Rodents: the gameplay guide

The short version

• Keep the bowl and the bottle filled. Pets eat and drink by themselves, and carry spare food home to a hoard.
• Clean where the mess builds up: by the house, the bowl, the wheel and the corners. Press Clean, then the cage, or hold Clean for all of it.
• Press the cage to call a pet over for a stroke. Strokes a minute and a half apart tame it.
• Happy pets earn seeds for new pets, toys and bigger cages; levels unlock the rest.
• Mind who shares a cage. Syrians live alone; different kinds never mix.
• Time away is gentle. Closed or untouched for 12 hours, the cage runs at half speed for up to three days, and nobody dies of it.

Simulation or Casual

The first setting decides the stakes. Both play the same in every other way: pets get hungry and thirsty, the cage gets messy, and seeds are earned at the same rate. You can switch at any time.

Keys and dials

A hold is any press of more than about half a second (600 ms). Everything happens when you let go.

On the shop, pets and settings pages, Back is bottom left and the key beside it goes round shop, Your pets, settings. The More page holds Settings, Snapshot, the Screensaver, Status, the Shop and Your pets, as many as your deck has room for.

Stream Deck + dials:

• Food and Water: push or touch to fill. The Food strip also shows the hoard.
• Clean: turn to pick a column of the cage, push or touch to clean it. No cleaning mode needed.
• Go: turn to pick Cage, Shop, Pets or Back, push to go; touch reads the next news.
• Cage dial (for your own pages): a live view; push or touch opens the cage, a touch-hold opens the shop.

Food, water and the hoard

• An awake pet goes to drink when its water falls below 65%, and to eat below 60%, and tops up to nearly full. Asleep, it gets hungry and thirsty half as fast.
• The bowl and bottle are sized to the cage: a full one lasts about the same whatever the cage, per pet. One Syrian in the small cage drinks a full bottle in about 60 awake hours.
• The hoard. A well-fed pet with a bowl over a third full carries spare food home to the house. When the bowl runs dry, everyone eats from the hoard ("Bowl empty: eating the hoard"). Every kind hoards, not only hamsters.
• Without food a pet loses health over about 30 hours; without water about 20; with neither about 12. "Sick" and then "dying" warnings come long before.

Cleaning

• The floor is twelve strips side to side, and each gets messy on its own: fastest by the house, then the bowl, the wheel and the two ends.
• One pet takes about a week to make the cage filthy; more pets, messier food and a dead pet make it faster. Soft bedding (level 3) cuts mess by 40%.
• Above 60%: "The cage needs cleaning". Above 85%: "The cage is filthy". Above 80% it starts to cost health.
• A key cleans the strips under it. Cleaning also says goodbye to a dead pet lying there, and earns a little XP when the area was dirty. The hoard is left alone.

Happiness and health

Each pet's happiness drifts towards a target made of:

• Being fed and having water: the biggest parts.
• Fun: the wheel, and a few different toys.
• A clean cage.
• Tameness: a tame pet is a happier pet.
• Decor: every item adds a little, up to +15% in all. Muesli and forage mix add a little more.
• Company: see who lives with whom.
• Room: each pet over the cage's places costs happiness. A dead pet, or poor health, costs it too.

Pets above 50% happy earn seeds; above 60% they earn XP; above 60% (and fed and healthy) a pair can have a litter. Health comes back fast: from nothing to full in two hours, as long as a pet has food and water (over 30%), the cage is not too messy (under 70%) and nothing else is harming it.

Sleep, day and night

• Pets tire as they potter about (twice as fast on the wheel) and sleep it off in the house.
• Hamsters, mice and rats are up at night and nap through the day; gerbils keep their busy habits round the clock.
• By day a rested pet still lies in; at night pets move faster and run the wheel more. A pet wakes early if it is very thirsty or hungry and there is something to have.
• Night runs from Day ends to Day starts, 20:00 to 07:00 by default. Pet hours: Swapped turns it round, so your pets are up while you work.

Taming

• Press the cage and the nearest awake pet comes over (it gives up after 40 seconds). When it arrives it gets a stroke.
• Strokes count if they are at least a minute and a half apart for the same pet. Each one makes it tamer, a little less as it gets tamer, and a little happier.
• New pets start shy; pups shyer still. Rats tame fastest, then gerbils, then hamsters; mice slowest.
• Poking a sleeping pet near where you pressed makes it grumpy (a little less tame and unhappier), unless it is already fairly tame (over 60%), when it just wakes up for you.

Cards say shy, getting used to you, likes a stroke (with a heart) and hand-tame. Tame pets are happier and, together with a happy clean cage, bring luck in the shop (see rarity).

Time away

• When Stream Deck is closed, the first ten minutes play in full; after that the cage runs at half speed, for at most three days.
• When Stream Deck is running but nobody has pressed a key for 12 hours, the same rules apply until your next press. The pets keep pottering about on screen.
• Away, nobody dies: health cannot drop below 25% (or below where it already was).
• Litters, the shop's daily restock, seeds in the bedding and illness carry on while you are away, and day and night follow the real clock.

The breeds, and who lives with whom

Four kinds, eight breeds. A new pet is fully grown; age only shows on its card.

• Syrians live alone. The shop will not sell anything else into a Syrian's cage.
• Different kinds never share: hamsters, mice, gerbils and rats each have their own cage.
• Different breeds of the same kind can: a Campbell's with a Winter white, say.
• Social breeds are happier with their own kind and less happy alone; mice, gerbils and rats most of all.

