Why isnt there a more streamlined way to get iridescent Gems?

[Mime]

While i understand the usage of the iridescent gem is linked with the moon caller event in the newest update for the sake of being related to the moon, why is it that you are forced to jump through all of these holes to get the gem? The gem is never explained to new players and it seems like if a new player were to stumble across the ornate pedestal they would just collect the gems or get confused, then leave. For a game that has the main teaching mechanic of pushing a player in the right direction, its oddly unfitting. I understand that they want you to go into the ruins to get it, but why not then just allow the players to find them in chests in the maze? It would save a lot of hassle when you already need to become best friends with pearl, kill crab king( a boss that still has pretty useless drops, and isnt too fun to kill), and find the lunar island... just to potentially spawn a new boss? At the end of the day youll at least reset the ruins after killing the fuelweaver, along with obtaining multiple boss drops. But right now, all of this hassle youll need to go through for the portal, you dont seem to get anything besides a possible boss with a few drops that might just be more 'useless' ocean/ sailing items like the malbatross or crab king. I just dont see the point why klei wants to make it so difficult (or drawn out, as its not necessarily hard to get many of these items.) 

[Zeklo]

Doesn't seem too much different from Fuelweaver.

Moon Event - Opal Staff/Shadow Atrium

Boss Fight - Crab King/Ancient Guardian

Mining - Lunar Island Rocks/Fossil Rocks

Only real difference is the extra step for Crab King needing the pearl. Though the Atrium requires more effort to get to than the Archive. I wouldn't quite call it parallel progression, but it's rather similar.

[Kur0u]

It's a quest, if you just find the Opal randomly in a chest it completely destroys the feel of research and discovery. The lore of this game is so deep and mysterious, imagine if you could find out everything about it lying in your path...

[Mime]

2 hours ago, Kuro_kira said:

It's a quest, if you just find the Opal randomly in a chest it completely destroys the feel of research and discovery. The lore of this game is so deep and mysterious, imagine if you could find out everything about it lying in your path...

Sorry, thats not necessarily my point. What im trying to say is that opal is an item that is so hard to discover, it doesnt make sense for klei to give it a use with its current path of obtaining it, im not saying that the game should just hand you it, just saying that the game shouldnt just tell you, " oh hey you need this gem but good luck trying to find out how to get it on your own!" I believe at the very least players should be given the opportunity to craft it via the celestial tab on a full moon or something of the sort, just for players to question, "oh hey what does this gem do?"  just for players to stumble across the other two pedestals holding the gems just to put the puzzle pieces together and understand, "oh alright, so im supposed to craft that gem that i saw earlier on this third pedestal to turn it on huh?" The game never tells the player to build a deconstruction staff, nor does it tell the player to use it in the moon caller staff, which isnt even a craftable item in the game. Why would the player think to deconstruct it if they cant construct it? 

[me real life]

1 hour ago, Mime said:

 Why would the player think to deconstruct it if they cant construct it? 

I mean, the iridescent gem isn't anywhere else in the game except on a moon caller's staff. If you try to think of a way to get that gem off the staff, I would think deconstruction would be something that comes to mind.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 hours ago, Mime said:

Why would the player think to deconstruct it if they cant construct it? 

Curiosity to check what drops a non crafteable staff

[Mime]

I believe a lot of this concern came from the idea that the game at some points misleads the player into thinking things through not being clear with how to go about solving a problem so the player often picks the easiest way even if it isnt as efficient as other ways, doesnt experiment enough, or assumes something like being unable to craft a certain item because its unobtainable in the moment. I had this problem years ago when originally learning the game, ive seen this when trying to teach friends how to play the game, and seeing youtubers try to play the game. For example i never knew that the lantern as useful as it is back when starting, i though, "Hey i dont know what a lightbulb is, this must be hard to obtain, i might was well just keep using torches," (along with the fact that because caves were turned off by default, it discouraged the players from turning them on along with telling them they needed a beefy computer, something that isn't even necessarily true.) 

[Pelontriques]

people tend to use the wiki once they've become acquainted with the game.

[Mike23Ua]

15 minutes ago, Voidbarker said:

people tend to use the wiki once they've become acquainted with the game.

Yeah and that shouldn’t be the only way.. Klei puts all this time and effort into giving these characters inspection quotes- which at times can provide hints at what to do.

