Now in testing - Reap what you Sow

[Cheeto-Jesus]

11 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Dear god, I knew it was powerful, but three separate nerfs?

I used this book all the time when megabasing. It was the only realisitc way of me mass hording lots of grass/twigs/reeds to stock me up without spending days holding down the space key for basic resources. The huge nerfs are going to tremendously slow down basing, and honestly make it so unviable to do stuff that this might actually kill my mood for megabasing, with how much I already dislike grinding for basic resources like boards.

The other changes seem good, and I can even get over the bunnyman one, but this is way too much IMO.

Thank you Maxil for mentioning this. I see a lot of people not understanding Maxil here, so I just wanna raise some support for his cause here. Towards the endgame, if your intentions are to build multibiome-spanning bases, you're gonna need a LOT of twigs, grass, and other resources. Maxil has a 8000+ day world, and the few screenshots that I've seen on the discord from him are gorgeous and glorious. My point here though is that a lot of people will be ok with the nerf because it skews game balance so much, but the handful of endgame players who have thousands of in-game hours might find this nerf pretty tedious, perhaps game-breakingly bad.

I'm gonna link some of Maxil's creations below in this spoiler. Saying "the scale is pretty massive" is an understatement in itself. @Maxil20 definitely let me know if this is something that you'd prefer not to be shared (I downloaded them from Discord to show a friend of mine on how good megabasers build things, and to admire them too). If anyone from Klei is here, please take a look inside too because there's something you're destroying by nerfing wickerbottom books like this.

Spoiler

Survival is no longer the main concern when someone finds time to build 500+ beeboxes. Killing Bee Queen consistently for thousands of days is how those beeboxes get put up there, and that's gonna need a lot of everything. I personally still grow my trees with Applied Horticulture if I need a fast growth rate, and having this nerf makes the book useless for that work. (Maxil does it differently but that's another matter.)

 

Maxil does what I wanted to do, in terms of fishing in oasis; megabasers like to do this for the permanent lights that come with Winter's Feast (Klei please do NOT nerf this permanent light source! We worked our butts off for that, so it better not get taken away, or a lot of streamers and megabasers would be very disappointed. Though less tedious ways of getting permalight is also very appreciated, like that thing from Hamlet.)

 

And below here we see what Klei will be nerfing off; it would barely affect those who struggle to survive (aka 70-90% of the playerbase), but it makes life much less grindy for those who get past that stage and are in a megabasing stage. I have a dual-lureplant grass farm of my own, and the wickerbottom nerf absolutely destroys this farm. (I'll need like 10+ reads to harvest what I used to be able to do with 1 read.) That's a large amount of biome space and time investment that goes down the drain, and with it comes an immense amount of tedium that would perhaps kill off the productivity for many streamers/megabasers out there. 

 

 

 

 

I get that Wickerbottom nerfs come from a meta of berry bushes and book calling. And to that, I want to tell a little story of my own.

About a year ago, I started out this game with a friend, and found myself absolutely fascinated with staying alive and gradually conquering the constant. With an initial band of close friends, we set off to create a world of perma-living for ourselves, but that band quickly fell apart. We always died before or during the Deerclops fight. After learning a bunch of knowledge forms and tactics from Youtubing with another close friend of mine, him and I carefully planned out every step of the way for the first of our 30 days in the constant, and chose a Wickerbottom-Maxwell dual combo. We were excited as heck, because at that time I only had 30 hours of gameplay under my belt, and we were on a mission to do so much more.

There were many close calls. We had food shortages, and sometimes we only survived those when our carefully-planned grass-twig-berrybush composite farm bought us enough time to survive to another day. We spent the majority of that very first winter in base, sitting around and twiddling our thumbs, because we were afraid to venture outside and freeze to death. We struggled to manage food for a very long time, and lived mostly around base; during that time, berry bushes came to our rescue on many occasions.

Gradually though, we broke through the barrier of living past 1 game year, and did more and more crazy things in our world. We got good by playing that shared world continually, just the two of us. We went on to kill MooseGoose, then Dragonfly, then Bee Queen. All in the same world that we grew up together in. We started switching characters at sometime around day 200, but I stayed as Maxwell for the book-reading. We relied less and less on the berry bushes, graduating onto using jerkies and other food sources. A (real-world) year later now, we have killed almost all the bosses at least once now, and have found our own favorite characters after exploring more variety. It's really during the early stages of our shared world that we used Wickerbottom as a crutch, though. But that extra food did give us enough motivation and ability to keep playing in one world and not call many situations a write-off loss. 

