The March QOL Beta is Coming Monday!

[AmyJane]

I've tried out the new crafting menu, and I have a few thoughts:

Pros:

-Pausing so you have time to look around without wasting the day/getting killed by mobs is nice

-Seeing everything without having to scroll is nice

-The favorite tabs are kinda neat

-It's cool that mods have their own category. Makes it easy to check if an item is working without having to try to find it in the submenus.

-The search is nice too.

 

Cons:

-My biggest issue with the new layout is this: The category pictures NEED to change. All black with sharp outlines doesn't fit the aesthetic of the game at all. PLEASE make the pictures/tabs colored and in the same art style as the rest of the game. Just use the pictures you already made for the old tabs. They were great. And for categories that didn't have an image before, just make new ones in the same art style as the existing ones and you'll be golden.

-I miss the snare icon that was used for survival tab in the old system (this is kind of a personal gripe, but still)

-Way more bulky when pulled out, and it's kind of busy. There's a lot of stuff on the screen all at once. Makes it kinda chaotic.

 

Overall Impression: Definitely usable. While the new system is different, it has some benefits, and the major drawback is something that can be fixed relatively easily. I'm REALLY impressed that all of the custom item mods people have made still work. BRAVO developers for implementing an entirely new layout without invalidating all of those existing mods. I was really depressed thinking that a lot of my favorite mods would be ruined, so I'm very pleasantly surprised that they still work. Even the HUD download I have works for the most part. It's not on the new menu obviously, because it wasn't programmed to account for that, but it still works on all the other areas (mini/map, day counter, inventory, etc). I was fully expecting a crash, but here it is, still working just fine. I am SO relieved.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

the menu is reaaaally good and confortable

AG fight has been improved a lot and the loot is too juicy ( i would personally remove yellow amulets from the loot table and add green ones tho)

didnt expect qol on turfs and other recipes neither allowing us to have all events on

new kind of hound waves

i need to test wolfgang changes (needing to git gud to keep mightiness sounds very interesting) but for me this is already a top 5 dst updates when i was expecting not being interested on it

[xDarkSoul18x]

I think with more end-gamey fights like the guardian you guys did a great job with what you have going on (More mechanics and involvement). I would just lower the time it is stunned in the second phase or give it a pissy boss mode at critical health. Other than that, looks and played good.

[PetulantPansy]

10 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

 

new kind of hound waves

 

is the day 100+ varg during hound waves confirmed? 

 

that's good and bad. Good in that this requires some level of team work now during hound waves since these aren't easy to solo. 

[QuartzBeam]

1 minute ago, PetulantPansy said:

is the day 100+ varg during hound waves confirmed? 

It is the opposite of confirmed. The Vargs appear to be a placeholder that will be replaced by the weaker Varglets.

 

2 minutes ago, PetulantPansy said:

that's good and bad. Good in that this requires some level of team work now during hound waves since these aren't easy to solo.

Requiring team work for hound waves would be a huge middle finger to any solo players.

Though it probably will be good, provided that having fewer mobs per wave, even if some are beefed up, will be easier to handle than 10+ hounds.

[ZombieDupe]

Read some feedback from others already and checked out the new menu myself. Love it, but there are things to iron out. Won't dwell on much and will just get right to the point.

Color code it 100% and ideally set it in a group of threes, not twos. This is much easier to recognize in my opinion. Stuff here is almost grouped in such a way that almost makes sense and some of the tabs are next to one another (like science and refine tabs near magic tab as all are necessary for progress and nautical next to beefalo riding tab as they are both forms of transport).

Squeeze down the crafting tab to 2/3 or 3/4 of its current size you can definitely do it. There are 22 tabs but the "Everything" tab you can get rid of making it 3x7 which is 21. How do you make the player be able to see everything? Make them deselect the tab currently in view. Or add it next to the "Favorites" tab and change the icon completely, it looks way too similar to the "Winter Items" tab and at first glance I could hardly distinguish the two.

Might want to make the description pop-ups (which are very useful, thank you) to show from left to the right of the cursor instead of being centered as this makes some of the text impossible to view.

