Jump to content

Thoughts on disease


Recommended Posts

Just a small post but I was wondering what everyone thought about disease, I recently noticed that the new stone fruit can get disease and personally i don't see any benefit to the mechanic, for me it's simply unfun and doesnt really add anything I really hope that klei does give up on it and/or reworks it into something that could be interesting/more easily preventable or something (honestly just want them to remove it)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I always disable it in world settings, because it's completely unfun to deal with. Harvest every plant, pay attention to whatever the character may say and dig the not-yet-diseased plant. Seems simple, but if you don't harvest the plant, it's gone forever and if you don't constantly check up on your plants, say goodbye to your entire grass/twig/berry farm.

Another way to deal with it is to build a grass gekko farm (it's quite tedious to build a tunnel and relocate them like that plus they take a long time to spawn from tufts) and twiggy tree farm. If you're Wormwood, you could also put spiky bushes and harvest them with bramble husk. Or gather tumbleweeds in desert.

There are no disease-free alternatives to normal/juicy berry bushes though.

I hate disease because it's too punishing, destroying almost non-renewable essential resources (world regrowth isn't very reliable). It would be so much better if you could cure plants with like a splash potion or something, I dunno.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Preventing disease is way too simple, and there's not really a major catalyst that you can stop to prevent disease from existing.

 

They could implement the toadstool more into the world by having it start to spread disease on the overworld through its mushroom trees, similarly to how the Antlion will occasionally create quakes every so often if not dealt with.

 

Using clean fertilizer and other forms of prevention would help flesh the mechanic out.

 

I'd love for more mechanics like disease to exist, but preferably more fleshed out. Definitely need more things like it, and less optional trophy non survival content.

(I'm look at you, Fuelweaver, Toadstool, Bee Queen, Malbatross, Sailing, Klaus, Deer, Shadow Pieces, pets (ugh), figure sketches, etc, etc).

 

22 minutes ago, SonicDen220 said:

 

I hate disease because it's too punishing, destroying almost non-renewable essential resources (world regrowth isn't very reliable). It would be so much better if you could cure plants with like a splash potion or something, I dunno.

I'm much more inclined to LIKE disease, since after all, Don't Starve is supposed to be a "Uncompromising Wilderness Survival".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

People complain there is no good scaling difficulty in this game, and this is one of them

^Yup, this. I love the disease mechanic for offering a new challenge beyond year one. I like to call it a tacit contract with the nature in exchange for bringing the essential resources to the comfort of your base. The mechanic can and should be expanded upon but I'm in the minority that appreciates it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After just recently finding out about world regrowth I find the disease mechanic more interesting almost pleasant to imagine. Potentially... it's a small loss of individual plants, with the fear of loosing it all without keeping some eyes out. Having to venture out to find new plants and restock your farms doesn't seem like the end of the world to me. It actually sounds like some pleasant occasional gardening amongst a lot of otherwise stressful hardships.

But, and it's a big old butt, that's just potentially. It's the balance again, of time and the chances of plants being diseased, that's probably not pleasant, occasional, or anywhere close to a break from stressful hardships but rather a contributor to it.

Having just recently realised things regrows, I haven't played on any other of the slower settings than off. I'd be interested to see how it plays out if it was only a really really slow process. Imagine if leaving your farms for two years had the risk of one diseased plant, and another two full years would see them all diseased? Is that enough time to just come in and inspect your plots every once in a while? It's like dealing with weeds isn't it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Plant a nice aesthetically-arranged assortment of Saplings and Grass Tufts in a fine-looking Thulecite-and-wood-fence pen. Fertilize. Place Savanna Turf inside, Cobblestones outside. Decorate around with Potted Succulents plus Potted Ferns. Beside, on a Wooden Flooring, place 2 Scaled Chests with signs for Grass and Twigs. Put between them, on center of tile, a nice Glowcap. Also have a regular chest there for rot/poop.

Now go for whatever reason, let's say Ruins or Lunar Island excursion, for an in-game year. Have fun with lots of fights and madness.

Come back to "baisu". Find all plants inside rotted with diseases.

You shrug a "welp" while taking out the torch.

Do "sitting like a B0$$" emote beside burning pen-with-chests-n-$hit.

Place a stack of gunpowder at your feet and also light it up.

 

Life is good and Disease mechanic "interesting and engaging".

 

Maybe one day we will get an antidote. Maybe.

'Till then gunpowder will do :livid:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I assumed everyone turned it off :confused:.

It just seems like one of those things that's just there to casually annoy and frustrate rather than some chronological difficulty-enhancing mechanic.

