Insect Guide

Guide to Finding Insects

by Blueshift In the process of being updated for T6.... so bear with me for a bit.

Basics

Excluding beetles and queen ants, there are 49 different species of insects in ATITD. These insects are used primarily for fishing lures, and also to cover the tuition costs of the increasingly expensive levels of the Fly Tying skill. They are split up into six classes, each class covering a different type of activity you can perform to find insects. These classes are:

• Tree Dwelling
• Herb Dwelling
• Water Dwelling
• Livestock Dwelling
• Ground Dwelling
• Crop Dwelling

Each of the above classes, with the exception of Crop Dwelling, contains 7 different insects (Crop Dwelling has 14). Some of the insects are more common than other ones. For example, among the Tree Dwelling insects, approximately half of all the clutches you find will be Golden Asps, approximately one quarter will be Woolly Aphids, one eighth will be Desert Millipedes, and so on such that only about 1% of the clutches you find will be Horned Hookworms(?), the rarest insect within the Tree Dwelling class. More detail on the rarities of the insects can be seen below, where each class of insect is covered. Insect rarities are randomized each telling, so in T6 some insects that were quite common/rare in T5 are no longer so.

The insects you receive are only defined by the class of insect (which covers the activity you are performing, for example Crop Dwelling in the case of harvesting carrots) and the rarity of that particular insect in question. This means that it doesn't matter whether you are growing carrots, leeks, or barley; any of the crop dwelling insects can be found on any of the crops, and the crop dwelling insects do not seem to prefer any type of crop over any other.

To maximize your collection, obviously you will want your Arthropodology skill to be as high as possible. Arthropodology skill seems to have no effect on the chances of finding any particular bug, however, as it seems more tied to sheer luck. Finding all the insects in a particular class will grant you an achievement.

A further note on the rarities: for the Tree, Herb, Water, Livestock, and Ground dwelling classes, you are 99% likely to have found all the insects in a class if you manage to discover 587 individual clutches. Many will obtain the achievement having found far fewer, of course. This refers to individual clutches, not total number of insects. For the crop dwelling class, that number is slightly higher at 75,449.

Note: The level of common to uncommon seems to have changed for Tale6. Some of the ones marked uncommon are easily found and others seem to be elusive.

Tree Dwelling Insects

How to obtain:

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Gather wood	Yes

This is the simplest class of insects to cover; even players not looking for them will easily acquire even the rarest insects in this class over time due to extreme necessity of wood and frequency of having to gather it in ATITD.

Insect Name	Rarity Level
Golden Asp	1 (Most common)
Woolly Aphid	2
Desert Millipede	3
Red Cricket	4
Ringed Wasp	5
Ash Centipede	?
Horned Hookworm	? (Least common)

Water Dwelling Insects

How to obtain:

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Pick papyrus plants	Yes
Gather Water	Yes
Collect a gem from a Water Mine	Yes
Diving	Yes

The best way to obtain the rarest insects here is by growing papyrus along the Nile. Picking a papyrus plant gives a good chance of finding a clutch, and it is rather easy to harvest hundreds of plants per hour if you are efficient. You will also gather many insects by collecting water in jugs and using the Water Mine, though these methods are not the ones to pursue if you are specifically trying to find the rarest insects.

Insect Name	Rarity Level
Bristleworm	1 (Most common)
Glass Worm	2
Bloodworm	3
Nippleworm	4
Needleworm	5
Oyster Mite	?
Footworm	? (Least common)

Ground Dwelling Insects

How to obtain:

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Digging	Yes
Collecting Slate	Yes
Collecting Clay	Yes
Collecting Sand or Mud	Yes
Collecting Limestone	No
Collecting Dirt	No
Gather Grass	Unknown

By far the quickest way to gather these is attending a dig; you will have Pickle Slugs overflowing your pockets, and with some luck the rarer insects too. Those looking for rarer insects are advised to collect a lot of slate, the second quickest method of obtaining Ground Dwelling Insects. Limestone is not bad either, but avoid collecting dirt and clay as methods of obtaining insects.

