Don't Starve: Bug Hotfix & Suggestions (2021)


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Introduction:
When I saw that Don't Starve got an update on its Shipwrecked DLC, years after its initial release, I told myself that maybe it's not over yet for this single-player game (despite no big updates for over 2 years - seeing as the devs focus more on DST).

I'm therefore hopeful that this is the case, and that in time, they'll improve DS and optimize its more recent DLC: Hamlet. For this reason, as a somewhat experienced player who spends time in Don't Starve collecting valuable resources and base building, I took note and gathered a number of issues (bugs and minor annoyances), as well as mustering up some of my personal suggestions in regards to the the game in general.

I decided to organize this big post into two separate sections (S: Suggestion; B: Bug/Nuisance), starting with the bugs and nuisances:

B1. PLEASE fix bugged invisible entities blocking structure/plant placement in specific spots (occurs in the Hamlet DLC in completely random places, with no logical explanation, such as spawners, etc.). I haven't seen it happen in Shipwrecked nor in ROG, so that's annoying when it comes to symmetry and city building.

B2. Weapons, tools, body & head gears switch to completely random places in the inventory. This is extremely painful when kiting, as we tend to swap between a weapon and the walking cane (occurs mostly in Hamlet and in Shipwrecked, seems fine in ROG).

B3. Improve pathfinding in Hamlet sublevels, this got me killed once inside the mant hills. Although capable of having avoided it (had I thought of immediately using the pan flute): when I clicked, my character went in an L pattern from the north door to the east door instead of going diagonally from N->E. In addition, sometimes when you click on a mant hole doorway, the character gets bugged walking against the wall.

B4. Similarly to caves in ROG, we'd like it if the character would perform the action on the thing that's closest to him in Hamlet's underground levels. ROG cave example: I have flint on the ground close to the rope, I get closer to the rope to let my character know I want to go back up to the surface and not pick up the flint when I press spacebar. This is not the case in the Hamlet DLC, as the character tends to go back to the middle of the room to pick up an item from the floor (that is sadly within range) instead of using the door, which is closest.

B5. Tab categories need to be "smart", in other words, it needs to remember where each tab was left off to avoid the constant, slow scrolling/clicking up or down. Example: crafting rope to then waste 3 seconds clicking on the downwards arrow in order to craft a bundling wrap. There should be an easier way to scroll through it all the way up or down in an instant (CAPS isn't as effective). Here's what I suggest: clicking on the arrows a single time will do that - it will either scroll all the way up or down - and then we'd complete that action using the mouse wheel (which should scroll slower).

B6. Birds drop an abnormally huge amount of seeds (typically) in Hamlet. Sometimes seeds appear in places I have previously been but not seen any birds come down. This is annoying as hell, each day you get about 10-20 seeds and if you don't pick them up (waste of time), you have rot almost everywhere on the map.

B7. Concerning the snaptooth seedling population in Hamlet - they proliferate like mice - and them targeting any kind of dropped meat over the player makes them unpredictable during fights (which is a good thing) but can be rather annoying, seeing that a level 1 low hp seedling can evolve to a level 2 one and regain all of its lost health back (+ bit more)... while we're fighting multiple ones at the same time (looking at the random kingfishers assisting them). Anyway, in my first island, I only have them in the gas biome but my pugalisk one is completely overpopulated with these things. There should be an item (maybe - bug b' gone) that allows to cull them, like a single noxious cloud does to a gigantic line of rabid beetles (which by the way, should NOT spawn inside lakes), that or there should be a limit to how many seedlings a tier 4 snaptooth can spawn, based on live ones that are around.

B8. Despite leaving a shipwrecked world with an appeased volcano and then world-hopping back to it after a while, if we happen to be on dry season, there's a chance a meteor shower will instantly rain down upon us with no warning whatsoever. I mean it seems quite inconsistent as I find myself getting meteor showers in the mid of dry season upon world hopping but when I world hop at around 3 days left of dry season (when the events are more recurrent and intense) the volcano hasn't advanced at all, kindly giving me warnings before exploding.

S1. Since it's available on controllers, ADD A DROP BUTTON/CONTROL FOR PC USERS TOO - this will save time and help with organization (I have a room in my Hamlet house dedicated to turfs, they're all on the ground for now but sometimes it takes me more than it should to find a pixel that shows a drop option).

S2. Make "Autumn" the default ROG season start.