It really seems less consequential to the grass than the fact that it likes to lizz-out and get mauled by hounds, anyways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok so I'll give what I think about it, I've been talking on disease on another topic recently so it's cool.

Well, Disease have been added to DST to prevent player to make abusive farming and depleting the world without any limit, if there were no disease, you could remove the entire world's plants and place all of them at a point, occasionally fertilize the plants and keep them here as long as you wish even if you will have no need to come back for a while after harvesting. This result in making a barren map with no need to go outside, for survival servers at least since the regrowth is not applied on harvestable plants (except in Endless that I recommand for dedicated servers)

 

But keep in mind you have alternatives to most of the disease-able resources :

You can keep for yourself a pen of 20-40 gecko, get the needed amount of Dug Grass and take care of them as long as needed to get the geckos and for twigs, you have Twiggy Trees or Spiky bush with a Bramble Armor (but still have a preference for Twiggy Tree), and for berry bush... Unlike grass and twigs, berries can spoil so I suggest you use Stone Fruit instead with time.

 

The problem I see about Disease is that it gives you the inability to do decorations, unlike farming, you can't afford the time to take care of a map with many roads and corner you've been ornamented with bushes and things like that.

 

So maybe in times, we will have a solution to make no abuse of farming without influencing decorations. Cause Disease do its jobs correctly, if you're too lazy you will never make a large field of plants, a little one is fine and take like 1-2 minutes every 6 hours of attention.

(like plastic plants but this is a quick suggestion I just had)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally just disable it in world generation settings. I don't really see it as a source of difficulty, I just find it annoying. Food is already easy to get from mobs such as Bunnymen, spiders, bee boxes and such. I'd even argue that they're less work than berry bush farms, considering the amount of picking and re-fertilizing you have to do for 12-hunger food items. I usually pen a bunch of Grass Gekkos and put a pig man inside of said pen for cut grass, and twigs are easier to get late-game than early-game with the ungodly amount of twiggy trees that spawn out of nowhere. Disease just prevents me from having these plants around for decoration or convenience and I really dislike it.

To clarify, I do use the methods listed above to get my resources even with Disease disabled.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Cosheeta said:

After just recently finding out about world regrowth I find the disease mechanic more interesting almost pleasant to imagine. Potentially... it's a small loss of individual plants, with the fear of loosing it all without keeping some eyes out. Having to venture out to find new plants and restock your farms doesn't seem like the end of the world to me. It actually sounds like some pleasant occasional gardening amongst a lot of otherwise stressful hardships.

But, and it's a big old butt, that's just potentially. It's the balance again, of time and the chances of plants being diseased, that's probably not pleasant, occasional, or anywhere close to a break from stressful hardships but rather a contributor to it.

Having just recently realised things regrows, I haven't played on any other of the slower settings than off. I'd be interested to see how it plays out if it was only a really really slow process. Imagine if leaving your farms for two years had the risk of one diseased plant, and another two full years would see them all diseased? Is that enough time to just come in and inspect your plots every once in a while? It's like dealing with weeds isn't it?

this ''world regrowth'' for things like tufts and saplings work on servers with Endless/Wilderness.

it also works on Survival mode but only for trees and carrots.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, despite how much I want there to be some sort of progression and increasing challenge/reward I hate disease.  This is because disease isn't either of this things. 

To start with the obvious, disease isn't  challenging there are plenty of other options to use as a food source besides berry bushes. It is purely just tedious. All it really does is require you to dig up everything again. It seems it had almost no thought put into it. It's uninteresting, serves no point, and is just plain tedious. It is the worst possible example of increasing "challenge" in DST. 

An example of disease being.. interesting would be if a hypothetical progression system existed, disease could be caused by a certain world event. Instead of berry bushes just randomly croaking after like 70 days, how about a certain biome appears sort of like a plague and starts spreading. It.. wouldn't be able to be stopped by just blowing up all your berry bushes, you would have to go and destroy it at the source or something. Just an idea similar to @maciu67's "karma biome" idea, in which your naughtiness would create some ugly harsh environment that keeps spreading as your naughtiness goes up. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its ok I guess. It prevents or curbs unlimited easy resource harvesting. But it can be frustrating when out on a 3 to 7 day journey away from base and come back to see a bunch of disease. But I just kind of deal with it best I can without too much hassel. Usually I just go the grass gecko pen route after a year or so. But I usually keep just an 8 to 12 berry bush farm and about 2 dozen twig bushes due to disease. It could use a tweaking or reasonably difficult way to negate it IMO.

The only thing I alter in my worlds is making the world large and caves large. Everything else is default 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...