Season length and personal preference

[Wanderlust]

Hey everyone,
          I'm curious to hear how long everyone sets the length of their seasons.  I've always played on the standard default season length. I've been playing with my 2 daughters lately and one of my daughters wants to set Autumn to "very long".   What is your guys opinion on this and how do you play when it comes to season length?  

(Both my kids are 12. I think she just wants more time to prepare because shes prone to dying. Lol)

[Mike23Ua]

I set them all to shortest (6 days each) so I can quickly experience each season in short play session. as someone who plays on Xbox (And is also pressed for time in choosing what games to play on Xbox..) I have to balance what games I play between each other.

For example- I will probably be playing a lot less DST as soon as Apex Legends Season 5 starts. So I can’t dedicate HOURS on end to DST like I’m currently doing Now.

[Well-met]

I mostly use default settings.

Instead I just max out hound attacks and giants.

[trinket_4]

I like to play with default Autumn and Spring, and short Winter and Summer.

let's be honest, dealing with freezing and overheating is the worst

[GenomeSquirrel]

If it weren’t for walking canes, I’d want autumn all year round.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i always play in default but few times i enjoy play with random length for every season

[MondayNight]

Most of times I play in Default-Settings Vanilla Survival Pubs.

On my personal servers I often use Actual Season Length Randomizer mod to spice things up a bit.

[autumnsbeast]

I use default settings, but I like to play with other ones. Autumn is my favorite season, and summer is the worst for me; at least during Winter you can stay warm by burning some trees and that. During Summer I hide in those cold and dark caves like I do in real life ... hiding in my room.

To me, it's cool that your kids play with you. It is great to see families playing together.

[Wanderlust]

@AutumnsBeast

It's a ton of fun playing with them. We are all stuck in the house so it keeps us  sane and spending good time together. Even when they constantly bicker about resources and how many days we need to rollback cause one of them died...again...haha!

[Yuuko]

Keep in mind - if you set Autumn to long you will very likely get hound attacks with firehounds before autumn is over.  I think its only the first 15 days that are safe from elemental hounds.  I just had a hound attack on day 18 in a game come with elemental hounds.

Otherwise I think setting Autumn to long is a fine idea if it feels like there isn't enough time to do everything before winter - especially if you're just playing with friends anyway.  Playing with friends I'm much more lenient on changing up world-gen.  A fun one to try is land loop always, land branch never - your world basically spawns like a doughnut, and you can walk around the inner shore pretty quickly identifying all of the biomes.  When you get to the end (its an incomplete circle) you can sometimes just put 1 boat there and have a full circle lol

[Monkey Cups]

Playing by myself? Modded season lengths, 30 day autumn. The default very long (50 days) was too long. The rest are 10 days. With other people everything is default.

[Wanderlust]

@Shosuko

 I play as Wendy so I haven't really had any issues with Hounds. I just run away from my base when I hear them baying and Abigail gets them all when they come. I love it.

 I haven't tried putting it on always land loops.  Maybe I will try that with the boat idea. I do branches, most, and loops, never.  The map looks like a giant flower with petals and I just make my base in the center. Easy to get to all biomes. 

[CaptainChaotica]

My favourite season lengths?  Whatever the hell they WANT to be!  Aka I use randomised seasons for funsies.    (Also the "Actual Season Randomizer" mod Xy mentioned earlier, which makes sure the seasons randomise again _every_ year.  Normal worldgen settings don't do that--it randomises everything _once_ and then that is the PERMANENT season-setting for the rest of the run.)

  And I love it!  Being kept on my toes by constant possible attacks is a type of challenge I don't like, but being kept on my toes by the _weather_ I DO like.  And there have been many weird configurations of seasons...

Spoiler

 

For example, since one of the valid possible numbers of days is "0", it is in fact possible to SKIP a season entirely. Here we have a world where autumn was normal, BOING! no winter and the only a five-day spring, leading to _summer_ on Day 26.  I wasn't even CLOSE to being able to make a fling-o-matic yet!  What did I do?  I popped by home just long enough to prototype a small endo fire and then went nomadic.  This particular summer is still going as of this writing.

(Oh, the giant trees.  Yeah that's also a mod.  Actually I use two; Big Birchnuts Together and Evergreens 2Gether.  They're both WAY old and both somehow still work.  One of them also affects twiggy trees.)

If you like variety but still having some _warning_ (as I do) but don't want to just outright cheatily know everything that's going to happen ahead of time (like, why do random seasons at all at that point?), you know what helps?  Birch trees!  Plant those babies around your camp and watch for when they start changing in some way.  That usually means the next season change is close by.

Oh thank heavens, it's almost fall.

(I'm still wearing earmuffs and carrying an umbrella, so, this was taken during spring.)  OH GOD I'M INSANE MY HEALTH IS ALMOST GONE I'M GONNA DIE ooh, we're not having a summer this year?  Sweet!  HELP HELP GET ME OUT OF HERE...

WINTER IS COMING.  Thanks for the heads-up, guys!

And now _spring_ is coming. 

However, it might NOT be.  Summer is the _sneaky_ one.  Because, see, under the orangey lighting, the leaves on the birch trees are actually green in both summer AND spring.  So if you see something like the above...

...it COULD actually mean _this_.  So, even without randomised seasons, what you gotta do is watch your _character_. If they start panting and wiping their brow at the campfire at night, you might want to make sure you have nitre and grass ready.

And...sometimes due to all the random season changing, nature just goes "BUH?" and throws its hands up in confusion:

...I don't know if this is an artifact of using the "Actual Season Randomizer" mod or just from using random seasons in general, but it appears that if you haven't gone to a certain area of birch trees for multiple seasons' worth, the game appears to try and have them catch up on _all of them at once_ when you enter the screen.  XD

 

So anyway my long and way too rambling and tutorialise-y for people who probably aren't going to randomise their seasons anyway answer is:  My preferred length is "SURPRISE ME!"

...okay okay I guess if I'm not messing with it I leave it alone.  I don't want summer and winter to be super easy or not exist, but I also _do_ appreciate them being a bit shorter than autumn and spring.  So I guess default is more or less my preference.

...Notorious

[autumnsbeast]

1 hour ago, Wanderlust said:

@AutumnsBeast

It's a ton of fun playing with them. We are all stuck in the house so it keeps us  sane and spending good time together. Even when they constantly bicker about resources and how many days we need to rollback cause one of them died...again...haha!

That brings me a lot of memories of my family and me playing with my Wii. Games are something that is a very important in my life, and makes me happy read/see/hear about stories like those. Take care and have fun!