Randomness in this game is what kills the fun

[Hornete]

Just now, reallychina said:

Salt is bad RNG because cookie cutters are there

What?

[Cheggf]

Speed running is affected by RNG a lot, as it usually is. The issue isn't the game, it's that you think wasting an hour in a world and restarting is better than spending 5 more minutes looking for what you need.

[reallychina]

26 minutes ago, Hornete said:

What?

yes

[Guille6785]

Everything you mentioned in your example could've been circumvented with better execution, so I'll just give you some feedback based on what you said if you wish to improve

1. If you practiced rushing ruins with a ham bat and learned to avoid damage as much as possible you wouldn't need an additional ageless watch or even the alarming clock; this solves your marble problem entirely and on top of that you leave the ruins earlier, it's more consistent execution with better results. If you learn to rush ruins effectively enough there isn't even anything stopping you from doing so without armor or weapons, here's an example as wanda specifically since you're playing as her: https://youtu.be/ZhDj7YadIDs

2. Let's assume you want to explore a good % of the world before going to the ruins regardless (which you did), in this case you would be wayyy better off starting your world by putting a saddle on a beefalo and riding it for a few days around the world while looking for landmarks and resources, this way you could feasibly explore the entirety of the mainland in just 7 days or so (even in a big world) while repairing the marble sculptures. That said you'd have to practice beefalo rushing a few times to get the hang of it because it can certainly be daunting at first, but it's well worth learning since you get a massive headstart (beefalo move 63% faster than a normal speed character) and by the time you're done you can ride your beef for a very decent amount of time without worrying about being bucked off; you can even take your beef to the ruins if you can properly prevent yourself from running into danger (aka rooks and nightmare monkeys)

3. You not finding any moles was the result of several mistakes; moggles are a crutch and you didn't need them to begin with, then you decided not to pick up any moles as you explored and simply tried to do so at the very end of the preparation phase (result of poor planning), and finally you clearly weren't looking in the right places to find moles; they spawn in large numbers near the portal, around the pig king, at mosaic, and even around the gigantic beehive or frog pond biomes

4. Even if you get the smallest ruins possible that still guarantees an x8 statue set piece with 2 bishops and x2 statue with broken station set piece at sacred as well as some amount of statues at military and all the loot from AG and ornate chests; your problem here was that you planned your game assuming that you'd get above average loot when the correct move is always to plan around getting the worst possible rng and then taking advantage of every bit of beneficial rng. Also there might be a chance you just didn't find all the ruins biomes to begin with so you missed out on loot

5. No eyed deer don't move at all while off screen, you should've simply crafted a backpack or trap to leave a map icon where you first found the herd

6. Shadow pieces and spiders don't aggro on each other so this part makes no sense (unless you somehow had the bishop hit some spiders with its aoe), but I'll just assume a piece despawned because you got too far away and it deaggroed. Your problem here was that you most likely panicked and ran away from the pieces expecting a miracle to happen, so I can't really tell you to do anything here besides just practice the fight in a more relaxed world to get more used to it. In your situation I would've killed the lvl 1 shadow knight as soon as it spawned then used the backstep watch and a cane to dodge the tier 2 shadow bishop and rook, kill the bishop and then do the rook last as that's both the easiest and fastest way. Also you should've killed the spiders around the set piece the first time you went there, you need the silk for pearl's quests anyway. Anything that happens to interrupt the fight is something you could've predicted and planned accordingly; this isn't rng, it's execution

7. If you absolutely don't want to bother finding a salt biome, you can completely bypass it by deconstructing 2 of pearl's lures and then duping cookie cutter shells with the cookie cutter cap. Green gems aren't even rng dependent by killing dragonfly and/or spazmatism, but you need to gain more consistency with your early game to fit those bosses

8. Meteor fields only spawn in the mosaic and bee meteor biomes, this was completely your fault

It's not an rng problem if with more experience you could achieve exactly the same goals without relying on good generation/loot, hope you find this helpful

 

[SinancoTheBest]

41 minutes ago, reallychina said:

yes

might you some how be stuck in September 2021? Cookie cutter shells are super common now (50% drop rate). With a little expedition to any salt marsh you end up with enough cookie cutter shells (and twice the monster meat) to build pearl's house and make helmets for everyone. It's such an abundant resource now and with how many salt marshes and seaweeds typical world gen produces, it's not at all unfair RnG. If anything, getting enough salt for a salt box is more reliable than finding gears for an ice box.

