Spider tips and tricks

[Frashaw27]

1 hour ago, QuartzBeam said:

They could have your followers despawn with you when you disconnect and respawn when you connect again. They already do that for Abigail.

Then that arises a different problem of what happens when if ally a pig or spider, what happens to structure that is meant to spawn an entity that is already count it for. Do they just unlink it from that spawner? thus causing them that have no more home once you get them to leave, as it has been replaced with a brand new, identical version of itself? Or does it just continue to take up a slot so that when it does get separated, it still has a home, at the consequence of now having that slot forever locked out as it waits for some to occupy it or for the previous tenant to die? This affects any recuitable mob's spawners of any efficiency from new york packed to uncolonized land stretches of neighbor space, as they could be permanently affected by griefing or by accident, thus causing you to remove and rebuild those spawners. Again, we arrive to the same point that simple solutions aren't possible due to the fact of other players and how it may affect them long term if the followed player never comes back. I understand that it in frustrating that you simply can't just take them into other shards, as it should seem simple to do, but the implications are that either their is going to be a lack of mobs due to lack of attention and logging out, or their is going to be spans of homeless mobs out in the middle of nowhere as they no longer have a slot for themselves as that has been stolen by steve. It one of those ideas that works on paper, but requires so much backwork and careful moderation in order to pull off successfully without either disaster outcomes happening that it would be something that would require an entire rework of the follower mechanics.

On the topic of Abigail, like you mentioned, Abigail is tied to the player itself. While this means that you can control her with any random Abigail Flower you find, it also means that you have this follower linked to you specifically that nobody else can control and cannot be separated from the Wendy player. This is not the case with the spiders as, previously discussed, any player can gain their followership of any spider, but this also means that they don't have the direct code linking the player and mob together, or a item that links itself to the mob, and thus lacks the code that would allow them to travel inbetween shards. Giving them such code would also lead to some of the questions above.

Throughout my writing of this response, I have thought of an idea to band-aid this. Have Webber be able to make a portable Nest that up to 5 chosen spiders will follow religiously like a Beefalo Bonded to a bell. That's it. While you can't have entire hoards follow you through the tiny entrance hole of the caves, it should at least allow players to carry the spiders they really want/need in-between layers without having to re hire them.

[QuartzBeam]

6 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

Then that arises a different problem of what happens when if ally a pig or spider, what happens to structure that is meant to spawn an entity that is already count it for. Do they just unlink it from that spawner?

Yes, they unlink. That's exactly what happens to rabbits when you log off with them in your inventory. So your spiders will become "homeless" and the den will spawn new ones to replace them.

And spiders becoming homeless is not a bad thing. Homeless spiders fall asleep during the day if they are not following you, which means you can pick them up and put them in your inventory.

Plus, all it would take to make spiders unload/load with the player is a simple table with, like, 2 columns. One column for the spider type and one column for their current health (their total health is set by their type, anyway). There's nothing else to save/load, as they don't need to keep track of spider names or of how much loyalty time they have left.

Hell, they could probably group spiders that have the same type and the same current HP together (spider_type, current_health, number) to keep the table size manageable, as most enemies will only target one spider at a time (and thus only alter one spider's health at a time) and you can always top up the spiders with Healing Glop and Nurses.

[Frashaw27]

2 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

Yes, they unlink. That's exactly what happens to rabbits when you log off with them in your inventory. So your spiders will become "homeless" and the den will spawn new ones to replace them.

And spiders becoming homeless is not a bad thing. Homeless spiders fall asleep during the day if they are not following you, which means you can pick them up and put them in your inventory.

