An insect can be in one of three forms:

• A larva: long wriggling thing
  
• A chrysalis: long thing, does not wriggle, different colour for each breed
  
• A mature insect: You can see the wings. It will probably be flying around, or in a display case.

Not all insects can be seen in all forms in the game.

These species can be incubated from larvae you find:

• Incubate a common larva : Azurae, Empalio, Leani, Galaxe, Fensea, Abstreus
  
• Incubate an uncommon larva: Bee, Silk Worm (these are not butterflies !)
  
• Incubate a rare larva: Penga, Chevrone, Aemel, Liux
  
• Incubate a rare larva using Mutagen T2: Imeo, Serena, Golden

These breeds can be found as a chrysalis in the wild:

• In many places: Nere, Lorpen and Florente. Good places to try are the shore-line near the waterfall, the hidden area above the Iridium cave, and the flat area between the sulfer fields and the sulfer falls (the curved area with constant dustfalls).
  
• In the Mushroom River area: Futura.
  
• In the White Desert, also called "The Wilderness": Alben.
  
• In the 'secret' area above the big Iridium cave: many kinds.
  
• In a secret place discovered at late-game stage: Imeo, Serena and Golden.

These multiplier factors affect only the increase provided by the dome or farm that the butterfly is in, not your entire Insect Index.

The game features 13 species of fish. This is how to incubate or find them all. The eggs of wild fish can be gathered with a Water Life Collector. These eggs respawn: collect some and come back later and you may find more.

The game features 12 species of frog. This is how to incubate or find them all. You can find eggs of some species of frog by looking for the adult frogs. They tend to like areas near open water, by slightly sheltered by cliffs or rocks.

Warning: Frogspawn does not respawn.

Some species are more rare than others. They do not all turn up (in the wild or an incubator) with the same probability. Some are very rare and difficult/tedious to obtain.

As you improve your Terraforming Index, larvae get more and more popular. If they are rare for you, don't waste your time trying to find them. Concentrate on increasing your terraforming numbers and soon you will start tripping over them.

Wild larvae take a little time to spawn. If you jet pack, or walk as fast as possible, over a route they don't have time to appear in front of you. Stand still or walk around slowly (no 'shift' key) for perhaps 10 seconds before you complain they're not spawning. But don't walk in a straight line because they'll appear behind you and disappear again as you walk away from them.

A maximum of 16 larvae and chrysalises will appear in your area at once. If you're searching for a specific kind of butterfly and see you have nearly 16 around you already, there's no point in waiting for more to appear. Leave the area for a few minutes and the existing ones will disappear.


If you're trying to incubate a certain species, but get one you already have enough of, you can put it in the recycler and get back the materials you used. You do not always get the same species from the same larva/eggs. (Thanks to the people who had that idea when I didn't.)


Many people have reported being able to find every exotic chrysalis except for Alben. I am not certain whether the exotics spawn in turn, with each one appearing only when an index has reached a certain number. If you can't find Alben, go and do something else for a while until your numbers are higher.

Due to how the White Desert area is specified, you can occasionally find Alben in the green area nearer the waterfall, but you're more likely to find it if you're in the White Desert/Wilderness area itself. One patch which spawns a lot of larvae is the area around the landing pod and other evidence of a visitor.