Celestial Portal - do you use it?

[Frashaw27]

11 hours ago, themightyone said:

 Tempted to use it for wormwood and plant acres of farms all over and also Winona for some catapult cheesing lol

Wow, you are umm..... going to be sorely disappointed (if the wild crop rotting hasn't been changed).

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

But it’s still very much a USELESS feature that is only good if your playing ALONE Solo, Otherwise- Other teammates in a 6 player coop game can more easily fulfill those roles for you.

And if the End-Game is large base building and Farming then no offense but- I’m extremely thrilled that I have yet to reach that point.

You see unlike you, I don't have the abilities necessary to make friends so I can't have teammates without the worry of one of them griefing. Besides, even with 6 players there is more then 6 characters and thus you would still need the portal to access all of them. If you are thrilled that you haven't yet gotten to the point where you can focus on base building, then good for you but you eventually reach that apex, that point where you have done everything and appeal of base design will slowly grasp you. You will meet the point where your skill succeeds the potential you can do without being a little bit creative, after all practice does make perfect, and the perfect have to find new ways to entertain themselves. Also that emoji really pisses me off for some reason.

[Mike23Ua]

Not a fan of Walmart? 

[WoodieMain45684]

Mike does make a legitimate point about the portal; it's not really that useful if you already have multiple characters in the world. You know, playing Don't Starve: Together, together. Though I can see the use of it in solo worlds, though I personally am not tempted even in solo worlds to use it for a couple of reasons.

1. The effort required to go through making the celestial portal is quite expensive unless you specifically go out of your way to focus on crafting it.

Going out of your way would be glossing over all the possible moon stone spawn locations over and over again and keeping near it till you have the resources necessary. Though this becomes less prevalent in late game when there are plenty of moon rocks already in the world, but by then the work I would want to do by swapping characters would already be done so its of little use to me.

2. A lot of sought after players abilities can be replicated with almost any other character.

Tentacles and catapults for bee queen can be replaced by an armada of bunny hutches. Additional damage from fighters can be "reproduced" by using followers to deal more damage and simply taking more time in the fight. Wormwood may have easy access to food, but I still can get easy access without him due to bunny hutches and stone fruit. The only ability that you would have a harder time 'reproducing' (this means not literally doing what a character does, but finding a substitute that may take a bit more effort), would be speed. Technically it is reproducible by smart basing near wormholes and using beefalo for transport, but the first is highly dependent on world gen and the other requires quite a bit of effort to get done.

3. I personally play a generalist character: Woodie.

Since Woodie has a foot in most specialties that characters have; it's often not worth going out of my way to swap to another character who may be able to chop better, when I can chop decently well then swap to something combat intensive like spider farming, and given enough resources swap to goose to parade me around the map. (While Goose may not have as high a speed as wolfgang, wx, or soul hopper wortox, he still can take a straight line to any POI, which helps out when all you want to do is get somewhere, and fast.)

[Yuuko]

I'm not sure I agree that its "only useful for solo" when that is directly compared to a 6 player team lol.  I could easily see this being useful for any team size to obtain tech available on a certain character.  I am a solo player, but even if I had 1-2 friends with me I would see the same value in the portal I think...  Because other players aren't picking their characters to provide ME with some benefit lol.

My hesitation to use it is that I feel it sorta breaks character.  I see myself being Willow or Wes when I play, not being some spectre summoning them to do my bidding in the constant.  I just started a new world to experiment with this... sorta see how I feel about it.  What I'm doing with it is:

Maxwell first for base building.  I can leave a LOT of stone and wood for future characters to utilize.
Wormwood to build bramble armors so I can harvest thorny bushes and cactus more freely.  Thorny bushes don't get disease  so it can give a more persistent resource farm.
Wigfrid to craft a mess of hats for 
RX to delve into the ruins.
Winona to set up catapults to help with dfly and a few different spots for hound waves.
Then switch to willow for the long haul.  I'd feel really cheaty if I switched to Wes since none of the world was built with him... so Willow it is for the long haul.

Unfortunately I've just finished getting all the stone and wood I want with maxwell, and set out to get the Celestial portal set up.  The smooth meteor hasn't spawned yet though lol.  I thought it spawned in the first meteor shower of the game.  Maybe that isn't accurate... but now I'm just wasting time waiting for meteor showers so I can get moving with this.