For example I DONT read Wiki Pages, I know maybe 5/7 at most food recipes.. AND I only learned how to spawn the Bee Queen because I just so happened to be playing as WILLOW at the time I Inspected her nest.

Which she dares the players to take a hammer to a certain object, and I did and regretted it Afterwards.

Not everyone reads a Wiki, MOST OF ALL people playing on Consoles.. Don’t take my word for it though, try joining 15 different rooms on Xbox One..

of those 15 you might find 4 rooms with people that actually know what they’re doing because they read Wiki Pages.

The game shouldn’t be that way... and what’s more important KLEI Knows this- that’s why they added things like the Cooking Book to the game: So people like ME don’t have to fail safe to a Wikipedia website to learn how to cook the games different meals.

There should be more inspection quotes added to the game.. that provide clear hints at what to do: For example-

“Carrying this staff around seems pretty silly, but if I could get that Gem off It might prove useful elsewhere.”

You can debate it all you like: but with the compendium and cook book existing at all proves that Klei wants to make the game more accessible to people who don’t rely upon Wiki pages.

[sinisterrkid]

Right, Don't Starve is a game that really enjoys hiding its content. I don't think it's reasonable to assume players would find out all its secrets by just playing around and trying to figure out what everything does, especially while trying to survive and usually not wanting to risk losing progress made over hundreds of days. I don't think we should pretend that wikis, forums or videos are not required to enjoy the full game.

Personally I'm fine with it and like that it results in us having to share our findings with each other, or remind each other of tweaks to strategies we thought we had nailed, or consult wiki pages even after hundreds of hours learning the game.

I don't know if the game would have a wider audience if it was more "guiding" or not, but that's not for me to worry about. It's a very bold design strategy to say the least. And it's funny when I'm watching a Twitch stream and someone comes up on chat saying something like "wtf this game is blowing my mind" when they're new to it and thought they had already seen half of its content.

[Mime]

2 hours ago, sinisterrkid said:

Right, Don't Starve is a game that really enjoys hiding its content. I don't think it's reasonable to assume players would find out all its secrets by just playing around and trying to figure out what everything does, especially while trying to survive and usually not wanting to risk losing progress made over hundreds of days. I don't think we should pretend that wikis, forums or videos are not required to enjoy the full game.

Personally I'm fine with it and like that it results in us having to share our findings with each other, or remind each other of tweaks to strategies we thought we had nailed, or consult wiki pages even after hundreds of hours learning the game.

I don't know if the game would have a wider audience if it was more "guiding" or not, but that's not for me to worry about. It's a very bold design strategy to say the least. And it's funny when I'm watching a Twitch stream and someone comes up on chat saying something like "wtf this game is blowing my mind" when they're new to it and thought they had already seen half of its content.

On the other hand, i dont think tweaking the way of obtaining the opal for example would 'ruin' the point of the game, especially if they have practically made living logs more common than twigs in a twiggy tree world.  

[Zeklo]

If anything I wouldn't mind a new way to acquire opals/opal staves once you've done the 'event' once.

Maybe you get a blueprint you can use at the lunar altar or something.

[Mime]

3 minutes ago, Zeklo said:

If anything I wouldn't mind a new way to acquire opals/opal staves once you've done the 'event' once.

Maybe you get a blueprint you can use at the lunar altar or something.

oh absolutely, i dont think they should make it harder, but yeah i def think that would be interesting and prob make a bit more sense 

or in this case, maybe use it as an upgrade to one of the altars, much like upgrading a pseudoscience Station or something 

[sinisterrkid]

1 hour ago, Mime said:

On the other hand, i dont think tweaking the way of obtaining the opal for example would 'ruin' the point of the game, especially if they have practically made living logs more common than twigs in a twiggy tree world.  

Yes, I agree with you. I think it would be cool to either:

• have another way to produce Opals; or
• have a way to build more moon altars, so we can at least bring the full moon event near us wherever we base. (Though be mindful this would basically mean having a way to create permanent light wherever we want.)

1 hour ago, Zeklo said:

Maybe you get a blueprint you can use at the lunar altar or something.

That would be sweet

[Pelontriques]

On 10/17/2020 at 7:19 PM, Mike23Ua said:

Yeah and that shouldn’t be the only way.. Klei puts all this time and effort into giving these characters inspection quotes- which at times can provide hints at what to do.

For example I DONT read Wiki Pages, I know maybe 5/7 at most food recipes.. AND I only learned how to spawn the Bee Queen because I just so happened to be playing as WILLOW at the time I Inspected her nest.

