Farming makes the game lose a bit of difficulty?

[Awarelol]

I would really like to try out ROG because I keep hearing that it's very unforgiving, but wouldn't it be kinda weird that you need to pay extra for a DLC that offers the same thing (which is uncompromising survival) that the standard game is supposed to offer?

DS without RoG would be mind-numbingly boring to me. Run around normally for 20 days and then sleep through 20 days, rinse, repeat is all DS is without RoG. The added giants, summer, and all the extra new stuff is what makes the game actually challenging.

 

I started with RoG and would probably have quit pretty quickly if the whole game was just fall/winter rotations.

[Nyx_Overkill]

I would love to challenge myself with Adventure Mode or Ruins, but it still seems wrong that reaching Day 80+ will usually mean that you will rarely need to worry about running out of resources/foods. Isn't the game supposed to be uncompromising and cause suffering to players the longer they stay? Right now, you could live up to thousands of days as long as you keep repeating the same boring repetitive tasks (farming, specifically) every day.

I would really like to try out ROG because I keep hearing that it's very unforgiving, but wouldn't it be kinda weird that you need to pay extra for a DLC that offers the same thing (which is uncompromising survival) that the standard game is supposed to offer?

Trust me,u will not find time to farm replay mode.Always u will be busy find a solution to a problem or survive from something.... As i said before,try explore ruins and adventure mode...

Game it should not be extreme difficult in the begining,otherwise everyone will not play it...

[Toros]

It's really not that big of a deal.

Farming is nice, because dragonpies are awesome, but ultimately it just makes summer easier, because crops stop growing in winter, rendering your farms useless.

For me, the critical components are having a bird cage and enough spider nests. With enough monster meat you can get plenty of food even through winter.

[Mobbstar]

It's really not that big of a deal.

Farming is nice, because dragonpies are awesome, but ultimately it just makes summer easier, because crops stop growing in winter, rendering your farms useless.

For me, the critical components are having a bird cage and enough spider nests. With enough monster meat you can get plenty of food even through winter.

 

Farming isn't limited to farms, digging up plants and making plantages/forests/mass bee production lines/lurefarms also counts. And it harms the "survival" factor a lot.

 

It'd be as easy as letting each existing problem spawn child problems - symptoms, if you will. For example a leif could cause saplings, grass and bushes to move when the player isn't looking; Beefalo in heat could cause grass to barren over time, if they can't find any targets; etc.

Of course I am wrong in some way, I just don't realise it yet.

[thezedword]

J192 I am going to have to echo everyone else here and suggest tweaking your world to be more dangerous or get RoG. It is on sale right now on Steam for $2.99!

[J192]

I recently got RoG and I could say that it's very challenging unlike the original game. I still don't like the fact that you can effortlessly mass produce food, logs, twigs, and stuff like that if you reach around Day 60-100. It's partially solved by Summer's "say goodbye to your base" difficulty, though.

[OmegaUnknown]

Well, the game just gets easier as you get better, I used to die during the first winter because I didn't know how to stock food, or how to stop treeguards. With experience the game does become much easier and more boring I guess I could say. But RoG is much harder and I do not have the mentality to play it. I haven't tried adventure mode yet, even though I have found the portal.

[insanechef]

If you think farming makes the game too easy -- Don' farm. I barely make more than an ice box, firepit and crock pots in my base because I like the challenge. 

[Winterbird]

Farming is cool, maybe they should add some viruses to the plants or insects that would kill plants and crops?

[THISTINYTHING]

I usually change my world settings to have a longer winter so farms are usless during that time.Starving is usually the last thing that would kill me usually I die from hounds.The game is more difficult becuse it's so easy to die at the hands of monsters.

But if you had a ton of farms i can see how it would make the game easier. And in that case I agree with Winterbird, maybe the farms should deterierate or the land loses its fertility?

[Winterbird]

I usually change my world settings to have a longer winter so farms are usless during that time.Starving is usually the last thing that would kill me usually I die from hounds.The game is more difficult becuse it's so easy to die at the hands of monsters.

But if you had a ton of farms i can see how it would make the game easier. And in that case I agree with Winterbird, maybe the farms should deterierate or the land loses its fertility?

 

Just a quick question.

 

Does farms grow at dusk 'n' night?

[THISTINYTHING]

Just a quick question.

 

Does farms grow at dusk 'n' night?

 

Do they grow in the dark? I thought they grow when they hit a ceritin day and nothing else mattered besides the rain. But.. uh don't ask me I know nothing.

[KalebSearle]

Theres a mod on steam maybe on Klei that makes the game much harder..

[thezedword]

Do they grow in the dark? I thought they grow when they hit a ceritin day and nothing else mattered besides the rain. But.. uh don't ask me I know nothing.