* Rename "Character Items" tab to "Character Items and Structures" and add a question mark on top of the player, makes the player more curious about what it is as it's a very niche concept while question marks are a universally recognized symbol and makes the player curious about the very top left tab. You have players responding to the question blocks by jumping under them in Mario games as proof of that.

* The "Armor" tab needs to be replaced with a shield as it's a much more universally recognized symbol for protection (the Log Suit texture here also looks like a barrel which is not what you want) and set the tab before and above the "Weapons" tab. For whatever reason players by default do not understand the concept of needing to craft and keep armor on during combat in a survival game, only weapons to kill things with. The sheer necessity of armor may be something to rebalance some other time, increased durability on all armors, like 50% damage reduction overall and without armor you wouldn't lose anywhere near as much health as you do now to not need armor anywhere near as much.

* The new "Clothing" tab texture is a mess when first taking a look at what you're even looking at. Top hat texture alone from the previous "Dress" tab would have captured the idea just fine, if not better.

* The original basic boat texture you had is much more recognizable as a boat than the game's circle plank pad with a cloth-strapped stick on it. Please change it to what you had in the showcase screenshot before the beta came online or something along the lines. The same could be said for some other tabs too honestly.

 

* Definitely change the event and "Decorations" tab textures. I actually had to go into the game to check what these two tabs even meant. First I thought the former was some important tab while the other had something to do with gardening like bees for example, but it turns out it was just the event tab (the old calendar from world settings before could have been an icon for it to make it more distinct) and the other was decorations. The "Decorations" tab should really be renamed "Signs and Decorations" as it contains many markers which are much more useful especially in a multiplayer setting and have its texture changed to a sign.

* Could add the + icon on top of the heart for the "Healing" tab.

Note: The straw roll is under the "Healing" tab yet it doesn't restore health, only sanity. Might want to make the straw roll restore at least a little bit of health to match this in hindsight especially since the player has very little non-food healing options available to them. Something worth considering rebalancing in the future too, especially for healing from more basic food items like carrots and berries (like 5hp per when cooked for example).

 

EDIT: One last thing. The tooltips are nice, if not too long and pass too quick for anyone to realistically read and understand what they say while keeping them in memory over time. But if we are talking about controls, I can't stress enough how important it is to display visually all the different left/right mouse click + alt/shift/ctrl interactions you could have using an item or. You have something like this already displaying for when you can right click to eat something or right click to dig something with a shovel and you most certainly have all these controls already shown for controller input. Please cover this sometime soon so none has to tell anyone how to split stacks or move stuff quickly from one open container to inventory or vice versa. Might also want to think about how to communicate to the player that (by default) attack is F and Spacebar is for picking up items too.

[. . .]

11 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Color code it 100% and ideally set it in a group of threes, not twos. This is much easier to recognize in my opinion.

This's just my opinion but coloring the backgrounds feels it'd look sort of out of place, I think just have colored icons we had before would be enough as they were very recognizable already. 

[Well-met]

haven't tried the beta but apparently deerclops doesn't seem to keep up his aim with targets so you can just waddle all around him and you'll never get hit. It feels like the overkill damage was somewhat justified

[abrocator]

4 hours ago, PetulantPansy said:

is the day 100+ varg during hound waves confirmed? 

 

that's good and bad.

Only good hound wave update is the one that gets rid of it. Forced+timed attacks is bad game design and seriously outdated.

Make the world more dangerous to interact with. More dangerous biomes like the deep jungle in Hamlet. Don’t make a tame world and then make some inconvenient threat ambush you every time when you have just gun powdered 300 stone fruits.

[SomebodyRandom]

46 minutes ago, Well-met said:

haven't tried the beta but apparently deerclops doesn't seem to keep up his aim with targets so you can just waddle all around him and you'll never get hit. It feels like the overkill damage was somewhat justified

I find that the way Deerclops attacks work now makes the fight more fun due to new ways you're able to kite it.

Also the timing for kiting it is still slim if you want to take full advantage of the number of hits you can get in per kite. In my testing I got hit many times even with a 1.2x speed boost when kiting before this beta I could pull the fight flawlessly.

