I don't understand why hound/depth worm wave mechanics are in the game

[kittem]

1 hour ago, Dwight34 said:

(literally cannot spend too much time at sea without cheesing with unbreakable barricades otherwise you're dead the moment hounds decide to show up).

hounds and bosses do not spawn as long as you are on a boat! (i spent all of winter sailing) 
i actually do not know if they will spawn once any land is visible in the distance (which definitely could cause problems!!)

there is a mod i use to help that warns ~2 days in advance when hounds are going to attack, so if that is an option, it's a valid one.

or, simply, you can tunr hound attacks off! it's fine. i know the topic is wanting people to argue and you are being argumentative and rude, but really you can turn whatever settings of the game off that you want, it's your game

8 minutes ago, BeeClops said:

I solely rely on depth worm farms for grass and twigs for my long term world, life would be a pain without them. 

how does a depths worm farm get you grass and twigs? :v  /gen

[BeeClops]

1 hour ago, kittem said:

how does a depths worm farm get you grass and twigs? :v  /gen

you plant grass and twigs in a large pen and try to make worms from wave spawn inside. They collect it over time, having the same storing capacity as lureplants(15 stacks x 40, but they never digest unedibles. So you can kill them whenever you want to get what they collected, they will also stop eating when they are full so you can tell. Those natural lit up areas with a lot of grass are ideal for this, you just add a few more. As you can imagine, fertilizing if you still want them alive can be tricky, so the less of it the better  

It is a lot slower than lureplants and it's not working offscreen ofc, so for it to be effective you need the farms in area you pass by often or close to base. I spend a decent amount of time in caves, have 2 pens near main cave base, and kill them once every few hundred days depending on my needs, getting 2k+ grass per harvest, pre-stacked. It's something I discovered randomly and it was really satisfying to test and make it work, I'm sure I'm not the only one tho  

[Aeglefire]

Wait, so you're saying Depth Worms harvest Grass and Twigs and store them inside of themselves?

[ImDaMisterL]

Hey everyone, just your friendly reminder to keep your posts respectful, constructive and on topic.

Discussion is always good, as long as it's healthy. Remember not to target other users in your messages to avoid derailing the thread and possibly hurting someone. If you see a post that you believe breaks the community guidelines, take the high ground. Simply report and move on.

Thanks for understanding, have a good day 

[Wardin25]

wait, you guys plan ahead for hounds waves?

[Captain_Rage]

Hound waves feel overwhelming and unfair at first but forces you to plan ahead and get better at the game. A "killbox" (a player made defensive perimeter) is not required, although planning ahead for the next attack definitely helps. Depth worms felt really unfair until the day I realized that building boxes of hay walls was a thing, which work wonders against worms, since you can simply attack them from the inside.

DST is supposed to feel like a survival game and the hound waves definitely add to that feeling that things can / will go wrong. Without them much of the suspense would be gone. While they might feel tedious, it definitely adds to the suspense and doesn't make running around in the world feeling safe and stale. Hound attacks add to the adventure and I wouldn't want to have any other way, even though I curse them every now and then.

It's the same thing as when people complain that gears too rare in comparison to how necessary they are (even though they are actually not very necessary) or that smoldering in the summer is unfair. If you play enough and experiment / discover new things you can most certainly overcome those obstacles while still respecting them as threats. And gears are neither difficult to come by nor super essential if you have figured out the most common pitfalls in the game.

[themightyone]

They dont bother me too much . But the frequency as to how often hounds spawn can get annoying late game. If you jump in a cave while they are barking but not spawned , then come right back up they will not appear. Good trick to know when you just don't want to deal with them.

[Baguettes]

In DS, things are bound to end your existence. It even says on the app store description:
"A living and breathing world that hates you and wants you to die."

