Renew the Non-Renewable

[osmRhodey]

Since DST was released, and even before, there's always been an issue with non-renewable resources.

 

Much like how the flowers used to be finite in the world and then butterflies were made to help replant them and now rocks have meteors.(at least in DST, otherwise there's just the caves)

 

There are still many resources in the world that are completely finite and without the help of the host in a server, you could run out completely of the resource. Be it grass, twigs, berries, and reeds especially.

 

So over the time I've been thinking and discussing what might be some ways to renew the resources.

__________________________________________________________________________________

 

Here are the ideas I've come up with so far(let it be known the tasks are meant to be difficult or tedious as these all would be resources similar to the world generated ones):

• GRASS--  Beefalo Wool +  Seeds (a stupid joke lol)
  • It was suggested that you would then afterwards have to plant these grass seeds in a beefalo horn and care and manage it for set amount of time before you could transplant it to whatever land you are in. There would be chances of it withering and dying and it would require an amount of manure to survive both in the horn and upon planting (beefalo horn is reusable for X amount of uses)

 

• SAPLINGS-- Small, small chance to occur upon plantings pine cones
  • Note; The saplings would not start with sticks on them right away
  • Not sure what more can be done for this right now, suggestions are welcome

 

• BERRY BUSHES-- Small chance of seeds popping out when berries are fed to caged birds
  • You would then afterwards, have to plant it in a farm and let it grow to maturity, caring for it in a similar fashion to the grass, before being allowed to transplant it but it would not need fertilizer after this fact.

 

• REEDS-- Leaving cut reeds by a merm house can carry an extremely small chance of said merm planting a reed somewhere in the swamp
  • The merms can only plant one reed for X amount of days per house, leaving stacks by the house will not substitute for more reeds being planted but can increase chances of one being planted but then a long period of waiting having to occur as it would be on a cooldown

 

_{HAHAHA FINALLY GOT TO POST THIS}

[osmRhodey]

Thank you Joe or whoever moved this into the right thread.

[Pyromailmann]

I'd rather be able to dig up reeds than let merms replant them.

[osmRhodey]

I'd rather be able to dig up reeds than let merms replant them.

 

Yes but that doesn't make it so you get any more.

Say you replant them, say you need the turf as well and that all works fine and it's at your base.

Then you happen upon something unlucky and they all burn to the ground.

 

Then what?

All Wickerbottoms will just cry in the distance.

 

I'm in a server that has very few reeds as it is. (20 all together)

If there could be a way to grow more it'd be nice, and very helpful in the long run.

Especially for RoG when summer is implemented.

 

I'm not suggesting merms are replanting the one plant, I'm suggesting you leave the cuts from one reed and they plant a new one somewhere in the swamp.

 

 

 

also JoeW could I have a little help to move this thread to the suggestions? :S

EDIT: Thanks

[RalphKastro]

how about no? finiteness is a good thing to keep in mind in the game. I'm not in the Beta yet, but if DST is still on the same principles as DS, then having finite resources is fine. Otherwise, for what reason does the Teleportato exist?

Knowing that if you use too much of a resource it's gone(FUR EVAH) is one of the most unsetling and plan-inducing things in the game. Why should I fear that bloody gosh darn freaking fiery base destroying Dragonfly, if I know all that stuff I lost can be renewed? There's some things you just can't replace, y'know.

I think I'm one of the few people that actually think there's a lack of non-renewable resources in the game. Thankfully, though the game does a good work on destroying the ones we got, if you're not careful enough(freaking lightning, eating all my berry bushes... If only I had built a lightning rod... if only I had planned...)

I think what would be a better solution to your problem would be them fixing the "more" and "lots" settings so that stuff doesn't spawn everywhere, then you could set it to "more" for your server, as there would be more people.

so, yeah... FEAR THE FIERY DEATHFLY.

[The Letter W]

how about no? finiteness is a good thing to keep in mind in the game. I'm not in the Beta yet, but if DST is still on the same principles as DS, then having finite resources is fine. Otherwise, for what reason does the Teleportato exist?

The Teleportato doesn't actually exist in DST yet. If it did, I'm sure that'd be a whole other ball of wax because I reckon an entire server would have to agree to using it and yatta yatta. 

 

Knowing that if you use too much of a resource it's gone(FUR EVAH) is one of the most unsetling and plan-inducing things in the game. Why should I fear that bloody gosh darn freaking fiery base destroying Dragonfly, if I know all that stuff I lost can be renewed? There's some things you just can't replace, y'know.

