Main Walkthrough

This guide is undergoing heavy construction, and will be updated regularly. Ranching is expensive, and requires a fair amount of time to fully explore.

Though growing crops is your first method of making money on your farm in Coral Island, truly lucrative farmers will always want to expand into Ranching. The practice of raising, caring for, and extracting product from farm animals, Ranching will earn you more money per product than just about any amount of crop farming. Granted, Ranching requires some significant startup fees and probably won't appeal to everyone, but farmers looking to maximize their profits will want to raise animals on their farm.

This guide will cover the ins and outs of Ranching in Coral Island. Please note that Coral Island is currently in Early Access, so many facets of Ranching - such as the animals available to your farm - are still locked away. This guide will be edited to accommodate updates in the future.

Unlocking Ranching

A few days after you start your farm you'll receive a notice that Dinda and Joko, Starlet Town's two carpenters, are ready to construct additional buildings on your property. This is the sign that you can begin raising animals. There are four buildings related to Ranching that you'll ultimately want to set up on your farm:

  • A Coop to store your Chickens. Coops cost $2,000, 100 Wood, 50 Stone, five Bronze Bars, and ten Fiber. 
  • A Barn to store your Cows. Barns cost $3,000, 200 Wood, 100 Stone, five Bronze Bars, and ten Fiber. 
  • A Silo for storing Hay. Silos cost $2,500, 100 Scrap, 300 Stone, and two Silver Bars. 
  • A Mill for processing Fiber into Hay. Mills cost $2,000, 20 Scrap, 50 Wood, and two Bronze Bars. 
You can buy all four of these buildings from the Carpenter, located a short trek northeast of your farm. The Carpenter is open from 9:00 to 17:00, 9:00 to 14:00 on Sundays, on every day but Saturday. Any buildings you purchase from the Carpenter will appear as items in your inventory that you can lay down on your property, and they will require a few days of construction before you can use them.


Once you have at least a Coop or Barn you can begin your Ranching career, though it's wise to also construct a Silo and a Mill. We'll discuss why below. Regardless, once you have a Coop or a Barn on your property you can start purchasing animals from the Ranch, located an even shorter walk north of your farm. The Ranch is open from 8:00 to 17:00, 8:00 to 12:00 on Fridays, on every day but Saturday. You can (currently) purchase the following animals from the Ranch:
  • Chicklets - $300
  • Chickens - $600
  • Calves - $1,250
  • Cows - $2,500
Chickens and Chicklets live in Coops, while Cows and Calves live in Barns. You need to have a building with an empty space constructed on your property to buy any animal. Chicklets will grow into Chickens and Calves will grow into Cows after a few days of proper, loving care, so you might as well save money and just buy the adolescents. You can house four Chickens in a Coop and four Cows in a Barn.

Once you have a Coop or a Barn on your property you can go back to the Carpenter and order an upgrade via the Edit Farm Buildings option. Upgrades double the population limit (four to eight) of both buildings. Upgrading a Coop costs $10,000 and 20 Wood, while upgrading a Barn costs $5,000, 30 Wood, and two Bronze Bars. You can also use Edit Farm Buildings to relocate any of your buildings to another spot on your property, for $2,000 per relocation.

Important note: When your town rank is bumped up to a D you'll be told that the Ranch now offers Sheep. Sheep have not been implemented as of this writing, so you'll have to live with Chickens and Cows for the moment.


Caring for Animals

Proper Ranching requires a fair amount of daily work on your part to become lucrative. When you start out with a new animal it will have no relationship with you, and you'll need to build up a rapport with your animals each day. There are three ways to keep your animals happy:

  • Feed them. Coops and Barns contain troughs where you can lay down Hay, pulled from a nearby distribution box (assuming you have a Silo on your farm). If animals aren't fed they won't produce any products you can sell.
  • Pet them. Once per day you can lavish affection on an animal by petting them. Animals you haven't yet pet have a small heart over their heads.
  • Let them outside. There are bells outside Coops and Barns that you can ring to open their doors, allowing your animals to wander and improving their mood. They will return to their shelters in the evening.

(Though I haven't run into this situation yet, in other farming games your animals can potentially become lost if you don't build them an enclosure to roam around in. Just to be safe you might want to build a fence or a wall around your Coops and Barn so your animals can explore without disappearing.)

Feeding your animals is of greatest importance, as you won't make any money from unfed animals. To do this you need Hay. There are two ways to obtain Hay:

  • Process Fiber in a Mill. Feed Fiber into a Mill and it will instantly be turned into Hay that's sent to a Silo, which can then be distributed via the boxes in your Coops and Barns. You can obtain Fiber from cut grass or seaweed.
  • Purchase Hay from the Ranch. Hay costs $30 per serving. You should only buy Hay from the Ranch if you've run out of grass to cut on your Farm, as feeding your animals this way will severely cut into your profits.
Regardless of how you get your Hay, if you don't have a Silo you'll need to carry it around in your inventory. Getting a Silo will cut down on a fair amount of grief.


Animal Products

The end result of all your daily care are the Eggs and Milk products that you receive from your animals. Check your Coop in the morning and, if the Chickens are happy, they will have left behind either Eggs or Large Eggs. You can sell these or turn them into Mayonnaise via a Mayonnaise Machine, a crafting station that you'll be able to create with sufficient Ranching experience.

Cows are slightly more complex. Happy Cows need to be milked, requiring a Milk Pail. You can buy one from the Ranch for $300. Use it on any Cow that has a Milk sign over its head to receive Milk or Large Milk. You can sell these or turn them into Sour Yogurt via a Yogurt Machine, also unlocked by progressing up the levels in Ranching.

Note that adolescent animals cannot produce items for you to sell. They need to mature into adults first.


Eggs and Milk are lucrative items to sell, whether you process them into something else first or not. That said, you should still strive to make the output of your animals as valuable as possible. There are two ways to make bronze-, silver-, and gold-level Eggs and Milk:
  • Increasing your affection with your animals will cause them to generate higher-tier items. Once an animal's affection is high enough they'll move from Eggs and Milk to Large Eggs and Large Milk, both of which are worth more than their normal-size equivalents.
  • Purchasing upgrades from Ling's Laboratory will increase the quality of your animal products. You specifically want the Hay upgrade, which will increase the quality of your Hay and make your animals happier with each meal.

Horse

In addition to Chickens and Cows you can also purchase a Horse for your farm. To purchase a Horse from the Ranch you'll need a Stable, which costs $15,000, 50 Scrap, 200 Stone, and five Silver Bars. The Horse costs an additional $8,000, making this (at least at the moment) the most expensive Ranching purchase of the lot.

Once you have a Horse you can use it to ride around the island, cutting down on your transit times. The Horse runs at roughly the same speed as your dashes, but has no slowdown. Very handy. You can't use any items while on the Horse, and you'll need to get down to pick anything up, though you can still speak to people. The Horse will return to its Stable when you go to bed for the night, regardless of where you leave it. There is no need to feed the Horse.

Main Walkthrough