S3. Rework beefalo taming. It takes too much time and if you're constantly moving through or focusing on other worlds, it's easy to lose taming points (in contrast to DST, where you're always in the same world). Here's what I propose: having once fully tamed the beefalo, it will always be yours (without having to worry about keeping it satisfied with any other means but salt licks) always that is, unless you feed it something you shouldn't, or attack it - in which case it will aggro on you until you either run off and it loses interest or you kill it.

S4. Change saddle durabilities, which should only drop their percentages when mounted on a beefalo and not per mounts/knockdowns. Their durability would range between and equate to that of a top hat (low tier) and a tam o'shanter (high tier), of course, based on the kind of saddle. Additionally, they'd be able to be repaired by using a sewing kit (which I'm surprised isn't a thing already - note that sails can be repaired using a sewing kit).

S5. Tamed beefalo and other pets such as: chester, packim baggins and ro-bin should be able to world hop with the player and be kept in the same world if they wish so... what is this eye-bone dropping upon world-hopping crap?

S6. Root trunks (which need to have more storage slots) and telelocator foci should work between worlds - the latter, so that we can transport pets (like sharkittens) into late game ROG/Hamlet dens, for example.

S7. Treasure hunting tab shouldn't be a thing as it only has 4 available recipes: which are all (essentially) tools that should be moved to either Survival or Tool tabs. This is a pain in my krissure, as this tab is available in ROG (in which it is completely useless) at the expense of the much more useful Nautical tab which, if it were available, would allow me to craft boat repair kits to take to Shipwrecked.

S8. Rework crafting recipes. For example: the football helmet (takes 1x rope, 1x pig skin... which makes no sense - the more appropriate recipe would be 1x flint, 1x log, 1x pig skin; the logic: grab a log, use flint to carve it into shape, put the pig skin inside - this way we'll get rid of excess flint). Another example: tooth traps need to use 3 hound teeth instead of 1 - this way we'll get rid of the hound teeth surplus (change their damage to 150 instead of 100 if so).

S9. Rework item durabilities. Take a razor for example... why doesn't it have durability? Should wear 5% per use (this will avoid having too many razors laying around from trawl netting) - plus, real life ones are worn out in 3 uses. Another example: thunderhat which, in addition to losing durability on wear, also loses it each time a lightning strikes in the player's vicinity (the former shouldn't be a thing, considering that it looks decent on pigmen).

S10. The berry bush hat needs to have durability and give a massive sanity boost (10/min) while deployed, it wears down fairly quickly (has the same durability and gives the negative sanity value of Hamlet's gas mask) only when in use (hiding).

S11. The feather hat is meta for noobs who build 10 bird traps and place them around to catch birds and feed on morsel. Let's brainstorm a bit shall we? Make this useless item a bit more interesting: in addition to spawning RARE birds (from other worlds), the hat will provide a small sanity boost AND it will serve as a "disguise" for bird-like mobs such as peagawks, gobblers, thunderbirds, tall birds, fire packims (if you're Webber), which will make them completely ignore the player (unless attacked or in the case of tall birds, if they catch you stealing their egg); regarding the BFB, it will drop and then despawn instantly.

S12. Rock lobsters are considered mini-bosses, as they have over 1k health that they can regenerate in shell form (which itself blocks a lot of damage) thus making it hard to kill them - quite impossible with melee, but feasible with gunpowder. The point is, their loot is garbage... 1 meat and a few rocks? How about 3 meat, a few rocks and a guaranteed gem drop (with a 10% chance for either yellow, green, or orange gem drops).

S13. Night lights will deploy an aura that will act as a camouflage against shadow creatures (only when lit) but there's a catch - being inside the light aura will cause a massive sanity drop per minute (this structure will be particularly useful in the ruins for when the nightmare phase is active, and we'd like to simply craft things next to the pseudoscience station, under the light, IN PEACE. Nightmare creatures might wander inside the aura but they won't see the player, unless the player attacks them which will trigger all other nearby ones.

S14. Allow us to destroy nightmare lights (by means of gunpowder) for additional ruins loot. Also, at one point there's always a buttload of nightmare fuel in the ruins... make it so that only the nightmare creatures we engage in combat with will drop nightmare fuel once the nightmare phase ends. Any shadow creature killed during the nightmare phase should give sanity (as a means of fighting against the constant sanity drop).

S15Dragonfly boss should have a 100% chance of dropping 3-5 gems of either kind (rare ones included) upon death.