[reallychina]

8 minutes ago, SinancoTheBest said:

might you some how be stuck in September 2021? Cookie cutter shells are super common now (50% drop rate). With a little expedition to any salt marsh you end up with enough cookie cutter shells (and twice the monster meat) to build pearl's house and make helmets for everyone. It's such an abundant resource now and with how many salt marshes and seaweeds typical world gen produces, it's not at all unfair RnG. If anything, getting enough salt for a salt box is more reliable than finding gears for an ice box.

The issue is finding the salt to get to the cutters. Sometimes its relatively fast. Sometimes it can take 2 or 3 days.

 

The salt itself is a luxury resorce so no problem being rng, the cutters on the other hand lock content

[Copyafriend]

1 minute ago, reallychina said:

The salt itself is a luxury resorce so no problem being rng, the cutters on the other hand lock content

What on earth content are you missing out on by not finding cookie cutters in a timely manner?

[Hornete]

1 minute ago, Copyafriend said:

What on earth content are you missing out on by not finding cookie cutters in a timely manner?

There's the Pearl house i suppose. But I never found salt too be too difficult ti fubd. Salt shoals are always near the shore so you find them generally quickly.

[reallychina]

16 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

What on earth content are you missing out on by not finding cookie cutters in a timely manner?

You will usually find salt in a decent time. Then there are those times when for no particular reason, you wont.

[SinancoTheBest]

^And besides you can't build Pearl's house fully before summer hits you with cacti flowers anyway so 65 days is an extremely, extremely generous time scale for you to locate a salt marsh or 3-4 deep sea treasures for someone wanting to do pearl's quest as fast as possible

[HowlVoid]

Without RNG the game would be less strategic and thus less enjoyable, imo.

Just thinks of them as, surprise mechanics.

[Auth]

So you're complaining about... random world generation?

You know the whole point of random world generation is to have a slightly different playthrough each time, right?

It's meant for you to best figure out how to adapt to that specific world, and what to do from there.

While rushing things like the ruins or bosses is possible, it is not the main focus of the world generation nor the game itself, especially not on some kind of fixed schedule where everything gets done as fast as possible. That's the nature of randomly generated games. Enough skill does not need luck.

As for base placement or boss fights getting interrupted, that just sounds like you need to check the areas you're settling a little more thoroughly before getting comfortable there. Meteor biomes are always in the same spots (Generally, meteor fields move around sometimes, but they stick to their main biomes pretty closely) and most boss areas can be scoped out beforehand and even transformed with cobblestones or structures. If lets say where you really want to put your base has something disastrous near it (meteor field on oasis) then that's where that whole "Adapt to the world" thing comes in, and you should probably stick that base somewhere else, even if it doesn't have all the perceived benefits of your last one. That and if you find yourself doing the same thing in the game over and over and over you will eventually get sick of it anyways, most likely.

Main thing I would suggest, is don't expect things out of your worldgen. Otherwise you're going to be sitting there rerolling for the reed trap for 900 years instead of playing the game.

[Pig Princess]

I think there is a degree of randomness that is optimal for enjoyment (at least for me): any more - and game turns into "forget any planning, just be lucky with dices" (and reroll the same fight/dialog again until you get lucky X times, pain of RPG based on dices), any less and it turns into game of memorization of every boulder under player's feet (and no room for improvization is left, everything is defined). In both cases game turns into groundhog day (repeat for luck or repeat to memorize), which quickly becomes boring, and has 0 replayability on top of that.

I don't want DS/T to turn into any of this, and right now game does fairly good job at this (although some areas could use an improvement from my perspective).

Onto your examples, @kNichael.

