What challenges you like to make for yourself? (with or without mods)

[Duck986]

What challenges you like to create for yourself to make the game harder and/or more interesting?

For instance, recently I've come with an idea of "Death World", which simulates the Constant after an unknown disaster-ish:

Spoiler

(wildfires are on little because thanks, I hate them)

Some monsters are set to More because there's abundance of their food or the player IS a food (like lobsters have a lot of rocks to feed on because the disaster made a lot of stone, hounds and worms see player as food, and lord of the fruit flies feeds on player's crops.)

Some monsters are set on Default because they either don't need food to survive or they (or their houses) were able to hide from the disaster.

Everything else you don't see is default.

Trust me, the resulting world is pretty much dead.

(I wish I could modify crops growth speed for this one)

It's not necessary for a challenge to include worldgen settings manipulation.

[Cheggf]

I intentionally play poorly to necessitate improvisation. I might not bring food, or light, or fight things in a suboptimal manner. I also don't cheese fights, but that's just because I don't find it fun, and I only very rarely switch characters.

[LiamAshvinn001]

UM with DST Minus Mods and some Keno's mods. It's peak DST for me, and it's really fun, especially the different bosses and just general content.

[Terra_Zina]

'SCIENCE WAS MADE BY THE DEVIL' run were I don't use any crafting stations. You plop down in dfly desert and pray to whatever you believe in that you'll get some good blueprints from tumbleweeds. End goal is killing dfly.

Don't like monster meat? Well too bad, get used to axeing dogs for a while.

Winter sounds too hard? There's magma right there, get used to spending half the winter next to it.

Doesn't sound fun at all? That's because it isn't. Until you get that "YYYEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!!!" blueprint. Then life is good once again.

[Terra B Welch]

I'd try challenges if I was actually good at DST.

[FourthLess]

18 hours ago, Terra_Zina said:

'SCIENCE WAS MADE BY THE DEVIL' run were I don't use any crafting stations. You plop down in dfly desert and pray to whatever you believe in that you'll get some good blueprints from tumbleweeds. End goal is killing dfly.

Don't like monster meat? Well too bad, get used to axeing dogs for a while.

Winter sounds too hard? There's magma right there, get used to spending half the winter next to it.

Doesn't sound fun at all? That's because it isn't. Until you get that "YYYEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!!!" blueprint. Then life is good once again.

Have you tried playing a cavemen mod? Seems like just a right thing for you! 

[Gi-Go]

My favorite challenge is to spawn a slurper at the start of a world, and see how long I can last. The tension is insane on this one.

And it also makes you look at available items differently. Healing food is much more valuable, light is pointless and so are head items. The only problem with this challenge is that sucking noice melts your ears after a few hours. 

[Psychic Chicken]

A challenge I find myself doing is trying not to pull my hair out when fishing for Malbatross.

[Another Vena]

40 minutes ago, Psychic Chicken said:

A challenge I find myself doing is trying not to pull my hair out when fishing for Malbatross.

I read it as finishing.

[maradyne]

I don't end up actually playing very often these days, but...whether it's solo or multi, usually I go in with some kind of goal. Especially with public servers; I've been nomadic for long enough that it comes naturally, which leaves time for shenanigans.

It's just neat changing the game in some way for others and then seeing what they do. Making a bridge to ocean features, providing enough of a certain resource that there's no need to seek it out again, rare resources, setting up marble statues/using full moon to grab the blueprints and make statues at base for the new moon...

Collecting stacks of mosquitoes for Wortox souls to let people face-tank bosses that they might just avoid otherwise. That's cool.

 

I like to be a set piece that changes per world, I guess.

Spoiler

And jumpscaring people with sudden teleports from off-screen, dropping something, using in an emote to make a noise, and teleporting away with no explanation.

