suggestions More gears

[Omninano]

I'm really kind of bummed and also a little bit peeved. I like to play games as vanilla as possible, without any mods, but in my current world that my friend and I are playing on (Day 121) we have fully explored the map and have only encountered two small clockwork setpieces. One of them had a single Knight and a single Bishop, and the other one only had a Knight, for a grand total of six gears in our overworld.

This was just enough to get by originally but now we are moving our base which requires moving our Ice Flingomatics... but we would only get enough gears back from hammering to build one Ice Flingomatic. We've made it through a year and are prepping for Caves, but I'm not confident we're strong enough to brave Ruins yet, which seems to be the only other place to get gears?

We've spent multiple full days harvesting tumbleweeds to no avail. We have tried digging lots of graves and still nothing. 

Why is the game programmed to possibly generate worlds with such minimal gears? I'll admit I'm pretty frustrated. If gears are such a necessary item for lots of things (and WX-78 EATS them for goodness sake), why can they be so hard to come by? It seems that at very least the clockwork set piece spawns should be increased, or the chance of picking them from tumbleweeds should be boosted. What should my friend and I do to find more gears on our server??

[Bird Up]

You can only go to ruins or use tumbleweeds for gears if the set pieces are cleared. You can get gears from sunken chests, but it's very rare. Somewhat tedious but you can move all the suspicious marble pieces to their respective statues for 6 gears total on new moon or full moon. Technically you could use a construction amulet and deconstruction staff to save gears on flingos, but that means you have to go to the ruins.

6 gears in overworld is kind of generous, most of the worlds I've played on in public have had 0 clockwork set pieces.

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

If the ruins aren’t your cup of tea, you can repair the suspicious marble sculpture set piece and, on the night of a full moon, break them open when they are shaking to reveal regular clockworks. I believe using this method you should also get blueprints for a rook, knight, and bishop sculptures so you can repeat the process on another full moon and wherever you choose! Be aware, that breaking them open on a new moon is going to be a lot different and way more dangerous (also not netting you gears) so just do it on a full.

[Yuuko]

I would recommend being a bit more brave about the ruins.  Get about 3-4 football helmets and a stack of blue mushrooms and go for it.  You're only looking for some gears so you don't even have to clear it.  Just be careful about the nightmare cycle to get passed the monkeys, and walk into the first room you can find with some rooks.  The rooks will smash up the other clockworks you would find there and plenty of gears will drop.  If you only need a few gears you can easily clear this 1 room and head back to the surface.

Make a new game and practice it a few times, then go for it in your real world.

If either of you is Wolfgang, Wigfrid, WX, or Willow it should be pretty easy.  Wolfgang can chug food for massive damage and tank most of the fight, Wigfrid can outfit you both in damage reducing gear and also tank most of the fight, WX can eat the gears to live if he needs and tank most of the fight, and Willow can drop bernie who can also tank most of the fight.

It is not unreasonable to clear the ruins within the first autumn with only a little bit of practice if you use any of these 4 characters, but even without them any 2 characters should be able to clear at least 1 room with a few pighats and perogies.

[Omninano]

These are all good suggestions, thank you! We will try the suspicious marble method, and even though we are playing Webber and Abigail Wendy, perhaps we will try to just brave the Ruins if it is possible (this will be the first time entering them for both of us).

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

A few tips for dealing with the marble @Omninano : if you haven’t found all the pieces yet/haven’t fully explored the map, use rabbit traps to mark the locations of the 3 different suspicious pieces you’re going to be moving. You will more than likely find multiple rook pieces for example and one might end up being closer to the location that you’re going to be delivering them to. 
A nice way of moving them is using a Beefalo. Actually taming them isn’t worth unless you’re going to be doing it for fun, but you can gather 40+ lightbulbs and feed them to them to keep them happy enough to let you ride them for the duration of the delivery. Hope this helps! 

[Omninano]

3 minutes ago, Kelloggs Dogfry said:

A few tips for dealing with the marble @Omninano : if you haven’t found all the pieces yet/haven’t fully explored the map, use rabbit traps to mark the locations of the 3 different suspicious pieces you’re going to be moving. You will more than likely find multiple rook pieces for example and one might end up being closer to the location that you’re going to be delivering them to.

Ah, using rabbit traps on the map! That's a great idea! I have been wishing there was something I could use to mark out locations on the map, and I had forgotten about rabbit traps!

[themightyone]

If it's your first ruins run. I would recommend having Webber traveling light with a log suit or 2 and providing your light for battles with a couple of clock works you need for gears.  With Webber having a log suit on he can keep his Tam O on mostly and keep his sanity good. That way the other can focus on killing the clock works with some armor and a tentacle spike or something decent.

Dont feel like you have to clear the whole ruins in 1 run .Just peck away with a few runs if need be . Bring some solid food , sanity boosters , and health items (jerky , green caps , cacti , healing salves , etc) . Pre build a fire and or firepit each for emergencies . Ruins are pretty easy as long as your not talking fuel weaver , so you should be fine .

