idea Renewable Gears

[MidrealmDM]

EDIT: - This is a rather long post about an idea for a new monster that drops gears.
The short version is : similar to spiders, 'clockroach' spawns and swarms only the king has gears (appears when swarming)

- Of course, just making gears craftable or clockworks respawn would achieve the same goal.
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I recently played a game of DST where on the entire map, there were only two clockwork creatures.
This resulted in a gear shortage that, barring farming tumbleweed, left survivors with no means to build a ice fling-o-matic.
While craftable gears would be nice (maybe using iron as introduced in Hamlet) unless the iron is rare, it soon becomes a problem of too many gears.and gears too readily available

So what is needed is a monster that respawns (slowly), and has a chance to drop gears.

Below is a proposal, and, although it probably has some problems, it is a starting point for a possible new monster.
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Idea:
New monster: Clockroach
Spawn: Similar to how some monsters appear only in certain seasons, (lure plants, mac tusks, etc) the clockroach nest is generated in summer.
Ideally appearing only near rot. A limit to the number of clockroach nests that could appear at the same time should be implemented.

Clockroaches in many ways are similar to spiders:

Nest: A clockroach nest would appear and have three tiers, in a manner similar to spider dens.
Tier 1 holds 4 clockroaches, grows to Tier 2 in 7-12 days
Tier 2 holds 8 clockroaches, grows to Tier 3 in 7-12 days
Tier 3 holds 12 clockroaches, produces a swarm in 15-30 days

Destroying a nest produces different rewards
Tier one: random 3 of the following: rock (possibly Iron if implemented in DST), rot, flint
Tier two: rock, nitre, plus random 4 of the following: rock (Iron), nitre, rot, flint
Tier three: rock x2, nitre, flint, plus random 5 of the following: rock (Iron), nitre, rot, flint, gears (maximum 1)
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NEST Appearance: A loose pile of rocks, with gaps and holes
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Feeding food or rot to clockroaches can reduce the time required for their nest to increase to next tier (see below).

When walking, clockroaches make a rapid ticking sound
When struck by attacks, clockroaches emit a metallic sound
Clockroaches are clockworks and do not have souls

DIET: All foods, and rot. Unharmed by eating 'bad' foods, They also consume minerals: rocks, gold, nitre, and GEARS
BEHAVIOR: Similar to spiders, avoid light, come out at dusk/night only

DAY: Clockroach will burrow underground and return to their nest if the can, if their nest is destroyed they will burrow underground and sleep.

DUSK During dusk they burrow, emerging only to grab food return to the nest.
food returned to the nest is consumed but for every piece of food returned to the nest this way, the time required to reach next tier is reduced a tiny bit

NIGHT During night they will emerge to walk on the ground and eat all foods they can, they can eat berries from bushes and will gnaw on containers and any ice box that contains food or minerals. After gnawing for a set amount of time (~60~90 seconds) the container is destroyed.
Food eaten by clockroaches at night does not hasten growth of the nest.
A clockroach at night, will attack walls and barriers if there is food nearby and it cannot find a path around the wall.

AGGRESSIVE: A clockroach will become aggressive if atttacked, if a nearby roach is attacked, or if their nest is attacked. When agressive, they will will stay on the surface and do not burrow, even during the day. If it becomes pacified, it returns to normal behavior..

INSECT: Most creatures ignore Clockroaches, with the exception of birds (tallbirds, penguls, etc) which will aggro on the roaches

TRAP: A clockroach caught in a trap will burrow out, emerging back to the ground if it is night

DISEASE: A clockroach has a chance to infect plants in a small radius with disease (just as disease plants spread disease)

APPEARANCE: Armor plated roaches of different color and slightly different size depending on type
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Basic clockroach: Health 160, Damage 15
25% of any nest will be elite clockroaches
Elite Clockroach: Health 320, Damage 20
-- Elite Clockroaches move faster and hop backwards after striking an enemy in combat
Clockroaches drop one of the following: rot, rocks (or iron), nitre, flint, with a small ~2% chance to drop gears (elite only)
=-=-=-=-=-=--=
SWARM
When a clockroach nest reaches its final stage, at dusk it releases a swarm which consists of a roach king and 16~20 roaches or more (25% will be elite) after releasing the swarm, the nest becomes teir 1 again. If there are over a certain number of roach nests on the map, the nest remains at teir 3 and does not release a swarm. Its timer resets until it tries again to release a swarm.
When near a roach king, all other roaches...
... engage in NIGHT behavior, they do not burrow (unless escaping a trap) and remain on the surface even during day.
... do double damage (and break containers in half the time) and take 33% less damage
... stay near the roach king, following if he moves away
... become aggro if any nearby roach or the clockroach king is attacked
If a swarming roach eats a  gear and their is no roach king nearby, it becomes a clockroach king and heals fully.

