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Don't nerf things to a grinding halt!


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Wickerbottom's books

I have a few things to say about the new update, but by far the biggest grievance is the nerf on applied horticulture book. I don't understand why Klei has such a hard time balancing things, it is quite often too easy and simple or way too hard and boring to do something with a lot of things. The book looks rather useless for farming crops now that it requires 5 seeds that are more difficult to get and 5 manure while being barely effective and still having the same durability. Either way, I think the book should be left as it was before for now, and we should wait until Wickerbottom's refresh before making big changes to the books. The new system requires a lot of care already, so if the book can speed up this process, that is a win in my book. Speaking of books, when you do get around to doing the refresh, one possible way to changing them could be to make the crafting recipe a bit higher, but give the books a lot more durability, or even become infinite use, however restricting their usage with a sanity requirement, like you did with potion crafting using the mad science lab, so you cannot use them at 0 sanity. Then you have to find ways to restore and keep your sanity up a notch if you want to keep using the books. If each read of a book took 10 sanity, and you want to read a book 50 times, you better have something to help restore it while you read. These are magic books after all, and they should feel powerful, but at a fair cost.

Wormwood

I hear a lot of players mention wormwood being a useless character now. He is not, though making him more specialised in farming and helping to grow the crops too would definitely put him back to being more useful and fair for the challenge you take playing as the character. Reading wickerbottom's books I don't think is the right way to approach this, however he should really have his own way of helping farming. And by the looks of it, wormwood players are still by far the ideal farmers, just not as desirable as before. May be wormwood can help plants grow simply by standing near them, or apply some other effect in some way to help with it?

Farming and reward

I looked a bit more into the farming itself and I have to agree that there should be a bigger yield, both for the regular plant harvests and the big ones. Two fruit/veg with a chance for seeds and six from the big ones with some extra seeds sounds like a fair deal to get invested in the mechanic, especially if you can get a Wickerbottom and Wormwood players into the mix. Remember, farming needs to compete with meat/monster meat/egg options, mushrooms, honey, berries and stone fruit as well as cactus flesh to stay relevant. While you're at it, you should really nerf cooked cactus sanity restoration and butterfly wing health restoration. It isn't just that it is a little too good, but that's a bit of an exploit, at least on the butterfly wing front which to my understanding was never meant to be a reliable source of stat restoration, health particularly. 1 sanity from cooked cactus and 1 health point from a butterfly wings (1 hunger value from the wings makes more sense too) sounds good, but may be some crock pot dishes for the cactus flesh that are rather excellent sounds good.

Farming goggles

Why does the Premier Gardeneer Hat require a purple and not a green gem? It makes it less costly, but the green gem is clearly the right fit for the item. The gem is ideal both for earth-like elements like farming and the work theme that it gives off, which you need a lot of for growing crops in the game, where as purple gem has more to do with sanity and by extension teleportation and overseeing visibility. The construction and deconstruction amulets could be integrated into the farming system in a cool way too I think, given they have more durability. I know it may sound controversial to give these items more durability, but by far they are an item you craft to then get rid through usage and do nothing more with. Getting skins for them seems entirely pointless when they stick around in your inventory for like 10 seconds. I do think you could have come up with a better name for these hats, especially the premier one. Inspect goggles... Inspectacles? It would give room for reusing the items for something else in the future as well, if inspecting becomes a more prominent mechanic later on.

But whatever you decide to do, make sure this feels rewarding and fun to engage with the content. Make it too easy and it's quick and boring by the end of it, and the game stops being about any sort of survival and turns into a social hub. Okay for easier settings and modded game, not so much for the default experience. Make it too difficult and it becomes boring to the point where you would rather do anything but engage with that part of the game, or if you have to, do the tedious tasks for hours on end until you stop wanting to play the game.

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10 minutes ago, 1bubbainpa said:

Posting things like this are counter-intuitive and just flame-baiting. Klei has said that feedback is needed for this update, so discussion posts about adjustments are fine.

I did have to look up flame-baiting, but it's a joke (Poking fun at what [usually, not always] happens on feedback threads). I never said anything about the thread being bad, I'm sorry you took that seriously.

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5 minutes ago, ZeeDragon said:

I did have to look up flame-baiting, but it's a joke (Poking fun at what [usually, not always] happens on feedback threads). I never said anything about the thread being bad, I'm sorry you took that seriously.

It's not even about taking the post seriously or not. OP made a serious discussion thread that doesn't break any rules. The first reply is a "joke" post which really just makes it off puting. Everything has the right time and place and this reply wasn't right overall. Anyway back to OP.

33 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Wickerbottom's books

My only complaint is that the book grows plants randomly, I wish it had more control. The book waited for a nerf a long time, with how much you could gather ridiculuos amounts of resources combined with lureplants. Speaking about your complaint that wicker shouldn't be touched before rework is nonsence. Klei wants to test the waters of how the gameplay could change with a small tweak, besides wicker has a lot of other OP books besides holticulture. 

