Some balance/usefulness needed in certain items

[Frashaw27]

So it is no secret that some items in Don't Starve Together are not used as often as they should are just straight up out classed by other items or mechanics. The progression of equipment in the items of this game is a bit wonky to same the least. For a few items it makes sense, like Torches and Lanterns. Lanterns are better in every aspect compared to the Torch (except in burning potential) and you need to have 2nd tier science to make a valuable item like this. On the other hand you have the Log Suit and Marble Suit. Log Suit can easily be gotten using logs and Rope and protect against 80% of a attack. The Marble Suit has higher durability and protection (95%) then the Log Suit but slows you down. You would think the Marble Suit would be used more because it has higher stats, but that isn't the case. The Log Suit is generally preferred because the it doesn't slow you down and the materials aren't as tedious/are more useful then the Marble Suit. This isn't a complaint on hoe combat should be changed, but rather on how items can and will be preferred even if they are statistically inferior then the other (this is also just a logistical sinarieo and not a experienced one) because of factors like "Time required to make to Payoff, General Usability, and Construction Cost". 

Weapons: Most weapons are under used because the Hambat and Dark Sword are so easily available and so effective. Weapons like spears, cork bats, and battle spears are simply over shadowed (heh) by the fact that Hambats are so easy to get with a simple pig farm and Dark Swords just are simply the effective battle weapon and very efficient to craft as a single tree guards can give you the components for 6 Dark Swords. Other weapons provide interesting dynamics like the Morning Star's electrical properties, the Blow darts use of resource gathering for best DPS, The Bat Bat for it's use of healing you when you attack the enemy, Glass Cutter's high damage but fragile body makes it so that it offers a safer alternative to the Dark Sword, and The Thulucite Club's method of speeding up the player while also being actually good at fighting. The problem is that these rare and unique weapons are either a) too situational, b) too expensive for their cost, and c) the materials that they used can be better used in other areas. Rarer weapons should have more damage or abilities to counteract the more abundant ones, but thats not what we have. Dark Swords are simply to easy to mass produce and them being the highest damaging weapon doesn't help. Hambats also aren't on their way out because 10 days worth of durability in not match by any weapon or tool that literally can't be broken. A way to rebalence them it to simply swap the Dark Sword damage with The Thulucite Clubs and reduce the damage to 51 at the start but also having a lower damage/spoilage rate (I think of it similar to how Wx's gears in DST needed to end up in the same result but also get their slower). Swapping the Thulucite Clubs damage with the Dark Sword will make the Dark Sword as a decent weapon but give more importance to the Thulucite Club and The Glass Cutter as they are the highest damage dealers in the game and gives more importance and meaning to the weapons as they feel more like rewards the alternatives. The other ones might be fixed by having their costs reduced or their effect buffed like higher regen on the Bat Bat or higher electrical modifier on the morning star.

Armor: The armor in game really aren't that area of the game where you get much verity as much of it is simply "armor that is abundant but can have less hp or reduction for all these effects" or "we have annoying or limited materials to craft us but we give you the your money's worth, maybe". The problem is that armors like the Marble Suit and Night Armor are items that have the 2nd highest protection in the game, but are seen as less important by people when you have to go out of your way to get these materials for armors that don't do anything more then protect you for a few more hit points. The reason why Thulucite is used is because the amount of it the ruins and the amount of durability each piece has really makes it good for armor for both bosses and normal everyday use and they even give special benefits when you use them, when compared to the others. The solution is to make these newer and more expesive armors more appealing so that more people can use them without feeling like they are being held back. this can simply be done by reducing the cost of the Night Armor and reducing the speed penalty from the Marble Suit.