 

[Falkenpelz]

Combine the mod Minimalist Challenge, which gives you a small island worldgen with limited ressources, with the mod Random Spawner, which does exactly what you think. On your little island with ressources scarce, you can be both blessed by the spawner or incredibly cursed, as one corner of the land becomes the ultimate dangerzone, where the Celestial Champion, Dragonfly and Enraged Klaus are hooked up in an eternal fight

[lakhnish]

Rush every boss in the game. High replayability, especially if you do it as every character.

Rush every giant crop.

Rush every recipe in the cookbook (there's a mod to reset said cookbook).

Eat specific diets only (like only leafy meat and leafy meat recipes).

Ruins rush but it's a full clear of the ruins.

[abrocator]

Warly.

Then my beefalo died to ghosts and I was like, nah, back to overpowered Wurt.

[stevmjon]

a challenge i set for myself is to NOT kill hounds or giants myself, and i run around kiting them until i find a mob that will.

this gets harder as time goes on as more and more mobs and the environment gets destroyed.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

On 8/20/2022 at 7:42 AM, Cheggf said:

I intentionally play poorly to necessitate improvisation. I might not bring food, or light, or fight things in a suboptimal manner. I also don't cheese fights, but that's just because I don't find it fun, and I only very rarely switch characters.

Same, i often don't bring armor and weapon material. I either use no armor, or I use suboptimal armor like grass suits or cookie cutter cap. Only cheese i do is dragonfly wall strategy, but that's often not even considered cheese by many players. I also leave out boss tier items or ruin tier items to others, while using basic science machine tier items.

15 hours ago, lakhnish said:

Eat specific diets only (like only leafy meat and leafy meat recipes).

oh, that one sounds interesting. I guess you need to pray you get gras gecko world, otherwise you needto find the Lunar and waterlogged asap.

[CaptainChaotica]

Stuff like:

--Randomising the seasons (and using a mod to make sure they STAY good and random from year to year)
--The "No Science Machine" challenge.  I honestly tried this...until the inability to not even make earmuffs kept me from wandering far enough away from the fire to find resources I needed.  (This was in regular DS.)
--Trying to make a scarce, post-apocalyptic world by turning down resources and turning up meteors, so you get a "blasted heath".
--Putting everything, both good AND bad, on "lots" and trying to carve out a quiet-ish area to live in.
--The "No Violence" challenge.  Similar to the Vegetarian one, but you ARE allowed to eat meat you find on the ground (whether you _should_, however, is another story). You can PASSIVELY kill things that are definitely after you.  But no fighting!

And then there's my "magnum opus" a few of you might remember from years ago, the "March of Civilization" challenge.  The basic idea is that you build things in the game not in the order of when you would unlock them game-mechanics-wise, but (more or less) in the order _they were invented in history_.  So like, while a thermal stone is an Alchemy Engine recipe in-game, IRL it doesn't take that much tech to go "Heat rock by fire.  Carry rock in loincloth.  Not freeze." so this challenge allows that much earlier.  BUT, it allows other things much LATER.

(Pictured:  Walani doing the Dance of the Chicken Goddess in front of the stuff you're allowed to use during the first year.  All of it.)

Problem is, every time new mechanics and items are put into the game I have to think "Where would this go in, what era, what chapter?  And oh dangit now the difficulty is all unbanced, hang on..."  And they keep updating it all the time.  Put it this way:  When I first wrote this challenge, _we didn't have sailable oceans yet_.  : P

Suggested mods that bring out the theme a bit better:  "Thirst" because you can build wells and it's like you've "invented irrigation",

and Pickle It! so you can primitively preserve veggies as well as meat for travel.  ("Advanced Drying" might be good as well.) 
 

Spoiler

 

For more RP'ing fun:  Wear clothes that fit the era of each chapter (furs/leathers, a toga, medieval-ish gowns, Victorian...)