Sure, they're annoying, but it's just how The Constant treats you. You can't just expect the world to just, y'know, let you live through days in harmony.
Plus, if you know how to take care of them, they're just free resources. The first few hound waves you'd see during your first Autumn is trivial, just make a spear and that's it. Only 2-3 hounds. If you can't deal with them, just lead them to Beefalos. Hounds LOVE changing targets periodically and they may as well go after the cows rather than you.

Fun Fact:
There's even an (ancient DS) update dedicated to adding those fiends; "The Birds and the Bees and Dogs that want to kill you"

TL;DR
This game is supposed to be full of dangers, not a "run around and not starve" simulator.

Oh and, turn lag compensation off. You would be better off seeing where you really are, rather than fooling yourself.

[clickrush]

It’s interesting that this type of complaint has become common in game discussions.

Not too long ago, features like the discussed, that disrupt gameplay were simply seen as a welcome challenge. People either overcome it themselves or ask for advice.

But over the years I’ve seen more and more complaints like OP. If a feature disrupts the fantasy of how they imagine or wish to play, they don’t look forward to solve the problem and adapt, but they start blaming the developers with vague and misused terms, such as „unfun“ and „bad design“.

[HowlVoid]

1 hour ago, BeeClops said:

I solely rely on depth worm farms for grass and twigs for my long term world, life would be a pain without them. 

Nani?!

They don't digest what they eat?

Wowowowowowow thanks man!

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, BezKa said:

You can't come to the forums full of experienced players and declare that one of the core mechanics is a bad game design when all of us have played this game for a while and never had this much against one of the basic elements of the game.

While I do not have nearly as much of a gripe with hound attacks as the OP does, I can certainty say I really don't like them at the moment, and I could assure you multiple of my friends don't like it either. There's just a bunch of things that feel off about them.

One is certainty the randomness. A day 100 hound attack has a 3-7 day delay between attacks, but you don't know when said attack is occurring until 30 seconds prior. It could be in 5 days, could be in 3 days and 7 seconds. You simply don't have any good indication of this. 

Countering them is also a bit of an oddball topic. While I have seen a bunch of strats posted here, most of my friends just resort to logging. If you don't know, logging out (mainly on dedicated servers or worlds where you are not the host)/swapping between shards is also a means to combat a hound/worm attack, as it prevents the hounds/worms from attacking you, even if you joined when the warning is still going. I don't like to take advantage of this too much, but I can assure you many people are pressing Escape + Disconnect or looking for a sinkhole the moment a hound attack warning starts. 

Now there are certainty ways to combat them that don't involve preparing an area beforehand, especially for hound waves which are not nearly as simple as grouping all of them up at once. I used to use darts a ton for the attacks, as special hounds are 1 shot by them and you could fairly easily gather materials for them lategame if you obtained a reed trap. I then swapped over to the hound whistle after the march QOL dropped which has also been really good for dealing with attacks, especially since it has 10 uses (meaning even if you got the absolute worst rolls and got a hound attack every 3 days, it would still be sufficient to counter hound waves for 4 hours).

Personally, I think it would be interesting if the attacks were able to be stalled for an extended period of time. I saw suggestions about adding a mob that you could feed to delay the next wave, and killing it would stop waves for 20 days. It would especially be nice if you are working on projects, since waves are unpredictable and having some help to gauge when they are about to attack would help a lot.

[sudoku]

Anything that challenges the e-party sim sit at base, eat 2 meatballs a day playstyle is a good thing imo. Its fine if people like that playstyle but there's already so few things to do outside of optional bosses

 

[MAMMAL_MAN]

I wish the wave mechanic was expanded upon, especially after an ingame year where there would just be a ton of elemental hounds

[clickrush]

16 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

While I do not have nearly as much of a gripe with hound attacks as the OP does, I can certainty say I really don't like them at the moment, and I could assure you multiple of my friends don't like it either. There's just a bunch of things that feel off about them.

One is certainty the randomness. A day 100 hound attack has a 3-7 day delay between attacks, but you don't know when said attack is occurring until 30 seconds prior. It could be in 5 days, could be in 3 days and 7 seconds. You simply don't have any good indication of this. 

