How would you rework Summer?

[Dollmaker]

I think most of us can agree Summer has issues.

A common one being Wildfires, most ive seen either turn them off or rollback if they caused a mess (showing how people think about them) 

And i feel for whats the hardest season, its just... boring and plain?, i mean, a large amount of players prefer expending most if not all of summer on the caves and basically skipping what summer has to offer, which isnt much. 

 

Just think of the things the seasons offer:

Autumn doesnt really have a drawbacks, and allows you to do much of anything due to not having to worry about overheating or freezing. 

Winter is the freezing temperatures and lower resources, but gives really good items in return, such has Ice, Eyebrella, Tam and Walking Cane.

Spring is the constant rain, with a chance of lightning and frog rain, which while annoying its a massive amount of food you can get, also the constant rain frees you from having to water the crops. 

Summer is the really high temperatures, food spoils faster and...your base downright burns down if you dont cover the base on expensive Flingos that burn your fuel, or gets destroyed by the Antlion if you dont kill or babysit it, only thing it offers are the Cactus Flowers which while decent healing item, by that point you likely have healing covered by better alternatives, and the Lazy Deserter which is largely useless when playing alone unless you want a fast way to drain sanity. 

 

Anyway, i just feel Summer could be more appealing so people dont just skip it most of the time.

[Echsrick]

well it needs some sort of special item in a way that is something more special like walkin canes and something that is not behind a boss but what could it be? i cant find something but what about drying racks? i dont think they actualy dry the meat faster i think that could be something good after a season where drying meat was takin a longer time so i think thats something to add in

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Offscreen wildfires removed

More time for smouldering to set something on fire so we have more time to react and big builds dont become charcoal in seconds

Alow us to extinguish fires like if were smouldering at a cost of a lot of damage (i always feel stupid watching a fire spreading without being able to do anything)

Migration, new mobs appearing and new events happening to give more loot so would be worth to spend the summer in the surface. Nothing game changer to compete to the caves but good enough to make us break the routine 

Maybe some kind of sw's dragoons with similar loot

Also some kind of fire biome like the volcano that forces us to wear things like ice cube would be cool

Anyways i think that the desing of forcing us to learn to survive in the caves is cool, becomes stale, but cool and, with the addition of more ocean content, the ocean can be an alternative to the caves or the oasis meanwhile the rest of the world is a chaos.

In addition to this, making resources renewable will fix a lot of the problems since nobody likes to lose the berry bushes from a moose set piece knowing that they wont come back. Same for reeds or catcoon dens

[Mike23Ua]

Actual new and actually interesting content? Because as the season stands right NOW it’s just Winter in Reverse but without anything even remotely CLOSE to ponds freezing over, pengul coming ashore to take up habitation, MacTusk Igloo’s, It’s very own Seasonal Boss like Deerclops.

I see millions of posts of Nerf Summer- but, do these people even stop to think that Summer is the last and (currently) final season you will endure in a Sandbox Survival game where you’ve already gone through Winter.

What does summer have to offer? Cactus Flower, Antlion Sinkholes, Overheating & Wildfires.. it’s not much at all and it needs some serious love.

Klei let’s you adopt a pet that’s capable of setting your base on fire, if they won’t do the job, a pack of fire hounds will… so instead of removing Fire based mobs and weather- Make it more interesting.

Thank You.

[HowlVoid]

Having a renewing factor to wildfires, similarly to how wildfires in the real world help promote plant growth.

Wildfires would have a chance to spawn walking flames called fire imps which you can catch with a special bug net. Theses imps can be fed to grow and spread wildfires in a location of your choice. Burned plants spreads seeds around them at the cost of the original but you always get more. 

You'd have to be careful though as multiple imps can merge together and become a threat. 

I'd also love to house one of these imps in a fire place/furnace/oven like calcifer in Howl's moving castle (I'm a big fan as you can tell by my username). Feeding it certain items could be beneficial (like feeding it gold has it give out obsidian?) but it would die at the end of summer.

[Baark0]

Increase wildfire spawnrates by 1000% per player globally so whenever you go to the surface the world just erupts into flames, I think that'd make the season more interesting.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

34 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

I'm a big fan as you can tell by my username

[NightfallsCurse]

I feel Klei should make summer more eventful than what it currently is. I find summer the most boring season, especially when it's hard to do boss fights when you're CONSTANTLY cooling your thermal. I don't use endo fires but I do use ice Chester.

And here's another thing, I believe antlion needs an entire overhaul.
Fighting her every summer is a chore, and I find it soooo annoying.
But again, she's an easy boss, she stands in one spot for the entire fight for crying out loud.
Summer and Antlion need overhauls, in any way, just make it to where it's less boring.