Staves & Amulets: While a majority of amulets and staves are fine, a few are...underwhelming. The fire staff is a easy example as all it does is light stuff on fire. That's it.  This Staff is what a torch can do for a massively higher time and resource cost. There aren't even that many situations where it can be useful besides like maybe lighting gunpowder and lighting a few snurtle dens if you want those items. The current iteration of this staff leaves much to be desired. The Chilled Amulet is also sort of useful but only specific situations.  The chilled amulet just cools you down, albeit at a absurd rate but that's it. It doesn't provide the planning or forethought like the other amulets and doesn't have any use outside of summer. It fulfills it's purpose fine, but it's still lacking. Finally, the Lazy Forger. The Lazy Forger is a great concept on paper, but its also underwhelming in practice. It picks up items instantly and puts them into your inventory instantly for 225 items. The problems are a) your inventory will quickly be filled up with random crap if you wander near something like your base or a deciduous forest or event a meteor site, b) the cost is a bit too high for something you can do within seconds with your bare hands. That isn't to say that isn't worth anything, it has it uses like picking up a lot of a handful of items and can be useful for picking stuff up from dangerous situations. but it isn't something that i would immediately craft with out a specific purpose for it. A few suggestions are 1) Add a magic attack to the fire staff with a alternative Lighting option. The fire would deal 50 damage without the possibility of being reduced or improved with modifiers, with a 5% of lighting the enemy on fire. lighting would just be the standard fire staff but adding a attack to it. This would make it feel less like of a long range torch and more of a actual weapon. 2) Have the Chilled amulet be changed to a more overall amulet with it making you reach the temperature of 35 degrees in any situation. This would give it more of a general use and would allow you to use it more situations then maintaining temperature while fishing in the oasis. 3) The Lazy Forger is fine, it just needs increased range and maybe make it cheaper? It just needs more apparent uses.

Tools: Tools are weird In DST because they are essentially the building blocks you have to mold the world how ever you want, and a proper artist needs proper tools. There are 2 in particular that really aren't all that useful when you consider everything about them. The Moon Glass Axe and the Pick/Axe. The MGA is a axe with a 2.5 efficiency modifier but with only 80 uses. It is also made at the Lunar Island so there is that. The problem isn't that the item is particularly bad, its actually a really easy but effective design of fast but fragile, it's that the resources and time to get it don't make it equal a good result. The sheer time it takes to get to the lunar island, never mind mining the boulders and making the alter, is too much of a serious time sink for a axe to be useful. The Pick/Axe is essentially a pickaxe and a normal axe in one tool with a 20% efficiency boost. The problem is that in order to make it, you need to make both a axe and pickaxe, which means that you just use the axe and pickaxe separately then wasting time to combine the 2. There isn't even a way to truly fix them without them being broken as the idea of the ancient tools are simply out classed by gold ones. As @Electroely put in a thread, Gold is simply much too abundant to consider any other tool. Why go to a island to make a axe when you can just as easily make some axes out of your tsunami of gold? (Not related but why is Klei correcting axe and pickaxe so much?)

So criticize me, call my idea manure, call my writing to complicated and wordy, but the main point of this thread is too shed light on how certain items are restricted in use or are out preformed by others and how they can be rebalenced to make them more useful/rewarding. Everyone have a Good night, Morning, afternoon, and evening and thanks for reading and replying.

 

[YouKnowWho]

Eh, they do their job fine. Especially the moon glass axe. You don’t go to the lunar island to only craft one, do you? Plus, it’s not like it’s the only thing worth at the islands, so it’s more of a bonus if anything. 
 

I don’t get why weapons are here at all. Yeah, they get outclassed, but you still use them. Do you start out killing pigs with an axe? Plus, having cheap alternatives is always good so you don’t have to waste away your durability on low level threats like spiders. Hambats are again a different story, but as said before, it’s supposed to be an upgrade anyway.

 

The last forager could use a bit of an upgrade, but it’s not all relegated to things you can only grab with your hands with those pedestal-items things in the ruins. It’s already cheap to begin with anyway. 
 

I don’t see what the problem is with the ice amulet not being all that spectacular. It’s a magical alternative to stuff like the ice cube and summer frest. What’s not to like? It’s not like those items really need any other use outside summer either. 

Those are only my thoughts though. Honestly, when I read the title, I thought it was gonna be another grass suit thread. It’s nice to delve into other things for a change, yeah?

