Varg in hound waves

[-Nick-]

3 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

I'm all for Vargs in hound waves, but their loot is... really bad.

Not sure what to give them, but anythings better than a bit of monster meat and some teeth, you will already have many stacks of those by the time Vargs can even show up in a hound wave.

Maybe a giant fang to craft a whistle that can make nearby hounds your gaurds. Just like hound whistle from Year of the Varg.

The whistle could only work for hounds that are not tied to a varg. Feeding friendly hounds could increase the loyalty time.

[Well-met]

4 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

I'm all for Vargs in hound waves, but their loot is... really bad.

Not sure what to give them, but anythings better than a bit of monster meat and some teeth, you will already have many stacks of those by the time Vargs can even show up in a hound wave.

how about they drop a red eyeball which could feed and heal a beefalo to maximum instantly

or a low chance varg fang which despite looking different would functionally be a walrus tusk

[Juny Pear]

Honestly as someone who really doesn't see the fun in hound waves to begin with, Vargs are just one more reason to not really care for me. If hound waves would have some sort of deeper gameplay feature instead of the periodic waves that increase in size and frequency with no reason other than "challenge" I wouldn't mind them as much, but as they stand currently they really only serve to catch new players offguard and annoy more seasoned players, vargs only really serve to further exaggerate this.

Now I can totally get the argument of them existing for challenge to a certain point, it's supposed to be a check of sorts if the player has learned enough to overcome larger groups of enemies that have more than just 100 health, the problem in my eyes is just that they happen too frequently, increase in numbers too quickly and that it's super easy to figure out that a load of hound traps can mostly solve your problems with the waves (which in turn leads to a huge amount of busywork as a lot of players will then set up a huge area of tooth traps which all require maintainance, placement, crafting).

If hound waves were linked to something such as a boss that spawned on some sort of later day and can be satiated or killed to temporarily get rid of hound waves (for around 20 to maybe 30 days) then this could be more intruiging in my opinion and would be fine with the adition of vargs in waves (although it's overall still a really weird change i feel), but as it stands right now I can't help but feel hound waves are out of place in the game that dst currently is.

[Mantispidae]

4 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

The real problem with this change is that the people who play a world hundreds or thousands of days mostly focus on either learning the game, building a base, or just chilling with friends. In all 3 of these cases its fairly annoying to have hounds attacking in the first place , so arbitrarily throwing in vargs isnt something that would improve the game (as far as I can see).

Yep 100%. I play either solo in my own long-running worlds where I do nothing but screw around and build things to look nice, or I'm playing with my friends who don't play the game nearly as much as I do and are also limited by the cost of internet connections in multiplayer games. In my own world I already tend to turn off the waves once they start getting too annoying or filling up my chests with teeth, and in my friend worlds they're a decent enough threat that tends to cause a death or two every time either through bad luck or lag (or someone can't get out of base fast enough and we end up scrambling to remove a fire hound)

Unless we get more settings to customize the specifics of hound waves (how fast the hound numbers scale, how frequently they happen, and how the vargs work) I would not want these things in there. For a skilled player they're just a time waster that doesn't give great loot and for everyone else they just make playing past 100+ way more annoying. 

Maybe add periodic special waves that show up randomly after day 100? Like maybe you get just a varg, or all ice hounds, or maybe even add in some non-hound waves. Especially if the vargs show up every time, then they aren't really breaking up the monotony of the waves anyway.

[Picklesaurus]

3 minutes ago, Well-met said:

how about they drop a red eyeball which could feed and heal a beefalo to maximum instantly

or a low chance varg fang which despite looking different would functionally be a walrus tusk

How about if this Varg fang could be crafted into an item that works similar to a beefalo horn, but instead of attracting, it makes a sound to dismiss an incoming hound wave? This item could have something like 2 or 3 uses before breaking. 

[firoborn]

i dont like the idea of a varg spawning in the middle of a boss fight or at all anyways, but if is gonna stay i hope they make the hound wave varg different from the hunt one perhaps this varg has a chance of despawning or running away if you kill all the hounds around it or make it so that if you take the trouble of killing it the cooldown for the next hound wave triples 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 minutes ago, Picklesaurus said:

How about if this Varg fang could be crafted into an item that works similar to a beefalo horn, but instead of attracting, it makes a sound to dismiss an incoming hound wave? This item could have something like 2 or 3 uses before breaking. 

im all for all of having vargs on hound waves if that means less ammount of hound waves

right now having vargs only means that i will need to bring pan flute/ice staff as an extra annoying thing

i like hound waves but in late game you wanna build having a bigger challenge without profit on something that already interrupts you... isnt. agood desing and less taking in count how they are hated by many players

im glad they are adding world progression and giving importance to vargs but this new thing needs improvements

 

[Monkey Cups]

Hounds and vargs are both annoying, all the more reason for me to toggle the waves off.

[Mike23Ua]

I’m still waiting for a dev to come to this thread and say “this bug will be fixed in the next hotfix”

it certainly would not surprise me in the slightest bit.  