[AmyJane]

@ZombieDupe

You make some good suggestions. I think the color coding of tabs might be a bit much. It doesn't really match the game aesthetic, but I do like your idea of organizing by threes. I wouldn't change the armor icon to a shield. We don't even have a shield in the game. Everyone knows what a log suit does.

Really looking at the new menu, there is a lot of redundancy in the tabs that I think could be eliminated. This is my vision of what might be nicer:

The Mods button remains at the top, as well as the search window and sort options. We also retain the customizable frequently used tabs on the side.

The sections are as follows in vertical columns:

• Character Specific Items (Special things, like Wanda's watches, Woody's Axe, Maxwell's Book, etc)
• Favorite items (Whatever you mark with the star)
• Event Items (Items that are exclusive to whatever event is going on in-world)

• Science (Science machine, alchemy engine, thermal measurer, lightening rod, rain-o-meter, etc)
• Magic (Prestihatitator, Shadow Manipulator, Amulets, Staves, etc)
• Refinement (Papyrus, Rope, Boards, Cut Stone, Nightmare Fuel, etc)

• Light (Fires, Lantern, Miner Hat, etc)
• Tools (Axe, Pickaxe, Shovel, Hammer, etc)
• Survival Tools (Bug Net, Basket Trap, etc)

• Cooking (Crock Pot, Drying Rack, Salt Box, Recipe Book, [I think the Ice Box could go here since it's a kitchen thing], etc)
• Farming (Garden Digamajig, Composting Bin, Bucket-o-Poop, etc)
• Healing (Healing Salve, Honey Poultice, Tillweed Salve, Booster Shot, Telltale Heart, etc)

• Weapons (Spear, Hambat, Bee Mine, Tail o' Three Cats, etc)
• Armor (Grass Suit, Log Suit, Marble Suit, Football Helmet, etc) 
• Clothing (All the clothing items, further broken down into season subcategories)

• Structures (Walls, Fences, Gates, Pig Houses, etc)
• Storage (Chests, Backpack, etc)
• Decoration/Markers (Signs, Potter's Wheel, etc)

• Beefalo Husbandry (Beefalo Bell, Beefalo Grooming Station, Brush, All the Saddles, Salt Lick, etc)
• Seafaring/Nautical (Boat Kit, Mast Kit, Anchor Kit, Steering Wheel Kit, Oar, etc) 
• Fishing (Fishing Rod, Sea Fishing Rod, all the Floats and Lures, etc)

I think items should be restricted to one tab if at all possible. If you look under the category that you think something should be and it's not there, that's what the search box is for. Don't make everything so redundant.

I don't feel that we need to have specific tabs just for weather related items, since all of them fall under other categories. I'd just have subcategories under clothing where clothing items for a given season show up to the right of the marker for that season (see the photo). There could be a subcategory for sanity as well for the things like the Garland, Seawreath, etc)

I'm not sure what the plan is for when we come up to something that gives us a temporary tab (like the Ancient Alter, Potter's Wheel, etc), but I guess the menu could just expand to show the temporary tab or something, then retract again when we're out of range).

 

 

[SuperDonuts]

On 2/28/2022 at 12:54 PM, SinancoTheBest said:

Here's Klei's history on their last 13 major DST releases, they seem to release at almost 6PM, averaging at 5:45

NEWS: All rejoice! The beta is here, merely 7 minutes later than the Average release time

Hello, I was impressed by your graph.

Do you have the same for the beta duration before release? I can’t wait to play with his update.

[Ruperstiltskin]

My only complaint with the new crafting menu is that it is way bigger that should be. Wouldn't it be super nice to have an option to make the menu thinner instead of smaller? So maybe instead of 11 tabs per row we can have like 5/6 or so? Pretty please 

[Archswifter]

Anyone know how long Beta's usually last? The more updates we get the more I look forward to when it comes out.

[QuartzBeam]

47 minutes ago, Archswifter said:

Anyone know how long Beta's usually last? The more updates we get the more I look forward to when it comes out.

Depends on the beta really.

This one looks like it'll take at least 2 weeks.

[queen_luna]

how will this work on xbox/ps4?

[ZombieDupe]

On 3/2/2022 at 1:48 AM, AmyJane said:

I wouldn't change the armor icon to a shield. We don't even have a shield in the game. Everyone knows what a log suit does.