Interesting, but I meant that part as to be an entire overview of how all allyable mobs would work with their spawners. So if we take this case with, say Merms, then it becomes a bigger issues. what if you are just running through a blue mushtree forest and then get jumped by like 10 merms as their timer ran out while following Wurt? What if are wondering around the forest during a full moon and suddenly start getting chased by 7 Werepigs? Even with spiders being the mob of choice, what if you were going to a cave entrance during and saw it being guarded by 15 spider warriors? While them being able to be picked is fine for Webbers, and maybe even preferable, but this delinking can have harmful results as a player is not expecting them to be there, because why would they be? Mobs being homeless is something I feel that you aren't taking as serious as me, and that is fine, but I feel as if adding the "logout with player" would not only have to a universal change to all followers, and may make these homeless mobs even more of an issue then they are now.

[fishofwar]

spiders become homeless when you give them a switcherdoodle regardless, so i don't see why they shouldn't retain loyalty through logouts by disappearing with Webber

[QuartzBeam]

58 minutes ago, amogus said:

spiders become homeless when you give them a switcherdoodle regardless, i don't see too much harm in making the loyalty persist through logouts 

Not just that, but picking spiders up also makes the Spiders homeless. Homelessness among arachnids is part and parcel for post-refresh Webber. And if they do make Spiders leave/enter either Webber, then the you will follow Webber until they die or until they are manually dismissed, so I don't see what the issue would be.

And I never said other followers should log off/in with you. Cause, again, those are temporary by design, so you won't really miss them if they don't stay around after a disconnect.

[Mysterious box]

7 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

They could have your followers despawn with you when you disconnect and respawn when you connect again. They already do that for Abigail.

Also, inevitable or not, it's kinda hard to be sold on this refresh when it's primary selling point (permanent loyalty) doesn't actually work half the time. Losing followers on disconnect/shard switch doesn't really matter with other followers, cause other followers are temporary by nature and players only hire them to do some one-off job and don't care what happens beyond that.

But having to spend more food to recruit spiders under the false promise that they'll follow you forever kind of sucks the fun out of it for me.

Having infinite hired followers is already fairly broken but if they did that for Webber I'd imagine they'd have to do that for everyone.(or atleast wurt who is looking less appealing next to webber)

[QuartzBeam]

Just now, Mysterious box said:

Having infinite hired followers is already fairly broken but if they did that for Webber I'd imagine they'd have to do that for everyone.(or atleast wurt who is looking less appealing next to webber)

The other followers are tankier, deal more damage, can help you out with tasks beyond combat and you generally need far fewer of them than you need spiders, which means you need much less food to hire them in the first place.

Spiders, on the other hand, only have 2 advantages as of now: healing and permanent loyalty. The first advantage is unique to a single spider type and the second doesn't. work.

But yes, it's totally broken that I have to run around like a lunatic and spend 10-20 Monster Meats every time I relog or every time I enter/exit the caves just to re-tame the same spiders. The same spiders that I have probably had to spend Switcherdoodles on, no less.

[Mysterious box]

12 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

The other followers are tankier, deal more damage, can help you out with tasks beyond combat and you generally need far fewer of them than you need spiders, which means you need much less food to hire them in the first place.

Spiders, on the other hand, only have 2 advantages as of now: healing and permanent loyalty. The first advantage is unique to a single spider type and the second doesn't. work.

But yes, it's totally broken that I have to run around like a lunatic and spend 10-20 Monster Meats every time I relog or every time I enter/exit the caves just to re-tame the same spiders. The same spiders that I have probably had to spend Switcherdoodles on, no less.

The only follower who has more hp than any spider past normal spiders is merms the fact spiders are infinite means no matter what unless you server hop and or disconnect alot you will always get more value out of spiders than any other follower in combat which is one of the primary ways to get food and high end resources each spider that isn't a nurse deals 20 damage meaning 10 spiders is 200 damage your carrying around with you.

Spiders can only do combat but carrying around more damage output that the Wolfgang is nothing to scoff at the weakest non base spider has 225 hp using only cutstone 6 of which out damage Abigial and the 3 highest ones have 400 hp only 100 less than a merm and 200 less than Abigail.

Outside of the spitter which isn't necessary and the dweller who is weaker than a warrior the resources for doodle stockpile with cave spiders and nurses being the cheapest to make it actually baffles me that people are downplaying the ability to control a horde that trivialize combat with no upkeep cost aside from server disconnect. 

