Some thoughts and suggestions

[General Chaos]

First of I just want to offer some praise for this game. I've been playing survival games for a while now and am pretty familiar with the UnReal World, which is generally regarding as one of the most complex wilderness survival games. Thus, I admire and appreciate how accessible Don't Starve is. It's refreshing to play something intuitive that lets me use the mouse!

With that said, I'm curious about something, specifically the "research" mechanic in the game. I realize the developers plan to work on this quite a bit and the whole thing obviously fits the atmosphere of the game, but I'm curious regarding whether or not this is intended to work instead of or in addition to some sort of skill based system. To me it would make sense to have several levelable skills (e.g. lumberjacking, mining, herbalism, cooking) that would increase with use. The obvious challenge would be balancing the late game so that a player with high skills wouldn't result in an easy game. I think this could be accomplished though, particularly if dynamic/semi-random events are added to the game that can be made more challenging depending on time survived.

Apart from the skills suggestion, I also support adding seasons to the game. I'm not sure if too much complexity is the right thing for this game but seasons don't necessarily require adding another status meter (i.e. temperature). The world could be the main aspect of the game affected by the change in seasons.

Another suggestion: I know that players can now set up a camp but in my game the camp seems extremely unwieldy simply because there is no central structure in which to store and organize goods. Note that I am NOT suggesting ANYTHING like Minecraft. I absolutely appreciate that the current buildable items do not have to be pieced together bit by bit. With that said, I think making the tent "enterable" or something along these lines would be very interesting and could help reduce clutter in and around camp. Perhaps even make the tent a sort of house akin to Animal Crossing, wherein the player can enter and place some items of use.

Finally, has any thought been given to item quality? This is something that again, might be too complex for the vision of the final game, but could add some depth. Essentially item quality would be determined by player skill (if that were added) and quality of ingredients. What if trees, rocks, etc. dropped randomly determined varieties of quality ingredients, maybe even some occasional rare super high quality ones. This could add some incentive to get out there and explore even more.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Like I said, this game is fantastic and I'm having more fun with it than just about any survival game I've played to date.