1. For Wanda's alarming clock your major rng challenge is to find marble and purple/red+blue gems, right?

a. For marble aside from statues and earthquakes you can find touchstone, die and resurrect, that will give you 2 marble per touchstone (there are 2 on surface, 2 in the caves). This is still rng, but it's yet another opportunity to combat said rng if you happen to find these earlier than other sources.

b. For gems you can: kill Dragonfly, kill bishops, visit biomes with a lot of graves and try your luck more times (the more you try, the less is chance that you fail every single time; key biome is mosaic since there is always cluster of graves there). Speaking of bishops, you can spawn one on day 11 if you happen to find set piece, or you can go to the ruins with prestihatitator prototyped and kill damaged bishop that you are guaranteed to find in multiple places (broken station with bishop and knight, double bishop room with 8 statues, fully repaired pseudoscience station with double bishop as guards).

c. You can rush ruins with dark sword instead, especially since you will have to get living logs for shadow manipulator anyway. You also can rush ruins with ham bat or any other weapon, and craft alarming clock after that (you typically get a lot of gems from both mining statues and hammering piles of broken clockworks).

d. You can avoid fighting. All statues except 2 without gem in 8-statue room can be mined without combat, and as for stations, there are unguarged ones; you can also use hutch as bait for guarded ones (be careful as it still can die, and obviously die faster to 2 bishops attacking simultaneously).

All of this can be applied to ageless watch №2 (alternative marble sources, looking for enemies/structures that guarantee red gem, not crafting 2nd watch). Speaking of not crafting 2nd watch: better armor and backstep watch could help with that. Thulecite armor blocks 2 times more damage than football helmets/log suits, for example, might as well use it since you are already there; plus there is night armor, and even though finding swamp is rng, if you happen to find one - the more tools for you to combat bad rng in other aspect. You can also practice kiting and not angering too many clockworks at a time; in double rook room you can make rooks kill each other and other clockworks without attacking them yourself.

2. Moleworms. Decidious forest is a good place to search for moleworms, but starter biomes and mosaic are also places where they can spawn. There is often (I'm not sure if it's guaranteed) grassland with featureless space with a lot (5+) of moleworms there. If you happen to find only one moleworm, you can disconnect briefly/change shards so this emptied burrow will start respawn timer for another one.

3. Ruins branches. There is always at least 1 double bishop room and military biome (the one with broken guarded stations and all sorts of clockworks), as well as repaired pseudoscience station set piece. That is enough to start process of thulecite duplication via green gems, and there are other ways to obtain green, yellow and orange gems outside of ruins clearing (Dragonfly (gives at least 1 of each kind of gem + chance for 1 extra), Twins of Terror (give 1 green and 1 yellow)). You also can craft lazy forager (orange amulet) and combat your bad luck via raiding cave holes (those little pedestals with otherwise unobtainable loot). You also can combat your bad luck with raiding labirynth and, most importanty, killing Ancient Guardian (his loot table was buffed relatively resently). If you are desperate for thulecite specifically, there are countless thulecite walls to hammer in monkey biomes, and some walls in double bishop and fully repaired station rooms. Finally, you can kill Ancient Fuelweaver more times than you initially planned and view it as a challenge.

If you are on PC, you can install "Force Biomes" mod that lets you force or disable to spawn every normally random biome on both shards, which includes some of the ruins biomes.

4. Deers. There I fully agree that it's frustrating, I would prefer them to not wander outside of their biomes and spawn even in winter (their loot is used in winter after all). The way to lure/summon them to desired location would be nice too, just like in SW one can spawn crocodog/sea hound by continuously dropping meat into ocean or like in DST one can spawn Malbatross at already found shoal by fishing deep bass (finding shoal itself is whole another story which I consider example of not interesting rng).

5. Time for uncovering map. Beefalo helps with that immensely, and one can feel advantage long before first season ends. Taming beefalo and rushing ruins work well together: you can either ride it and fight as rider, feed it with lichen/bananas/twigs and fight yourself while your well-fed cow continues to gain domestication, or park it (near salt lick or just be quick to return) before fighting yourself (at the entance of clockwork biomes, for example).

6. Shadow pieces despawn. That one is completely on you, you knew beforehand location of the future fight and could clean it at least, also shadow pieces prioritize players a lot more than anything else, which helps with getting their aggro back in order to lead them away from other mobs.

Even after despawn, as long as there is at least 1 shadow chess piece in proximity, you can make more statues of despawned chess pieces and save the fight (statues will become shadow clockworks) since unlike all other bosses, shadow pieces drop corresponding sketches on spawn, not on kill.