Before you ask how I would overhaul these, I'm not sure how at the moment, but once I think of it, I'll edit this post again

[ShadowDuelist]

1) Wildfires giving a more fair and clear warning sign that they will happen. So if you see the heat wave or whatever in an area you know wildfires may happen there and you have some time to do something about it (or ignore it, but knowing what’s going to happen)

2) I’d make flingos fuel tank from full to empty last 12 days, enough to cover the wildfires time. So flingos become a much less Grindy but simple solution to keep your base safe during the first summer. This would be the ground for an okay-ish early game.

3) In a higher degree of complexity I’d make trading with antlion more engaging, and if you not only keep it alive, but appease it in a special way, it will consider you a friend and actually help you to put out fires. Perhaps signaling it for help with some item involving desert stones, will make a limited special sandstorm sent by your friend, that puts out all fires in a large radious around the player, for example. This storm will not cause all the slowdown and low visibility it causes at oasis, just put out all and any fires for 20 seconds or so.

4) A new consumable item dropped by crab king that lets you summon rains at need. Rains could have not only the purpose of dealing with wildfires, but can also help you wet large crop fields, or wet certain enemies during fights. Repeating the crab king fight will grant more resources to keep controlling the rains. Perhaps this item is only dropped by defeating CK in summer.

5) Wildfires should not affect you if you are sailing. Idle boats near the shore in an area affected by a heat wave could maybe get affected, but being at a certain distance from land, like 2 tiles away or something should make your boat entirely immune to wildfires. 

6) During summer, sunken chests will pop more often, and offer better loot.

[HowlVoid]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Well it doesn't stand for me howling in back alleys lol. I'm keeping the void part a secret though.

[zacqiang]

2 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Having a renewing factor to wildfires, similarly to how wildfires in the real world help promote plant growth.

Wildfires would have a chance to spawn walking flames called fire imps which you can catch with a special bug net. Theses imps can be fed to grow and spread wildfires in a location of your choice. Burned plants spreads seeds around them at the cost of the original but you always get more. 

You'd have to be careful though as multiple imps can merge together and become a threat. 

I'd also love to house one of these imps in a fire place/furnace/oven like calcifer in Howl's moving castle (I'm a big fan as you can tell by my username). Feeding it certain items could be beneficial (like feeding it gold has it give out obsidian?) but it would die at the end of summer.

Or lock it behind a certain spawn location / setpiece such as a McTusk Igloo. Maybe some sort of geyser hole / mini volcano that looks similar to lunar fissures. Wildfires are just too hard to control outside of Oasis desert anyway.

Merging the fire imps sound interesting, since it kinda becomes an optional seasonal miniboss that players can fight if they want to. Pengull hordes are basically seasonal minibosses when you steal eggs in front of them anyway.

[Cheggf]

Wildfires are boring. They're really easy to prevent, but doing so is ugly (although you're now given a less ugly alternative that requires things to be near a coast). I want an actually threatening mechanic instead of an annoyance. Also, Antlion is not very good. I love his appearance and name, it's pretty funny, but his tribute mechanic isn't very impactful and most players end up either ignoring him and just evading his super telegraphed annoyances (and rolling back when they fail to do so...) or killing him immediately.

I'm not too concerned about Antlion being subpar, but the wildfires could really be improved. I've seen several people suggest them being replaced with a heat wave. I think that would be better than how it is now but it still has the same base issue of how you prevent the wildfires. Now instead of having ugly flingomatics littering the world, you have ugly flingomatics littering the world except you're getting a warning before they're going to start going off. You could instead use that warning to know that it's time to be bored and walk away from what you were doing, or perhaps to have your bstaff on the ready, but you can already have the bstaff on the ready so it'd just switch how long you need to be alert and ready to extinguish from most of the time to some of the time.

I'm not sure how to actually make wildfires fun and engaging, but those are my thoughts on them.

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

In a higher degree of complexity I’d make trading with antlion more engaging, and if you not only keep it alive, but appease it in a special way, it will consider you a friend and actually help you to put out fires. Perhaps signaling it for help with some item involving desert stones, will make a limited special sandstorm sent by your friend, that puts out all fires in a large radious around the player, for example. This storm will not cause all the slowdown and low visibility it causes at oasis, just put out all and any fires for 20 seconds or so.

I really like that idea. Solves multiple problems at the same time.

[Owlrust]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

1) Wildfires giving a more fair and clear warning sign that they will happen. So if you see the heat wave or whatever in an area you know wildfires may happen there and you have some time to do something about it (or ignore it, but knowing what’s going to happen)

Spoiler

Heat Waves are something I really want as a daily occurrence. As it stands wildfires are pretty similar to the disease mechanic in terms of not being very engaging or fun for a majority of players because of the consequences they add; feels bad having to leave base for an entire season twiddling your thumbs unless you're willing to invest in a lot of flingos. If I had to change summer I would change the way that wildfires are made. Instead of just smoldering, maybe small geysers of lava during a heat wave that spews from the ground smoldering everything in proximity and can be put out manually by the player at a cost to health unless they wear the Scalemail. Also, just giving a use to Scalemail in general. For example, an island that's on fire and cannot be safely traversed without either being Willow, or wearing the Scalemail.

