Largos produce double the plort for the same amount of food, so of course we want largos. Also, largos are the only way we can get every single type of plort produced on the ranch due to the limited number of plots: 8 to start + 5 in grotto + 4 in overgrowth + 4 in dock + 5 in lab = 26 plots. There are 14 types of slimes we can raise on the ranch excluding the puddle slimes (do not need their own plot or food plot). That means at least 28 plots (14 corrals, 14 gardens/coops) are needed to raise all pure slimes without creating silos at all, too inefficient.

Naturally, you are wondering about the tarr risk, but if you take all cautionary steps, you will never even know what a tarr outbreak looks like on your ranch unless you start one yourself; in which case, why? For the glory of Satan?

Now that we have established that we are raising largos, how many plots do we need, and which largos to raise?

Excluding fire and puddle slimes, we have 14 slimes we can mix into largos = 7 largo corrals + 7 gardens (yes, only gardens, chickens don’t really grow fast enough to be reliable food and are also more finicky) + 1 incinerator + 1 random food to burn for fire slimes = 16 plots, and then we need 5 silos, one in each area, to maximise the profit from the plorts.
That comes to a grand total of 21 plots – We have 5 extra.

Due to the finicky and slow nature of raising chickens, make all your largos vegetarian by mixing the meat eaters (tabby, boom, hunter, tangle, saber) with others that eat fruit or veggies.

Pink and Saber slimes have to be mixed with other slimes because they have no favourite food = no double plorts from favourites on their own.

Crystal slimes have to be mixed with another slime because their favourite odd onion grow at too low a rate to be a consistent food (Maximum 8 per full garden, the rest would be carrots, no one’s favourite either).

I mixed the more dangerous ones together so there are fewer spots I have to be careful when moving around.

We want largos in the same area to have the same diet (all fruit or all veggies) for the sake of automation later.

Here is my tested theoretical ideal list:
Tabby + Phosphor (Fed cuberries)
Honey + Crystal (Fed mint magoes)
Pink + Rock (Fed heartbeets)
Boom + Rad (Fed oca oca)
Quantum + Saber (Fed phase lemons)
Mosaic + Hunters (Fed silver parsnips)
Dervish + Tangle (Fed prickle pears)

And here's an extra imperfect viable example:
Tabby + Phosphor (Fed cuberries)
Hunter + Honey (Fed mint mangoes)
Boom + Rad (Fed oca oca)
Rock + Crystal (Fed heartbeets)
Quantum + Pink (Fed phase lemons)
Dervish + Saber (Fed prickly pears)
Tangle + Mosaic (Fed silver parsnips)

Garden grown phase lemons now don’t require other fruit trade-off any more making Quantum Largos viable. If the devs decide to make the garden phase lemons a trading tree again, this list will have to be changed.

Mosaic and Tangle slimes can only be captured by feeding their gordos in the Glass Desert or reviving the oases (they will only spawn then). You cannot obtain Saber Slimes, just Saber plorts from the Wilds (accessible after having traded with Ogden Ortiz enough times and have the Overgrowth expansion).

All corrals are to have high walls, air nets, auto feeder, and music boxes. They must have one of the largo’s source slime favourite toys. Plort collectors are imperative as well except in the docks when you have drones (because of the pond for the puddle slimes).

Always raise the food first and wait until you have at least one batch of food before putting the slimes into their place. This will make sure you can keep them fed and they won’t wreak havoc or start a tarr outbreak.

Have the auto feeder unless you are free ranging and always keep it stocked. Manually feed the slimes right after putting them into their corrals for the first time, then leave the rest to the auto feeder.

I keep 6 largos per corral, but it might be more profitable to keep 7 (which keeps up perfectly with the medium speed on the auto feeder). However, 7 largos might be too many and they might escape starting an outbreak. You can try it yourself.

Boom largos MUST be kept far away from everyone else because of their tendency to launch their plorts and each other to infinity and beyond when exploding.