 

Oh definitely. I'll agree with this. However, the issue in DST isn't so much Dragonflies as it is griefing players coming and ruining your life before you're even aware they're there. I've had that happen. Brand new world, in comes a rampant Willow player, taking out a good 20+ or so Berry bushes before leaving. I am aware that Berries shouldn't be a main source of food, but they're nice in a pinch, especially in 6 man servers when things are starting to get a bit scarce as Winter goes on. 

 

I think I'm one of the few people that actually think there's a lack of non-renewable resources in the game. Thankfully, though the game does a good work on destroying the ones we got, if you're not careful enough(freaking lightning, eating all my berry bushes... If only I had built a lightning rod... if only I had planned...)

I think what would be a better solution to your problem would be them fixing the "more" and "lots" settings so that stuff doesn't spawn everywhere, then you could set it to "more" for your server, as there would be more people.

so, yeah... FEAR THE FIERY DEATHFLY.

 

 

You're in a server with 5 other people. You've managed to amass quite a Twig farm, which is good. Twigs are much needed! Your Willow player is out collecting said Twigs during the dusk. Their sanity slips below the okay threshold without them noticing .

"Teehee!"

And there goes the Twig Farm, up in flames. You've already picked this world almost dry of Twigs, so what do you do? 

 

The OP's method doesn't garuntee 800 Twigs in a single day just because you planted a metric arseload of Pinecones, it just gives a small chance of getting back what you've lost. I imagine it's like .05% chance of a Pinecone becoming a Sapling instead of a tree, kind of like Gears from graves. (Which let me tell you, in all the servers I've played in for DST, I've only seen them get dug up legitly once.) 

As for the Reeds, it's just a way to get more should your world have a small amount. Especially with the Booster Shot requiring a good amount of them, it'd be nice to have a chance at increasing your numbers. 

[RalphKastro]

 

 

You're in a server with 5 other people. You've managed to amass quite a Twig farm, which is good. Twigs are much needed! Your Willow player is out collecting said Twigs during the dusk. Their sanity slips below the okay threshold without them noticing .

"Teehee!"

And there goes the Twig Farm, up in flames. You've already picked this world almost dry of Twigs, so what do you do? 

 

The OP's method doesn't garuntee 800 Twigs in a single day just because you planted a metric arseload of Pinecones, it just gives a small chance of getting back what you've lost. I imagine it's like .05% chance of a Pinecone becoming a Sapling instead of a tree, kind of like Gears from graves. (Which let me tell you, in all the servers I've played in for DST, I've only seen them get dug up legitly once.) 

As for the Reeds, it's just a way to get more should your world have a small amount. Especially with the Booster Shot requiring a good amount of them, it'd be nice to have a chance at increasing your numbers. 

 

well, for the reed part, my solution kind of helps. For the Willow thing, that's actually the player's fault. They went near flamable stuff while in low sanity. That should have been expected and planned for.

For the griefing thing, though(that, for some reason, I can't quote) is a very serious problem. I can't see how to protect your stuff from griefers, as willow's lighter is earlier game than grass. But I don't like to think that the game should change just to prevent griefing. Aside from some kind of whitelist or permission to enter thing, I really can't think of any other way to prevent permanent, world-screwing problems.(that's my main problem with MP, as well. Everybody is happy in their completely co-op server, and then just comes some idiot and starts seting fire to stuff. In a PvP server that would be fine, but it just really screws co-op. Guess I should leave it to klei to figure out a way to prevent this without messing with the gameplay(I really do love non-renewable materials)) 

[The Letter W]

well, for the reed part, my solution kind of helps. For the Willow thing, that's actually the player's fault. They went near flamable stuff while in low sanity. That should have been expected and planned for.

For the griefing thing, though(that, for some reason, I can't quote) is a very serious problem. I can't see how to protect your stuff from griefers, as willow's lighter is earlier game than grass. But I don't like to think that the game should change just to prevent griefing. Aside from some kind of whitelist or permission to enter thing, I really can't think of any other way to prevent permanent, world-screwing problems.(that's my main problem with MP, as well. Everybody is happy in their completely co-op server, and then just comes some idiot and starts seting fire to stuff. In a PvP server that would be fine, but it just really screws co-op. Guess I should leave it to klei to figure out a way to prevent this without messing with the gameplay(I really do love non-renewable materials)) 

 

I do too, don't get me wrong, but with Together there's a whole new set of variables in place that can be even more out of control than in single player. They're working on a Rollback, but I think just a small chance at fixing your world would be nice. 