Which she dares the players to take a hammer to a certain object, and I did and regretted it Afterwards.

Not everyone reads a Wiki, MOST OF ALL people playing on Consoles.. Don’t take my word for it though, try joining 15 different rooms on Xbox One..

of those 15 you might find 4 rooms with people that actually know what they’re doing because they read Wiki Pages.

The game shouldn’t be that way... and what’s more important KLEI Knows this- that’s why they added things like the Cooking Book to the game: So people like ME don’t have to fail safe to a Wikipedia website to learn how to cook the games different meals.

There should be more inspection quotes added to the game.. that provide clear hints at what to do: For example-

“Carrying this staff around seems pretty silly, but if I could get that Gem off It might prove useful elsewhere.”

You can debate it all you like: but with the compendium and cook book existing at all proves that Klei wants to make the game more accessible to people who don’t rely upon Wiki pages.

that seems more like a you problem if you don't want to go read a bunch of wiki pages. which i can't entirely blame you for, given that there's often a bit too much information to take in all at once.

i'm not even implying that everyone has to go and read the wiki, but a fair amount of players will probably discover the wiki after wanting to learn more about the game.

it might help if Klei added in multiple inspection quotes, but that's likely not something they're going to do for the forseeable future, considering a lot of inspection quotes are pretty much just for flavour.

additionally, you still have to *craft* the cookbook.

i think it'd be neat if the game got wiki compatibility, ala World of Warcraft, but I highly doubt that's going to be even remotely possible, given limitations within the 32-bit structure + engine limitations.

[Mike23Ua]

You don’t *have* to craft the cookbook, alternatively you can just view your cookbook recipes that you have learned through the in-game compendium page.

You know that super useful page Klei added with their Quality of Life updates that tell you your characters hunger, health, sanity stats as well as story lore and favorite foods? Yeah there’s a page added there now that lets you view food recipes you’ve made in a crockpot and also tells you those foods effect values as in how much health hunger or sanity they restore, as well as how long it takes to cook and the recent ingredients you used that resulted in that recipe.

It’s basically taking what was strictly on WIKIPEDIA page or scattered all around the internet and placing it right there in front of your face inside the game for people to see and easily understand- You would be surprised at how many Console players don’t resort to Internet web searches so I think I can speak for Myself and probably half my Xbox Live friends list when I say this was a much welcomed feature Klei added to the game.

I wouldn’t mind if they also took the time to add the Animated Shorts into the game as well- (not everyone visits the Klei forums or even knows these animated shorts exist)

I can confirm this fact by saying that 3 of the friends who I have managed to convince into buying this charming little game only bought it because they thought it looked cute and I wanted them to play it with me.. They have absolutely NO IDEA about the games story or any of its lore.

(and Klei knew that.. which is why the compendium page is having that lore added into the game for easy access viewing)

you are Underselling the importance of the Compendium- my friends who used to pick characters because they looked cool.. and ONLY because they looked cool, can now easily see and understand that picking Maxwell means they are choosing to pick the character with the lowest amount of health. Meanwhile picking Wurt they will easily see she has 200 points of hunger before she ever enters starvation status.

I guess the TL:DR of what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t hurt for the game to be more accessible to console players who don’t spend all their time on forums, or Wikipedia pages, we want that content right there.. in our face, easy to see, read, watch and understand without having to scour the Internet to find it.

The lore for DS/DST is scattered all over everywhere and now it’s steadily being conveniently included right there in the compendium each time a character gets a Refresh or new lore is brought to light- just look at Woodies page as an example: it got updated with an actual origins story for his Transformation totems when he gained his new shape-shifting powers.

[Pelontriques]

13 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

- snip -

part of the charm of the game is that the lore isn't in-your-face, though. additionally, this game is a roguelike / roguelite -- a lot of the games within this category require either some memorization or wiki-scouring.

the compendium; while not exactly my sort of thing, so i haven't really checked it since the update that added it in; is pretty useful to players that wanted that sort of functionality in the first place.

you keep putting words into my mouth. i'm not going to enter one of those 'debates' with you.

[Mike23Ua]

5 minutes ago, Voidbarker said:

part of the charm of the game is that the lore isn't in-your-face, though. additionally, this game is a roguelike / roguelite -- a lot of the games within this category require either some memorization or wiki-scouring.

the compendium; while not exactly my sort of thing, so i haven't really checked it since the update that added it in; is pretty useful to players that wanted that sort of functionality in the first place.

you keep putting words into my mouth. i'm not going to enter one of those 'debates' with you.