New players do not. I mentioned earlier, new players don't assume that armor is something you absolutely need if a survival game if you are going to charge into combat. Not even after dying dozens of times, I have enough experience observing other players to know it's true vast majority of the cases.

With color coding, the tab background don't have to be colored, that was just an example, you can color the icons themselves instead like they are in the main game branch right now, that's still making things color coded and will match the previous tab look, while coloring them in 3s. Maybe not with my layout unless you want a purple skull magic tab and a purple gem refine tab (that would still work though).

That also remind me that new players now might just assume there are 5 things you can craft overall and get confused about the other 4 free slots in the tab, not realising the crafting menu is bigger. I haven't tested the new menu too much, but does the lightbulb icon still appear on tabs and maybe the extended crafting tab button when you have materials to craft something new next to a crafting station? If not, that's a missed opportunity to indicate to the player that there is more to craft than 5 to 9 things in the game.

[LinknAllie]

God I'm hoping there's a switch to turn on the old crafting menu.

10 hours ago, Archswifter said:

Anyone know how long Beta's usually last? The more updates we get the more I look forward to when it comes out.

1-2 weeks

[AmyJane]

@ZombieDupe

Well, dude, not to sound mean or anything, but it's not all about new players. This game is six years old. The people keeping it alive at this point are veteran players from back in the day, not new players. And personally, I don't really care how new people interpret the menu. There's a million wiki pages and you can google just about anything. If they're having problems they can do at least a tiny bit of research. The menu should be geared toward people who know what they're doing and play the game consistently, and make it more streamlined for them. If new people care to get acquainted with the game they'd easily learn the menu and benefit from the streamlined nature in the future. God forbid a game have a little bit of a learning curve.

[Falkenpelz]

On 2/24/2022 at 9:04 PM, 1bubbainpa said:

Bro what ruins rush strat is this

The one where you wear a 0% minerhat for the AG fight and use two hambats at once, while a tiny pigguard watches you from the corner of the screen.

[Ali Bun]

Can I just say I don't like how messy the new UI is, I like that now you can add favorites to quickly make something but I think the ability to scroll and just find the stuff you need in where they normally are is better. In terms of single player, I don't like that it pauses my world when crafting, especially if Im playing like at night during winter and Im crafting a bunch, the flow of this game is kind of slow already but having to pause everytime I make something is something I think should be optional. If players that enjoy their game being paused when crafting to make it easier for them to learn then thats fine, but I really don't want to make my seasons longer because of the amount of pausing they game does. 

This also goes for multiplayer, I have yet to do multiplayer on the Beta but I can only assume its a bit more fustrating to navigate when the world can't be paused for you to make something. I get that adding things to your favorites fixes it in a way, but things are really seperated in weird ways. Why can't the fighting tab just still hold all necessary fighting gear instead of making three random tabs? Or like the season gear which are basically all the same times in different tabs, because the diversity of their uses can be for any season? I think this can help newer players understand what the items are for, but I think that they could figure that out on their own or just through playing around.

I do however like the little tips and such on loading menus and I think since there is no tutorial for DST newer players that actually read them can find it helpful. I also do sorta like the fixes to Wolfgang, I think the ability to gain strength back from fighting it a great option, but Im unsure about the whole losing strength depending on the health of an enemy...Wolfgang already has greater sanity lost, and he no longer has his speed boost as well, so adding the extra downside in my opinion feels like it isnt necessary. I have only tested it out a little bit so maybe I'll change my mind in the future, just I need to experience being the caves during nightmare cycle with a bunch of shadow creatures on my butt to see how well that last. But thats all I have to say, bye~.

[Hornete]

28 minutes ago, Ali Bun said:

I think should be optional.

There is an option for it.

[Ali Bun]

1 hour ago, Hornete said:

There is an option for it.

Oh thank god nice

[LinknAllie]

9 hours ago, Hornete said:

There is an option for it.

Thank the Lord above.

[allmeitysk]

As I user I want to be able to click on required craftable resources so that I can efficiently craft component needed. (instead of searching or trying to find this component in the list or categories). 

Essentialy I want to be able to click on Electrical doodad to open its crafting and craft it instead of now navigating in the menu.