I only got here because of the many times Wickerbottom carried me in one shared world, and perhaps the overpowered-ness of the book is necessary for some players to find comfort, grow, and eventually find their own playstyles. 

 

Having only 10 things grow at any given time (from a book call) wouldn't nerf things too much for us back then, and I still don't think it'll do too much nerfing for beginners either. Most of them won't be coordinated enough to pull off something like 40 fertilized bushes by first winter, and wouldn't know enough to make use of that additional power anyhow (ie not picking the bushes after one last call on day 21, or only saving those bushes for absolute emergencies). It does heavily punish the endgame players though, as grass, twigs, reeds, and stone depend largely on tedious farming if we nerf down this ability. There won't be any way to produce things at scale, to really harness the constant and make it something of our own; that's what the game's about for me at this point.

I'm fine with ending the Bunnymen meta, honestly. It's a little bit painful, but that's alright. I'm not as happy about this Wickerbottom nerf myself though, and (even though I dislike mods that change game balance) I would probably install a mod to revert this nerf after it's released. I don't even play wickerbottom anymore either, but I want this option to be there when I megabase. A guy can dream, right?

 

Also Canadian Ninja edit: I do appreciate the balancing efforts, Klei; you guys really are doing a work of love here, and I appreciate that. I don't agree with the Wickerbottom nerf myself because it makes grass farms (and other farms) obsolete, and that destroys a lot (maybe too much) for many long-time players around here. But most of the things y'all are doing are wonderful. Keep it up and happy not-so-early Thanksgiving!

[Pikapikap]

I look forward to the official server update next month

[Lanaaa]

1 minute ago, Sapientis said:

And the fact that the game becomes so thicc (wide,  branched out) is always good, it allows everyone to find something they enjoy doing.
Some players need a farming simulator more than another boss.

And I'm thrilled that those players get to do what they enjoy, but there have always been a wide variety of farms to tend to. Those of us who don't want to farm constantly are now left with no choice but to, what? Ignore the farming altogether and never utilize crops again? I agree farming was overly simple and needed a tweak, but that doesn't mean we needed a new mini-game. 

[Ohan]

16 minutes ago, m14221 said:

 

i also was fearing the worst but it turns out it really isnt that bad. you should check out Zeklo's Farming 101 thread. the new farming system is actually less about constant baby-sitting and more about combining the right kind of plants so they provide each other the nutrients they both need. 2 asparagus and 1 dragonfruit supply each other the needed nutrients for example. So for each tile u would want to plant 2 asparagus for every dragon fruit 

once you figure out the correct pairings what u have left to do is "tending" to the crops every growth stage and watering once in a while. This kind of perfect horticulture results in giant crops which yield 2-3 fruits/veg and 3 species seeds. 

Tending can be sort of "automated" by placing shell bells around the plants and walking by them every time the crops need tending (they need music) or using a beefalo horn to tend to all the plants on ur screen at once. There are also new friendly fruit flies which will tend to the crops for you. 

So the only chore really would be the watering. Itd be nice if we could get some kind of sprinkler 

[Lanaaa]

5 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

For everyone worrying about Wickerbottom:
keep in mind she's been one of the best if not the best character in the game for quite some time.
She really is the definition of how cheating works in similar games.
Let her have a break, we are still to get an update on her.

I agree, I think this tweak is justified. Tbh I think what she really needs is a better weakness to balance her power... I've literally never used a tent or fur roll, as any character. I actually forgot about her insomnia until Bearger yawned and her eyes stayed open. It was day 400+. And doesn't like spoiled food? Come on, those are NOT weaknesses whatsoever and we all know it.

[sinisterrkid]

6 minutes ago, m14221 said:

And I'm thrilled that those players get to do what they enjoy, but there have always been a wide variety of farms to tend to. Those of us who don't want to farm constantly are now left with no choice but to, what? Ignore the farming altogether and never utilize crops again? I agree farming was overly simple and needed a tweak, but that doesn't mean we needed a new mini-game.