To add to that giving them the ability to get resources as well would remove any need to ever play Wurt or Maxwell and would just be game breaking.

[QuartzBeam]

2 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

To add to that giving them the ability to get resources as well would remove any need to ever play Wurt or Maxwell and would just be game breaking.

1. What does that have to do with anything?

2. The only suggestions I've seen here about spiders gathering resources concern grass, twigs and maybe berries; Wurt and Maxwell are good at collecting logs and rocks, so there's basically no overlap in function here.

[Mysterious box]

4 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

1. What does that have to do with anything?

2. The only suggestions I've seen here about spiders gathering resources concern grass, twigs and maybe berries; Wurt and Maxwell are good at collecting logs and rocks, so there's basically no overlap in function here.

1.Having access to what is essentially the best variant of the follower system with the least amount of effort involved would kill the desire to ever play Wurt or Maxwell.(assuming they were also given resource collection)

2. I assumed logs were what was being asked for my bad.

3. Webber's follower system is still extremely unbalanced from a gameplay stand point so I don't believe piling on even more benefits is the way to go.

[Toros]

This is a weird thread imo because the forced topic is “this is how you can kill X with spiders” and we’re deliberately told not to ask “why would webber use that tactic at all?”

Even if we ignore webber vs other character comparisons, why in the world would you bring 20+ spiders to fight AG instead of using pillar cheese?

That’s a huge waste of resources.

[QuartzBeam]

3 minutes ago, Toros said:

“why would webber use that tactic at all?”

... cause it looks cute?

I get using spiders for Bee Queen, as it's considerably cheaper than Bunnymen (you mostly just need 2 Rabbit Traps to catch a horde of Spitters and 6 Nurse Spiders with Beekeeper Hats). It pales in comparison to the oven, but even so...

But Deerclops? That thing will die if you so much as hold F in its general direction for all of 30 seconds.

[Mysterious box]

I wouldn't say it's a huge waste of resources since the resources to make most doodles stockpile from tasks you already do but yea there's no point in letting spiders fight alone may as well back them up.

[Baark0]

18 hours ago, Frashaw27 said:

Most likely not, because imagine this. You are playing with other people and decide to leave the game for whatever reason while they keep playing, what are your followers suppose to do then? Are they suppose to just stop entirely until thier master comes back? What if you never come back? Do they just sit there until the end of time, til they're nothing but a coat on a brittle rack of bones? Do they endlessly await the implosion and erosion of not only our world, but all others as they cling on to the now non-existant hope as they are brutally torn asunder, iota to iota, by the ravengers of those who lived to tell the tale?

While it is annoying to have to recruit all of the spiders each time you dc, I also think that this is a problem that arises from the very concept of being server based and having multiple players that play at different times. They can't allow them to wait for the possibility that the player never rejoins and thus they do just wait for eternity, potentionally making sure said spawners are then deprived of thier spawnables. This happens anyway, but that's an issue with how deloading works which is an entirely different system.

So, in short, I understand the frustrations, but it is sort of an inevitable problem if we would be working with followers who are directly linked with the character themselves (i.e. Maxwell's Shadows). We also can't  have for spiders as they need to be something else for the game out side of followers.

just make them disappear like beefalo and critters do

9 hours ago, Toros said:

This is a weird thread imo because the forced topic is “this is how you can kill X with spiders” and we’re deliberately told not to ask “why would webber use that tactic at all?”

Even if we ignore webber vs other character comparisons, why in the world would you bring 20+ spiders to fight AG instead of using pillar cheese?

That’s a huge waste of resources.

sometimes you waste resources in the name of fun. sure, i might not need a whole spider brigade to kill the minotaur, but its more fun if i bring one anyway. i dont even need to go to the ruins or kill any bosses (aside from maybe clops and there are ways to avoid her as well), but its more fun if i do. focusing entirely on efficiency starts to take the fun out of the game