Caterpillar
A slow, segmented eating machine. Grows into something worse.
Common bugs are free to play. The game shows how to get each one.
Passive: Voracious
+25% food value, but 12% slower and boosts inefficiently.
A passive is always on: you never fire it and it never runs out. It is what the Caterpillar does that no other bug does quite the same way.
Stats
Stats are multipliers on the standard bug, which is ×1.00 in everything (the game shows them as percentages: ×1.14 is 114%). Turn is Agility in the game. For Boost drain, lower is cheaper.
| Stat | Caterpillar | Compared with the standard bug |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | ×0.88 | 12% slower |
| Turn | ×1.00 | the standard |
| Bulk | ×1.20 | 20% thicker |
| Growth | ×1.25 | 25% more from food |
| Boost | ×0.90 | boosts 10% slower |
| Boost drain | ×1.20 | boosting costs 20% more |
| Spawn mass | 22 | bigger than the standard 18 |
Power-ups
Every bug has 5 power-up slots. The Caterpillar can carry 8 of the game's 18 power-ups: the 5 core ones every bug carries, and 3 more that its traits from the real animal allow. Its traits are grub, gardener, ground and armored.
Burrow
Go underground for 5s: untargetable, invisible to bots, 40% slower, cannot eat.
From its ground and grub traits.
Barbed Carapace
Body swells up to 30% and grows barbs: enemies that hit your body are repelled and stunned instead of dying.
From its armored trait.
Nectar Bloom
For 10s every mouthful is worth double and you regenerate 6 mass per second.
From its gardener and grub traits.
Core power-ups: Nitro Wings, Molt Husks, Phase Shift, Pheromone Call, Shockwave.
How bots play it
Bots fill every seat no player is using. A bot playing the Caterpillar plays it as a Grazer. Food first: senses food further off, reads a closing head from further away and bolts early; it almost never hunts.
Other grazer bugs: Ladybird Beetle, Cicada, Millipede, Mole Cricket.
Skins
The Caterpillar has 6 skins. A skin changes only how it looks, never how it plays. See them in the full skin gallery.
Monarch Caterpillar
After the monarch's own caterpillar: cream-white segments with fine black markings.
Azure Caterpillar
Sky-blue segments with fine leaf-green seams and feet.
Woolly Bear
The autumn woolly bear: a rust-orange coat ringed in black, with a dark head.
Pipevine Caterpillar
Plum-purple segments studded with paired orange tubercles, the warning colours of the pipevine swallowtail larva.
Golden Crown
Burnished gold segments with a deep jade bead on every plate and a black crown line, after the monarch chrysalis's real gold crown.
Glowstick Caterpillar
Glow-in-the-dark green rings on a dark body, the brightest trick-or-treater on the street.
The real animal
The Caterpillar in buggs.io is based on Danaus plexippus (larva), and its traits come from what the real animal does. Read about it on Wikipedia.