What you need
- Windows 10 or 11 with Stream Deck software 7.1 or newer.
- Any Stream Deck: there are pages for the Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo and Mobile.
- Nothing else: no account, and it never goes online. Your terrarium is saved on your PC.
1. Getting started
In testing. Bugs & Friends is being played on real decks before it goes to the Elgato Marketplace. This page will link to the listing when it is up. It is the fifth Deck Pets habitat, alongside Fish Tank, Rodents, Reptiles and Ant Farm.
- Find Deck Pets in the Stream Deck actions list and drag the Terrarium key onto any page.
- Press it and pick your first creature from the line-up: a stick insect, a giant millipede or a praying mantis.
- The whole deck becomes the terrarium, with your controls along the bottom row.
2. Looking after them
- Feed puts in what each hungry creature eats (the one in the quarantine tub too): bramble for stick insects, leaf litter for millipedes and isopods, jelly for beetles, flies for mantises and jumping spiders, a cricket for a tarantula. It will not put live food in while a hunter is moulting. A creature about to moult stops eating, as they do, and is not starving for it.
- Mist shows the air against the range your creatures want, and warns when one is about to moult in air that is too dry.
- Clean works an area at a time: press Clean, then the keys with mess on. Hold it to clean everything. Damp, still air over leftovers grows mould; a mesh lid and an isopod colony both help.
- Creatures shows the creature most worth watching (who is moulting, about to, or moults next): press it for that creature, hold it for all of them.
3. Moulting
Invertebrates grow by shedding their whole skin. Near the end of each stage a creature stops eating, then moults, and for a while afterwards it is soft. In humid enough air, left alone, it goes well and leaves its old skin behind: press the key it lies on to pick it up for nectar. A tarantula's skin is a whole ghost of itself, lying on its back. Dry air, handling it, or a live cricket about can make a moult go badly.
4. Handling
Press the key a creature is on to pick it up: that is how they tame. A key with nobody on it tells you which way they are. Leave a moulting one be (the key tells you so), and go gently with a creature that has just moulted. An untamed tarantula flicks its hairs.
5. Eggs and the young
- Stick insects lay eggs without a male.
- A mantis leaves an egg case on the twigs; spiders spin an egg sac. A mantis or spider pair sometimes ends with the female eating the male, as they do (never in Casual).
- Millipede and beetle eggs are buried. Rhino beetle eggs hatch into grubs that live in the soil, pupate, and come up as beetles; you can see them through the glass.
- The young are small versions that moult their way up to full size. They need room: a pair only breeds while the terrarium has space for the young, and rhino beetles only with deep substrate for their grubs.
- The isopods are a colony of their own that grows when fed and damp, and eats the mess and the mould.
6. The creatures
| Creature | Level | Eats | Air | Shares? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indian stick insect | 1 | bramble | humid | yes |
| Giant millipede | 2 | leaf litter | damp | yes |
| Isopod colony | 2 | leaf litter, mess, mould | damp | with anyone |
| Praying mantis | 3 | flies | fairly dry | its own kind only |
| Rhino beetle | 4 | beetle jelly | humid | yes |
| Chilean rose tarantula | 5 | a cricket a week | dry | its own kind only |
| Regal jumping spider | 6 | flies | fairly dry | its own kind only |
The shop sells bigger terraria (room for two grown creatures up to eight), a mesh lid, twigs, cork bark, moss, deep substrate (rhino beetle grubs need it), live plants, a burrow hide and a heat mat, a quarantine tub, substrates from coco fibre to bioactive, backdrops, and a second terrarium. Your creatures climb onto the twigs, the cork bark, the burrow hide and the bramble, and sit up there a while.
7. Morphs and one-offs
Every creature is a morph, from Common to Legendary, the way keepers talk about them: Dairy Cow and Rubber Ducky isopods, Ghost and Orchid mantises, a red-phase tarantula. The rarer it is, the more nectar it brings in. Above them all are six named one-offs, one per species, which only hatch from two Rare-or-better parents.
8. The status page
Press Status and the terrarium is laid out a fact to a key: humidity with the range your creatures want boxed on the bar, who is moulting or about to, mould and the mesh lid, how clean it is and where it is dirtiest, shed skins to pick up, the next moult with a bar across that creature's stage, the bramble, litter and jelly, live food loose, eggs and grubs, the isopods, room used, and a line for each creature. Press a creature's line to open its readout. News has its own key beside Back, and holding Status still opens your creatures.
9. Settings
- Simulation or Casual: in Casual, nobody dies.
- Illness, off unless you want it: then a bad moult or mould can make a creature ill, and an exotics vet is in the shop.
- Nectar and XP multipliers, up to ten times.
- Day hours, across decks, smoothness, Snapshot, your record, How to play and Start over.
Frequently asked
Will my creatures die while I am away?
No. Time away runs at half speed for up to three days and cannot kill anything.
My mantis ate its mate.
That is mantises. Keep one alone if you would rather it did not happen.
Something is still wrong.
Email support@teatimeservers.ca and tell us what you see.