Giraffe

Reticulated Giraffe

The giraffe is a build that debuted fairly recently in the Neogene expansion. The build is mainly available in the African grassland and open woodland servers.

## Overview

The giraffe is part of the Ruminant guild, along with Bison and Deer. While each build has different modifications, the differences tend to be negligible.

The feature that sets giraffes from other Ruminants is their absurd height, with adults being along the lines of 4.3-5.8 metres (14-18 feet) . While their body is somewhat small, their legs and neck make up most of the height. The giraffe is also a heavyweight, weighing up to 1360 kg (3000 lbs) for males and over 827 kg (1825 lbs) for females. Because of it's height, giraffes ignore all stealth abilities and have an excellent vision all around. The giraffe has a prehensile tongue which measures at 45 cm (1.5 ft) which is useful for grabbing loot in treetops and grooming. They also have taste buds in their tongue and inside their mouths.

The speckled coating of the giraffe was from the early game where new players need it for stealth bonuses whenever a more experienced player is not in the area. Considering the relatively high griefing rate of new giraffe players, it is essential to have the camouflage to help avoid a griefer like a leopard or a hyena. The adults rely on their sheer size and the ability to defend themselves. Adult giraffes are well versed in self-defense, should the situation call it. The giraffe mains opt for thicker skin by its legs which lowers damage dealt at that area, which, combined with their decent defense as it is, makes it hard to land a resetting blow while a giraffe's kick is so strong enough to one shot a Lion player of guard, potentially by decapitation. Both genders of giraffe have a mane, which reduce critical damage by the neck. For this reason, the only normal predators of giraffes are lions, but lions need to be in a group to take a adult giraffe down, and even then they don't really do it too often. They also have a 1 m (3.3 ft) tail with a tuft at the end to defend from insects, though they're more so just pests.

The main features of a giraffe are its neck and legs. The legs allow a giraffe to reach sprinting speeds of 60 km/h (37 mph) and can sustain speeds of 50 km/h (31 mph). That's slightly slower than a lion but the match-up doesn't look so good for lions anyways. Giraffes, like other Ruminants, can sleep while standing, though they only sleep for a very short amount of time because they spend a lot of time taking small naps throughout the day. Their neck allows giraffe players to get hard to access loot that other build may not even be able to reach, though longer necks are more dangerous to have in drought conditions, it is an advantage in necking, when male giraffes compete for mating rights.

Giraffes need to eat 34 kg (75 lbs) of loot a day to maintain a high HP stat, though this is less than other herbivores because they tend to use nutrient rich loot. When stressed, they will eat bark from trees. While generally herbivores, giraffes have been known to take loot from carcasses in the form of dried meat. Giraffes spread out during the wet season due to the larger loot spawn rate, while in the dry season thy tend to stay around evergreens. Mothers tend to eat in open areas so they can detect predators at the cost of food efficiency.

Giraffe players tend to form herds, but they are sex-segregated most of the time. Often it is based off familiarity of other players. Male giraffes form herds, but as they grow older they tend to grow to a solitary lifestyle.

The Giraffe build has a support class with it in the red and yellow billed oxpeckers. The support class alerts the the giraffe of danger while they feast on whatever ticks live on the giraffe's body. The Giraffe build also has a long lifespan for a ruminant, with 25 years in the wild and 28 years in captivity.

## Tier Placement

In the African watering hole server, Giraffes sits at C tier. This may be because they have to adjust themselves to drink, leaving their neck open to attack, which leaves them open to other predators that may not normally attack them, such like the Nile Crocodile build. In the grassland server, they are in A tier because they don't have such problems.