[Electroely]

I definitely agree that some items could use a bit more balancing, but I feel that a lot of the changes you suggest won't really help. Starting from up top:

29 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

Weapons like spears, cork bats, and battle spears are simply over shadowed (heh) by the fact that Hambats are so easy to get with a simple pig farm and Dark Swords just are simply the effective battle weapon and very efficient to craft as a single tree guards can give you the components for 6 Dark Swords.

I think spears and battle spears are in the same situation as the one you mentioned earlier - a bit of progression. Like how you go from torches to lanterns, you go from spears to Hambats or Dark Swords. I did not mention the Cork Bat because it isn't an item in DST and I don't really have experience with it.

32 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

A way to rebalence them it to simply swap the Dark Sword damage with The Thulucite Clubs and reduce the damage to 51 at the start but also having a lower damage/spoilage rate (I think of it similar to how Wx's gears in DST needed to end up in the same result but also get their slower). Swapping the Thulucite Clubs damage with the Dark Sword will make the Dark Sword as a decent weapon but give more importance to the Thulucite Club and The Glass Cutter as they are the highest damage dealers in the game and gives more importance and meaning to the weapons as they feel more like rewards the alternatives. The other ones might be fixed by having their costs reduced or their effect buffed like higher regen on the Bat Bat or higher electrical modifier on the morning star.

I don't really agree with this. First off, the Hambat change. I think the appeal of a lot of the high-end weapons is that they can deal over 50 damage, letting them kill a lot of mobs in less hits than they would if they had any lower damage. Spiders and hounds are two perfect examples of how much having +50 damage can matter. Now, I know you said that the Hambat would start with 51 damage, but that won't last long at all - it won't be useful for very long. It'll become much less desirable when an early game weapon can do the job just as well in most situations.
And then there's the Dark Sword change. I think that its damage to 59.5 would not make it any less used. The main reason is: You can make it at home. That's what makes a lot of the most used items... the most used. You can farm wood for base stuff and log suits and get Treeguards as a byproduct. The problem with items like the Thulecite Club and the Glass Cutter is that they don't last long enough for what you need to do to get them. You have to travel allllll the way to the ruins to make any ruins-exclusive items. You have to go to the lunar islands (either by sailing or using a boat bridge) to make glass cutters. Neither of these things are things a lot of players want to do regularly. It ends up being much more efficient to use whatever's obtainable from base - and it just so happens that dark swords do the most damage out of all melee weapons. My point is: Reducing dark sword damage will not make the alternatives as viable; it'll just make fighting overall slower for the majority of players.

46 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

The solution is to make these newer and more expesive armors more appealing so that more people can use them without feeling like they are being held back. this can simply be done by reducing the cost of the Night Armor and reducing the speed penalty from the Marble Suit.

I think a cost reduction would benefit both more than a penalty reduction. The marble suit has one huge issue:

This recipe takes an ungodly amount of resources to craft. Especially for armor. Four ropes is 12 cut grass. It certainly doesn't help that farming marble shrubs is painful - each one can take 15 days minimum to fully grow, each takes TEN pickaxe hits to mine and it only gives two marble - effectively only 1 marble in profit.

56 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

The fire staff is a easy example as all it does is light stuff on fire. That's it.  This Staff is what a torch can do for a massively higher time and resource cost. There aren't even that many situations where it can be useful besides like maybe lighting gunpowder and lighting a few snurtle dens if you want those items. The current iteration of this staff leaves much to be desired.

 

56 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

The Chilled Amulet is also sort of useful but only specific situations.  The chilled amulet just cools you down, albeit at a absurd rate but that's it. It doesn't provide the planning or forethought like the other amulets and doesn't have any use outside of summer. It fulfills it's purpose fine, but it's still lacking.

