The Sendinel, a bird you can use to send items to your friends!

[PHibrilatoR]

So I've been playing Don't Starve Together for a while now with my friend and we tend to get separated, one stays at base and one goes out gathering resources. With the addition of Bundled Supplies and sending gifts with the gift wrap, the idea of a carrier pigeon-like creature in Don't Starve would be pretty helpful for these situations. I'm going to list some Ideas of how the bird looks or could work in DST! Feedback is greatly welcomed!

The Bird's appearance and name:

Usually the creatures in the DS Universe are a mix of two types of animals (Ex: Bearger, Goose-Goose, Antlion, Etc...), So maybe the bird could be a mix of Owl and Pigeon? Despite this I feel like "Sendinel" seems like a fitting name for the creature since the pigeon would be the type of bird to send items and the owl side would be more of a sentinel (That and Owlgeon or Powl sounds kind of silly )

How the taming and sending processes could work:

To use the sendinel, you must tame it. Taming the bird shouldn't be as simple as other birds, maybe the the sendinel must be lured by placing Jerky instead of seeds in a bird trap. After capturing the bird you must make a bird glove to that will allow you to send the bird (it should have limited uses). The sendinel should have it's own cage. It'll be where you keep your sendinel (lol duh) but it should return here after it is done sending an item if it does not detect the glove it has been sent from. The cost of these items should be left to Klei to balance out, to determine how early or late we should have these birds.

Types of Sendinels:

Much like beefalo taming, the way you treat your sendinel should give it a trait, here are some examples of types of sendinels there could be:

• The Wild Sendinel: This sendinel is not fully tamed yet, therefor it will not be able to send items just yet. After a while it gains one of the following traits depending on how you've treated it later on. (Can't carry items yet)
• The Quick Sendinel: This sendinel is much faster, must be fed smaller foods like seeds and morsels to be obtained. (One item slot, moves faster)
• The Heavy Sendinel: This sendinel can carry two items but moves at a significantly lower speed, must be fed big meats like Steak and Jerky.    (Two slots, moves slower)
• The Fat Sendinel: This sendinel is obtained by feeding it various food without taking into consideration the type of food. (One slot, Moves slower, has to be fed less)

All suggestions and criticism will be taken into consideration! Thank you for reading our suggestion for Don't Starve Together! 

[brbrmensch]

On 2/11/2017 at 10:05 PM, PHibrilatoR said:

sounds kind of silly 

i thought that's the way klei make up names. also: pigeowl (obvious one),

it's a pretty nice idea actually, i think it can have it's uses, even though it'd need a very large world to be useful and most of the time nobody will even think of it (at least on a pubs)

(actually had one of those where i wouldn't mind having something like this, pic [of course, i could just tame beefs and travel much faster {it was before antlion}]))

traits are unnecessary, i'd say, regular with one slot (for pack) is more than enough

 

 

[Bunions]

Sounds like a great mod.

Traits seem fun to me. 

Possibly change Heavy Sendinal to Warbird Sendinal and allow it to carry either armor or weapons - 1 slot?

Change Fat to 2 item capacity, but slower?

[PHibrilatoR]

On 2/14/2017 at 2:02 AM, brbrmensch said:

i thought that's the way klei make up names. also: pigeowl (obvious one)

Some creatures are straight up called what they at times, not all mobs were made by fusing two animals together, like: The frog, hound, bird, bee. But Pigeowl could work as well. Name depends on what Klei want it to be, me and my friend kind of thought the play on the name sendinel works because it combines the two bird's attributes instead of name, while stiil being some sort of fusion of two animals.

On 2/14/2017 at 2:02 AM, brbrmensch said:

traits are unnecessary, i'd say, regular with one slot (for pack) is more than enough

I see why you would suggest not having any traits. The Bird itself would work fine without them, but traits would add a bit of variety to the bird and it would encourage getting more than one sendinel.

[PHibrilatoR]

4 hours ago, Bunions said:

Possibly change Heavy Sendinal to Warbird Sendinal and allow it to carry either armor or weapons - 1 slot?

Hmmm i love the idea of a war bird that transports your weapons and armor.
Though the Heavy bird could be used as a war bird since it would carry more than one item and it'd probably be big and look pretty fierce.

(Or maybe there'd be some cosmetics that would allow you to make your sendinel look like a war bird? )
 

5 hours ago, Bunions said:

Change Fat to 2 item capacity, but slower?

The fat bird is only there to be something the player would want to avoid getting since it's upsides shouldn't make up for the downsides that it has (Usually a player would obtain it by being careless while feeding it). Though two items could work for the fat bird if it's considered too under-powered.