I'm pretty excited to utilze Winona's catipults.  I found with 2 sets of 8 of them I can stun dfly solo getting a second scale, and a much quicker kill.  I've thought about just playing her... but I don't wanna actually mine all that stone heh and her crafting perk / penalty is a nuisance for long term play...

[maradyne]

1 hour ago, WoodieMain45684 said:

2. A lot of sought after players abilities can be replicated with almost any other character.

That's basically it for me. For the most part, once early game is over, basic resources are obtained, and the map is explored, there are ways to do pretty much anything the characters could do. And min-maxing...is something that people will always figure out how to do so I don't have anything against it (and I'm interested in functions and numbers anyway), but it gets unsatisfying eventually.

Typically I'll pick a character and stick with it as the 'flavor' for that world. Someone who gives a different way of going about things at the start, guiding the rest of the game. I'll look for indirect solutions to problems if I have a character who specializes in that. Focus on personal power if I'm Wigfrid or Wolfgang. Mobility and more risk-taking if I'm Wortox. Can use Wendy to immediately base in/near Ruins while ignoring food in favor of doing other stuff. That sort of thing.

Personality too. It...feels weird to experience the world with one character, and then they suddenly just...don't exist in that world.
Especially apparent given that I build around the character. Maxwell gets statues, fanciness, more magic. With Wigfrid more than other characters, I set up little adventuring camps all over the place. Wortox takes full advantage of the always-available and spammable teleportation.

 

I see the appeal, and I use it rarely for structures/decorations, but...switching characters just kinda feels like ripping out the ending pages of a book.

[Frashaw27]

13 minutes ago, maradyne said:

I see the appeal, and I use it rarely for structures/decorations, but...switching characters just kinda feels like ripping out the ending pages of a book.

That is a good analogy, but I feel as though instead of removing the ending  pages, its more a drastic change that completely chatches you off guarf like reading a dufferent book entirely. Like reading harry potter and then having it switch over to a new york gangster story.

[Mike23Ua]

Aren’t there Yellow and Green gems in this game that currently do nothing?

there are FOUR slots on this portal, Only TWO of them are utilized. 

I would personally LOVE IT if we had to craft Four Different Moon Lens, each one with a different colored Gem in its Socket- BUT WAIT!!!

Moon Lens are just to freaking easy to create, there I said it.... So what if- Each of the 4 Gems had to be socketed into Moon Lens like structure that is made up of various material.

(For example the dead fish bones washed up around Lunar Island) 

Four Different Moon Lens, each one crafted out of a unique material and then socketed with its colored gem and placed into the portal. 

Thats my vision of DST’s End game Content... this is my own personal answer to DST’s currently missing Adventure Mode.

(Adventure Mode was in single player DS and had you quest around the map to collect pieces of a portal and take it back to a certain spot on the map to build a portal and quest across 5 randomly generated worlds each with unique gimmicks involved to “beat” the game and win.)

 

 

So..... is the portal Incomplete?

[CameoAppearance]

I generally prefer to stick with one character and won't do it just to take advantage of someone else's perks, but once in a while I want a change. Or get sick of getting punched by pigs as Wortox.

[BeeClops]

13 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Aren’t there Yellow and Green gems in this game that currently do nothing?

 

Green and yellow are actually the most usefull gems in the game rn

And even if you would have to put one of each moonlens gem to fix it, i still don't find it too expensive for it's purpose, i don't get where s that coming from.

[knaveofclubs22]

For some people complaining the Celestial portal "ruins the game" for them, it's not something for you. It's a fairly expensive build early on, and provides a very minor game feature that's not even necessary for most players. It's just something that allows people to bypass using console commands to swap up their characters in Survival and Endless game modes. Whether that's because they dropped into a server with too many of one character, or they're not necessary anymore, they get bored but wanna maintain their builds, or they're solo and wanna use other characters for their perks.

If it's not something you like, you don't have to use it. Especially for the amount of build time to go into it.

[maradyne]

4 hours ago, knaveofclubs22 said:

It's just something that allows people to bypass using console commands to swap up their characters in Survival and Endless game modes.

Yea, despite not using it much I like that it was added. Before the portal, people would end up bugging staff for messy character resets on longer-term servers. Portal makes it more of a functional and hands-off experience.

[SinancoTheBest]

21 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

...Green gems in this game that currently do nothing?

