Lunar Island Journey and Is It Worth It?

[Mencken]

It does take a while though I enjoy the time at sea.    The sea stacks are a bit over the top, you get into dead ends and sometimes get trapped between them and the edge.   In one game the edge was right next to the mainland and the passage so narrow that it was only possible to navigate with anchor down and one sail up.

Too many stacks, running 2-3 sails is impossible except for short distances and you have to be ready to drop anchor instantly all the time.   Most annoying is a maze of stacks with a dead end where they are spaced too close together.  Fortunately once the islands are discovered the route is known, you could also clear the stacks but doing that solo is tedious.

I like the lunar island design, the favorite items being the saw weapon, the axe and stone fruit that never perishes.  Seems like crafting items aren't that unique, axe is what you can kind of get in the ruins, weapon is similar to a dark sword.    Might have been better to have something unique?

[WoodieMain45684]

Tbh, I wouldn't really try and make a judgement on this until they finish the whole thing. Like they said the future updates are going to be more content heavy, so it would probably include a very good reason to go to the island.

 

[Pedro cc]

yes, it is worth, stone fruits and moonglass tools are really good

[Ezaroth]

There're no sea stacks in the "bridge" part between the main and moon island. If you see a sea stack then you're going the wrong way.

[Brago-sama]

Considering you can just set up a telelocator pad on the island to go to and fro whenever you please, yes it's very much worth the first trip.

[AdventZen]

14 hours ago, Mencken said:

Seems like crafting items aren't that unique, axe is what you can kind of get in the ruins, weapon is similar to a dark sword.    Might have been better to have something unique?

Glass Axe chops trees 50% faster, as opposed to the 20% of the Pick/Axe, It is also far more renewable than Thulecite.
Glass Cutter is Dark Sword, but without the sanity drain, and lasts twice as long when fighting Shadow Creatures (Fuelweaver and Shadow Pieces count)
The trip is cost-y and boat mechanics are not very forgiving, so I'd advise making a bridge out of stationary boats, which is super expensive, but it's a one-time investment. In summary: It's a time-consuming, but oh-so-worth-it journey.

Fun fact: Glass Axe + Warly's Honey Crystals means you can cut down small trees in one chop, medium trees in two chops, and big trees in three chops.
Not-so-fun fact: Lucy and the Glass Axe have the same modifier, but Lucy rounds numbers up, while the glass axe rounds numbers down, making a craftable axe better than Woodie's...  that kinda really hurts, yes.

[fimmatek]

3 hours ago, AdventZen said:

Glass Cutter is Dark Sword, but without the sanity drain, and lasts twice as long when fighting Shadow Creatures (Fuelweaver and Shadow Pieces count)

I didn't know that one, thanks!

[Zeklo]

Right now it's kinda a bit silly.

The island can be located based on abnormal flat-edges on the mainland paired with a lack of sea stacks.
I do kinda wish it was further out there.

[X-lem]

On 8/28/2019 at 9:00 PM, Pedrito said:

yes, it is worth, stone fruits and moonglass tools are really good

Agreed. I would make the journey for stone fruit alone. Easy and quick method to farm rocks as well as filler that doesn't spoil (before you mine obviously).

[Mencken]

Yeah, I didn't know how fast those stone fruits grow.   Just 9 trees and I have a ridiculous amount of food.    

[Bird Up]

I just expressed the same thoughts in a post before coming here lol. Yeah, the crafted items are not very unique, and the crafting station alone is not worth finding the island for. The main reason I ever go to Lunar island is to dig up the stone fruit. I think it's unfortunate that ultimately I am just going to the island to dig up some op avocados and kelp, and then hauling them back to the main base. It'd be nice to have a powerful and unique crafting station, and more incentives to stay on the island. I think adding life and interactions to the ocean is what is most desperately needed. The uniqueness of the Ruins crafting station is really what I want them to bring to the Lunar crafting station.

[Well-met]

56 minutes ago, Bird Up said:

I just expressed the same thoughts in a post before coming here lol. Yeah, the crafted items are not very unique, and the crafting station alone is not worth finding the island for. The main reason I ever go to Lunar island is to dig up the stone fruit. I think it's unfortunate that ultimately I am just going to the island to dig up some op avocados and kelp, and then hauling them back to the main base. It'd be nice to have a powerful and unique crafting station, and more incentives to stay on the island. I think adding life and interactions to the ocean is what is most desperately needed. The uniqueness of the Ruins crafting station is really what I want them to bring to the Lunar crafting station.