Seeds and XP

• You start with 20 seeds.
• Happy pets earn seeds (over 50% happy), more the happier, more for rats and rarer pets. One happy pet alone earns best per head; four pets earn more in total, but each a little less (about 70% each).
• Seeds in the bedding: while any pet is alive, a little heap turns up about every two hours, up to three at a time, each lasting eight hours. Press the cage key it lies under. They are worth about 5 to 10 at level 1, and more at higher levels.
• XP comes from happy pets (up to 4 an hour), 6 for every pup born, cleaning a dirty area, and rehoming (3).
• The Seeds and XP settings multiply them 1x, 2x, 5x or 10x. Seeds covers what pets earn and what you find in the bedding.
• Rehoming pays half the shop price (half again for a pup), scaled by rarity. It is never multiplied.
• Lose everyone with fewer than 30 seeds, and the shop gives you a Syrian hamster to start again.

Levels and unlocks

XP needed for each level: 40, 120, 260, 480, 800, 1,250, 1,850, 2,600, 3,600 and 5,000 (level 11 is the top). Prices are in seeds.

Only the next cage up is on the shelf, and moving up is instant.

Toys, decor and food

• The wheel is the big one for fun: pets run it when they are rested and a bit bored, and at night most of all.
• Toys (chew stick, tube, sand bath, hammock, seesaw) add a little fun, more for up to three different ones. The tube also lets pets climb up to its ledge.
• The wooden house is where pets sleep and where the hoard is kept.
• Every item adds a little happiness, up to +15% in all; the lookout tower and digging box add the most. Each is one to a cage, apart from chew sticks.
• Backgrounds are just for looks; bought once, then free to swap.

Each food is bought once; switching back to one you own is free.

Litters and pups

• A litter needs a grown female and male of the same breed (grown means three days old), every grown pet of that breed over 70% health, fed and over 60% happy, no Syrian in the cage, and at least one free place.
• That last one means a pair needs the large cage (3 places) or bigger: two pets fill the medium cage.
• Then there is a small chance each hour she is expecting; pups arrive about 18 hours later, and she rests at least two and a half days before the next.
• Litter size is the breed's range, up to the cage's places. Pups take no room until they grow up (in three days), so a big litter can leave the cage over full: every pet over costs happiness, and the shop will not sell more pets until you make room.
• Pups start shy and small, and each one born gives 6 XP. Rehome some to make room: a pup pays half an adult's worth.
• Syrians never have litters.

Rarity and one-offs

• Pets come as Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary or Unique, each with its own coat. Rarer pets cost more and earn more seeds.
• The shop restocks once a game day, and each pen shows exactly the pet you would get. Base odds: Uncommon 6%, Rare 1.2%, Legendary 0.2%, multiplied by keeper luck: up to four and a half times for tame, happy pets in a clean cage.
• Litters are better: Uncommon 15%, Rare 4.5%, Legendary 1.2%, and rarer parents raise the odds for every pup.

One-offs. Two parents that are Rare or better have an 8% chance of a one-of-a-kind pup. The shop can offer one too, about once in eight days, when every pet is very tame (80%), happy (75%) and the cage is clean. There is one per breed, and each turns up only once in a cage: Butterscotch (Syrian), Sable (Campbell's), Frost (Winter white), Ink (Chinese), Pepper (Roborovski), Pearl (mouse), Amber (gerbil) and Mittens (rat).

Illness

Off unless you turn it on. With it on, hamsters can catch wet tail and the others the sniffles, in either mode.

• A messy cage (over 60%) gives it a small chance each hour; a pet from the shop has a 3% chance of arriving with it; an ill pet can pass it to the nearest well one.
• It wears health down slowly, and a pet that is otherwise well looked after mends faster than it wears. Nobody dies of it in Casual.
• It clears by itself after a day in a tidy cage (under 65% mess) with the pet fed. Medicine (50 seeds, only in the shop while Illness is on) cures in six hours and stops it spreading meanwhile.
• A travel carrier keeps one ill pet apart, so it cannot pass it on.

Warnings and news

The Cage key's rim shows the worst thing going on: amber for a warning, red and blinking when something is wrong. The same shows on the Status key, the Go dial and the pet cards.

News (deaths, levels, tameness, special pets in the shop, litters expected and born, pups grown, illness) waits on the Status key; press it to read the next. A death also flashes Stream Deck's warning on the Cage keys.

Settings

On the deck (hold Back on the cage page, then Settings) or in any Rodents key's settings in Stream Deck. Press a setting to step it on, hold it to step back.

• Mode: Simulation or Casual.
• Illness: off or on.
• Seeds and XP: 1x, 2x, 5x or 10x.
• Pet hours: like real life, or swapped. Day starts 05:00 to 11:00 and Day ends 16:00 to 23:00.
• Across decks: one cage across several Stream Decks, left to right or right to left.
• Smoothness: 2 to 15 frames a second on the cage page (8 by default).
• Your record, How to play, and Start over (press twice within 4 seconds; the old cage is kept as rodents-previous.json).

The cage saves itself every 30 seconds to %APPDATA%\DeckPets\rodents.json, with a backup beside it.

Tips

• Want to see them awake? Set Pet hours to Swapped, or keep gerbils.
• Plan for litters. A pair needs the large cage, and a big litter can overfill it, so keep seeds for the next cage up or be ready to rehome.
• Stroke often, not constantly. A stroke only counts every minute and a half.
• Rats pay. They tame fastest and earn the most, but need the medium cage.
• Soft bedding early. Forty percent less mess means less cleaning and happier pets.
• Tame and tidy for luck. Tame, happy pets in a clean cage make rare pets turn up in the shop far more often.
• Leave the hoard. Cleaning never touches it, and it tides everyone over when the bowl runs dry.