I don't mind hosting open servers, but I would be lying if I didn't say that people popping in and lighting things on fire isn't a problem. Or leaving with valuable items, never to return. 

[Zillvr]

Overall I think all the ideas are good, especially about the saplings. Just another idea is to include rain into the equation.

• Day + Raining = Slightly Higher Chance
• Day + No Rain = Normal Chance
• Night + Raining = Normal Chance
• Night + No Rain = Slightly Lower Chance

For the grass, I think that it should be done differently than through combining Beefalo Wool + Seeds. Though I like the idea of taking care of the Young Transplant* (you should definitely have a name for that state of the grass). What I'd suggest is that there would be a fourth state in a grass tuft. The four states would be as follows: unfertilized, fertilized, grown, and then matured. The matured state is a taller version of the grown state which is the current final state of a grass tuft. The period between the grown and matured state is longer than the period between fertilized state and grown state by a certain variable, let's say 3/4ths of default DST summer. Once you harvest a mature grass tuft, it will yield 2 cut grass and a very small chance to spawn the grass seed which you can use to make the following recipe:

 

1 Grass Seed + X Manure + (X+Y) Rot = Young Transplant*

 

This would create the Young Transplant* that you can put into the Beefalo Horn to nurture it until it turns into it's Grown Transplant* state that can be transplanted into any where you wish with all the conditions you have stated before. I'm suggesting to use more rot for the young transplant since imaginatively a Young Transplant* that needs to be nurtured would require the help of previously living things to imaginatively live. i.e. meat,food,flowers all were once alive or part of a living thing turns into rot.

 

Hope that whole block of text makes sense. 

[Toros]

I can't imagine anyone actually runs out of saplings, grass tufts, berry bushes, or reeds.

 

For one thing, berry bushes become less and less relevant the more developed your base is.  when you have 20 farms, berry bushes aren't important.

 

As far as the rest, either ban willow, have the host respawn lost resources, or learn to deal with it.

 

Losses to lightning rods are just bad play, considering how cheap rods are to make.

 

As far as random fires, it's pretty easy to just spread out your resources.  Yes, it's less space efficient but it's a lot less vulnerable to being wiped out.

[osmRhodey]

well, for the reed part, my solution kind of helps. For the Willow thing, that's actually the player's fault. They went near flamable stuff while in low sanity. That should have been expected and planned for.

For the griefing thing, though(that, for some reason, I can't quote) is a very serious problem. I can't see how to protect your stuff from griefers, as willow's lighter is earlier game than grass. But I don't like to think that the game should change just to prevent griefing. Aside from some kind of whitelist or permission to enter thing, I really can't think of any other way to prevent permanent, world-screwing problems.(that's my main problem with MP, as well. Everybody is happy in their completely co-op server, and then just comes some idiot and starts seting fire to stuff. In a PvP server that would be fine, but it just really screws co-op. Guess I should leave it to klei to figure out a way to prevent this without messing with the gameplay(I really do love non-renewable materials)) 

 

Sadly enough setting any resource on a higher setting leaves chances for the generation not working correctly and the resource spawning all over the world. As much as I'd love to just have a giant world and set the resources higher it also brings along the addition of over use and abuse. By abuse I'm meaning that there could be too much spawning at once and that would ruin any survival aspect to the game, even with 6 players. You would just gather the numerous resources, set up lightning rods, have no issues at all.

 

As for Willow players, it is hard for them to keep high sanity, especially when starting the game. Having to stand in fires 24/7 isn't very fun and you want to be a part of the team and do something....hopefully...

Either way, early game is always difficult. Not to mention with Willow's fires not being noticeable to the Willow player makes it infinitely harder for them to notice anything.

Not all of them are bad, some just have accidents. But having lower sanity than most characters and a hard time keeping it up can be a pain in the ass for the player early game.

 

As far as griefing goes my only idea is possibly having messages, photo evidence(if possible), and descriptions of people who would need to be blacklisted. It has been an issue for a short while, it was okay up until some time ago. Now that there's a ban function though it can make everything so much easier. Believe me.

 

But yes co-op is nice, which is why if you're going to have a co-op friend server, you're going to want to stick to a private passworded area.