These two items are fine as is, in my opinion. The fire staff does what anyone would expect a fire staff to do - make fire. Fire isn't a great combat tool in DST most of the time. The staff has its use as basically a ranged torch.
As for the chilled amulet, I don't see why it's a bad thing that it just cools you down. You also forgot to mention that the amulet does more than just cool you - it chills attackers at the cost of 3% per hit. I think this would be a more useful feature if the chill effect wasn't only 2/3 that of an Ice Staff, but as it stands I can't find a use for it. I tried fighting a (summer) hound wave with it and literally no hounds got frozen in time as I got bit to death.

1 hour ago, Frashaw27 said:

The Lazy Forger is a great concept on paper, but its also underwhelming in practice. It picks up items instantly and puts them into your inventory instantly for 225 items. The problems are a) your inventory will quickly be filled up with random crap if you wander near something like your base or a deciduous forest or event a meteor site, b) the cost is a bit too high for something you can do within seconds with your bare hands. That isn't to say that isn't worth anything, it has it uses like picking up a lot of a handful of items and can be useful for picking stuff up from dangerous situations.

The Lazy Forager is probably one of my favorite items in the game. While it may not seem useful, I have to tell you - it has the potential to be one of most players' favorite item too. It's not something you'd just put on and play the game with - like you're suggesting - it's an amulet you equip when you need it. Here are a few examples of when it's useful:
- Chopping trees: You can pick up the drops of the tree as you equip a shovel & dig the stump. It saves a lot of time on the process, which is especially good considering the time saved would otherwise literally be spent holding the action button.
- Looting during a fight: You can equip it with some empty slots as you fight some hounds or spiders. Those mobs usually eat meat as soon as they lose interest in you, so leaving it behind while fighting multiple of them will likely mean it'll get eaten. You could run around the mobs and pick up the meat yourself... or you could equip a forager and just pass by it. Most of the time you won't even need to go out of your way to pick up the item. You'll get it as soon as you land a killing blow.
- Collecting items on the ocean: The increased pick up range means you won't have to go out of your way nearly as much if you're after certain items in the ocean. It's especially useful in brine shoals, where salt crystals could land behind a salt formation, forcing you to row all around said formation to get the salt.
These are just a few uses. Its main problem, though, is that it does not last. Especially since it's a ruins item. You can probably tell from my signature what I'm about to say: It should be refuelable. Much like the the Magiluminescense, the Lazy Forager's purpose is situational usefulness, and without the ability to keep it around for long you can't really make use of that. Making it repairable with nightmare fuel will allow players to trade a resource (nightmare fuel) for some convenience, which is honestly a deal I'll gladly take. I'd rather fight shadow creatures than hold spacebar near a bunch of logs and pine cones.

1 hour ago, Frashaw27 said:

The MGA is a axe with a 2.5 efficiency modifier but with only 80 uses. It is also made at the Lunar Island so there is that. The problem isn't that the item is particularly bad, its actually a really easy but effective design of fast but fragile, it's that the resources and time to get it don't make it equal a good result. The sheer time it takes to get to the lunar island, never mind mining the boulders and making the alter, is too much of a serious time sink for a axe to be useful. The Pick/Axe is essentially a pickaxe and a normal axe in one tool with a 20% efficiency boost. The problem is that in order to make it, you need to make both a axe and pickaxe, which means that you just use the axe and pickaxe separately then wasting time to combine the 2. There isn't even a way to truly fix them without them being broken as the idea of the ancient tools are simply out classed by gold ones. As @Electroely put in a thread, Gold is simply much too abundant to consider any other tool. Why go to a island to make a axe when you can just as easily make some axes out of your tsunami of gold? (Not related but why is Klei correcting axe and pickaxe so much?)

