taking out the roots of Hamlet's optimization issues.

[Theukon-dos]

Alright, If you haven't heard, Hamlet is a good DLC, and is quite fun, However, it has some *serious* optimization issues. However, after putting good while into my new Hamlet world, it's become obvious why this is the case. to put it simply, not one, not two, but 3 creatures have a tendency to Completely conquer the world. and for once, it isn't the player.

 

the three creatures in question are the Rabid beetle, the Snaptooth flytraps, and the Spider Monkeys.

 

The rabid beetle is the most obvious one. However, because they've already been changed to die after a day, they're not as bad as they were, though there will be an indirect nerf to there ability to murder everything coming up.

 

Next is the Snaptooth. if you're unfamiliar, these plant beasts have 2 forms. there's the seedling and then the Flytrap. The seedling is mobile, extremely hostile, and will attempt to eat meat to "evolve". Each time it "evolves" it becomes a bit larger and stronger, and once it eats 3 pieces of meat, it becomes a Flytrap. The Flytraps are stronger, are immobile, and spawn seedlings around them. This is where the issue lies. The flytrap stalks are supposed to stop producing once there are enough of any kind of flytrap in an area. However, due to this being an extremely short range (3.75 tiles according to the wiki, but take that with a grain of salt) and the seedlings being extremely aggressive, it is super easy to lead packs of seedlings out of the flytrap's range, which causes them to spawn more seedlings, and with how aggressive they are, one of those will probably end up turning into another flytrap. so what I suggest for these ones

 

-Flytooth's spawning of seedlings now counts both the local area (which is expanded), and the island it's in. so if there are, say, 50 Snaptooths on the starting island, then no more seedlings can be spawned by the flytraps. which means that even if there's one all alone on the other side of the jungle from the rest, it will be unable to spawn any seedlings. Note that Deep jungle spawns and Gas jungle spawns are separate, so killing them in one biome won't interfere with the other.

-Flytraps that are killed will leave a root that allows them to respawn after 10 days (3 in lush season). this is to prevent Extinctions with there much thinner numbers.

-Seedlings will return to the deep jungle if they're lured out of it and no longer have a target

-flytraps that root outside of the jungle will not produce seedlings in any scenario.

 

Now finally, we have the Spider monkey. On further pondering, I think these guy's overpopulation issue is actually a bug. because according to the wiki (which again, not the most reliable to do Early access), they're supposed to have "heards" like beefalo, which should mean that there's a cap to how many there can be. Which leads me to believe that either A. the wiki is correct, and that the issue is that when they try to find a jungle tree to cocoon they wander too far from there heard, which cases them to form a new herd, and the cycle repeats itself until the entire deep jungle is webbed (I wish that was sarcasm). B. There's an issue with breeding similar to what Rock lobsters had. It's just not quite as noticeable due to their immense numbers being spread out due to them trying to web trees. or C. the wiki's wrong and they actually spawn from cocooned trees as opposed to using Herd mechanics. in this case, my assumption is that they're not properly recognizing the trees that spawned them as their home, and go out to cocoon new trees.  Either way, there is something up with there spawning that's causing them to take over entire deep jungles. Assuming that it is a glitch, there are still two tweaks I suggest for them

-cutting down the tree removes the webbing, you no longer have to dig up the stump aswell. (this is just a QoL suggestion)

-now have a Slam attack similar to the bearger. this deals 60 damage and is specifically intended to counter the swarms of rabid beetles.

 

So yeah, assuming the spider monkey overpopulation is a bug, the changes to them and the snapteeth should, atleast in theory, help with Hamlet's optimization issues. though I have no idea if they where the soul issue with it.