[Mike23Ua]

Wait.. how are you playing as Abigail? o.O

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 hours ago, Omninano said:

These are all good suggestions, thank you! We will try the suspicious marble method, and even though we are playing Webber and Abigail, perhaps we will try to just brave the Ruins if it is possible (this will be the first time entering them for both of us).

carry with you few healing exlixirs, the good ones, and try to recall her against rooks. For the rest of the ruins abigail will make almost all the job

1 hour ago, Omninano said:

Ah, using rabbit traps on the map! That's a great idea! I have been wishing there was something I could use to mark out locations on the map, and I had forgotten about rabbit traps!

you have also the sings in the build tab

[Well-met]

Tumbleweeds in the DragonFly desert, friend. They have gears.

[00petar00]

Ruins aren't that hard to deal with if you don't get caught in the splumonkies and get chased down though the whole caves map.

You should pay attention to phases and check wiki page on it so it doesn't happen to you. After that you can get as many gears as you want, you don't need to clear whole ruins in one run, take 10 gears from clockworks there and some thulecite, go back for now. After that you'll have a better understanding of caves and be able to prepare better next time.

I don't really see a reason of going for tumbleweeds and hoping there's a gear, its not a high chance of drop while ruins have unlimited supply of gears once you can kill fuelweaver, even before that you'll have at least a stack of gears from the first ruins clear and lots of thulecite/gems.

Another reason i am suggesting you go to the caves isn't just ruins, you should set up a secondary base there for summer, as you won't overheat and nothing will burn. Staying in the world above and running around the map will get your whole forests burned down and anything at random can catch fire if there's no ice flingomatic, also fueling it drains your resources.

 

Ruins aren't hard at all once you get used to them,most of the players who have experience can clear out ruins in day 12-14 and carry almost everything of worth to surface, with most characters there won't be issue if you have any food cooked for sanity and health, or just go to caves and cut down blue mushtrees for both.

[OMGkawaiiAngel]

Go in the ruins with loads of armor and healing and a hammer, and you'll surely return with gears!

[Ornge]

Go to the ruins. If its day 121 then ruins should be no problem

[OMGkawaiiAngel]

I beg you, if you hear depth worms just RUN as fast as you can and put your helmet on, they will lose interest, and whatever you do do not tank them, only tank the bishops because bishops can't be kited...

[Omninano]

Thanks everyone for the help! We are approaching our next summer, so I think we are going to attempt the Ruins for our first time with log suits, tentacle spikes, and some healing/sanity restoring crockpot recipes. Hopefully we will be able to find the clockwork enemies fast enough without dying! Thanks for all the tips, and I will let you all know how it goes!

[OMGkawaiiAngel]

39 minutes ago, Omninano said:

Thanks everyone for the help! We are approaching our next summer, so I think we are going to attempt the Ruins for our first time with log suits, tentacle spikes, and some healing/sanity restoring crockpot recipes. Hopefully we will be able to find the clockwork enemies fast enough without dying! Thanks for all the tips, and I will let you all know how it goes!

and tell your wendy friend to put abby on aggro mode during nightmare cycle... those splumonkeys aren't joking around

[ArubaroBeefalo]

45 minutes ago, Omninano said:

Thanks everyone for the help! We are approaching our next summer, so I think we are going to attempt the Ruins for our first time with log suits, tentacle spikes, and some healing/sanity restoring crockpot recipes. Hopefully we will be able to find the clockwork enemies fast enough without dying! Thanks for all the tips, and I will let you all know how it goes!

take care with tentacle spikes, they have low durability. Make sure you have resources for make more weapons.

[Omninano]

On 5/11/2020 at 9:53 AM, Charlie Dark said:

and tell your wendy friend to put abby on aggro mode during nightmare cycle... those splumonkeys aren't joking around

The Splumonkeys aren't aggro during regular times though, right?

[ArubaroBeefalo]

if you rile up her she will agro them even in regular form but you dont have to worry, they will flee if she atacks them so much

i recommend you to rile up even if they arent in nightmere form, in that way you prevent them to follow you to steal your stuff

 

if you mean if the monkeys atack you in regular form, no if you dont atack them but they will follow you to steal stuff instead of trying to kill you

[Duck986]

6 hours ago, Omninano said:

The Splumonkeys aren't aggro during regular times though, right?

yep, but they will steal your things you leave on the floor. Charlie have already said about Wendy, though.

[OMGkawaiiAngel]

6 hours ago, Omninano said:

The Splumonkeys aren't aggro during regular times though, right?

They don't... they only steal everything you leave on the floor! Like @Duck986 said, so make sure your friend riles it up before nightmare cycle, the animation could take too long and she could get stunlocked

[Omninano]

Update for everyone who was wondering: We actually managed to do the completing the suspicious marble statue method and killing the Rook for some gears because there was a statue right next to our base with its missing piece right next to it. I tried out the Caves/Ruins on a test world, and I think we can make it through them but we're going to take it slow instead now that we have enough surface world gear to sustain us through the seasons. We started our trek into the Caves today and haven't died there yet. Thanks to everyone for the help!

[GetNerfedOn]

Personally I find the ruins bishops the hardest to engage.

You can't dodge them without large enough speed boosts, and their high health means they're going to burn through lots of your armor. Also, it doesnt help that they usually spawn in numbers. And they get free hits when you run away.

Avoid engaging them if you're unprepared, or have Rooks ram into them. If you plan on fighting them make sure you've got enough armor, heals and weapons to tank them.

[Captain_Rage]

Yes, when you start playing and are new to DST gears feel like an exotic resource that is hard to come by, but as you progress you will accumulate them without even thinking about it and end up with more than you need. At least that is my experience as a Willow player who has sank some time into the game.