Glass cutter is very nice for the fuelweaver.

Either way, what I'm bothered about is finding the island. 95% of the sea is literally nothing and with my luck I just have to navigate the whole sea pointlessly until I find it where I look last. That's entire months of navigation.

[DemonRebuilt]

15 hours ago, Well-met said:

95% of the sea is literally nothing and with my luck I just have to navigate the whole sea pointlessly until I find it where I look last. That's entire months of navigation.

At the moment you can find the lunar islands by looking at the borders of the main world and noticing where there are long flat edges. It will kinda look like the map has been cut off. Those edges are perpendicular to the lunar islands.

[maradyne]

1 hour ago, DemonRebuilt said:

At the moment you can find the lunar islands by looking at the borders of the main world and noticing where there are long flat edges. It will kinda look like the map has been cut off. Those edges are perpendicular to the lunar islands.

Ditto on the flat edges, I've noticed this.
Also may be on to something here: in every newly-genned normal settings world thus far, I've always found the moon off the coast of either the PK birch biome or one of the deserts.

Not saying that that's a definite occurrence or that the biomes are intentionally connected; just that the existence of patterns means that there should be a few rules that we can come up with to figure out where the moon island will be located with minimal map info. Quicker than 'explore the whole world and find the missing chunk'. Long flat edge is one of those 'rules'. Another could be something regarding how those favored biomes were added to the world gen in the first place; none of them are original biomes, after all.

[Ezaroth]

I often get worlds that merged with the island if I leave the world size at default.

[Well-met]

20 hours ago, DemonRebuilt said:

At the moment you can find the lunar islands by looking at the borders of the main world and noticing where there are long flat edges. It will kinda look like the map has been cut off. Those edges are perpendicular to the lunar islands.

I do not understand or notice this. There are half a dozen flat edges.

Where would the island be on this world?

 

[maradyne]

10 minutes ago, Well-met said:

Where would the island be on this world?

Question just in case: is this a new world, or an old world from before the Moon (ie Moon here would've had to be retrofitted which changes the generation process a bit)?

Other than that though, a full, single-image map would help in figuring it out. Those images are a little too chopped up for me to guess.

[Well-met]

it's brand new, not retro'd.

I guess I really shouldn't set it to "huge"

[maradyne]

Oof, yea...that makes it a bit more difficult.
Well, best I can say without a full image is to keep this in mind:

On 8/29/2019 at 12:20 AM, Ezaroth said:

There're no sea stacks in the "bridge" part between the main and moon island. If you see a sea stack then you're going the wrong way.

If the spawning follows the same basic rules as on a normal sized world, then there should be a light 'sand bar' in the water between the mainland and the moon. Like, an area that looks like the shallow 'beach' water that generates around most land.

 

 

...huh. That's an interesting consideration, now that I think about it.
The Moon generates almost as if it's a long extension of the mainland generation, that was cut off by filling what would otherwise be turf with water. This would explain both the sand bar and the lack of sea stacks.
That may be another indicator we can use in figuring out the rules of nature generation.

[DemonRebuilt]

19 hours ago, Well-met said:

Where would the island be on this world?

My best guess would be to head north of the straight edge near pig king.

I think you'll find if you were to regenerate multiple worlds and use console commands to reveal the map, it's quite easy to see where the islands line up with flat edges most of the time. Sometimes you still get strange worlds where the land edges are smaller.

18 hours ago, maradyne said:

The Moon generates almost as if it's a long extension of the mainland generation, that was cut off by filling what would otherwise be turf with water.

If this is the case, it's possible that your lunar biome was just cut off at a relatively thin section of the land, so it's more difficult to tell where it should join up.

[loopuleasa]

On 9/9/2019 at 7:56 AM, Well-met said:

I do not understand or notice this. There are half a dozen flat edges.

Where would the island be on this world?

My money is up from PK in this pic.

The flat edges is one marker of lunar, but what matters is the donut shape.

As you can see, there is a ring forming, and the lunar island is the missing link in that ring.

[Well-met]

yup you are correct

[maradyne]

1 minute ago, Well-met said:

yup you are correct

Glorious. It looks a bit different due to world scale, but that indicates that it still genned off of PK.
The more samples we have of generation, the better.

[Well-met]

so is it always off PK then?

[maradyne]

No, but it seems limited to just a few places in my playthroughs; the other being off of a desert.
Both world regions just happen to have been added to the game in times past the DS base-game, so I'm thinking it could be a symptom of design rather than intentional.
Either way, the more we know, the more predictable the moon's location becomes.