Adventures in Donut Land

[sinisterrkid]

I want to recommend you try generating donut worlds in DST. I've been doing this for some time now, tried a bunch of different maps this way, and it's always great! On the surface I end up using boats for transport very often to go from one biome to another, and everything is closer this way. Below is an example of the map:

Just set World Looping to "Always" and Branching to: "Never".

I also started doing this for Caves settings, and there is where it gets a bit wild, and you might love it or hate it:

Spoiler

Exploring this map feels much, much more like you're going down and deeper into the caves. Also, entrances are likely to spawn next to the ruins, but the ruins are also broken up and spread apart. On one hand while it's easier to immediately get some gems and thulecite, and enough to repair a broken pseudoscience station, it's way harder to fully explore all of the ruins, as one area is far from another. Below is the route I had to take on my last run.

Circled in purple is Ruins, green triangles are entrances.

Spoiler

I went through a huge stretch without running into grass, twigs or trees. As it was Winter, that nearly ended my run.

But the most interesting bit is this: my path was completely blocked by the Ancient Guardian's Labyrinth, and on the other side was... the Archives.

[wigfrids hat]

i love donuts aboveground! though i tried them in caves and super wasn't impressed XD it isnt as fun when you cannot cross over via the water

[sinisterrkid]

1 minute ago, gaymime said:

i love donuts aboveground! though i tried them in caves and super wasn't impressed XD it isnt as fun when you cannot cross over via the water

Indeed. Donut caves was a fun experience, but not something I always gen in my worlds. Donut surfaces, though, have become standard for me. Totally replaced the want I had to have an islands mode. On the late game after I mine all the sea stacks I can just zoom across the "donut hole". 

[wigfrids hat]

1 minute ago, sinisterrkid said:

Indeed. Donut caves was a fun experience, but not something I always gen in my worlds. Donut surfaces, though, have become standard for me. Totally replaced the want I had to have an islands mode. On the late game after I mine all the sea stacks I can just zoom across the "donut hole". 

just wait until you get the mythical magic that is pearl's island IN the ring. i've been told lunar island can happen too but i only got that once via being gifted an already-made world by a friend so i cannot confirm it

[SnowdropPax]

In the picture, there is a small island that isn't connected to the rest. I'm assuming it's Pearl's Island. But there isn't any ocean unlocked on the map that leads to there.

Did you...wormhole to Pearl's Island??

[sinisterrkid]

2 hours ago, SnowdropPax said:

In the picture, there is a small island that isn't connected to the rest. I'm assuming it's Pearl's Island. But there isn't any ocean unlocked on the map that leads to there.

Did you...wormhole to Pearl's Island??

Pearl's Island is revealed to the player when they read a message in a bottle, from one of those jars you can find in the ocean:

[BellumOmnes]

I wish every world generation was a bit more donut shaped, in general. And have Pearl's Island and the Crab boss (and all other sea content) right in the middle. I got a couple of ''old'' worlds who were retrofitted a few times and finding some newly added stuff was surprisingly time consuming.

Is there a way to share the world seed like in Factorio?

[wigfrids hat]

34 minutes ago, BellumOmnes said:

I wish every world generation was a bit more donut shaped, in general. And have Pearl's Island and the Crab boss (and all other sea content) right in the middle. I got a couple of ''old'' worlds who were retrofitted a few times and finding some newly added stuff was surprisingly time consuming.

Is there a way to share the world seed like in Factorio?

there is but it is also quite easy to put the cluster in a zip file since you only need to swap it out with the cluster from a doner world

[SnowdropPax]

7 hours ago, sinisterrkid said:

Pearl's Island is revealed to the player when they read a message in a bottle, from one of those jars you can find in the ocean:

Really? I never knew that, I always thought it just pointed you in the general location. The more you know..

[sinisterrkid]

8 hours ago, BellumOmnes said:

Is there a way to share the world seed like in Factorio?

If what you want is to generate a donut world in general, all you have to do is change these world settings before you generate it, in this screen:

That way you'll consistently get a map shaped like the one I showed, but it will always be a bit different. You can do it for Forest (surface) and Caves separately, in their respective tabs.

If instead you actually want a map exactly like the one I posted, yes, I can give you the seed, but to use the seed you first need the Gem Core mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1378549454

After turning on the mod, go back to that same settings page I pictured above and you should see a space to paste in a number. Here's the seed for the map I posted. It's the same one for surface and caves. You can leave one of those blank if you want either randomly generated:

1602988219