If a roach king is still alive at dawn/day it will burrow and move away from the previous nest and players, if, at dusk, there are no players or roach nests nearby, it will construct a new tier 1 nest.

Clockroach King : Health 600, Damage 50
Except as noted above, behaves as an elite clockroach, and is only slightly larger
When reduced to 0 health, a clockroach king drops 1 gear and becomes an elite clockroach.
- Because clockroaches eat gears, (and if they do so while swarming become a clockroach king), it is best to kill all other roaches first.
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If not attacked clockroaches will simply break open containers, eat all the food and leave survivors alone.
Clockroaches are relatively harmless unless fighting in large numbers

Since they break open containers, players should not want nest sites near a camp or base.
The numbers, (spawn rate, drop rate, damage, etc) can be tweaked as needed
While they can be farmed for gears, their slow rate of increase would result in 1 gears every 30 days or more.
If making gears more available, some of winona's inventions could be modified to require gears to build.

Potential Problem: Can be Farmed for rocks, flint, rot, or nitre.

 

[Jayfeather345]

Did you ever consider going to the ruins?

[MidrealmDM]

1 minute ago, Jayfeather345 said:

Did you ever consider going to the ruins?

Some DST servers do not have caves.

 

[Jayfeather345]

3 minutes ago, MidrealmDM said:

Some DST servers do not have caves.

 

Fair, but I wouldn't go so far for a new mob witch would break the whole theme around clockworks, maybe just for existing clockworks to respawn somehow.

Wait I know! The Shadow Pieces boss fight.

[MidrealmDM]

1 minute ago, Jayfeather345 said:

Fair, but I wouldn't go so far for a new mob witch would break the whole theme around clockworks, maybe just for existing clockworks to respawn somehow.

That works too,

But I think it would be easier to farm.If existing clockworks simply spawned in a set location.
Esp since clockworks arent agressive until you get near them, a base could be placed fairly close

 

[researchlab_2]

Sounds interesting, but imo too complex

[reverentsatyr]

13 hours ago, MidrealmDM said:

I recently played a game of DST where on the entire map, there were only two clockwork creatures.

That's just uncommon and unlucky. I usually have enough gears above ground to build 2 iceboxes and usually an ice flingomatic. But after that, the only good option is to go to the ruins. I don't understand why people would ever create a world with no caves and miss out on a ton of useful resources.

[fimmatek]

2 hours ago, reverentsatyr said:

That's just uncommon and unlucky. I usually have enough gears above ground to build 2 iceboxes and usually an ice flingomatic. But after that, the only good option is to go to the ruins. I don't understand why people would ever create a world with no caves and miss out on a ton of useful resources.

Hosting a world with caves requires much more resources than one without, and many players' computers cannot run two servers. But I don't think there's any reason agains caves other than this.

[_Ellat_]

I created a world which had 0 clockworks in the entire world had to go to ruins

[asheil0830]

Quote

I know in my insanity rework idea post, where insanity ramps up, but so do the rewards. One of the possible rewards for staying insane for an extended period of time was shadow versions of monsters would appear and along with gems and additional nightmare fuel, gears could also become a potential drop, when the shadow version of a mechanical enemy appeared.

 

[MidrealmDM]

Another - much, much much, much, simpler option

When meteors fall, a chance for one of the following ideas
Option 1> Ore/Metal/Iron falls from sky - make gears craftable - (possibly make Winona's machines require gears)

Option 2> Broken Clockworks falls from sky - making the resource available even without enabling caves (but also makes Thulecite available on surface world - unless the surface version of 'Broken Clockworks' has different loot table)

Option 3> Satelite/Machinary falls from sky - can salvage gears, possibly frazzled wires, and other items
(basically similar to option 2 above except can't spawn clockworks, and different loot table)