Quantum and Dervish ones are generally not dangerous when WELL FED, but we are keeping them far away from the others anyway just in case because teleportation and tornado-raising are very capable of wreaking havoc on your ranch.

Keep Hunter and Tangle largos OUT of the Overgrowth because the Tangles will grab the chickens with their vines ruining their diet of only their favourites and the Hunters (Tabbies on steroids) will be very likely to escape confinement as their hunting instincts get tickled. Tangles must also be kept far away from everyone else as their spores make others sneeze and irritate them.

Honey largos are docile, but their plorts are very desirable to the other slimes making them bend over backwards to reach them. Therefore, honey largos must be kept alone or far away from them all with plort collector in their corral to sweep the plorts away quickly before a tarr forms.

Mosaic largos attract other slimes with their colourful light and glints, so they must be kept alone as well to prevent tarr outbreaks. Their glints also burst into fire when they hit the ground potentially hurting you.

1 silo, 1 or 2 garden & corral pair depending on the size of the area.

You want to have a silo in each area for maximising plort profits and automation later on, plus having extra storage never hurts. Silos help with profit by allowing you to hoard the plorts until their price rises (you selling them lower their prices for the next few days). You need to store plorts in these silos because the more plorts remain in your largos’ corrals, the higher risk something gets launched outside and starts a tarr outbreak.

For Overgrowth and Dock areas, have only one corral (and garden for the largos) in each of them because they only have 4 plots. With the silo taking one, you have 3 left, so only 1 pair can be used for the largos.

You can have 3 or 4 pairs of corral/garden in the starting area’s 8 plots early on, but later on, I recommend keeping only 2 largo corrals because your plort production can really pick up and it’s possible to run out of space even on a maxed silo.

By my calculations earlier, we have 5 extra plots in total. You can do whatever you want with them. The only place with at least 2 extra plots is the starting range, so that’s where you can keep an extra corral of largos for whichever you like.

Build silos, put your plorts in there (when you can afford it), wait for the plort price to go up high (consult the slime rancher wiki or this guide if you hate opening your browser while playing) before selling (hurry, you have to finish selling all you have hoarded in one day, your selling with tank the price the next few days).

Eventually, when you unlock the lab and Slime Science, you can make extractors and then drones. The basic drones (unlike Viktor’s advanced drones) can only do one task. You are only allowed 2 drones in one area, so you want to keep one on food duty and one on plort duty (plort to silo to keep the corrals clear). This is why we want to keep largos with the same diet in the same area.

If you have managed to reach this point, congratulations, you earned the right to sit on your arse while your drones do all the work. The only work you have left would be to make your rounds around the ranch once a day to charge the drone stations with water and to check the plort market every morning to see if you are selling any plort for the day.

By the way, at this point, when you have decided on a plort to sell, get your drones to help you sell, too. Trust me, I tried to do it myself, didn’t have enough time. For the drones to be able to help you sell in areas other than the starting one, you want to reach rank 11 in the 7zee rewards club to have the market link available. Build a market link next to the silo and you can sell more quicky yourself and have the drones help out.

“Drone” both mean “flying robot” and “male bee”, so I can see why the drone looks like a bee.

This is if you are starting from a clean save file.

1. Clean up the stray pink slimes, get the chickens, carrots, and pogo fruits around.
   
   
2. Get outside, get some pink plorts and more pink slimes and start a corral.
   
   
3. Feed the slimes, sell the plorts, get a garden of carrots (easier to harvest).
   
   
4. Go get some rock slimes. If possible, find a heartbeet and/or cuberry in one of the boxes. You can also start doing the ranch exchange if you want to from noon, which may give you the berries and beets as well.
   
   
5. Make pink rock largos (maximum 7 in a corral) and sell their plorts. If you have a heartbeet and/or a cuberry with the newbucks, make a garden of cuberries and replace the carrots with heartbeets (right after a harvest if possible). Get the high wall upgrade as soon as you can afford it.
   
