Protect the Pumpkin Lantern

[Lyl2333]

 When you place a couple pumpkin lanterns on your base, there is a high chance that your default action destroys them.They even make a Chester sound when crushed and they have the health of a butterfly. I'm pretty sure it's some sort of dark humour. (And Wigfrid will say "Dö yöu wïsh tö fïght, vegetäble?" even when the pumpkin does not bite with his carved teeth) I always have to tell my friends to be careful around them or everyone rolls back

 

[minespatch]

13 minutes ago, Lyl2333 said:

here is a high chance that your default action destroys them

I'm guilty of this.

[SinancoTheBest]

Pumpkin Lanterns are quite nice when you use them. Sadly they have some unnecessary complications that discourages the use of them. I hope they are touched on a future QoL update. I have 4 tweak recommendations for these light sources but reallt #1 and #2 would be enough in light of the changes brought by recent updates.

1) Make them targetable only by Ctrl + Mouseclick like other ally entities. It makes no sense for them to have an attack priority like an enemy where any F and Ctrl+F can accidentally break them.

2) Make us able to preserve them with Wax like the giant vegetables to make them last indefinitely. It really wouldn't be OP since beeswax is rather limited and the lantern is fragile. If there is a need to balance "indefinite light" out, waxed pumpkin lanterns may be made to not release any fireflies upon destruction.

3) Make them release the fireflies upon their own expiration. Right now making pumpkin lanterns is a risky business as you risk losing the rather limited fireflies if you don't babysit the pumpkin lanterns and destroy them right before their expiration. This was a biggerneed when fireflies were largely limited but now they are quite unlimited thanks to the waterlogged biomes. Still such a change would relieve us from the risk of losing fireflies by using them.

4) Increase their spoilage time. While DST is definitely an improvement over DSA by having them last much longer at about 10 days, it stteel feels very short in the flow of things. They'd benefit a lot if they were made to last twice or even thrice longer but waxability suggested on #2 would already be fixing this somewhat.

[Lyl2333]

9 minutes ago, SinancoTheBest said:

1) Make them targetable only by Ctrl + Mouseclick like other ally entities. It makes no sense for them to have an attack priority like an enemy where any F and Ctrl+F can accidentally break them

I agree with this one. I remember in DSA or some other version you default attack Chester, which has been fixed. Still, I cannot see why anyone would hate a nice pumpkin head that glows in the dark. But I think an indefinite light source carved out of a pumpkin is still a bit overpowered, given that other kinds of indefinite light source in game requires killing the toad stool or at least Klaus, or they wander off like a light bug. But waxing the pumpkin to expand its life sounds reasonable. 

Another of my idea: I saw someone in the game wiki discussing why the scarecrow is named "Friendly scarecrow" . Maybe we can add a "Hostile pumpkin lantern" that bites you and everyone around after being attacked, and maybe have the health of a bee.