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Applied Horticulture is still super OP lol

I'm glad they finally nerfed Wicker, she makes the game too easy.

Whats the point in an "Uncompromising Wilderness Survival Game" if the game is made too easy, and there are a ton of exploits? I'd love more nerfs to overpowered strategies.

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4 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

Applied Horticulture is still super OP lol

I'm glad they finally nerfed Wicker, she makes the game too easy.

Whats the point in an "Uncompromising Wilderness Survival Game" if the game is made too easy, and there are a ton of exploits? I'd love more nerfs to overpowered strategies.

Far as I know. Fixing (OP) exploits usually gets heavy backlash...and it can get pretty overwhelming. Which sometimes prevents more fixes from happening. Although I agree with you, I'm not entirely sure where this paragraph is going. Nor does it have any point to it. 

8 minutes ago, stranger again said:

can one say this topic is outdated?

klei said there working on balancing the applied horticulture and making wormwood better which is really cool

The Office Reaction GIF

1 minute ago, 1bubbainpa said:

Source?

 

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I don’t agree with all the hard Nerfs Wicker was hit with, but I do agree that farming need to become just as complicated as fishing.. 

unpopular opinion: But I also think that the game is actually getting Easier with each update: hold on hear me out.. used to you could not use Batilisks wings in a Crockpot.. NOW I use them all the time as Wigfrid as my Meatballs source if I can’t find any other meat drops.

Even in wide open empty areas of land where not a single food source is around there is still the Ocean you can toss a fishing Rod into for food.

Reworks are making characters more OP with Wendy, Willow, Woodie, and even Arguable Wigfrid with her Stagecrafts..

Return of Them content keeps adding new food sources making it further impossible to actually Starve.

Quality of Life updates are cheapening the costs of craftables like Marble Armor, Bat-Bat, Rabbit Earmuffs.

Anyone who claims the game isn’t getting easier is not looking at all the above evidence-

But I don’t expect it to remain this way forever what I’ve seen: 

Fishing got an Overhaul, Farming got an Overhaul, Sailing the Ocean itself got an Overhaul from its DS SW roots, 

What is still to be seen: A Summer Season Overhaul, a Enemy A.I. Overhaul, Combat Overhaul, Even the way we progress around biomes could use an overhaul- I pray we eventually get elevated foundations of land so players can no longer just walk or swim in a straight line from point A to point B without having to go around, over, under, or through some obstacles.

I think this post shows that in addition to the things you claim are being nerfed, other things are being heavily buffed.. and in the end result: I hope Klei can find a proper balance that satisfies the majority of their players.

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5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

farming need to become just as complicated as fishing.. 

oh yes, lets make farming same as ocean fishing - pain in butt, slow as heck and does not worth itself. I mean, just 2-3 dragonfruits from an oversized one, seriously?

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Reworks are making characters more OP

except when they not. Killing bosses using hambat and special things like garlic powder, Spectral Cure-All, Moose Idol, or even playing on console  Character is OP

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1 hour ago, Duck986 said:

I mean, 2-3 dragonfruits from an oversized one, seriously?

you're talking about 150 hunger and 80 health or 225 hunger and 120 health from a single seed in 4 days time. Not to mention the 3 species specific seeds it also gives. 1 garden rigamajig creates enough space for 36 plants and since giant crops can never be grown by themselves your harvest will always a multiple of that. 

I think at this point there are enough people who have come to the conclusion that the new way of farming is better in practically every single way. The only thing that was lost was the ability to instantly boost a crop with manure. If you're still struggling with it i suggest you check out the Farming 101 thread in gen disc. 

When you balance the nutrient requirement of plants correctly the only thing you have to do is tend to and water them once a day. When a crop is in season and happy Giants will grow in approx 4 days 

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8 minutes ago, Ohan said:

you're talking about 150 hunger and 80 health or 225 hunger and 120 health from a single seed in 4 days time. Not to mention the 3 species specific seeds it also gives. 1 garden rigamajig creates enough space for 36 plants and since giant crops can never be grown by themselves your harvest will always a multiple of that. 

I think at this point there are enough people who have come to the conclusion that the new way of farming is better in practically every single way. The only thing that was lost was the ability to instantly boost a crop with manure. If you're still struggling with it i suggest you check out the Farming 101 thread in gen disc. 

When you balance the nutrient requirement of plants correctly the only thing you have to do is tend to and water them once a day. When a crop is in season and happy Giants will grow in approx 4 days 

With the old farms, you can just plant and forget, so I'm curious, how fast/slow does it grow and how much do you get if you completely ignore fertilizing, tending and watering? If you just plant all 9 seeds into one tile and wait.