   
6. Go grab some tabby slimes. If it’s getting dark, get a couple of phosphor slimes for phosphor tabby largos as well. If you do not want to spend money on the solar shield, you can avoid the phosphor slimes for now and just make pink rock largos and tabby rock largos. If you choose to go all rock, plant more beets (1 garden per slime corral) and be carful when harvesting the plorts as I doubt you can afford the plort collector yet. For now, try to fill up your starting area (3 or 4 largo corrals and their corresponding gardens right next to the corrals for ease of feeding).
   
   
7. Get the upgrades for your gardens and corrals whenever you have the newbuck to. Order: high walls (corral) -> sprinkler (garden) -> mineral soil (garden) -> air net (corral) -> auto feeder/plort collector (prioritise plort collector for the rock largos)
   
   
8. Once you have the auto feeders and plort collectors, you can now explore without much worry. Once you have found your first slime key, go unlock the moss blanket. You can now get boom, honey, puddle, and hunter slimes (or just their plorts) for making new largos (except for puddle slimes, can’t largo them. Also, maximum 4 in a pond.)
   
   
9. Once you have enough money, you want to unlock the lab and slime science (10000 newbucks) as soon as you can. This is in preparation for automation in the future as the drone requires A LOT of stuff. Make the novice drill, pump, and apiary (only one of each) and wait until you unlock the advanced drill, pump, and apiary to use those and save your plorts for later mining endeavours.
   Always put the drill in the indigo quarry, pump in the dry reef, and apiary in the moss blanket. Prioritise the apiary as the drones require hexacombs from those.
   
   
10. You can now just explore, capture, and work towards your ideal ranch arrangement.
    If I suddenly sound sloppy in these steps, no, not really. This is enough early hand-holding. From now on, it’s freestyle.

Once you no longer need specific largos or slime, you can release them back into the wild or yeet them into the slime sea. Don’t worry, they don’t die in the sea, you can read the slimepedia for that.

This is NOT PERFECT as when I was playing, I wasn’t thinking as much. When I used some plots, I wasn’t thinking for the future. However, this is perfectly viable and fully automated except for the human judgement on when to sell which and recharging the drones with water.



Legend:

• Yellow: Silo
  
• Green: Garden
  
• Red: Corral 1
  
• Cyan: Corral 2
  
• Orange: Incinerator

The starting area has Honey Hunter largos (In corral 1 near the silo) and Phosphor Tabby largos (corral 2) with mint mango and cuberry gardens.

The Grotto has Fire slimes in the Incinerator, 20 free-range Mosaic Tangle largos and silver parsnip gardens. The drone is on free range collection.

The Overgrowth has Boom Rad largos with oca oca garden.

The Docks has Crystal Rock largos and 5 puddle slimes in the pond (thanks to the duck). The drone is also on free range collection and I intentionally didn't get a plort collector on the largos' corral.

The Lab has Dervish Saber largos in corral 1 and Pink Quantum largos in corral 2 far far away with a phase lemon tree and a prickle pear tree.

Legend:

• Yellow: Silo
  
• Green: Garden
  
• Red: Corral 1
  
• Cyan: Corral 2
  
• Orange: Incinerator

The silos are closest to the plort market/entrance of the area for quick selling before the market link is available in all areas.

30+ Dervish Tangle largos free roaming in the Grotto (1 drone to carry some pears to the incinerator from time to time). Gardens grow prickle pear. The incinerator and the 5 - 8 Fire slimes are high up, so it’s less likely the largos would wander up there. No scareslime on the gardens for the free ranging areas. 1 drone can pick up one plort and the other go for the second type in the free ranging areas as it’s more difficult to pick the plorts up or you can automate the plort picking in this area with one drone only in case you have been unlucky with materials.
The Grotto is the best on-site free range spot, so I kept it for these very costly plort makers, but you can keep other Dervish or the Quantum largos here instead for safety.

