and with black or white eyes, thin arms, broad legs with small feet, broad-ended ears, and a thick tail that tapers at its end. The player must keep the Slugcat alive as they explore the world, confront strange Creatures, and work towards challenging Achievements. The Slugcats have a variety of movement abilities, which can be seen in detail on the Controls page.

When first starting the game, the player has the option of playing as two different Slugcats: the and the. After finishing the game as either, the player unlocks the ability to play as the.

If the Rain World Downpour DLC is installed, and the More Slugcats mod is enabled, five more Slugcats may be unlocked. The, and are unlocked along with Hunter. After finishing the game as either the Gourmand, Artificer, or Hunter, the player may play as the or. Once both of their campaigns have been completed, the is unlocked.

Food
In order to hibernate, the Slugcat must find and eat enough food each cycle. This amount is represented by the food meter, which can be viewed alongside the current karma level by pressing and holding the map button.



The food meter is made up of several food pips: circles which fill up as Slugcat eats, and a vertical line that separates the food pips required to hibernate (all pips to its left), and the food pips that are saved for the next cycle (all pips to its right). The amount of food required to hibernate varies between Slugcats. There are many different kinds of Food, providing varying amounts of food pips. Monk and Survivor can eat most insects and fruit, as can Downpour's Rivulet and Gourmand. They can also eat any size of, though larger ones must be killed prior. Hunter's diet is more varied, allowing them to eat from the corpses of most creatures. However, fruit and small insects such as, , , and provide less value, and only fill a quarter of a food pip when eaten. Gourmand also has this ability, but only gains half the normal amount of food pips.

Gourmand is able to combine two food items into a meal, providing an additional food pip to their base amounts. Spearmaster is unable to eat food like other Slugcats, instead having to throw spears grown out of their tail at live prey. Saint's diet is much more limited, being completely incapable of eating meat.

Incapacitation & Death
While both death and incapacitation disable the player's input and cause a game over, Slugcat is still alive when incapacitated, and is able to come back. This potentially allows the player to continue without restarting the current cycle. The two states can be differentiated by looking at the Slugcat's eyes- they are shut when incapacitated, but crossed out when dead. Additionally, death plays two bass notes, while incapacitation only plays one.

,, and , among other creatures, have an RNG-based kill system, which means that when bitten/grabbed there is a percentage chance that Slugcat dies. If this check fails, the player is incapacitated, then killed if brought into a den.

There are a few ways to get out of incapacitation. A creature is likely to let go if already wounded or attacked by another creature. When bitten by most creatures, there is a short grace period where or a  can be thrown to stun it, allowing escape. Tamed Lizards or friendly s may also attempt to save the Slugcat.

Relationships

 * -|Vanilla=


 * -|Downpour=

These values are present in the game's code, but do not impact gameplay mechanically.

Downpour Slugcats
These are made available by the More Slugcats Expansion mod.

Table of Slugcat Differences
[*] Monk's lung capacity is increased to 1.25x when 'Monk Extended Breath' is enabled under Remix's Assists config.

[†] A full list of food and pips given can be found on Spearmaster's page.

[§] Saint can understand Iterators and Echoes even without the Mark of Communication.

[**] Saint is unable throw regular Spears like other Slugcats, instead tossing them aside.

The following are the raw statistics for each Slugcat, exactly as they are found under SlugcatStats. [*] lungsFac determines how much air is drained per frame. This means lower values grant a larger lung capacity.

[†] Damage value is randomized on throw between 0.6 and 0.9, with an average of 0.66.

[‡] 3.0 only when not exhausted - reduced to 0.3 when exhausted.

The following are the raw statistics when starving, showing the stats that change only. Note that most slugcats share these stats when starving, only Gourmand and Rivulet are unique. [*] bodyWeightFac is clamped to 0.9 - for Spearmaster and s who are already lighter than 0.9, their weight does not change.

Trivia

 * All three vanilla Slugcats as well as the otherwise unused Nightcat are playable in the game's Arena modes, but they all handle similarly to how the Survivor does in Single Player.
 * In Downpour, this is changed, and any Slugcat may be played with their unique stats.
 * Slugcats have a few different facial expressions apart from the ones mentioned in the incapacitation and death section. For example, when throwing or swallowing an object, Slugcats briefly close their eyes, and when regurgitating an object they keep their eyes closed for a longer period of time. Slugcat also keeps their eyes shut when close to a threat. While idle, Slugcat has widened, circular eyes which blink occasionally.
 * Slugcats actively move their tails away from threats, such as Lizards, in situations that allow it (such as resting at the top of a pole).
 * When faced by a threat, Slugcats may hold their hand out in an attempt to briefly stop the creature from biting them.