feedback [RESOLVED] Farming the Unnatural Portal Is Not Fun At All

[lakhnish]

Edit: This issue has been resolved as of Game Update 512083.

Trying to farm the unnatural portal for the new items is not a fun experience at all.

Can the default spawn please be increased significantly?

If people want to build docks, banana farms, or reed farms, it's simply not realistic just because of how boring and tedious it is to try and farm the items.

For those that don't know, you need to collect the items that shoots out of the portal or else more items won't spawn. Currently, the items you collect from the portal will also count towards the cap unless you bundle and then unbundle them, destroy them (i.e. the animals), and I think leave the area (as in go far away), but that part might be bugged like it was for Moon Gleams and I've accounted for that as well. 

Sitting there for hours trying to come up with other activities while just waiting for things to spawn only to get an insignificant amount at the end of it really makes me not want to invest the time and effort into the new content.

I've even resorted to changing the spawn rates via the unnatural portal resource section in the world settings menu and it was still too slow and really boring. I really don't want to resort to changing settings to since to me, that means a certain mechanic is bad in the game and needs to be worked on.

Note: I had set the portal activity to more because I know tons is bugged atm, but I even set the other stuff to tons too and it's still too slow.

[VouMorrer]

i heard the pirate stash gives back the resources monkeys stole from you. does that count the resources they have taken from the portal? because if yes, you could do whatever in the main land, kill the pirates and recover the portal resources without going to the island, right?

i havent played much the beta because of time, but maybe this pirate killing farm could be adapted somehow?

[chaosmonkey]

2 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

Currently, the items you collect from the portal will also count towards the cap unless you bundle and then unbundle them, destroy them

You don't actually have to bundle/unbundle. Due to how item stacks work, as long as you already have a stack of one in your inventory, the new item you picked up is "destroyed" when it gets merged into the other stack. This makes it possible to basically sit at the portal with a lazy forager and autofarm the portal -- you can just start with a bunch of stacks of 1 of each item it can drop.

That said, the tuning on this is really broken, and I agree with everything you said about it. After going through a whole lazy forager with the palmcones on TONS, the portal spawn rate on TONS, and everything else disabled, I only had ~2.5 stacks of palmcones. This is really not sufficient for doing decorations in a big world.

One solution *might be* simply providing settings to turn off all the junk it can spawn (twigs, rocks, grass, phantom items), and dramatically increasing the portal spawn rate, but IMO this is just papering over the problem. At the end of the day, standing around waiting for 300 palmcones to spawn is just not an engaging mechanic, regardless of how quickly the portal spits them out.

My preferred solution would be some way to perhaps feed items into the portal to get back the things you want (eg, normal berry bush for a banana bush, pinecones for palm cones, etc.) OR doing trades with the queen, maybe something like banana juice for more banana bushes, etc. Really just any way to give the player some agency.

[thewalkingcamel]

Agree. Basically you have to set your base on the island and do something while waiting in order to not wasting too much time

[lakhnish]

37 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

One solution *might be* simply providing settings to turn off all the junk it can spawn (twigs, rocks, grass, phantom items), and dramatically increasing the portal spawn rate, but IMO this is just papering over the problem. At the end of the day, standing around waiting for 300 palmcones to spawn is just not an engaging mechanic, regardless of how quickly the portal spits them out.

My preferred solution would be some way to perhaps feed items into the portal to get back the things you want (eg, normal berry bush for a banana bush, pinecones for palm cones, etc.) OR doing trades with the queen, maybe something like banana juice for more banana bushes, etc. Really just any way to give the player some agency.

I really like the idea of trading with the Queen. 

There's really not a point to the queen after getting the Blueprints unless you want to de-monke yourself.

Though I don't think berry bushes should be the trade since not everyone does loot worlds (nor do I expect people too). But definetly a yes to the other items, since it gives a nice and engaging gameplay loop.

40 minutes ago, VouMorrer said:

i heard the pirate stash gives back the resources monkeys stole from you.

That's for the boat monkies (the ones that spawn with the Prime Mate). Monkies on the island put it in their houses, but it gets pushed to 0,0, so it's bugged. Even if it wasn't, items in the inventory still count towards the cap in the area.