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9 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

The book looks rather useless for farming crops now that it requires 5 seeds that are more difficult to get and 5 manure while being barely effective and still having the same durability.

So obviously Horticulture is going to be changed in the coming week, but at the moment, I believe Horticulture is intended to be a farmers' ignition rather than a long-term food-supply tool. When you're starting out, all you have are regular seeds that grow random crops that eat up a random set of nutrients from the soil. Rather than spending the time to fertilize the soil and take care of seeds that might end up being junk crops, you can instead plant the seeds, water the soil for moderate happiness, and read your book to get instant crops and, more importantly, their crop-specific seeds. Once you have enough crop-specific seeds, you can start farming for real by planting the ones that compliment each other and shoot for happy giant crops that yield extra crops AND extra seeds for you to exponentially expand your farm.

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3 hours ago, Duck986 said:

oh yes, lets make farming same as ocean fishing - pain in butt, slow as heck and does not worth itself. I mean, just 2-3 dragonfruits from an oversized one, seriously?

People are having fun with these new mechanics and its overall better than old farming/fishing. Nobody forces you to make farms and fish in the ocean so you can use your valuable 4 days to boss rush.

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2 hours ago, SonicDen220 said:

With the old farms, you can just plant and forget, so I'm curious, how fast/slow does it grow and how much do you get if you completely ignore fertilizing, tending and watering? If you just plant all 9 seeds into one tile and wait.

I did some tests and im not sure what to think of the results lol! So before i begin i played as wormwood and planted everything in 3x3 in separate farm plots without tilling. 

  • a plot of unknown seeds planted at the beginning of day 2 in autumn with zero tending, no watering, no fertilizing, no weeding, produced fruit on day 5~ 
    • First to come up are Forget-me-Lots which grow in 2 days.
    • Each seed gave 1 fruit

 

  • a plot of unknown seeds planted on day 3 in autumn with watering and tending once a day at dawn + removed 2 seedling weeds, produced fruit on day 6 (no fertilizer)
    • each seed gave 1 fruit and 1 species specific seed
    • similar results from a plot that only got watered once a day, no tending, no weeding, no ferts

 

  • I observed a similiar 3 day-ish growth time for a plot of unknown seeds i babysat, meaning i tended as soon as it came up and kept watered, weeded (no fertilizer). 
    • each seed gave 1 fruit and 2 species specific seed
    • there were 4 pumpkins in this patch which means they got family bonus too. they were the first to fruit 

 

There are a ton of variables at play so its hard to draw a concise conclusion. season, seed rng (weeds, compatible plants, 4 of the same plant for family bonus, etc etc). I also do not yet know if a second round of testing on the same plots will produce the same results or worse since i payed zero attention to nutrient presence in the soil. 

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8 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I don’t agree with all the hard Nerfs Wicker was hit with, but I do agree that farming need to become just as complicated as fishing.. 

unpopular opinion: But I also think that the game is actually getting Easier with each update: hold on hear me out.. used to you could not use Batilisks wings in a Crockpot.. NOW I use them all the time as Wigfrid as my Meatballs source if I can’t find any other meat drops.

Even in wide open empty areas of land where not a single food source is around there is still the Ocean you can toss a fishing Rod into for food.

Reworks are making characters more OP with Wendy, Willow, Woodie, and even Arguable Wigfrid with her Stagecrafts..

Return of Them content keeps adding new food sources making it further impossible to actually Starve.

Quality of Life updates are cheapening the costs of craftables like Marble Armor, Bat-Bat, Rabbit Earmuffs.

Anyone who claims the game isn’t getting easier is not looking at all the above evidence-

But I don’t expect it to remain this way forever what I’ve seen: 

Fishing got an Overhaul, Farming got an Overhaul, Sailing the Ocean itself got an Overhaul from its DS SW roots, 

What is still to be seen: A Summer Season Overhaul, a Enemy A.I. Overhaul, Combat Overhaul, Even the way we progress around biomes could use an overhaul- I pray we eventually get elevated foundations of land so players can no longer just walk or swim in a straight line from point A to point B without having to go around, over, under, or through some obstacles.

I think this post shows that in addition to the things you claim are being nerfed, other things are being heavily buffed.. and in the end result: I hope Klei can find a proper balance that satisfies the majority of their players.

You are right on the QOL changes like this. The game is being made easier in many ways, and I think it's a good thing. For late game, it should get harder for players, but for someone starting fresh, if they happen to enter during winter and don't know what they are doing, it is instant game over without help. There is no notification for it as a warning, nor is the current season highlighted by the server selection menu to indicate the season. Progression of difficulty will certainly make the game more fun for everyone, instead of a set difficulty that is impossible for new players, but too easy if you have played for a while. To add to your list, I think boss danger should be overhauled so less of them are raid bosses and more like encounters that you stumble upon or have bosses come for you.

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