If you haven’t checked it since it was added, then how can you debate its usefulness? Even if it’s not a feature you find useful, it’s something I find useful and as I literally just pointed out- 

it was the Original place the lore for Woodies Transformation totems officially appeared.. it didn’t pop up on Wiki first, it sure as heck wasnt seen in his lore-less animated short (which people are still angry over btw) Klei devs didn’t drop that lore here on the forum, nope only place you could find that was in the compendium 

(which is why I check there after every game update to see if some new lore tidbits were added)

Its not really a debate.. 

[TipherethB]

I do wish there was a way to make it easier to find out how to get the opal gem. I can see someone connecting the dots on getting the shadow pieces boss, but not for the opal gem. 

Though at the same time, without previous knowledge I also don't think someone could figure out how to make the ancient fuelweaver show up so who knows, man.

[Pelontriques]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

If you haven’t checked it since it was added, then how can you debate its usefulness? Even if it’s not a feature you find useful, it’s something I find useful and as I literally just pointed out- 

it was the Original place the lore for Woodies Transformation totems officially appeared.. it didn’t pop up on Wiki first, it sure as heck wasnt seen in his lore-less animated short (which people are still angry over btw) Klei devs didn’t drop that lore here on the forum, nope only place you could find that was in the compendium 

(which is why I check there after every game update to see if some new lore tidbits were added)

Its not really a debate.. 

i don't play woodie, so the info there would be useless to me, personally. i'm fairly certain that woodie's update came out before the compendium.

[Mike23Ua]

7 minutes ago, Voidbarker said:

i don't play woodie, so the info there would be useless to me, personally. i'm fairly certain that woodie's update came out before the compendium.

Wanna know what else that Compendium page does? It tells you each characters specific favorite food- the one that will give THAT Character the most overall stat benefits- instead of just cramming Meatballs or Pierogi in your characters mouth.

Wendys is Banana Popsicles  

[user1464576869]

I love it. I don't have a good reason. It's just.. cool.
 
I think it might have to do with how it feels like a dirty trick. Like you did something you weren't meant to do, and it's communicated through the very mechanics of the game itself. The gem felt like such an outlier, unusable for the longest time, like getting it was an oversight altogether, a glitch. Just, that alone I find neat.

[Mime]

For new players i feel like its kinda... just imagine buying a new game... and you have to go onto an external source to actually understand what you are doing DESPITE  the fact that isnt what you are told. 

[Notecja]

1 hour ago, Mime said:

For new players i feel like its kinda... just imagine buying a new game... and you have to go onto an external source to actually understand what you are doing DESPITE  the fact that isnt what you are told. 

I consider this as normal for 95% of existing games. Minecraft before recipe book required to remember a lot and even with this some things are "hidden"; They Are Billions - you can struggle a lot before finding better strategies or some guide; Dead Cells - some things may be missing for long time due to random worldgen and some fight mechanics are "hidden"; Oxygen Not Included - Luckly it has a index in game, but without digging in external sources I wouldn't made proper automation nor start properly using rockets. Games with secrets, and things to discover are best games and I love to discover something that nobody else did. It doesn't matter if I struggle with something and I need to seek information - I also enjoy reading about my favorite games.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

9 hours ago, Mime said:

For new players i feel like its kinda... just imagine buying a new game... and you have to go onto an external source to actually understand what you are doing DESPITE  the fact that isnt what you are told. 

Like when i was child i bought videogame magazines to know hiden tricks? 

Was worst in the past because internet didnt exist.

Imgine being kid and try to play pokemon with all his unfinished features and text with "hints", expending weeks to finally read on internet years late that all that stuff was nothing

Or how i couldnt finish a videogame because was so confusing and i didnt find a magazine with the guide

Also, nobody is forcing you to check the wiki. It will take a lot of time to discover everything but that is better than going to a pro stream when you have 1h of gameplay spoiling everything.

 

About the topic. If you try all the staffs you will eventually find that is the star caller which can be place in the moon base. Later you will find 2 gems socked in the ruins thst looks the same that the one in your new staffs. What to do? Obv, destroy the staff

 

Klei should make his game able to be finished without external guides but at the end is the player who choose how many effort want to put into the game