I am not sure what the Pick/Axe's purpose is, but I feel that it isn't regular use, as you'd have to go all the way to the ruins to restock. As for the Moon Glass Axe, I think its fine. Its crazy good efficiency makes it very useful for Toadstool. Other than that, it gives moon glass you may get a decent use. Certain playstyles may find bath bombs relatively easy to make, and visiting the lunar island every once in a while wouldn't hurt, especially if you've got something special set up over there (I think there's lots of potential for a land where all the sanity draining features the game has benefit you rather than hurt you). You also get some gems from mining frozen hot springs, so it's not a complete waste of time mining them. (also it seems like the forums prefer the spelling Ax and Pickax over Axe and Pickaxe, hence the red lines everywhere)

My point in the other thread was not that gold is abundant. It was that gold had a variety of ways you could obtain it. Having many ways to obtain a certain resource makes the process of obtaining that resource enjoyable in a way; You have many choices on how to restock on gold, and it's to you to choose how you'd like to do it. I feel that Moon Glass could benefit from a variety of obtaining methods as well - I am not sure what kind of new obtaining methods could be introduced, but I think it'd be cool if Shattered Spiders (or a new variant with moon glass colored crystals) dropped it sometimes.

 

Overall, I think the majority of items are fine as is, If I were to compile a list of changes I'd make, it'd be something like this:
- Decrease cost of Marble Suit (both materials) and Night Armor (3->2 papyrus)
- Increase on-hit freezing effect of Chilled Amulet to match an Ice Staff attack
- Make it so that you can add uses to the Lazy Forager using Nightmare Fuel (please klei i cannot describe how much i want this)

I think it's fine for some items to be situational, and part of the fun of Don't Starve Together is making the most you can out of those overly situational items. For all we know, someone could come out of nowhere with a great use for items like the Fire Staff or the Thulecite Club.

[SonicDen220]

Agreed with original post. Klei needs to do better balancing. Instead of making players want to try out all kinds of different stuff, they do the opposite - just... punish players for using the underrated and niche things. They indirectly nerf things that were never overpowered and never needed a nerf in the first place.

Recent events show that especially. Why should you make morning stars for electric damage when you can switch to Warly and spend a goat horn on any weapon? Why go with 72 damage when you can just go for 170 damage (over double) with a dark sword? The only advantage that morning star has is that it lasts for 1 minute longer and you can extend its time by unequipping it.

Another example - moon glass tools. Lakhnish showcased it in his thread. No one asked the moon glass production to be slowed to a crawl and be capped to the amount of hot springs in your world (which can be really low). But here we are.

Also, Woodie completely outclasses Wendy at her main job, so let's hope her rework fixes that.

[Ellilea]

If Pick/Axe had a combined durability of golden pick and axe it might be something to consider for the sake of a) slots b) feeling of upgrade.

I'm not sure 1 slot used less is an incentive enough for how much hassle making that thing is.

And I know many won't agree with me here, but I'd actually like to have a way to make all the crafting stations at base. Not an easy way, a hard way, but a way nonetheless. It'd give a neat goal to work towards for n00bs like me mostly concerned with building bases and hoardin stuff inside

[Whisperlisc]

What about lazy explorer? It was already mentioned by someone somewhere, but i agree it shoudn't vanish from your inventory when used down, it should remain as walking cane becouse it's a component to make it, it should just lost it's ability to teleport. And maybe you could use nightmare fuel to fuel it.

[Frashaw27]

2 hours ago, Kuba5565 said:

What about lazy explorer?

While the lazy expoler turning to ash may seem like it suppose to make it on the list there is a reason why. It does its job so good that they madw a entire character with that gimmick. The power of short range teleportation has a lot of applicable ises so there isn't really a balence or usefulness issue. That is a useful thing none the less though.

[Fuffles]

Problem with some of those is; Let's take Thulecite Club as an example
If you want yourself a Thulecite Club, you need to go to the ruins and find that silly altar, get the materials and craft it
If you want yourself a Hambat you get the items and craft it
See the difference? You have to do so much more to get those special items for barely any difference.
This is a similar case with Moon Altar Items.