 

[zacqiang]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

3) In a higher degree of complexity I’d make trading with antlion more engaging, and if you not only keep it alive, but appease it in a special way, it will consider you a friend and actually help you to put out fires. Perhaps signaling it for help with some item involving desert stones, will make a limited special sandstorm sent by your friend, that puts out all fires in a large radious around the player, for example. This storm will not cause all the slowdown and low visibility it causes at oasis, just put out all and any fires for 20 seconds or so.

This is a really good idea ngl, since it gives desert stones a use in solo play. Though I doubt that Klei will make this as the Luxury Fan from Moose/Goose does exactly the same thing but without the sandstorm.

Since desert stones are only obtainable during summer (and Loot Stash in winter), I think it can be a summer-only exclusive consumable where you can use to teleport to Antlion (which you have befriended in some way) when you are outside venturing and you see smoldering. Since the original mechanic of wildfires is that smoldering objects will not burn when you unload the area, desert stones (or a Magic Tab consumable crafted with desert stones) can be used to teleport to Antlion, and immediately unloads the smoldering area.

This doesn't break existing mechanics, doesn't replace existing craftables (namely Luxury Fan, Telelocator Staff, Ice Flingos, Water Balloon, Watering Can), and the teleportation slightly inconveniences players since they have to venture out from the Oasis desert every time they use the consumable (which is also another interesting reason for basing in the Oasis). And on the plus side, this encourages players to venture out from their comfort zone since they know that they have a failsafe should wildfires occur.

The whole mechanic can be centered on having perks (in terms of teleportation) for befriending Antlion instead of killing him, and solo players can have a use for desert stones outside of existing unusable crafts like the Lazy Deserter.

[Mx-Pain]

Wildfires should be applied to players too.

Sandtorm all over the constant.

Antlion earthquakes should be happen at least once everyday.

[SecretPizzaMan]

2 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Well it doesn't stand for me howling in back alleys lol. I'm keeping the void part a secret though.

HowlVoid is made of void, proof? There's void balls in his profile picture.

[minespatch]

14 minutes ago, SecretPizzaMan said:

HowlVoid is made of void

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[DonBobo]

If we get a Winter Island, I would love to see an item that can only be obtained there in Summer when world temperature is at its highest. Maybe something like Icecalibur. 

[prettynuggets]

still wondering why antlion loot can be obtained without killing her .. i would love if the bucket can give u the googles blueprint instead so can kill her for her main loot and those beautiful statues 


i always turn off wild fire in my own server . i can deal with heat . but i cant stand so much stuff smoldering far away . when i get there the stuff already in flames ... 

how to make summer better ? ummm .. no idea .. basically summer is same as other season . just more annoying with wild fire ... 


 

[ShadowDuelist]

4 hours ago, zacqiang said:

Though I doubt that Klei will make this as the Luxury Fan from Moose/Goose does exactly the same thing but without the sandstorm.

True. What I considered is that the antlion solution would only work by actively cooperating with antlion which limits the uses of this to summer, and (maybe) be a lot stronger than the luxury fan.
The luxury fan can be kept on you at any season, works for fire hounds in autumn, and does not require you to actively do anything special once you got the feathers.

So I think they would be optional complementary things. Though I like your ideas.

[Milordo]

9 hours ago, Dollmaker said:

 And i feel for whats the hardest season

Strange, i always thought the spring was the hardest and many players agreed on that. Plus it's a nice trap put by klei for newcomers, when winter is gone and they think the worst is over, oh poor souls....

[Meneervis]

8 minutes ago, Milordo said:

Strange, i always thought the spring was the hardest and many players agreed on that. Plus it's a nice trap put by klei for newcomers, when winter is gone and they think the worst is over, oh poor souls....

a bad spring with tons of frog rains/pouring rains is a pain for sure, but I think summer is consistently more annoying to deal with.

[Milordo]

6 minutes ago, Meneervis said:

a bad spring with tons of frog rains/pouring rains is a pain for sure, but I think summer is consistently more annoying to deal with.

It's just boring. If you mean annoying because for the wildfires, well i disable them, simple as they should be. 

Now in spring you have: all the wet mechanic that overclass easily the temperature mechanic, frogs, a giant duck that if you don't know could spawn in your base, many animals in heat and other details i'm not remembering now. This seems to me really annoying but still more fair than wildfires or Antlion.

[zacqiang]

3 minutes ago, Meneervis said:

frog rains

are annoying to the point where I turn them off indefinitely when I find them coming every 2 days over the duration of the season. Imagine getting rotting giant crops one year just because I can't harvest them due to unstoppable frog rains.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I think they've tackled it with just giant trees and called a day with it. I mean, not gonna lie - they're pretty damn dandy, but they only make shoreline bases more viable than anything. Most I can hope it that we'll eventually be able to make patches of water or something on land to plant more of those knobby trees or if other giant trees were a thing. Otherwise I think maybe some special structure that would take up smoldering and would extinguish itself, like, with lureplant priority.