I think it's a bit early to tell, from what I've seen there are a bunch of ways to make the current farming pretty easy and automated, so you don't have to babysit them. It just takes some prepping steps. But the previous system on the other hand required gathering tons of grass, rocks and manure.

[Lanaaa]

1 minute ago, sinisterrkid said:

I think it's a bit early to tell, from what I've seen there are a bunch of ways to make the current farming pretty easy and automated, so you don't have to babysit them. It just takes some prepping steps. But the previous system on the other hand required gathering tons of grass, rocks and manure.

I'm hoping that's true and ends up being the case. These are just my thoughts based on what I've seen. Also, I've always thought that the improved farm cost made plenty sense considering it's a permanent structure, but I know I'm in the minority on that one lol.  

[Sapientis]

4 minutes ago, m14221 said:

I agree, I think this tweak is justified. Tbh I think what she really needs is a better weakness to balance her power... I've literally never used a tent or fur roll, as any character. I actually forgot about her insomnia until Bearger yawned and her eyes stayed open. It was day 400+. And doesn't like spoiled food? Come on, those are NOT weaknesses whatsoever and we all know it.

Tents are actually very powerful to regain massive amounts of health for very little resources, but they cannot be used in combat and many consider them to be wasting time. I underestimated sleeping until I started playing Wormwood alone.

But yes, those are too minor drawbacks for such a powerful character.

 

[1ake]

 

Hello Dear Developers, I`ve played DST a lot, and I`ve seen enough upgrades that changes game play methods. And all the time long time players are adjusting the play style to used to these upgrades, I actulally found some development fun and see many new ideas .Such as Wendy and Abigal`s ghost flower power. With this upgrade,Abigal`s flower no longer decay into flowers, the evil flower plants couldn`t be built anymore. We had to regain sanity by old ways like sleeping and foods.
But this time the upgrade changes more playing methods in many ways.I think the most influential of them all is the Applied Horticulture. This book uesd to growing many plants in one screen, but now it can only affects up to 10 plants. Some long time players like me(long time player means plays world more than 1000days, not play DST a lot) plant grass, twigs in good order to better harvesting and collecting much resources. 

This way can collect enough resources for 6 or more people to survive.
But the changes in Public Test make it much more hard to do so, only 10 plants can be affected by Applied Horticulture, I have to read much more books to get the same effect.
The results inflented four characters : Wickerbottom, Warly, Wormwood and  Wurt.
As I said, Applied Horticulture is the unique book made by Wickerbottom,so the changes also affected her as well, Wickerbottom have to make more books to get the same effect like she used to cause, not to mention low sanity and crowing horror interrupt reading books.
Warly is mainly affected by the way plants grown, plants are not easy to get as they uesd to be: onion, garlic , tomato are essintial to specific recipes, and now if I want to make these recipes I have to grow plants in new ways,not easy I think. I may not choose to make this dish and only eat meatballs. This make some recpies never cooked.
Wormwood may benefit from this upgrade cause he can plant seeds everywhere, but now I have to care for these plants. In the past I just let the farm grow itself, sometimes a Wickerbottom player help me by reading books so the plants are harvested planty and quickly. The upgrade make this method much more complicated, cause only 10 plants can be affected.
Wurt is hidden character influenced by the upgrade. Because she only eats veggies. At the start of the game she lives a hard life cause she can`t eat meatballs and bacon`eggs, the situation may improved by the farm construcion and rabbit houses. And the upgrade cause the veggie output harder and slower, also the rabbit doesn`t drop 2 carrots, but 3 in 1 chance instead. So Wurt may live a harder life until the farm construcion is fully built. This also make Wurt solo player hard to survive, I may not choose to play Wurt. And many other mod characters only eat veggies are the same.

These are the consequences I have thought so far, I may say them in fierce ways but I do hope this game can add joy and new elements, can play a long time. Some of my friends installed DST cause they saw the changes in Applied Horticulture. I hope you think 3 times to make this real, the new plant way is more difficult and complicated. Under this circumstance I may kill pigs and spiders instead of growing plants with long time,long care and not sure what plant come out.