Insect Name	Rarity Level
Pickle Slug	1 (Most common)
Corkscrew Asp	2
White Mealybug	3
Queen Maggot	4
Clay Slug	5
Mud Asp	?
Blister Beetle	? (Least common)

Livestock Dwelling Insects

How to obtain:

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Slaughtering Female Camels	Yes
Slaughtering Male Camels	Yes
Slaughtering Female Sheep	Yes
Slaughtering Male Sheep	Yes
Sheering Sheep for Wool	Yes
Slaughtering Hens	Yes
Slaughtering Roosters	Yes
Slaughtering Female Rabbits	Yes
Slaughtering Male Rabbits	Yes

Note: The sex of the animal may not make a difference in bug yeild.

This would seem to be a very hard class of insects to find, and indeed a lot of people have trouble here, but there is a simple solution: Rabbits! These breed so quickly and carrots are so easy to grow nowadays that with a couple of rabbit hutches under your command you will soon be overflowing with Livestock Dwelling Insects. Having a Modern Sheep Farm or two will definitely speed things up also and give you leather to boot. Hens are a good supplement, however camels are likely to be the slowest method of obtaining these insects.

Insect Name	Rarity Level
Hairy Slug	1 (Most common)
White Sawfly	2
Skinlicker	3
Stone Fly	4
Bat Mite	5
Toad Sawfly	?
Rose Mite	? (Least common)

Herb Dwelling Insects

How to obtain:

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Forage an herb successfully	Yes
Forage an herb from memory	Yes
Forage an herb not successful	Yes

Sadly, this is a hard class of insects to deal with, as there isn't much you can do to speed up your harvesting of herbs. The best solution is to forage often, and forage every single herb you see, even if it pains you to add to your overflowing pile of Discorea and Fool's Agar. Eating food that raises your speed and dexterity before heading out will increase the speed of your foraging and therefore your yield of the rarest insects in this class.

Insect Name	Rarity Level
Slime Moth	1 (Most common)
Camel Weevel	2
Salt Mite	3
Grass Slug	4
Honey Fly	5
Sand Mite	?
Feather Midge	? (Least common)

Crop Dwelling Insects

How to obtain:

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Harvest a bed of flax	Yes
Harvest a bed of barley	Yes
Harvest a bed of wheat	Yes
Harvest thorns	Yes
Gather Grass	Unknown

Harvesting vegetables needs to be check because gathering water can yield bugs too. So are these bugs in the water or veggies?

Activity	Yes/No	Note
Harvest a bed of onions	Yes
Harvest a bed of carrots	Yes
Harvest a bed of garlic	Yes
Harvest a bed of cabbage	Yes
Harvest a bed of peppers	Yes
Harvest a bed of egg plant	Yes
Harvest a bed of cuccumbers	Yes
Harvest a bed of watermelon	Yes

The nightmare class; even after obtaining the "Harvested 77777 Flax" achievement it is highly unlikely you will have found all of these bugs; I do not know of single person who has the Crop Dwelling achievement (having found all 14 bugs in the class). After performing some truly horrifying calculations, I have determined that you are 99% likely to have obtained the achievement only after finding a whopping 75,449 individual clutches of insects in this class. So much for that.

Raspberry Moth is just about impossible to get. It is so rare that you can just about give up finding 21 for Fly Tying Skill Level 4.

Insect Name	Rarity Level
Spittlebug	1 (Most common)
Fruit Maggot	2
Leaf Snapper	3
Woodmoth	4
Clearwing	5
Nightwing	6
Leafhopper	7
Raspberry Moth	8
Snowberry Butterfly	9
Ruby Hornborrer	10
Orchid Hopper	?
Dew Fly	?
Rose Swallowtail	?
Corn Maggot	? (Least common)