 

But this still never changes the fact that for DST itself, there might need to be an implementation to renew resources. Meteors are there for rocks similar to how the caves would have earthquakes. Those are resource renewable mechanics.

 

Heck like I mentioned, back when I started butterflies existed but flowers were finite so having beeboxes were useless and no one ever used them. They were so useless. But then things changed.

Time will change. We'll see what happens and what becomes of the game. These are simply ideas much like ideas like a server horn to help locate people, Woodie having an amulet that could temporarily counter the curse, etc. They're all suggestions and not all suggestions will pass.

This is more to just help so if you are running out of resources for whatever reason(friends making their own bases, sudden fires, lack of resources in the world, etc), you have a way of replacing them as time goes on.

 

Not to mention there's something new to do in your spare time, eh? Don't get me wrong though, love the non-renewables and all, love the mechanics, always have. But this isn't vanilla and it will need tweaking to make sure people can actually play a game together. What Klei decides to do, is up to them. All I've got.

[greenglacier]

Oh cmon! A-Are you seriously wanting that from me to read all these wall of text?! I gave up after the 4th comment. How can you write this much? Could someone summarize these thoughts in short? Ty!

[osmRhodey]

This is a discussion thread so they're bound to happen. I'm not sure what you're needing summarized.

Is there something specific?

[osmRhodey]

Did not mean to hit send. But following that. No one is expecting anything from anyone. If there is no inclination to read there's no worry. I would rather carry on discussions and ideas though instead of reiterating previous statements.

Hopefully that's understood at least.

[Halved]

I would prefer a very low chance (0,05%?) of getting a seed of a plant when harvesting it. That should only work for twigs, grass and barry bushes though.

[rezecib]

Back when RoG summer wildfires were added, I was thinking about something along these lines. I don't really like the "small chance of getting it while doing things you normally do" approach, but it would be cool to see a way to make them that's expensive. Maybe you could make a winnowing machine, stock it up with a full stack of grass/reeds, and then run it to have it spit out 1-2 grass/reed seeds. Reeds, of course, you'd only be able to plant on marsh turf, and grass maybe only on savanna turf.

 

That approach doesn't really make sense for saplings/berry bushes, though, so perhaps you could make a trowel to make a hole, then plant them and have to babysit them in some way (like when hatching smallbirds) until they're grown.

[Rahzeil]

I don't find it to be too much of an issue but I can see how it would be one. Having a whole group of twigs or grass that you implanted to your base just burn up after all that hard work. If only we had the ice flingomatic in DST, or something similar, it would solve this issue without having to implement another system to grow new crops. Though the idea is great and could easily be balanced. A machine like rezecib said. Perhaps turning a whole stack (40) of grass or twigs into one grass/twig seed allowing you to turn 40 into 1 renewable. Sounds pretty fair.

[Algesia]

Basically DST at first sight is that players tries to make base at spawn all the time and no one seeks for challenges of get going searching parts of the ending map scenario. And this makes like playing for no point or like the sims or minecraft ( sorry for that, i am not against it). So for that kind of players who want not only strategic play, but fun and fast i recommend customise by adding ev.erything more of enemys and reduce food to less. Have you seen beefalos, robots and spiders fighting to each other? It is the most satisfying thing in Don't starve. It perfectly suited for tf2 , l4d2 players. And for other who builds base,v make some magicn powder or smth to craft for all

Kindofproof for buildings where nothing can destroy it like in terraria game

[Stroomschok]

I'm fine with renewable resources. The problem is that it is not balanced. It's too easy for players to change their environment to completely suit their needs without much of a risk or drawback.

 

The only one is the risk of fire, but that's easy enough to manage.

 

The best way would be to give the player more competition for resources, that especially kick in when they try have the convenience of having all resources close at hand in abundance.

 

Simple things like pigs opening boxes and fridges and stealing all your food (so you can't have your basecamp next to a pig village). Or beefalos eating all the grass (and not producing manure if they're hungry), so you can't have the benefit of a savannah providing both an abundance of grass AND beefalos. Make rabbits eat the veggies from your gardens, so it's a lot harder to have a good meat and veggie production close to each other. Etc.

 

And it's not just lack of resource competition but some resources are also simply too easy to renew like trees (which should grow much slower and not reset), tallbirds (which should have a proper reproduction cycle) and spiders (which should need food to grow new spiders and lair size).

 

Also something I'd like to see at some point is more interaction with the biome turfs. Like plants growing better on certain turfs, while also planting a lot of certain type of plant on the same tile, changes the turf over time (like playing multiple grass on a tile, changes the turf into savannah, or trees into woods).