[. . .]

I just wanted to say Klei you did amazing job with this new update this is so dam cool I never would have thought we would get the gorge farming mechanics but even better in the base game! I love it a lot cause it reminds me of Harvest Moon kinda lol! I hope there is more amazing updates like this in the future !!

[Lanaaa]

1 minute ago, Sapientis said:

Tents are actually very powerful to regain massive amounts of health for very little resources, but they cannot be used in combat and many consider them to be wasting time. I underestimated sleeping until I started playing Wormwood alone.

But yes, those are too minor drawbacks for such a powerful character.

 

Absolutely, I agree tents are fantastic (and I love decorating with them eventually lol). I believe you need to be able to feel the difference when it comes to a character weakness... the way you can really feel the impact of Wormwood's healing penalty. You really notice that limitation. That's the kind of thing Wicker desperately needs imo, something that punches a big fat hole in people's play-styles and forces them to think creatively.

[Nikki Darks]

9 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Dear god, I knew it was powerful, but three separate nerfs?

I used this book all the time when megabasing. It was the only realisitc way of me mass hording lots of grass/twigs/reeds to stock me up without spending days holding down the space key for basic resources. The huge nerfs are going to tremendously slow down basing, and honestly make it so unviable to do stuff that this might actually kill my mood for megabasing, with how much I already dislike grinding for basic resources like boards.

The other changes seem good, and I can even get over the bunnyman one, but this is way too much IMO.

Sir/Madame, you clearly don't realize how powerful Wicker is, this is nothing.

Please don't overreact to nerfs that won't affect Wicker's overall power in a team.

If anything, she needs more. 

[Sapientis]

1 hour ago, Ohan said:

So far ive succesfully made it with 2 forget-me-lots flowers, 1 ice and 1 honey it only gave like 15 sanity and a bit of health iirc

I found out it gives 0 hunger/ 15 sanity/ 3 health and regenerates additional 30 sanity over a minute.

[KainMorgen]

I am not in board with the changes to Applied Horticulture.

First of all when announcing reworks for all characters you, the Klei developers, promised that your approach to reworks would not be to nerf the stronger characters but to buff the more overlooked ones.

The Horticulture nerf is a direct nerf to Wickerbottom's current abilities and therefore you are breaking a promise you have given to us loyal players.

 

I get that you intend to overhaul how farming vegetables works. I might be ok with that.

But in regards to non-edible plants I strongly feel that Applied Horticulture should continue to work just the way it does right now.

Therefore I make my second point: Lureplant farms for twigs, grass, reeds and even stones with stone fruits (although the latter qualify for the edible category) are a wonderful thing for players who Like to megabase in their worlds with 3 or 4 digit day counts.

They provide a conveniant and elegant way to stock up in basic resources for endgame players without spending tedious hours of holding space like the earlygame players do. Thus giving the endgame players more time to tinker with the game and building fun and interesting projects in their worlds.

Terraforming the whole constant in your unique way after mastering the survival aspect of DST is very fun and entertaining.

Holding space for an hour or so to collect basic twigs, grass and stone is just tedious and boring after a particular point in the game.

 

Since this is an early Beta and you the devs are asking for feedback to finetune the next update please consider to leave lureplant farms intact for twigs, grass, reeds and also for stone. If you consider stonefruit-lureplant farms too broken, then add a different option to quickly amass stones. Waiting for meteor showers is not a fast and conveniant option for megabases.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[Nikki Darks]

Why are people crying over the Wicker nerf? 

Like what?

Wicker mains get everything in the game, us Willow mains can't even get her old infinite lighter back.

This Wicker nerf does NOTHING to hurt her playstyle, she's still OP, she's still the best resource gatherer.

Please, stop.

[will527]

Wondering how you plan to address large scale grass, twig, and log collection after the applied horticulture nerfs. I can understand the nerf because of the crop changes, but this leaves a kinda hole in the place of where players in the endgame would get their grass and twigs from as the amount of books necessary would be increased by a lot. Nobody likes holding space bar for 5 minutes just for a bit of grass and twigs, so I hope you can figure out a change if the nerf is sticking because it's leaving a bad taste in my mouth. 