30+ Quantum Saber largos free roam in the Overgrowth. Gardens grow phase lemons.

30+ Mosaic Hunter largos (or Quantum Saber/Tangle/Mosaic) free roam in the Docks (They occasionally yeet themselves into the sea and the pond, but except with Dervish largos, this isn't a very big problem. Have source slimes' toys lying around to gather them and reduce this problem as well as improve their mood). 5 Puddle slimes stay in the pond (need rubber duck so they would make plort with a 5th member). Gardens here have silver parsnips. Hunter largos turn feral from time to time and attack you. You will need the taming bell or just feed them quickly or simply be very nimble. If you want to be safe, opt out from having free-ranging Hunter largos and just keep them in a corral in the starting area.

Starting area has Phosphor Tabby largos in corral 1 and Honey Crystal largos in corral 2 (with Quantum/Dervish/Honey Hunter largos and their food in a third corral if you opt for it instead of free-ranging Hunter largos). Placement makes sure they are too far apart for the honey plorts to be targeted and make it unlikely for stray slimes to start a tarr outbreak. The Honey Crystal corral is closer to the plort market for easier direct sale as their price is higher. Both the ones here eat fruit for automation. You can switch their locations in case you favour the Phosphor Tabby near the entrance to the Lab for ease of Slime Science transportation and no need to be wary when rushing to the Lab. The gardens here have cuberries and mint mangoes (and the according third fruit if you opt to have Hunter largos here).

The Lab has Pink Rock largos in corral 1, near the Refinery as you will need A LOT of pink plorts in the Refinery for Slime Science and the Rad Boom largos far at the back, unable to disturb anyone. Both the largos here favour veggies for automation. The gardens here will grow heartbeets and oca ocas.

For the two non-free-roam areas, add a few of the according food to the automatic feeders first for the drones to follow.

This arrangement allows you to keep the priciest plort producers in free roam making enough space for a lot of them (6 - 12 in corral vs. 30) while the less expensive plort makers remain around for Slime Science and collection. Total automation is possible. It will just be slightly dangerous to enter the free roaming areas as the high tier ones are also dangerous. Take a full tank of water when visiting the Mosaic largos to get rid of their glints.

When you have unlocked Viktor's advanced drones which can do two tasks, you will still want 2 drones/area for efficiency with their stations near the entrance for ease of recharge and you want to upgrade the dock and the grotto first so the advanced drone can burn stuff for the Fire slimes AND pick up 1 type of free range plort (I personally put 2 advanced ones in the grotto so the drones won't ever pick up the same type of plort wasting time being inefficient). Same issue with the Docks so you can have 1 regular drone taking 1 plort and 1 advanced drone taking the other plort + puddle plorts. You will want two drones to sweep plorts in the free ranging areas, trust me. One drone won't be able to keep up with the largos and the precious plorts can despawn.

This is what I theorise to be the ideal end game arrangement allowing you to maximise plort potential (unless the devs decide to release even more slime types, in which case this will have to be revised). However, this is just my favoured arrangement and what I see as ideal, it’s up to you if you want to try this. You can mix and match on your own based on your preferences, but I still recommend sticking to the rules listed out to make your life easier.
Leave a comment if you think there is a better arrangement and I will check it out. I will revise and credit accordingly.

Congratulations on finishing this guide. It was nearly 3000 words, I can't even believe it myself.

General rules:

• Raise vegetarian largos
  
• Largos in one area must have same diet (all fruit or all veggies)
  
• Mix nonviable slimes with viable ones for viable largos
  
• Slimes with viable diets: Rock, Phosphor, Rad, Honey, Quantum, Mosaic, Dervish
  
• Slimes with nonviable diets: Pink, Tabby, Boom, Crystal, Saber, Hunter, Tangle

If you have any problems following this guide or using my arrangements, leave a comment and I will see if I can address the issue.

There is room for more mix and match, this is just my theory.