[The Letter W]

I'm fine with renewable resources. The problem is that it is not balanced. It's too easy for players to change their environment to completely suit their needs without much of a risk or drawback.

 

The only one is the risk of fire, but that's easy enough to manage.

 

The best way would be to give the player more competition for resources, that especially kick in when they try have the convenience of having all resources close at hand in abundance.

 

Simple things like pigs opening boxes and fridges and stealing all your food (so you can't have your basecamp next to a pig village). Or beefalos eating all the grass (and not producing manure if they're hungry), so you can't have the benefit of a savannah providing both an abundance of grass AND beefalos. Make rabbits eat the veggies from your gardens, so it's a lot harder to have a good meat and veggie production close to each other. Etc.

 

And it's not just lack of resource competition but some resources are also simply too easy to renew like trees (which should grow much slower and not reset), tallbirds (which should have a proper reproduction cycle) and spiders (which should need food to grow new spiders and lair size).

 

Also something I'd like to see at some point is more interaction with the biome turfs. Like plants growing better on certain turfs, while also planting a lot of certain type of plant on the same tile, changes the turf over time (like playing multiple grass on a tile, changes the turf into savannah, or trees into woods).

 

I actually quite like these ideas! I know a lot of people have been asking for ways for the world to still be changing in ways that can't always be predicted, and I think the turf one would be a good way to do it. The Beefalo one is good as well as it creates a bit of competition for grass, but for a good reason.

 

[Some1]

In my opinion, it looks like the best solution would be, if server put new instance of the item, when something destroy it.

If you burned out some twigs/reeds/berriebushes, somewhere in the world a new item should be spawned by the server (of course according to appropriate biome and outside of the player (well, actually players) screen boundaries).

[Zillvr]

@Some1, with that logic, all servers will always have a specific number of world generated non-renewables from the first world generation, right? I can see how this would seem to work, but the only effort you have to put into this is just find the newly generated non-renewables. 

 

Seems somewhat exploitable though, if you don't necessary like the positioning of the reeds, you can just burn them, and wait for the game to generate another reed somewhere else, and hopefully in a better spot.

 

Sadly, I have nothing else to suggest. I'm sorry.

[osmRhodey]

All right!

Hi again! Been a while and I apologize for that!

I know everyone's got the critiques/criticism for the ideas I've posted there, but remember these aren't fleshed out and are only in like a stage one of thought process.

 

I've got a crap ton of new ideas in why renewable resources would actually be a good thing and why you would need them.

 

Here's a hint: Insects!!

 

Why?: The ambiance and basis is already there for this to work and insects cause havoc in the real world already it would make sense

 

I'll be re-updating all the info soon, promise

[Midnight Tea]

I'm of the mind that nonrenewable resources has always been a bit of a thorn in Don't Starve's craw, especially given how you can lose them due to no fault of your own. That said, I definitely agree with anyone who says that the "pinch" that comes from wanting and needing to preserve those resources is a major part of the DS flavor and that the game loses a lot if its world isn't unyielding. I don't have any real suggestion to offer beyond that there is a middle ground that shouldn't go ignored -- impractically renewable carries a lot of the same heft and gravity that nonrenewable does without the horrible sinking feeling that comes with knowing you'll never be able to fix that which was broken.

 

Also? Something has to be done about Willow. I'm sorry, but I offer no compromise here. When your character's drawback has the potential to exponentially punish everyone on the server, that is the very definition of Disproportionate Retribution. DST with an unaltered Willow is essentially DS minus one of its iconic characters since any server operator with any sense whatsoever will ban her from the outset. Someone suggested that Willow should instead experience intense temperature drops when at low sanity -- this would double as a great change that'd make her more attractive a character choice for high-level RoG players due to her becoming a fantastic character for beating the summer heat.

[rezecib]

impractically renewable carries a lot of the same heft and gravity that nonrenewable does without the horrible sinking feeling that comes with knowing you'll never be able to fix that which was broken.

 

 

I can't agree with this more. Tumbleweeds, for example, are pretty impractical for renewing a lot of the things they make renewable, but knowing that if you accidentally killed off a moleworm+burrow that there exists a way to get them back is pretty comforting.

 

And... yeah, Willow.

(as a side note, she's also preposterously strong in PvP right now, because fire cuts through all of the damage multipliers they added for player and PvP damage)