[Rinkusan]

1 hour ago, Cheeto-Jesus said:

*snip*

Thanks for the detailed elaboration that I was looking for.

With that said, I still don't see how megabasing is even remotely "destroyed" by having Horticulture nerfed. Alongside the Horticulture nerf, you also have the complete elimination of disease. The key issue here seems to be the twig and grass deficit, so why can't you make up that deficit due to Horticulture nerf with MORE transplanted grass tufts and saplings that grow on their own and, thanks to the lack of disease, will continue to produce grass for you to harvest for the rest of eternity?

Frankly, the only farm I see being nullified from the Horticulture nerf is the lureplant farm.

 

[sawchuk519]

2 minutes ago, Rinkusan said:

Frankly, the only farm I see being nullified from the Horticulture nerf is the lureplant farm.

It's funny, because the lureplant farm never needed applied horticulture. People are getting so upset over nothing.

[Rinkusan]

5 minutes ago, sawchuk519 said:

It's funny, because the lureplant farm never needed applied horticulture. People are getting so upset over nothing.

Oh nice, that makes things even better. I was under the impression that people used Horticulture on lureplant farms to counter the rate of item digestion from the lureplants; good to know that it wasn't even an issue to begin with. 

[DST_LSJ]

12 hours ago, Tritrons138 said:

MOD is coming!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2299716385

[ArubaroBeefalo]

19 minutes ago, Rinkusan said:

Oh nice, that makes things even better. I was under the impression that people used Horticulture on lureplant farms to counter the rate of item digestion from the lureplants; good to know that it wasn't even an issue to begin with. 

The countdown for digestion only applies when the area is loaded so you can harvest the lureplat every few days without losing the loot

The book was to mass produce

[TheFat]

Amazing! O.N.I. And DST both are getting major changes, don't even know how are you guys doing this 

On the other hand, everyone here is arguing over the Wicker nerf, and nobody mentions this 

11 hours ago, ScottHansen said:

Birds in the Birdcage will now eat raw monster meat but not cooked eggs

(Klei, please commit to this nerf, I know this sounds like a complaint but it's not.) 

11 hours ago, ScottHansen said:

Disease has been removed from transplanted plants

Didn't get to test the game yet, so how does it function now? 

[Notecja]

8 minutes ago, TheFat said:

(Klei, please commit to this nerf, I know this sounds like a complaint but it's not.) 

I could complain about eggs, but honestly I rarely mass-produce anything above 40 stack. For one-two players barely makes sense, except for boss fight. 

Still all stuff can be wraped in bundles.

[Pikapikap]

I hope that the updated items will have various skins in the future. and I wonder if Klei will make a major update to the cooking system someday, such as the one in George? Team cooking XD

[Sapientis]

42 minutes ago, TheFat said:

Didn't get to test the game yet, so how does it function now? 

Disease seems to be fully removed, it doesn't exist in world generation menu as far as I know.

There are many items added to Food Tab, but mainly: a deployable Garden Rigama jig which can be used 4 times to convert 1 ground tile into a farm plot (similar to Gorge ones), Garden Hoe to Till the ground on farms, 2 Watering Cans (normal with 40 uses and special made from Malbatros Bill with 160 uses) which can be refilled with water to water farm plots, Composting Bin which can be filled with up to 6 items and turns them into up to 3 Composts, Growth Formula Starter which gets stronger as it spoils and is used to enhance growth and last, but definitely not the least is Gardeneer Hat, used to Research plants and fertilizers. It has no durability and can be used to show all Researched crops and fertilizers. They all have different seasons in which they grow the best, different water needs and also crops use up or nourish one of three fertilizers (Growth Formula, Compost and Manure). The Gardeneer Hat can be upgraded near Ancient Pseudoscience Station to Premier Gardeneer Hat which works the same but has special visual effects of Purple Gems around the screen and shows which fertilizers are present on farm plots.

Crops have also a chance to grow into 2 dangerous weeds, 1 tillweed, a flower or especially big sometimes, so you may display and weigh them on Produce Scale from Structure Tab (similar to Fish Scale-O-Matic).

There's also a new enemy spawning from farms, which drops Friendly Fruit Fly Fruit and a Friendly Fruit Fly which follows it and tends over crops.