7. Meteor field is on you, there is always one in turfless part of mosaic and one in turfless part of optional to spawn grassland. You could have identified meteor field by turf and moonrock boulders, and if one of meteor showers happened already - by marks on the ground. Knowledge of biomes features is not rng, on the contrary, it's a way to combat rng. You could have based in adjacent biome far enough if you liked general location. Also since you are playing Wanda, biomes location matters much less because you can connect them via backtreck watch (no other character has this luxury by the way, and now I am salty since I remembered that once again).

------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, I think there are only few cases where game could really use an improvement, preferably as soon as possible:

1. Mushgnomes in the grotto. I believe only 1 is guaranteed to spawn, which potentially can yield only 1 living log. It's better for consistency than getting 0 living logs in attempt to spawn treeguard by chopping trees, but it could be much better (for example, a way to increase number of spawners in early game would be perfect).

2. A way to obtain celestial orb without rng (force it). Even tough technically one can increase chance of it spawning withing X days by visiting meteor field more frequently (so area is loaded and meteor showers happen), I would like more interactable way than "go into biome, stare for a bit, leave".

3. Specific crops, namely all aside from dragonfruit (since saladmanders exist). One can pick a lot of generic seeds or even befriend catcoon (if not Webber/Wortox), but a way to bypass rng could be interesing alternative way, with it's benefits and downsides. This is especially relevant for rarier crops, such as pepper, etc.

4. A way to bypass rng on finding Malbatross shoal and seasonal fishes, as well as every other ocean biome except lunar island and Pearl's island. On the mainland there is at least probability and order of the biomes in branches, for example, mosaic tends to be the only biome in it's own branch, but pig king decidious or Bee Queen biome can sometimes be found further after it in the same branch; same for Dragonfly desert which is usually at the end of branch, but sometimes there is oasis desert further away; same for monkey biomes in the caves where the one with a lot of debth worms, lesser glow berries, separate from monkey area banana trees and a lot of guano turf always is dead end, and clockwork biomes tend to be past another monkey biome.

5. Another way to obtain tusk, cane or other craft with tusk than mac tusk farming or sunken chests grind. The latter is self-explanatory, chance is just too small to do activity in order to get specific drop (cane), and mac tusk problem is that only 1 is guaranteed to spawn, rng changes tusks availability drastically (50% to get 4x more spawners - this could rival some D&D-based games in worst possible examples of that), and tusk drop chance itself is only 50% (just why does it need to be chance-based?), paired with 50% chance to get single mac tusk camp it's pretty bad for something that is necessary to kill Fuelweaver legit (for most characters; unless one's fighting skill is higher that the world's highest skyscraper). Technically there is Ancient Guardian, but again, there is only chance for lazy explorer to drop and it's one per world before FW is killed. The more players are on the server, the worse is the problem.

Possible solutions: extra mac tusk biomes (in the ocean? Available outside of winter?), other mobs that can drop tusk, other non-combat ways to get tusks (trader npcs? Pigs need rework as non-food resource for very long time already, making them traders with some initial player input could be their niche, and they could trade maps for certain locations and other resources as well - for appropriate price (just no bank robbery meta and Hamlet economy balance based on rng, please)).

[Waynel]

2 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

moggles are a crutch and you didn't need them to begin with

based

[ALCRD]

Only randomness that kills the fun for me are the Wildfires.

And that is one of those things that you can just toggle off in World settings :P 

[LiamAshvinn001]

Its fun for me. Everytime you start a new world you get a new experience with fresh generation.

[Bumber64]

There's a reason speedrunners use world seeds in such games. Rushing is speedrunning, so...

[goblinball]

I don’t think viewing bad world gen as “ugh this is now UNOPTIMAL because I can’t get my alarming clock everything is RUINED” is the right mindset. You need to be able to adapt to wacky world gen and be flexible, that’s part of the fun of DST; having something not go how you want it to then having to improvise and get yourself out of the mess.

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, Auth said:

(Generally, meteor fields move around sometimes, but they stick to their main biomes pretty closely

Meteor fields do not move around at all. From the start of the game to day 10 billion they are in the same place. Meteors are not guaranteed to fall at the furthest spot they can so people see meteors fall further than they saw before and incorrectly come to the conclusion that they "move" or "grow".