S16. Obsidian walls, HELLO? We need some vivid red, high tier walls that match thulecite ones and that can only be crafted near the obsidian workbench.

S17. During meteor showers on Dry Season, it becomes progressively harder to see projectile shadows through the ash filter... this is a problem, as in a mere second, we can die and lose everything unless we have revive options or a life vest equipped. At that point in the game, the player is usually equipped with a backpack and won't have enough time to swap to the life vest to save himself. Proposition: make this item equipable on the left boat slot (where boat cannons and boat lights go), this way if there's a chance a meteor hits, the vest on the boat will "revive" the player, dropping us on a nearby island.

S18. Please create an item that summons the tiger shark to help with crocodog waves or other bigger threats. The item will be called "Eye Of The Tiger" and I'll let you guess the ingredients for the recipe (which can only be learned from a blueprint that is dropped by killing the tiger shark).

S19. Please make bridges a new craftable structure, so that we can walk over short distance "invisible" walls instead of going all the way around to get to the other side. Why this? Well, I have an island that is really close to my base but is separated by a single tile of "invisible" wall (only accessible way to it is by using a wormhole situated on the other side of the world)... but that's not the only reason we need this - another use for it would be in caves where sometimes world generation (shenanigans) kicks in, and the player can't progress unless they have a lazy explorer.

S20. Wood fences and gate textures have inconsistent colors. I feel like the wood fences should be more gray (since they're made from twigs) and gates should be brown and not orange-y. In terms of decor, us single-player enthusiasts could use more craftable fences (with iron as an ingredient, for example) - import some of the good stuff from DST into DS.

S21. Each pig shop needs to have a unique pig: only the bank should have the banker, tools shop will have the mining helmet pig or the berry pig, the grocery store will have the farmer pig and the rest should be kept as is. Add more buy options for each pig trader and make them accept other things such as broken snurtle shells for hunter pigs, or flint for miner pigs.

S22. "The Flying Pig Arcane" shops should sell rare pseudoscience items, all kinds of amulets and staves for high prices (in the centapieces); and for the laughs, a rare chance of selling some Wickerbottom books (let's be honest that pig trader kinda looks like she might be her cousin). Please oh PLEASE, make this a thing!!!

S23. Pumpkin lights should not have durability: they offer a very small immovable light source, don't last that much, and are essentially fireflies with durability (which is worse than just having fireflies). I mean, I would certainly like to use them as decoration for my crops.

S24. When dropped, bioluminescence won't be destroyed if it slides from water to a small margin of land (see, this is why we need a drop button, we don't want things sliding into oblivion). Bioluminescence also glow if dropped on Hamlet's sparkling pools.

S25. Planted magic water will NOT cap the player's max health - it will function as a portable touchstone (which are non-existent in the Hamlet DLC) - reviving the player and being consumed upon death, thus beating meat effigies). It will also keep providing the other bonuses when close to it (sanity raise and hunger to health conversion).

S26. Meat effigies won't take 30 health but instead 20% of the character's max health each time when built (up to a maximum of 3 active ones). Wheeler example, whose health is 100 by default: 1st meat effigy will put her to 80 health, second one will cap her down to 60 health and not to 64 (20% of 80 being 16).

S27. Smelter needs more uses, here are a few ideas: 4 gold dust = 1 gold nugget OR 1 tenpiece oinc (up to the devs); and 4 flint = 1 iron ore (to get rid of our plethora of flint).

S28. Let's talk about ro-bin and the amount of space he takes up on the screen, let's also talk about how he's the only pet that doesn't "evolve" with special items. Make default ro-bin smaller, a bit bigger than packim. Give him a transformation where, upon placing 9 iron ore (or whatever; TBD) on each slot inside him, he becomes fat ro-bin (with more space and the same design as it is now); AND a special metamorphosis where he becomes an aggressive ro-bin (it will require 9 bramble bulbs in each slot during Lush Season for the transformation to occur) - aggressive ro-bin will look like his mama, the BFB (appearing slightly bigger than the normal [future] small version, having a frowny face, pink foliage and some bramble spikes in parts of the body). It will attack nearby hostile mobs (with or without the player's sics) and it will automatically target and destroy brambles too (unlike royal guards who instead decide to panic at the idea of getting prickly boo-boos).

