Terraforming and Knobbly Trees

[extremyt]

This might be a controversial suggestion, but I think the Terra Firma Tamper should give you the ability to create and destroy land tiles. Not only this allows you to fix obnoxious worldgen terrain-wise (this is the controversial part, up until now you'd have to build around terrain RNG), giving you more freedom in late-game base building, it also allows you to be more versatile with Knobbly Trees.

When Waterlogged first came out I was excited when we got a new way to permanently prevent wildfires just to be immediately disappointed knowing that you're restricted to a small area near the shore. At this point, just go to the caves or oasis.

As for balancing, my main suggestion would be allowing building land only on coastal ocean, this prevents stuff like cheesing crab king. But someone can come up with something better.

[goatt]

Oh yes, please!

[ShadowbirdRH]

1 Knobby Tree Seed, 5 [any turf], 1 purple gem, and 5 nightmare fuel @ Terra Firma Tamper = 5 Land Seeds

Land seeds must be planted in the ocean at least 1 tile space (as indicated by a pitchfork) away from land, usually requiring a boat, but can also be achieved by dropping it off a corner of land. When planted, the Land Seed will first appear as a vortex in the water, and will suck in any materials dropped within 2 units of it, up to 10 items a day. Upon consuming any material, the vortex briefly closes to chew and swallow its food (teeth visible) before returning to its normal state. Once the vortex has consumed 50 items, it will quickly grow into 5 blocks of land in a + shape (or X shape, depending on camera's orientation and hence the need for 1 unit of space from land), covered with the turf used to create it. Land Seeds should have a sub-icon to show the turf used to create it.

4 Thulecite, 4 Gunpowder, 4 red gems, 1 Garden Digamajig @ Alchemy Engine = 1 Land Breaker

With 4 uses (25% durability lost per use), the Land Breaker plants a bomb underground. A timer appears on screen for 10 seconds to collect the Land Breaker and get back. The single block of land is destroyed, along with the Land Breaker if not collected, yielding 20 material (roughly 40% rocks, 20% flint, 15% nitre, 5% gems) launched in the direction of the player (so as to avoid being lost to the sea). Falling materials cause damage much like falling materials in an earthquake, and unlucky players who thinks they only need to back up one space can easily be killed by this.

As for the potential to cheese the Crab King, maybe grant it the ability to smash land with the same effect (and dangerous potential) of the Land Breaker, granting the potential of attempted cheesing to backfire catastrophically?

[Bumber64]

They should be handled like turfs, so players can still remove them with pitchforks instead of being permanently trapped.

[goatt]

On a second thought, I think there are some challenges that come with creating/destroy land/ocean tiles.

1. Like you said, cheating some ocean bosses

2. Trolling a server. If someone decide to cut off piece of main continent with ocean tiles, he can do that. Other trolling examples are isolating a sinkhole, a wormhole, a boss location, your base, etc. While none of this is permanent, but it can be really painful.

3. It doesn't make sense synergistically for caves, because changing surface tiles should definitely create cracks in cave.