[Ornge]

On 5/15/2022 at 12:09 PM, kNichael said:

I'm playing Wanda and I want to rush the ruins in autumn and I need marble to make my alarming clock and another ageless watch, while gathering materials I am also searching for marble sculptures, more than half of the world is explored, tough luck buddy, seems that the clock is ticking and you still haven't found your precious marble

This might be an odd suggestion, but have you considered using a seeded world? As in reveal the map and check where everything is before you play. It seems to me like you enjoy the base gameplay but dislike the rng of the generation. If you checked where everything was spawned before playing it might make the game more fun for you

[BeeClops]

I love the randomness of the game personally. Those sweet 1%'s always feel good. I also gamble for a living so I might be biased. 

But if I knew what to expect from each map and run I think I would've gotten bored by now. 

[Mike23Ua]

14 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Meteor fields do not move around at all. From the start of the game to day 10 billion they are in the same place. Meteors are not guaranteed to fall at the furthest spot they can so people see meteors fall further than they saw before and incorrectly come to the conclusion that they "move" or "grow".

That’s only people on PC who open the games files and look into its programming code- but I’d bet you 9 votes out of 10 anyone playing on Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo who can’t look at the games files to tell that would vote that Meters do indeed move.

[herding dog]

On 5/15/2022 at 7:09 AM, kNichael said:

 

I understand where you're coming from here - when rng throws a wrench in your plans, it can be frustrating. One thing I would try to keep in mind is that the rng as it's configured is the game. When you were playing as Wanda and you couldn't find marble - that's a situation where the game/rng is requiring you to modify your strategy on the fly. DST is not a grocery list - it requires you to adapt as conditions change. 

If you're still trying to do a speedrun, lots of talented players have left advice for you in this thread. You could also consider not trying to produce an "ideal" run where everything goes perfectly rng-wise. In my experience, having that expectation of rng only leads to frustration and prevents you from learning to improvise.

[reallychina]

25 minutes ago, herding dog said:

I understand where you're coming from here - when rng throws a wrench in your plans, it can be frustrating. One thing I would try to keep in mind is that the rng as it's configured is the game. When you were playing as Wanda and you couldn't find marble - that's a situation where the game/rng is requiring you to modify your strategy on the fly. DST is not a grocery list - it requires you to adapt as conditions change. 

If you're still trying to do a speedrun, lots of talented players have left advice for you in this thread. You could also consider not trying to produce an "ideal" run where everything goes perfectly rng-wise. In my experience, having that expectation of rng only leads to frustration and prevents you from learning to improvise.

While bad rng by far hurts speedrunning the most, it is not restricted to speedruns.

Some actions are a chore and add nothing to the gameplay no matter you try to squeeze them in the first autumn or you do them in the summer or next year - Shadow pieces, atrium tentapillar for example. The only thing you can do to make them somewhat more palatable is having cane+magi and moggles (for caves), but it is still overall a bad experience.

I think the most relatable and straight forward example is the Eyebone. The Eyebone is good rng. While it is still RNG because you will never find it in the same place, the experience is designed so that it's spawn is usually tied to some environmental spots (stone road, lakes) and that it can only spawn in certain biomes. So with some experience, you can infer where it could be and an experienced player will find it much faster. And you don't need to find the item itself, you find the landmarks and slowly size down the search area.

For shadow pieces and tentapillars, EVERYTHING is random and there is absolutely nothing an experienced player can do over a novice one, it's all down to flipping coins. You also have no environmental cues, you can only find the item on the map.

[herding dog]

2 minutes ago, reallychina said:

For shadow pieces and tentapillars, EVERYTHING is random and there is absolutely nothing an experienced player can do over a novice one, it's all down to flipping coins.

You are correct that bad rng does not hurt speedruns only. I can see a case being made that some things should have a different split between rng and predictability. To be clear, I'm not saying the rng as it is currently configured is how the game should be, I'm just saying it's how it is. I've found I enjoy the game more when I don't have too many expectations of rng. I'm not disagreeing with OP so much as I am suggesting he changes his expectations. As far as what rng should be, I'll leave that to you guys as I don't have anything interesting to contribute in that regard.