[chaosmonkey]

This is the farm I ended up testing with yesterday BTW. This is basically an ideal setup optimized for not playing the game: hound trap to deal with hound waves, lazy forager, and walls to keep the spewed items within forager range. If this was in a real world presumably you'd be on WX with hunger circuits and piles of gears for food, CC hat, and a couple items for seasons.

And the result of over an hour of farming (ie, afking): ~2.5 stacks of palm cones. Hardly enough for significant decorations. This was with all the other loot turned off.

Painful, to say the least.

[-Nick-]

On full moons, it should make the Portal have a higher chance to spew more stuff, and much quicker. Making it ideal to revisit it on full moons.

[lakhnish]

1 minute ago, Nickolai said:

On full moons, it should make the Portal have a higher chance to spew more stuff, and much quicker. Making it ideal to revisit it on full moons.

That doesn't really sound like fun :<

That'd just put a slight bandaid on the issue. You'd essentially just have Alter activated 24/7 and go back to AFK farming again.

[Catteflyterpill]

It'd be interesting if you could build something to 'capture' the portal and stabilize it - increasing the efficiency of item production. Seems like it would be compelling lorewise and help make the portal more sustainable. 

[flamboyant wolf]

it would be nice if palm trees dropped their saplings when chopped down, even if just 1.

or if we had an alternative way to get them(maybe applying tree jam to a fully grown palm tree?) 

[lionking102]

I think the portal system right now has some big problems. 

The thing is, that non of this ressources from the portal are relevant for survival. When you get there you have already anything you need. So this new plants are for decoration for perfecting the base, building cool stuff etc. and it's sad that than there is no good and engaging way to get them. 

I was asking for new trees to decorate with for so long and now finally there is one and we can barely get the seeds. 

[MondayNight]

2 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

..I only had ~2.5 stacks of palmcones. This is really not sufficient for doing decorations in a big world.

While I understand your dilemma, DST isn't geared towards "decorations a big world". It has Survival and Multiplayer facets meant to limit that "mega base decorating" aspect in default - and I for one hope game's future will bring KLei concentrating on DST's Survival aspect a lot more than present (aka almost none at all). From my pov it seems Banana Trees, Reeds etc aren't supposed to be farmed in consistent bulk and over short time periods. 2.5 stacks looks like a reasonable amount for some irl hours of play.

[lakhnish]

5 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

While I understand your dilemma, DST isn't geared towards "decorations a big world". It has Survival and Multiplayer facets meant to limit that "mega base decorating" aspect in default - and I for one hope game's future will bring KLei concentrating on DST's Survival aspect a lot more than present (aka almost none at all). From my pov it seems Banana Trees, Reeds etc aren't supposed to be farmed in consistent bulk and over short time periods. 2.5 stacks looks like a reasonable amount for some irl hours of play.

They had to tune the settings drastically for that and it doesn't change what they said where they sat there and AFK'd for the resources (it's not engaging).

I like focusing on the survival content too and it's why I rush bosses (it's the closest thing I can get to a harder survival experience) but this game will always turns into a sandbox base builder afterwords, no matter how much survival content they add.

Base building wise, I'm nothing like what others can do (I can barely fill a biome) and I'm not having fun trying to farm the new resources, which is what this post is about.

[chaosmonkey]

 

8 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

DST isn't geared towards "decorations a big world". It has Survival and Multiplayer facets meant to limit that "mega base decorating" aspect in default - and I for one hope game's future will bring KLei concentrating on DST's Survival aspect a lot more than present (aka almost none at all). From my pov it seems Banana Trees, Reeds etc aren't supposed to be farmed in consistent bulk and over short time periods

Reeds are already farmable in extreme quantities using wickerbottom. 2400 reeds using 4 lureplants and a reed trap can be obtained in less than one in-game day. Bananas are also plentiful in the game already -- killing all the splumonkeys in your ruins during nightmare cycle gets you a full stack of bananas. Even if that wasn't already the case, bananas aren't going to break survival. Goats are far more useful for both food and sanity in a survival world. Farm giant crops. Make a honey farm.

The only truly novel resource here are the palm cones which have basically no utility for survival.