[ArubaroBeefalo]

12 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m still waiting for a dev to come to this thread and say “this bug will be fixed in the next hotfix”

it certainly would not surprise me in the slightest bit.  

isnt a bug

[Capybara007]

next qol = hound waves rework?

[kittem]

hmm, now it looks like they are going to be adding "varglets"
(side note, i know the different names are to prevent confusion from players and make the code not wonky but, it seems kind of silly for different names of the same species like kitcoon/kittycoon/catcoon and vargling/varglet/varg, unless they are different stages of lifespan. but the same accidental update reveal calls them a "cousin" of varg species, which throws that out the window...not that i cant rewrite 'canon' with my own information..)
but yeah. hopefully there is SOME sort of benefit to this. hound attacks are annoying and vargs dont have good drops. at least with hounds you can get material for traps, and sometimes gems, but with vargs its just meat and teeth, so what? hopefully something more...

[minespatch]

55 minutes ago, kittem said:

unless they are different stages of lifespan

Would like that added in the future.

[Notecja]

I am literally all these options, just randomly depending on mood.

But sometimes I would simply kill a varg just because I am Wendy player and she has kinds gear to deal with it.

It's a story, when one of my friends was "in love" with hunting and tracking, but everything other than koalefant, it was like "Notka, save us".

[dish-order man]

Personally, I would very much welcome this type of modification where quality wins over frequency.

 

I think that as players live in a world for some years, their way of playing tends to be building an epic home, however overly frequent hound raids can disrupt their plans. So the high quality monsters infrequently appear rather than the large batches of annoying monsters frequently coming to your home is a very good change IMO.

 

But in fact, varg is not a very well designed creature, because his drop is actually, nothing but useless, dog tooth is a complete garbage that is very difficult to solve in the later game, I can only put it to feed the lureplant or put it in a bundle and throw it into the sea to completely destroy all these garbage

[ALCRD]

And they added it ... *sigh*

Sort of.. Varglets instead Vargs

[Lord of Bunwich]

Vargs are essentially a "punish" mob that are an optional encounter.

Adding them to hound waves means that literally just existing past the hound wave cap is pain. IIRC, Vargs have a harsh kiting pattern and 

Now, if they want to tie Vargs into hound waves, they can either make a specialized Hound Event that includes fighting a Varg, or make it so that eliminating some special Varg stops the hound waves, if only temporarily.

[Yuuko]

16 hours ago, Capybara007 said:

next qol = hound waves rework?

I would really hope its more of a re-work than just throwing a varg into the hound wave...

Hound waves are like summer smoldering - they are very binary, and unengaging mechanics.  They happen, you must prepare x to deal with them.  Do you have x?  no problem.  Did you forget x?  totally screwed.  They both could be more engaging systems that players interact with and we'd all be better for it - and if they would be more engaging systems its okay if they become more difficult.  As they are now any scaling up in difficulty is just punitive.

The bottom line is - a lot of players just turn these systems off.  Which should tell you there are problems with them...  and the problems aren't "too easy."  I don't think scaling either to be more difficult without a greater rework is a good idea at all.

Really this game is not built to be a combat simulator.  Targeting between multiple enemies can be a real pain, attack timings are inconsistent, visuals don't always line up with hit boxes, player hit stun is relentless, etc.  If they want to try and force everything into these mini-game combat scenarios we need better controls to deal with it.

Should probably come with some re-branding too, b/c the more you're forced to use combat to deal with problems the less emergent / sandbox experience we get.  It honestly feels a bit vindictive when someone looks at something like tooth traps for hound waves, or a firetrap on bee queen and wants the methods deleted form the game...  The game isn't a combat sim, its a survival game.  We're given these tools and we found a use for them.  Why the hate?

[Cannoli]

How make a annoying mechanic even more annoying: vargs.

Just put an option to disable this terrible idea.

[Cheggf]

Maybe you could make a shrine from the bones of hound mounds and offering it monster meat would delay the next wave while desecrating it would cause a boss fight that would put a long cooldown on the next wave. Maybe even give you some treasure.

Would fix the issue of the waves being nothing but tedious to those who can easily defeat them since they would be able to easily defeat this boss. Could even let the boss summon these "varglets" as adds to ensure their assets are used.

[CaptainChaotica]

Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah WHAT?!!  Dude!  Thanks for alerting me, guys, I would've had no idea!  My thoughts on this are thusly:

1.  Vargs should only appear as a surprise on hunts--aka, something the player DOES have some control over, since you can just...choose not to follow the dirt piles at all.

2.  I hope I have enough tooth traps by then...

...Notorious

[Mike23Ua]

1 minute ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah WHAT?!!  Dude!  Thanks for alerting me, guys, I would've had no idea!  My thoughts on this are thusly:

1.  Vargs should only appear as a surprise on hunts--aka, something the player DOES have some control over, since you can just...choose not to follow the dirt piles at all.

2.  I hope I have enough tooth traps by then...

...Notorious

Ima be honest here, just seems like something they added to make sure you’ve already started that Bell Bound Beefalo taming before Day 7.. 