 

I believe I have had veggies reach maturation in the night

[_Q_]

Its something different.

First you explore to make your base and more or less constant food supply, and after that gameplay pretty much ends.

I mean you can explore the caves and stuff like that, but at that point you can survive endless number of days on surface.

Hounds will happen from time to time and maybe deerclops or other giants in RoG.

 

I still think adding caves was a big mistake, and I can't find anything interesting in exploring the caves.

There is almost no rewards for that effort, you get lantern and thats nice, the other items you can get in ruins are not worth the effort at all, and are overpriced as hell.

 

RoG pushed surface world in the right direction, but still not things are working in there. You can use ice in crock pot for example, 3 x ice + any meat = meatballs. Broken birdcage that can turn any meat into an egg. Spoilage system expanded but at the same time more bad things happened, and old issues also remained in place.

[imsomony]

Do they grow in the dark?

 

They won't grow at nighttime. However, if you can drop fireflies on/above the farms, it will help encourage growth even while it's dark since the fireflies provide a permanent light source. They're a minor source though, so it's slow-going using that method.

[dingfengquek]

It's perfectly normal and common for a game to be easy after the player learns how to play it. Even if it stayed hard, most players won't want to spend hundreds of hours repeating the same hard stuff (we already have real life for that).

 

It's not that games cannot be designed to be entertaining for thousand of hours (some are), but that games that are fun for even a hundred hours are valuable too. In fact, many popular games can be completed in 20 to 40 hours, the length of a movie is generally under 3 hours, etc.

 

So, I suppose a good reframe of the topic would be "Is Don't Starve too easy to master if the first strategy you try is to farm?"

 

I'll just make some rough calculations to see how long it takes, and of course assuming that you hit on the strategy right away and make very few mistakes (like vs Darkness, Hounds, Sanity, etc) so you don't needlessly replay games

• Each game-day takes 8 real-life-minutes
• How long will you play? I'm assuming you happen to be lucky and learn very fast (perhaps with the Wiki or someone beside teaching you what to do)
  • You will play at least 1 game where you reach winter := 35 game-days
  • After you master the game, you would probably try a new game and play through 2 winters and see that it works := 70 game-days
• 105 game-days = 840 real-life-minutes ~= 13 real-life-hours (+ more if you spent time reading the Wiki)

So, if you learn games really quickly, the minimum play-time for this game is 13 real-life-hours, which might be on the short side. But it's more likely 20 to 200 hours. That's a pretty normal amount of play-time for a game (even 13 hours is fine, if you got it on discount or if you are rich).

 

Conclusion: I think Don't Starve (without RoG) is challenging enough as it is, even with farming strategies, to keep a new player engaged for at least 20 hours. And that's good enough.

 

###

 

Besides, I don't find farms of most sorts useful! (both with RoG and without)

 

# Example: Log farm by planting pine cones? #

You can plant pine cones, or you can make a trip to a forest. Planting 60 pine cones take more time than walking to a forest biome, making a temporary campfire (and maybe a lightning rod), and walking back. (And you can't get 60 pine cones without cutting 30 trees first; While you often find 60 trees with pigs or rhinos... mmm....)

 

Before I run out of existing trees, I only plant pine cones for shade (RoG stuff). Or if I somehow run out of logs in winter (not as convenient to run off and chop wood for 2 days) or RoG-summer. This game has lots of trees.

 

 

 

 

 

[THISTINYTHING]

Its something different.

First you explore to make your base and more or less constant food supply, and after that gameplay pretty much ends.

I mean you can explore the caves and stuff like that, but at that point you can survive endless number of days on surface.

Hounds will happen from time to time and maybe deerclops or other giants in RoG.

 

I still think adding caves was a big mistake, and I can't find anything interesting in exploring the caves.

There is almost no rewards for that effort, you get lantern and thats nice, the other items you can get in ruins are not worth the effort at all, and are overpriced as hell.

 

RoG pushed surface world in the right direction, but still not things are working in there. You can use ice in crock pot for example, 3 x ice + any meat = meatballs. Broken birdcage that can turn any meat into an egg. Spoilage system expanded but at the same time more bad things happened, and old issues also remained in place.

 

I love the caves, I accually live underground during the winter so I don't have to deal with the cold.

 

[_Q_]

It's perfectly normal and common for a game to be easy after the player learns how to play it. Even if it stayed hard, most players won't want to spend hundreds of hours repeating the same hard stuff (we already have real life for that).

 

It's not that games cannot be designed to be entertaining for thousand of hours (some are), but that games that are fun for even a hundred hours are valuable too. In fact, many popular games can be completed in 20 to 40 hours, the length of a movie is generally under 3 hours, etc.