But none of that really matters, it's not the point.

11 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

for some irl hours of play

The problem is that it's not actually play that gets you these items. The items instead are obtained by standing around doing absolutely nothing. It's anti-play.

[-Nick-]

Maybe you could trigger a Moonstone like event with the unnatural portal? Get rewards by fighting waves of enemies. The difficulty scales but you get more resources.

[MondayNight]

Then, indeed, this new portal should have some special event attached to it, perhaps unlockable under Full Moon or via certain player-input conditions, to speed up its process via "big danger, big rewards". Maybe defeating a boss or passing some other challenge will amp up the resources popped through this Portal for a certain time frame or after said trial is over (let's say, 1 stack of each / random stack-numers)? Something aside pseudo-afk-ing and/or a plain higher rate of resource passive dropping?! Namely, some specific & engaging game-play.

[lowercase skye]

2 hours ago, lionking102 said:

The thing is, that non of this ressources from the portal are relevant for survival. When you get there you have already anything you need.

With the new grass raft you can stumble on the island very quickly, I believe it only took me till like day 8-10 to find it in my current world with friends? And the banana bushes are absolutely relevant for survival, we'll basically have sanity taken care of forever with those at our base.

49 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

While I understand your dilemma, DST isn't geared towards "decorations a big world".

The Don't Starve Together Steam page contains, quite literally, a Glermz base. A mega base provided by Glermz. A base with focus on decor spanning the entire world is listed on the Steam page with as much importance as exploring, fighting, and farming.

[MondayNight]

2 minutes ago, meow meow meow said:

The Don't Starve Together Steam page contains, quite literally, a Glermz base. A mega base provided by Glermz. A base with focus on decor spanning the entire world is listed on the Steam page with as much importance as exploring, fighting, and farming.

Probably because Glermz is KLei's biggest "Ambassador" and since KLei themselves don't play their game much to reach (well, at least endeavor) such builds. Meanwhile I witnessed myself attempts from various DST communities at mega-bases: when they reach a biome-span, with all kind of plants, objects (including walls, as loadable entities), animals and so on, they begin to horrendously lag the host - and mind you, these are powerful data-center servers, not personal, run-of-the-mill PCs - to the point of unplayability. Hence various artifices are adopted, like Pig Farms and Hound Farms away from main Kitchen, research stations & storing space, a.s.o. I doubt the handful of dedicated mega-basers are having it better on their personal computers - the Multiplayer really strains such projects into infeasibility. An aspirational ideal that maybe shouldn't be taken as default for bulk player-base when vast majority of machines can't sustain it - not to mention the tiny number of people partaking into "mega basing".

[lowercase skye]

2 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Probably because Glermz is KLei's biggest "Ambassador" and since KLei themselves don't play their game much to reach (well, at least endeavor) such builds. Meanwhile I witnessed myself attempts from various DST communities at mega-bases: when they reach a biome-span, with all kind of plants, objects (including walls, as loadable entities), animals and so on, they begin to horrendously lag the host - and mind you, these are powerful data-center servers, not personal, run-of-the-mill PCs - to the point of unplayability. Hence various artifices are adopted, like Pig Farms and Hound Farms away from main Kitchen, research stations & storing space, a.s.o. I doubt the handful of dedicated mega-basers are having it better on their personal computers - the Multiplayer really strains such projects into infeasibility. An aspirational ideal that maybe shouldn't be taken as default for bulk player-base when vast majority of machines can't sustain it - not to mention the tiny number of people partaking into "mega basing".

I don't quite understand what you're getting at...? My point is that base building is advertised on the Steam page and new content is absolutely added with it in mind. I'm not sure what the point of saying "oh but the game lags with too many mobs" and "oh but people don't have good enough PCs" is, it doesn't change the advertising or the way Klei designs things.

[MondayNight]

1 minute ago, meow meow meow said:

I don't quite understand what you're getting at...? My point is that base building is advertised on the Steam page and new content is absolutely added with it in mind. I'm not sure what the point of saying "oh but the game lags with too many mobs" and "oh but people don't have good enough PCs" is, it doesn't change the advertising or the way Klei designs things.