Countering them is also a bit of an oddball topic. While I have seen a bunch of strats posted here, most of my friends just resort to logging. If you don't know, logging out (mainly on dedicated servers or worlds where you are not the host)/swapping between shards is also a means to combat a hound/worm attack, as it prevents the hounds/worms from attacking you, even if you joined when the warning is still going. I don't like to take advantage of this too much, but I can assure you many people are pressing Escape + Disconnect or looking for a sinkhole the moment a hound attack warning starts. 

Now there are certainty ways to combat them that don't involve preparing an area beforehand, especially for hound waves which are not nearly as simple as grouping all of them up at once. I used to use darts a ton for the attacks, as special hounds are 1 shot by them and you could fairly easily gather materials for them lategame if you obtained a reed trap. I then swapped over to the hound whistle after the march QOL dropped which has also been really good for dealing with attacks, especially since it has 10 uses (meaning even if you got the absolute worst rolls and got a hound attack every 3 days, it would still be sufficient to counter hound waves for 4 hours).

Personally, I think it would be interesting if the attacks were able to be stalled for an extended period of time. I saw suggestions about adding a mob that you could feed to delay the next wave, and killing it would stop waves for 20 days. It would especially be nice if you are working on projects, since waves are unpredictable and having some help to gauge when they are about to attack would help a lot.

All these elaborate strategies are just *waaay* overkill. A piece of decent armor is all you need. Tank the first couple of hounds so you can kill them a bit quicker and kite the following to preserve your armor and health.

Logging out to avoid them or preparing an arena and all those things are just completely unnecessary. Maybe it's different if you play Wes? Idk.

[HowlVoid]

Here are my 2 cents...

I think hound waves are outdated. Having your entire end game revolve around "grace periods" is restrictive and boring. I hope the devs are willing to take a look at them and make them more interesting. 

[bruhmoment23]

You seem to be pushing your own agenda of how "awful and unfun" this mechanic is while not understanding the basic concept of the game you're playing let alone these features and what they were even created for.

In the end you're just sharing an opinion, your opinion isn't a fact nor what everyone else thinks of these features. Some may share your view point and sympathize with it fully or to an extent, but that's about it.

These waves exist purely to frighten/overwhelm the player to give further immersion and depiction of survival, however that feeling is pretty much dropped if you've played this game for a couple hundred hours or so. 

While the mechanic itself can become tedious and annoying, i personally don't mind it too much.

[Krewnathan]

1 minute ago, gaymime said:

it would also help if instead of elemental variations there could be more of a 'hunt' element where the type of creature coming is sometimes different. less repetition and sometimes you could get something better than teeth and mon meat would be nice

oooo imagine like winter hounds that look more fuzzy and drop some kind of hair, or maybe on spring hounds look like swamp hounds and leave puddles that make you wet, that would be cool!

[BezKa]

43 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

snip

 

5 minutes ago, gaymime said:

snip

The point of my response is not "Hound waves are the best thing ever", it's "You don't come to a book club and say paper makes you itchy". If paper makes you itchy, you can ask for advice, and people will offer you audiobooks, e-books, etc. Or talk if others also find it itchy and talk about it. Not yell about the evilness of paper and how books are stupid for using it. And it's not the correct place.

OP did not offer discussion. They came here, said something I can only qualify as vent without specifying they aren't looking for solution and just want to complain (which is valid) and when offered explanation or help started arguing "No, hounds are bad, this is bad game design". Phrased like that, it's simply rude. If they actually wanted to talk about it, they would leave some space for discussion, not put a public claim then be mad people do not agree.

If OP doesn't have anything more to add except for repeating over and over they don't like hounds they should drop the topic (aka: leave). My first comment was fairly nice, and the response was lowkey barking back (pun intended). I'm not going to be nice if someone is not willing to do the same for me. 

