Summer Season Reworked

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

7 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

 im against comments like "remove them" 

Oh for sure! They’re definitely no where near as bad a condition as disease was and I think the changes to make them better are relatively straightforward. Here’s to hoping we can see something soon!

[Mike23Ua]

Friendly reminder that this thread isn’t just about wildfires it’s about potential ways to rework summer as a whole..

And after seeing some recent NewHome unimplemented files (particularly of one where a large bird changes appearance each season Aka with his beak freezing & shivering in cold) I think the entire game could use small details like that- let each Season effect each mob differently..

For example- Firefly could be easier to kill during spring when it’s always raining or something.. or Pigmen much the same way when you hammer their houses down and they run toward your campfire to stay in the light at night- Reacted differently to Freezing/Overheating.

I think it would be “Funny” to during summer see pigs in PK village all being distracted by standing near PK with gigantic feather fans cooling him off.

The game in its Current state- has very minimal changes between mob behavior in different seasons.

Maybe Swamp tentacle could dry up and be found laying in the swamps weak & extended making them easier to kill for Tentacle Spike? Or maybe Merms will be seen bathing in ponds or retreating to the nearest land of water to swim & cool off?

Summer as season is BORING because it’s literally just Winter in reverse but without all the little changes Winter does to the world.

When WINTER comes around the ponds you used to fish in or get frog legs from freezes over and it forces you to play the game in a way that maybe you hadn’t been.

For myself in Particular I play with RANDOM seasons & RANDOM season lengths so there’s never a moment where I can just “Hide in Caves or Base in Oasis until Summer is over” Summer can last 200 days if I’m unlucky enough to have that happen.

Now what I DO find myself doing often during summer is when I start overheating TOO much retreating into a cave (which helps cool your thermal stone) gathering some Nitre, and then returning to the surface to continue my journey.

The same way Dragonfly should be weakest during endless rainfall, she should be at her strongest when the warmth of summer makes her more powerful.

The TL:DR is this game is still running on an engine using design concepts from 2013… but it’s 2021 now and changes huge massive sweeping changes are LONG Overdue. We are starting to see that NOW with the amazing character reworks, unique new content exclusive to DST, and the QoL updates that make the game as Easy or as Hard as you feel like playing it at the time. And I strongly feel it’s high time we start embracing bigger changes.

I used to think Skittersquid retreated from the waters during summer and ran amok on land, maybe it’s time they actually DID that? Just take the content Klei has already added to the game and make SUMMER interact with it.

If ponds can Freeze over in Winter.. why can’t they boil over into firefly like magma ponds in summer? Etc…

[AlternateMew]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I think it would be “Funny” to during summer see pigs in PK village all being distracted by standing near PK with gigantic feather fans cooling him off

This is great and I love it.

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Summer as season is BORING because it’s literally just Winter in reverse but without all the little changes Winter does to the world.

This I completely agree with.

I love suggestions of little details like mobs having seasonal weak spots and seasonal strong spots, perhaps making them drop more or unique loot to encourage fighting them at their strongest. For Summer I like the idea of things happening at dusk and at night, a time when maybe other creatures also come out to beat the heat. 

[Mike23Ua]

 

This in particular really struck my attention, because it’s taking a single mob and changing its appearance (and hopefully even it’s attack patterns) based on what time of SEASON it is.

Unfortunately the above is a “Scrapped Concept” But what it does effectively manage to Spark (Wildfire pun 100% fully intended) is Conversation about how mobs, hazards, weather, etc should behave & look during each of the games seasons.

Klei has ALREADY shown small signs of this with the ponds freezing up for winter or Cactus blooming into Cactus flower in the Summer or most bosses having different looks during WintersFeast..

But I can’t help to think they could do more to make each season feel more unique, especially Summer, the one that’s most lacking in interesting content.

[JosePapp]

Honestly, summer could be really fun if they remove some of the fat (like the off screen wildfires) and add a bit more stuff to do on it. Perhaps you could enhance fire staves into "channeled fire staves" into not burning the loot with drops of a summer mob, or get a backpack that raises sanity sort of like the Tam? Just more stuff to interact with in summer

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

3 hours ago, JosePapp said:

backpack that raises sanity sort of like the Tam?

This! Related to the increased seismic activity during summer idea I had, I always imagined an advanced rock lobster miner showing up in the rocky biome at a set spawn. I envisioned him as someone who you could trade things for gems and such which would be interesting, or, if you wanted to kill him he could either drop a backpack with a refillable light and a small sanity aura, or a pickaxe with the speed of walking cane and a light source on it with a durability that slowly drains while out and speeds up while in use. That way you’ve got a unique interesting mob worth interacting with and he also has a tam style drop and a walking cane style drop worth repeatedly farming to grab a bunch. 