My point for current topic: either leave the plants spawning rate as is, since is passive and the amount one can get from random trips assures one's personal needs in Survival context (not "horn of plenty" manner - aka "mega basing"), or attach a special event/condition/engaging mechanic to portal for obtaining higher amounts - aka some boss fight for example. "Mega basers" case shouldn't be taken, once-more, as default get-go and tweak spawn rates to their needs, beyond reasonable survival parameters.

Other counter-examples, like Reeds Trap, are purely incidental with a small generating-chance per worlds, plus it requires a lot of work to clear and setup for exploitation, also demanding a certain character to do so. Passive collecting from Unnatural Portal implies solely idle time spent there, collecting (after initially sailing to Moon Quay Island - that am sure will be further simplified by giving a map-location to first Pirate Crew dispatched by player in combat, as people advocate for in Beta's posts).

[lowercase skye]

1 minute ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

My point for current topic: either leave the plants spawning rate as is, since is passive and the amount one can get from random trips assures one's personal needs in Survival context (not "horn of plenty" manner - aka "mega basing"), or attach a special event/condition/engaging mechanic to portal for obtaining higher amounts - aka some boss fight for example. "Mega basers" case shouldn't be taken, once-more, as default get-go and tweak spawn rates to their needs, beyond reasonable survival parameters.

Other counter-examples, like Reeds Trap, are purely incidental with a small generating-chance per worlds, plus it requires a lot of work to clear and setup for exploitation, also demanding a certain character to do so. Passive collecting from Unnatural Portal implies solely idle time spent there, collecting (after initially sailing to Moon Quay Island - that am sure will be further simplified by giving a map-location to first Pirate Crew dispatched by player in combat, as people advocate for in Beta's posts).

I.. huh????? Genuinely I don't understand what you're saying here. You said DST isn't geared towards megabasing, I described how the store page presents it as such and I think the content is generally designed to accommodate it... and now it seems like you're going into something unrelated about how you THINK mega basing shouldn't be accommodated, and... whatever that entire other half is that you just sort of began talking about without prompting?? I don't... understand...?

[Primalflower]

Probably some of the most batilisk poop insane versus takes i've seen in a while.

Though, I absolutely do wonder if/probably when the unnatural portal is going to be changed to be more accomodatory towards players who really want to get a bunch of its drops. It doesn't fit with the lore, but the image that always instantly pops up in my head is like, the idea of putting a bunch of stuff (preferably food that doesn't taste good) into the unnatural portal so it gets indigestion and barfs stuff up more rapidly. I don't know, though.

[lowercase skye]

2 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

It doesn't fit with the lore, but the image that always instantly pops up in my head is like, the idea of putting a bunch of stuff (preferably food that doesn't taste good) into the unnatural portal so it gets indigestion and barfs stuff up more rapidly. I don't know, though.

That's a silly and cute idea, but sadly yeah. Lore-wise things can only go out, not back in.

[MondayNight]

1 minute ago, meow meow meow said:

I.. huh????? Genuinely I don't understand what you're saying here. You said DST isn't geared towards megabasing, I described how the store page presents it as such and I think the content is generally designed to accommodate it... and now it seems like you're going into something unrelated about how you THINK mega basing shouldn't be accommodated, and... whatever that entire other half is that you just sort of began talking about without prompting?? I don't... understand...?

Hmm.

Even simpler: 1) leave mechanic as is; in Survival context (what bulk player-base does) it assures enough for random trips there (personal food necessities & whatnot) - aka what vast majority of players does; 2) bump the spawn rate of the Unnatural Portal via a special event, in tone with Survival's "good rewards from good endeavors" (engaging game-play). "Mega-basers" need entire stacks of rare resources to decorate and whatnot. For rest of players, is fine as is.
 

Spoiler

2 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

Probably some of the most batilisk poop insane versus takes i've seen in a while.

Amusing how you and your friend try to paint me in certain colors because of past personal-perceived grievances. Funny pinch.

 

 

[chincer]

the queen should give you bushes and saplings from trading specific items with her, maybe even trinkets from the ruins just like the pig king do, or exclusively from banana related dishes? this would solve the issue without making it broken easy to get those stuff