S29. Packims transformation needs to be more challenging: 1 red gem (for his eye), 2 doydoy feathers and the rest of the slots filled with obsidian - (some asking, "but why tho?"). :D

S30. Thunderbirds should create iron in their nests after a few days; they should roam around during dusk and night and only return to their nests during daytime (when they sleep and don't react to the player approaching them unless startled). Make thunderbird nests craftable (using infused iron as an ingredient); using a hammer to destroy (world generated) nests will shock the player with each swing (unless they're wearing insulating equipment - such as the eyebrella).

S31. Stone Slabs in Hamlet offer limited resources (mainly gummy slugs, bean bugs...) as when flipped over, they don't go back to default. So here's my trade offer: we get them renewable (having the player perform an animation, such as the one when harvesting berries - which will turn the slab over, setting it back to "default"), giving the player an option to get slugs and bugs to respawn after 1 ingame day; you receive - hours of writing the code for it. :D

S32. Basalt eruptions should have a 50% chance of dropping iron when mined/destroyed.

S33. We should be able to plant tuber and banana trees and cacti plants (and reeds, dammit!).

S34. Character animations are boring (quaffing anti-venom, drinking snake oil, unlocking Woodlegs - all share the same animation; also looking at Wilbur sleeping on a log raft having a 1 second infinite twitching loop is displeasing to see). Import some DST animations for some variety.

S35. It only makes sense that Woodlegs would get a massive wetness resistance, so much that torrent rains make for a small arrow pointing upwards, and he only gets 1 point of wetness from big waves (being immune to small ones) which will also be the only kind of waves that will damage his boats for 1 single hp.eyebrella). Buff their health too, so that they're impossible to kill with 1 melee swing when they're asleep.

S36. Wheeler's one of the most recent characters and I feel like she needs to be balanced further. I almost never use the navigadget - that's only useful for early game where we have to look for supplies - I kept that item "grounded" for hundreds of days. I guess what I'm trying to ask is: give Wheeler at least 1 more slot OR improve her Health. I get that she's primarily a ranged weapon character and she has a dodge ability to help with CQC but, depth worms deal 75 damage which, combined to a moment of inattention will result in me going back to the meat effigy I built in the other world. I know it's a major con and the fault is mine if it happens but to be honest, sometimes it's hard to see worms coming at us when there's a cave-in, shadows on the floor, and the screen is shaking; I like Wheeler's voice choice (but I don't appreciate it getting cut off). I like most of her speech but I feel like it could be better, seeing as it mostly revolves around her pew-matic horn (I'm fairly certain that almost 90% of her quotes on stackable items mention her ranged weapon, which I don't think needs to be recalled every single time I inspect something, seeing as I'm far from being done using it). Another minor example: I feel like she undervalues bees, her quote when examining them says that "Flying is wasted on insects" yet she treats glowflies like they're saints (which they aren't, they morph into rabid beetles) - what I'm trying to say is that the quotes should be inverted so that she shows some appreciation for bees and hate towards glow flies with that remark.

S37. Lilypads in lakes should be able to be destroyed using the executive hammer (or a shovel if it makes more sense), as sometimes mosquito sacks drop there, unreachable, unless we use the amulet (but let's be honest, who would waste it on 8 hp/3 oincs). We should have an option to "craft" them and only be allowed to place them on shallow water (thus creating a "pernicious amphibian" spawner).

S38. The royal pig queen should respawn (why isn't this the case?). I killed her with traps after having unlocked Wilba in order to get the crown back. I read on the wiki that she "respawns", before intelligently committing 1st degree murder (by means of tooth trap) - but she hasn't for thousands of days. I was planning on taking her to my city hall/house to use her as my personal maid (a job that fits her attire).

S39. Complete the city building tab: add more topiary options (beefalo, pig...) and improve the structure placement grid (how come slanty shanty's grid is more "precise" than other structures?).

S40. Caught glowflies should be able to be planted to give exotic flowers. Any kind of flower planted (butterfly/glowfly) will never get uprooted by strong winds and will never change (I know exotic flowers don't change but the default ones do and that's a shame - it's ok if they turn into evil flowers during full moons).

S41. I've longed for reeds to be movable (which should be able to be relocated either on ground or shallow waters), the same way I've longed for mushroom spores to be a crafting recipe (the recipe using an amount of any kind of mushroom and some rot as ingredients to be able to craft it). "Planting" the mushroom spores would "make" a hole in the ground that would essentially look like a mushroom was "harvested" there, all we had to do was wait for it to spawn (it would randomly be either red, green, or blue).

THE END, FOR NOW...

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