[AlternateMew]

On 8/29/2021 at 7:31 PM, Mike23Ua said:

Unfortunately the above is a “Scrapped Concept”

Were grass gators not a scrapped concept? Have we had confirmation that other "scrapped concepts" don't have a chance?

Genuine question. I don't catch the streams and stuff so there could be info I do not have.

[Mike23Ua]

I just got done playing in a world as Wurt where Summer lasted a grueling 70+ days, I joined this world on like day 10 or so.. and Summer was ALREADY in Progress.  Before you ask: Wildfires was still totally toggled to on.

However- when joining this world i spawned with some sticks, some flint, and a “pretty parasol” now first off in my entire time playing this franchise I’ve rarely ever crafted this item.. But this parasol was just enough to let me run around collecting basic resources (mainly more twigs and grass to survive nightfall) the hosts world also had a large lack of cave entrances so I ran around on the surface for I swear at least an hour, surviving off just the Parasol, crafting new ones along the way & also with my knowledge of knowing how to craft the Straw Hat I was able to get by just long enough to find some boulders and with the flint I had at spawn create a Pickaxe to mine boulders for more rocks & flint finding GOLD was another problem altogether, as I didn’t find any anywhere nearby..

I’m playing WURT remember this.. it’ll be important. 

So there I am desperately trying to just survive.. living off whatever veggies I can find (because Wurt won’t eat meat at all) The Summer heat is causing Wildfires and Wilting plants everywhere.. with the grass Wilting away I can’t collect the vital resources I need to make basic torches to survive the nights, so with my limited torch durability I carefully burn isolated trees unequipping the torch & making sure to stay far enough away from the fire to not overheat myself.. all Wurts Veggie sources are dying out- And I still have not found GOLD to make things a really really need at that VERY moment like Thermal Stone, Armor, Weapon, Backpack, etc..

Now what I don’t think new players understand about this game (and Klei provides no sort of hints as to what they should be doing…) New players don’t realize that a single item/clothing won’t be enough to endure whatever weather hazards your encountering.

for summer in particular for TWO HOURS I survived off just:

Spoiler

Straw Hat + Parasol + Taking occasional cover under trees while using these items, retreating into a cave when I absolutely must..

And the spoiler is an example of how you need 3/4 different items to survive.

I think clearer indications could be used here similar to how clothing in Red Dead Online gives the player Insulation stats so they know wearing this + this + this = I’ll survive.

With DST it DOES NOT Do That & newer players just sort of get screwed & die, however… anyone NOT willing to play the game and learn probably shouldn’t be playing this type of game at all..

I was playing as WURT.. Meat of any type, was irrelevant to me, outside of making weapons, my veggies were all burning, resources were wilting away, I couldn’t find the other players to retreat to their base so I spent the entire time walking around the map living off whatever I could find (carrots, seeds, Butterflies.. etc) And then… it occurred to me- Man I’m stupid..

I could’ve created a RWYS Garden & planted seeds to grow veggies a long dang time ago… yet there I was surviving off the land- When I finally got the gold I needed and was able to create the things I needed the 70+ days of Summer became a cake walk from that point forward with Endofires, thermals, a backpack to carry more Nitre and other required Wurt related stuff…

I survived 70+ Days of Summer AS WURT without meat, without healing from pierogi, Summer becomes a very boring highly uninteresting season once you know how to survive it (sorry but stay in caves the entire time or camp at oasis isn’t the way your supposed to do it..) 

The DIRECT problem with summer is its lack of unique content: Outside of things burning, and resources wilting to become ungatherable, the season itself is pretty much The same as Autumn.. it doesn’t have any unique summer mobs (Antlion defiantly does not count…) and there’s just not much to it other then the spoiler above.. it’s boring and it could use exciting content.

However this experience made me clearly see how much easier this game has been and continues to be becoming- when I started to run low on natural food resources I could’ve set up a garden and survived, when my sanity started to take a nose dive and I didn’t have time to go gather any sort of useful sanity restorative clothing in between running from tree to tree to beat the heat- I could’ve always went down to the lunar grotto and got all the Mushrooms a Wurt could ever need.. I could have probably created a Beefalo bell and used a beef to get around the map quicker…

Yet I didn’t… because tonight I had a temporary memory lapse of exactly what all the “newer” changes Klei had been doing to the game since the RoT updates started..

Summer as a season isn’t as hard and brutally punishing as people make it out to be (maybe if you want to build a massive mega base….) but if your just playing the game it’s originally intended way- spawning with the parasol is just enough when you join a game in summer that you can “scratch by” surviving wandering around on the surface just fine: Provided that you know how..