Problem with Armor is, there are cheap alternatives that p. much do just as much as the high tier ones,
1 Log Suit gives you 80% Dmg Absorbtion which is p. much close to top tier for literally 2 pieces of rope and a few logs
1 Night Armor gives you 95% Dmg Absorbtion which is a lot, but at a cost of 10% of this dmg being converted into sanity damage, this is already a downside, while the cost of 3 Papyrus and 5 Fuel add another, Reeds are not farmable, so 3 Papyrus can take some time without a cleared Reed Trap

Issue with the better Tools is as mentioned earlier that the stations required to craft them are not conviniently on you all the time

Magic Stuff was always rather underperforming,
Staves really dont do much, Fire and Ice are basically ranged Crowd Control. Telelocator is quite expensive since you need a lot of stuff per teleport. Orange can get annoying if you accidentally r-click, Wortox players should relate to this one. (The other ones are actually quite good, nothing to complain there) 
If you ask me an easy way to fix this make the Fire and Ice Staves have Forge-Like Projectiles (Slow moving pretty FX balls) as their main attack which deal damage and set the enemy on fire, more shots adding more to the fire timer/give a stacking slow that turns into a freeze (Think Deerclops)
Alternatively just like the Forge Staves as well, the Staves could cast a spell, I think that what No-Eyed-Deer fire during the Klaus Fight would be fitting for the 2 Staves.
As for the Orange Staff, a small widget that toggles the teleporting would be enough, think of the compass widget.

Problem with Amulets is, they are supposed to be worn as a casual thing, which is problematic since a Backpack/Krampus Sack usually occupies this space casually. Chilled Amulets have thus barely any uses, Life Givers are usually used as rez material instead of HP regen, Purple Ammys still have some use, Green is situational so it's a-okay, Yellow is also something to wear casually, same with Orange tbh. I'd add a new Slot for Amulets only to be completly honest, they seem to be sorta like an additional equippable that as of now in the body slot seems to be more in the way

[Well-met]

on a side note, moon island has a set piece with a free moon axe and I've seen it spawn in multiple instances

[ShadowDuelist]

10 hours ago, Electroely said:

Overall, I think the majority of items are fine as is, If I were to compile a list of changes I'd make, it'd be something like this:
- Decrease cost of Marble Suit (both materials) and Night Armor (3->2 papyrus)
- Increase on-hit freezing effect of Chilled Amulet to match an Ice Staff attack
- Make it so that you can add uses to the Lazy Forager using Nightmare Fuel (please klei i cannot describe how much i want this)

This, absolutely agree, and regarding OP weapons suggestions, I think he is right that they need rebalance, but not by nerfing, rather than updating the less used ones:

Dark swords are very cheap to make and readily available, however they have a permanent con, that basically makes you crazy by simply holding them.

I think its a fair balance and the other weapons need to be better than dark swords, with the penalty of needing to go to a specific place to craft:

- Make thul clubs deal the same damage as dark swords, and lower their cost to just 1 living log, 2 thul, 4 fuel. Their durability could remain the same or be slightly increased. This will make the effort of making them at the ruins worth taking, since it gives you a far superior weapon (dark sword damage, no sanity penalty, bonus tentacle damage, bonus speed)

- Make glass swords have only a tiny less durability than dark swords. Again, it will then be better weapon than dark sword, almost same durability, more durability against shadows, no sanity penalty.

The idea is that Dark sword should be the cheap, readily available and low effort top tier weapon, and the others that required more work to obtain, are about as cheap, but give a bit more for the extra effort of having to move. And all 3 will be at the same top tier damage.

[shadowDigga]

Thulecite armor and weapon should slowly regenerate durability for 5% per day, so they can be fully repaired after 20 days (same cooldown as ruins regen). Then they can be used as everyday gear  that doesn't require periodic replacement, because you don't fight stuff often unless against bosses. And the thulecite club will take place of hambat since it always does fresh hambat damage.

[maciu67]

Bundling Wrap is too powerful. I uderstand that it may prevent food from spoiling but how can it keep animals alive?

[Butt Pillow]

I would like a lot of the magic section or misc items boosted a bit... Like Catcoon whip, winter hat, etc. Too many items that feel useless or close to it. 

Also, let Firestaff put out fires by absorbing the flame for a bigger attach next use. Uses double durability.