Green gems do have uses through Construction Amulet and Deconstruction Staff but I with we had a use for Green Moonlenses aside from marking the map- I want each moonlens to have a cool Building like Ocuvigil, Moon Dial and Lazy Deserter. 

For Green Moonlens, I can think of a Recycling Bin/Compost Canister/Repurposer that would act like a bin that you can throw in all sorts of excess useless stuff, especially Stingers, Teeth, tools, feathers etc. and it would return you items at a much reduced rate when its filled. The recycled items might be from a random pool like tumbleweeds or if they want to sophisticate it a bit more, They can categorize objects as Organic, Mineral and Other, picking the final, product accordingly, from a pool of organic, inorganic or special items.

[Yuuko]

To people who haved used the portal: About how long does it normally take you to complete the structure?

[Frashaw27]

9 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

To people who haved used the portal: About how long does it normally take you to complete the structure?

While I haven't made the portal much myself, I can say that it isn't too expensive. Its a very reasobable prive for a permenet upgrade. The time it takes also differs wildly based on rng and character choice. A gathering character would have a much easier time making it while someone like wilson would take competitively longer. The best way to get moon rocks would either be through gathering on the lunar island as they sort of just lay around there, or the lunar event which requires a lot of prep for a defence and going to the ruins for a star caller staff.

[mistrbushido]

25 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

To people who haved used the portal: About how long does it normally take you to complete the structure?

The lunar island usually provides the 23 moon rocks required. Most of the time, it's just a waiting game for the orb to appear, which can take up to 50 (60?) days.

[Yuuko]

Ah, I didn't realize the lunar island had so many moon rocks - so if I'm trying to switch characters with the first summer, I should probably go to the lunar island in spring.  I've not really done much boating yet, so that will be something new to starte exploring I guess ^_^

[Mike23Ua]

43 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Ah, I didn't realize the lunar island had so many moon rocks - so if I'm trying to switch characters with the first summer, I should probably go to the lunar island in spring.  I've not really done much boating yet, so that will be something new to starte exploring I guess ^_^

Set your games mechanics to have meteor fields  and have them drop meteorites at their default rate, it seems like I am always dying to random meteor strikes. The best place that this happens in is the rocky Biomes they crash so frequently that it is super easy to craft this portal- gathering moon rocks is so easy to do (you only need 23 total) 3 to craft the moon Lens, 20 for the portal.

The hardest part that will take the longest time might be getting the Purple Gem. 

 

But I think since the portal already has four slots to place items in but only uses two and we can socket moon lens with different colored gems, that this would very easily translate into “The Wooden Thing” from the Adventures mode of single player DS.

^^^^^^ and THAT is the point I’ve been trying to get across this whole time- the portal just feels Incomplete.

[Frashaw27]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

But I think since the portal already has four slots to place items in but only uses two and we can socket moon lens with different colored gems, that this would very easily translate into “The Wooden Thing” from the Adventures mode of single player DS.

^^^^^^ and THAT is the point I’ve been trying to get across this whole time- the portal just feels Incomplete.

But it is complete. The 2 missing items might be added in another update or not at all since it seems like 4 is the max amount of different material types you can put into one of these gradual progression builds. The only thing that should be changed is the name from "Celestial Portal" to "Celestial Postern" as the name has obviously caused some confusion. It wouldn't even make sense for it to do anything else as the postern has only been shown to send players into the constant and nothing else. The celestial postern just upgrades it so that you can re do it, but you don't actually change anything else by the fact that it only changes the player. Even if it did recreate the world, it would be way too griefy and would make all the changes that klei has made to make the game constantly renewable since you only get one world, null and void. It could grief any world as a world reset will effect everyone and there is nothing they can do about it. People will log onto servers with prestigious decoration and 1000s of days survived just for some asshat to come along and reset it all. Sure, those servers make backlogs for that specific reason but the problem will still be there, even if multiple saves can be made to soften the impact. There also isn't room for saying that a torch is on par because there is a huge f***ing difference between burning a section of the world (which can be prevented with a multitudes of options) and what is essentially god pressing the reset button but you keeping your character. There would be now way to combat it, no method besides not making the portal to change that outcome, but even then the griefer can just make the celestial portal themselves and them do it. Thats why the teleportato lost it's functionality, it would a uncouterable griefing tool that would only be a massive danger if you wanted to start making a mega base.