 

So, I suppose a good reframe of the topic would be "Is Don't Starve too easy to master if the first strategy you try is to farm?"

 

I'll just make some rough calculations to see how long it takes, and of course assuming that you hit on the strategy right away and make very few mistakes (like vs Darkness, Hounds, Sanity, etc) so you don't needlessly replay games

• Each game-day takes 8 real-life-minutes
• How long will you play? I'm assuming you happen to be lucky and learn very fast (perhaps with the Wiki or someone beside teaching you what to do)
  • You will play at least 1 game where you reach winter := 35 game-days
  • After you master the game, you would probably try a new game and play through 2 winters and see that it works := 70 game-days
• 105 game-days = 840 real-life-minutes ~= 13 real-life-hours (+ more if you spent time reading the Wiki)

So, if you learn games really quickly, the minimum play-time for this game is 13 real-life-hours, which might be on the short side. But it's more likely 20 to 200 hours. That's a pretty normal amount of play-time for a game (even 13 hours is fine, if you got it on discount or if you are rich).

 

Conclusion: I think Don't Starve (without RoG) is challenging enough as it is, even with farming strategies, to keep a new player engaged for at least 20 hours. And that's good enough.

 

###

 

Besides, I don't find farms of most sorts useful! (both with RoG and without)

 

# Example: Log farm by planting pine cones? #

You can plant pine cones, or you can make a trip to a forest. Planting 60 pine cones take more time than walking to a forest biome, making a temporary campfire (and maybe a lightning rod), and walking back. (And you can't get 60 pine cones without cutting 30 trees first; While you often find 60 trees with pigs or rhinos... mmm....)

 

Before I run out of existing trees, I only plant pine cones for shade (RoG stuff). Or if I somehow run out of logs in winter (not as convenient to run off and chop wood for 2 days) or RoG-summer. This game has lots of trees.

 

Its funny for me when people say you paid 5$ and played it for 3 hours, so you don't have any right to point any exploits and bugs, cause you played the game.

 

Its not about money for me and people don't understand that, this game could be even free or cost 100$, I would still try to fix it, cause I like it, and exploits and bugs are bad for gameplay.

 

[Starvation]

I still think we need turnips

[DevilsSlide]

 

Its funny for me when people say you paid 5$ and played it for 3 hours, so you don't have any right to point any exploits and bugs, cause you played the game.

 

Its not about money for me and people don't understand that, this game could be even free or cost 100$, I would still try to fix it, cause I like it, and exploits and bugs are bad for gameplay.

 

 

I didn't get that impression from what he said. The impression I got was, how long do you expect the game to actually last? Yes after you unlock things like farms, crockpots, and drying racks the game becomes easier. But how much effort did you have to put into the game to realize and master the use of those items? Generally games don't have an unlimited lifespan, eventually there comes a point where it gets boring and it's time to move on or restart. There's only so big of a city to build in SimCity and there's only so long of a challenge to not starve in Don't Starve.

My impression of what he said isn't so much that the guy that played for only 3 hours can't complain about something, it was more that for the cost of the game you get an acceptable number of enjoyable hours before you reach a point where you have mastered everything and the game may become boring. The game wasn't meant to survive 300 days. Sure you can live that long, but the main challenge of the game is to figure out how to survive and gather food. If I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off on day 300 scrambling to find food the same way I was on day 1... well where is the fun in doing the same thing for 300 days? *Kill a spider, eat monster meat, find a mushroom to restore sanity... rinse and repeat* Feeling like you're making some sort of progress in your survival can be a good feeling.

As you learn things, you find ways to make your survival easier and that makes the game easier and at some point you reach a spot where you go it's pretty easy to sustain the place I'm in.

Sure farming makes access to food easier, but do you master your farms and create lots of dragonfruits or higher value pumpkins or are you happy with lots of carrots?

The crockpot makes the game even easier than farming with it's ability to generate high value foods, whether for hunger or health.

If you take out everything that makes the game easier (farms, crockpot, birdcage, drying rack) you're left with being a nomad eating what you kill and gather. In my opinion, having to do that every single day would get just as monotonous and boring as when you've mastered a base and can survive easily off your own base. Of course then there is always trying to play as a different character and seeing if that brings any additional challenges or mods or RoG.

Obviously, we are all open to our own opinion but long answer short, yes farming makes getting food easier (it's why mankind switched from being hunter gatherers to farmers). But does it break the game? No. Each person is able to play the game as they see fit. If you don't want to farm, don't. Want to try to survive without meat, go for it. If you want to survive only on meat, try it. Try whatever you want to challenge yourself.