However, I’d rather deal with one Varg with a capped limit (3-5 sounds reasonable) at how many hounds it can spawn at once.. rather than have 20-40 hounds chase me.

Hopefully they’ll continue to spice up “Waves” let’s just stop calling it Hound waves altogether…

Id like to see Bat waves like Hamlet had, among other types of waves, a Hilarious land invading Skitter Squid Wave could be fun.. just ANYTHING that breaks up the same boring and repetitive pattern of repeating the same predictable gameplay over and over and over and over again.

They can add more sounds & change some quotes/add new ones to accommodate 

“Glorp.. Something Bad coming..” -Wurt *all*

”I haven’t seen fish acting this Aggressively in awhile..” -Wicker Skittersquid wave.

”These Spiders won’t reason with me they think I stole their Cookies!” -Webber for incoming spider wave.

Varg/Varglets are okay I guess, but why limit it down to just hounds?

”I need to keep my eyes pealed incase that Suspicious looking Eyeball sends its Minions to spy on me again!” -Wilson incoming Suspicious Peeper wave.

You can turn Hunt surprises off….. I see no logical reason why Hound Waves or err just Monster Waves- Couldn’t get the same treatment.

Of course all of this is me just speculating as I obviously haven’t got a clue what Klei is up to..

But the posts where people assume this is leading up to a waves system rework gives me hope.

[CaptainChaotica]

32 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Ima be honest here, just seems like something they added to make sure you’ve already started that Bell Bound Beefalo taming before Day 7.. 

...well, I don't think beefalo training should be made necessary (?) either!  It's a pain in the butt to do and takes forever, and uses resources I need for crafting (such as lots and lots of grass).  

This just seems...no.  I do leave Hunt Surprises on, myself...but I'd prefer those creatures to only show up because of HUNTS.  Like I said, that at least kinda sorta still leaves it in the player's hands (or claws, or paws, or vines, or...)

(Well, I guess it could be worse...we COULD be getting surprise Ewecuses...)

Also if we do start getting waves of stuff other than hounds--are we talking INSTEAD OF or IN ADDITION TO, and if the latter, can they be spaced further apart?  Up in the higher numbers of days, sometimes it seems hound waves happen like _every freaking three days_.  So, you can barely leave the base to go on exploring/gathering trips, as it is...

...Notorious

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, CaptainChaotica said:

...well, I don't think beefalo training should be made necessary (?) either!  It's a pain in the butt to do and takes forever, and uses resources I need for crafting (such as lots and lots of grass).  

Just because it’s tedious to do, doesn’t mean it should be dismissed as a game feature, because unless Klei patched it- Bell Bound Beefalo can be carried off to other areas of the map you can break this bond and they will create their own herd in this new location.

As someone who SUCKS at fighting 40 hounds at once even AS WENDY.. I heavily and I mean HEAVILY Rely upon a field of Beefalo, or a Treeguardian, Nearby Spider Infestation, Deerclops, Bearger, MooseGoose, Dragonfly, Eye of Terror etc to kill hound waves for Me- because I don’t feel like wasting time setting up fields of tooth traps or whatever.

I have effectively managed to kill Bearger just with several fields of mated Beefalo (leaving a few down in caves to guarantee recovery in case of accidental surface extinction) 

The game is changing in huge ways, and Klei needs to embrace those changes.. so what you got a Varglet in your hound wave now?? I have an Infinity amount of Beefalo to throw at him.

[CaptainChaotica]

I don't totally "dismiss it as a game feature", I just think it shouldn't be NECESSARY.  This is a sandbox game.  There are different ways to play.  Not everybody likes/uses the same ones.

Also, sometimes it takes a LONG time to even _find_ the beefalo.  Start _taming_ them by Day 7? By Day 100 sure, but by Day 7 I might not even know where they are.  Also, I use Huge worlds, which take longer to explore--but even BEFORE I started doing that, I'd sometimes take like two or three entire normal-length seasons to find a single Beefalo.  

And no, I'm also not willing to shrink all my worlds down, permanently, to have a better chance to find beefalo so I can start taming them earlier because of stupid varglets.  But I also don't want to turn hound waves off entirely, because I don't feel the game should have NO regular dangers in between giants.  I want my game manageable, not _completely_ safe.

AND, you need grass and twigs for so many things, and it takes a _ton_ of them to fully feed a beefalo once, and then there's, y'know, summer and winter, and there might be other players who need the stuff too...  And no.  I'm NOT giving up my traps (both kinds), drying racks, spears, logsuits, helmets, torches, and ability to make a camp/small endo fire on the go (all things that use a lotta grass and some twigs).

Last but not least, can we at least stop with the dismissive attitude?  "so what you got a Varglet in your hound wave now??"  Sounds a bit snarky to me.  Maybe...maybe NOT do that...?

Spoiler

(don't worry, people, I won't be answering this anymore.  I've said my full piece--reading any more "Just play it THIS one particular way and you'll be fine, stop complaining!" messages won't accomplish anything. Sigh.)

...Notorious