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, Frashaw27 said:

-snip-

Okay well I’m taking it you’ve never really played a multiplayer game that’s linked together by various maps/worlds in the likes of Borderlands for example- 

But usually what happens in this scenario is that every player has to be standing in a certain vicinity from the player who confirms transportation to a new location otherwise the new map area does not load.

i just figured a device reading CELESTIAL PORTAL would take me to a new Biome in somewhere in the Skies, since the definition of the word Celestial is pretty much Sky. 

And then there’s also this-

“Charlie Focuses her Attention Towards the Skies & the Mysterious Entity that awaits there.”

 

so honestly at this point... Only Klei knows what’s in store for the future of DST. But either way I’m excited to see what 2019/2020 will bring.

[Frashaw27]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Okay well I’m taking it you’ve never really played a multiplayer game that’s linked together by various maps/worlds in the likes of Borderlands for example- 

But usually what happens in this scenario is that every player has to be standing in a certain vicinity from the player who confirms transportation to a new location otherwise the new map area does not load.

You see while borderlands does allow for multiple people to go from area to area together, Dst would still have to have at least some of the area loaded, so that other people can access it and so processes up there still run. This would mean that the game, in order to have the fullest experince of DST, would require running 3 servers at the same time. This would be bad because people are already having trouble keeping one up, much less three. Even if we consider dedicated servers, that also means that you can't make any meaningful progress because you essentially have 1 session to do as much as possible, or you have to shell out money just to play with all of them. This would mean that you either a) Get stuck behind a pay wall for a server (or a machine to run it) b) Have the lack of continuing a world as you would have to basically reset every single time or c) Cut content simply because you can't run it. All 3 options are bad because, one way or another, you will have to make a sacerfice and will turn off people from the game and divide the commuinty, which is what Klei doesn't want (as seen by the lack of any meaningful content (characters are also not on the same level as something like a full blown dlc so it can be ignored without missing out on a whole lot)). There is also the problem that if it takes every person to go into another server, then it can get real annoying real fast when you have to stop what ever you are doing because somebody needs to go into the caves.

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

i just figured a device reading CELESTIAL PORTAL would take me to a new Biome in somewhere in the Skies, since the definition of the word Celestial is pretty much Sky. 

And then there’s also this-

“Charlie Focuses her Attention Towards the Skies & the Mysterious Entity that awaits there.”

The message of Charlie is meant to be that she planning to take on the moon, as it clearly has some significance due to it need for sacerfices, the ability to transmute items, and how a part of it's body has life on it before anything else got to it. I will agree that the name is a misnomer but there is also the problem there isn't any reason to suggest that there is land to go to. There isn't ant quotes, any updates, no news to even suggest that you would be going into the sky. Sure, there was a mod but that was also a mod. 

[Primalflower]

I find myself using it every couple hundred days in endless servers because i like to play different characters.

I dont like the celestial portal because the way it sorks now completely destroys some peoples images of characters as they become "swap" characters that you play as for 2 seconds to build whatever they need, and then swap back to other character. Its so annoying to hear about how people think winona is not good because they choose to only play her for a split second to build her catapults and then immediately switch back. 

[Queron81]

On 5.12.2019 at 11:58 PM, mistrbushido said:

The lunar island usually provides the 23 moon rocks required. Most of the time, it's just a waiting game for the orb to appear, which can take up to 50 (60?) days.

I always thought you can find it in the first autumn after a meteor shower (that's the way I always found it).

[mistrbushido]

Just now, Queron81 said:

I always thought you can find it in the first autumn after a meteor shower (that's the way I always found it).

Yeah you can find it in the first autumn. Day 50/60 is just an upper bound. The chance for the orb to appear in a meteor shower steadily increases over time until day 50 or 60, where the chance becomes 100%

[.]

I'm get bored while half of game and I remove my game lol. I didn't passed one game year ever  I didn't even went to deeper of caves bc I dont feel like i need it

[Viktor234]

16 hours ago, Queron81 said:

I always thought you can find it in the first autumn after a meteor shower (that's the way I always found it).

As much as I understand, the first Meteor Boulder has a 33% chance to become the Smooth Meteor Boulder. The second one has a 66% chance and the third one a 99% chance (4th: 100% chance). Once you reach day 60 and the Celestial Orb didn't spawn yet, then the next Meteor Boulder will become the Smooth Meteor Boulder with a chance of 100%.

That at least is what the lua tells me.