Also, please don't imply what does and doesn't distress me. I put out a response in a firm tone to mark end of my involvement, and I'm doing the same here. 

[ShadowDuelist]

I for one think they are not challenging or interesting enough. I don’t like the sandboxy sit at base and decorate all season gamestyle, and I enjoy if there’s a bit of pepper in the mix with stuff trying to kill you.

However as others mentioned the waves are now outdated, maybe new mobs and things could attack you depending the season and your actions In the future. But I definitely consider “being invaded by stuff” a core part of the game and I don’t want it to be gone, maybe just made more interesting.

[Behan]

Good to see this pointed out, I recently just turned hound waves to "little" (or is it "few"?) for the first time in my new world.
I wouldn't call it "bad game desing" as it does prove to be an issue early game, but I definitively think that it lacks complexety as time goes by.
As others pointed out, random mobs or more hound variants would be interesting. When you get used to it, it just becomes a boring insistent and time consuming chore.

Btw, people arent often unpleasant around here as said "veterans". Don't let that push you away from the community. Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions. 

[Aeglefire]

Here's what I would do in an impending hound wave.

First, I would check if there is a hound trap nearby or if I could maybe kite the hounds around a herd of beefalo or a spider den. I would also look to see if there was a nearby sinkhole I could run to so the hounds won't spawn. But, if it was a real inconvenience to me at that specific moment in time, or if I knew I was going to die, I would log out and relog back in.

After playing so much DST, hound waves and also depth worm waves do become somewhat of a nuisance, since it gets repetitive to face them. But they are great because they are designed to test you in situations where you can be very vulnerable to a hound wave. They force you to plan your routes carefully, and to make a few Tooth Trap areas to cover your bases if you do encounter a hound wave in a bad spot.

Hound waves are part of what makes Don't Starve challenging and fun, because at the core, the game is about your safety and your survival, and learning how to deal with hound waves with increasing success, and increasing your range on the map, is a great challenge and skill to have. I don't think the game would be a great survival game without hound waves to impede your success.

[Dr. Safety]

Don't think of it as hound waves, think of it as a delivery service for only the finest cuts of signature purple meat.

[NSAiswatchingus]

Hound waves are annoying, but since I've started riding a beef everywhere I'm always ready for a wave. Can't be away from your safe zone if you're riding it. *taps head*

[Arbolk]

based on google: 

no rules broken, this game is designed to make the players defy that, in my opinion constantly grinding and farming logs and grass to expand/ refill the tooth trap is kind of annoying sometimes xD but, idk why i still dont feel like disabling it. maybe just increasing the trap range and can be refilled with tooth will make it less annoying.

[W0l0l0]

36 minutes ago, Dr. Safety said:

Don't think of it as hound waves, think of it as a delivery service for only the finest cuts of signature purple meat.

I find this especially true for Depth Worms when I'm in the ruins, with little light and meat.

 

In terms of the dogs though, I'm in agreement with the idea of some sort of update.

Whenever anything "uncompromising" is suggested, such as blizzards and attacks from other mobs, it risks being spammy, exploitable, and annoying. Dogs absolutely fit this description past day 100.

I want to have constant challenges thrown at me, and I love how they come to us instead of waiting, but I need a moment to kill a raid boss, or some time to deal with Fishlady, and the dogs kinda make me feel punished for actually exploring and doing what the game wants me to do. I like the dogs, especially early game, but they definitely can be improved for later on. 

1 hour ago, Maxil20 said:

Personally, I think it would be interesting if the attacks were able to be stalled for an extended period of time. I saw suggestions about adding a mob that you could feed to delay the next wave, and killing it would stop waves for 20 days.

This is a really good idea, and probably the best solution I've seen so far. I hope more things like the woofs can be added, to make the world feel hostile and active, without the feeling that I'm just getting spammed with enemies. That's not an easy accomplishment though, and the recent world settings are a great feature that makes it much more bearable.