(I was SO happy when I opened this daily present DURING the challenge. :))

You can get a pet other than a cat at any time, but don't get a cat, specifically, unitl you're allowed to farm (they only started hanging out around humans once we had grain silos that attracted rodents)

No signs until you have Writing.  I also liked to update the sign as the eras went along, so it went from "Welcome to the City-State of Starvania!" to "Welcome to the Starvanian Empire!" etc.  (Yes, this is also where my "High Priestess of Starvania" custom title here on the forum came from.  )

Build a Year of the (Whatever) shrine as soon as you get to a chapter with religion, to represent that.  Put decorative somethings around it to make it look like a special/revered structure (I usually use trees or berry bushes).

 

..but unfortunately I can't put the rules to it here for others to try, because they are SO OUDATED and like I said, I'd have to keep updating it all the time.  (I guess when I wrote it we were in a relatively stable time of the game?)  But in general, be a hunter/gatherer the first year and don't start making farms or machines until later, is the main theme.

...Notorious

[Antynomity]

I don't learn from my mistakes, that's my self imposed challenge, especially during lategame  

[Falkenpelz]

I'm also thinking about a challenge where you are only allowed to eat food that never spoils, but that is just extremely cursed (eyeballs, guardian horns, glommer goop, tallbird eggs, phlegm and jellybeans would be your only food). Maybe add the rule that you can eat dishes out of unspoiling food (meaning, you get taffy). Any idea how to modify that challenge?

[user1464576869]

While I didn't stay or do much of anything in there for long, I had quite a lot of fun with the Nothing World concept. Where everything in worldgen is set to none. Reminiscent of skyblock.

Basically stopped once I got a hold of stone fruit since anything after is mega grind. Chasing after a reliable source of food in the start is just kinda fun though, some reason.

I'm not sure if it's still playable ever since worldgen options changed around? It wouldn't have any stone fruits now that the moon is part of settings I think...? Sounds like something I ought to try though.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

58 minutes ago, Falkenpelz said:

I'm also thinking about a challenge where you are only allowed to eat food that never spoils, but that is just extremely cursed (eyeballs, guardian horns, glommer goop, tallbird eggs, phlegm and jellybeans would be your only food). Maybe add the rule that you can eat dishes out of unspoiling food (meaning, you get taffy). Any idea how to modify that challenge?

milk hat and tall bird eggs never spoil neither

[CaptainChaotica]

5 hours ago, Cosheeta said:

While I didn't stay or do much of anything in there for long, I had quite a lot of fun with the Nothing World concept. Where everything in worldgen is set to none

I tried that once!...but this was before ocean stuff, so I just flat out died.  (I played as Willow so I could make it past the first night LIGHT-wise, but...)  Then I modified it so that everything _canon_ to the game was "None", but MODS that added stuff were there, at their default settings.  Not so much as a super-challenge, but to see what that would look like.  (Although the mods also didn't include any grass or twigs, so...)  This was the time that a group of green catcoons saved me from the first hound attack.

Awww!  Good kitties!
(This is from the now-defunct "Tea and Trees" mod, which includes occasional groups of up to four "tea cats" who live amongst the tea bushes, and are green and will beat the crap out of you if you pick even one leaf in front of them.  I miss that mod.  It also had mangoes.  :))

But this is where I found out about the "less isn't less ENOUGH" problem, because "None" was TRULY none, but "Less" didn't take things down to actual scarcity, difficult-but-you-have-a-chance-if-you-try level, which is what I wanted.  I want things to feel like a blasted, dying wilderness, or maybe a world that's just starting to recover from a huge disaster.  The "Less" setting in the game, however, is like "I GUESS they're not as clumped together as usual...?"

...Notorious

[Notecja]

8 hours ago, Falkenpelz said:

I'm also thinking about a challenge where you are only allowed to eat food that never spoils, but that is just extremely cursed (eyeballs, guardian horns, glommer goop, tallbird eggs, phlegm and jellybeans would be your only food). Maybe add the rule that you can eat dishes out of unspoiling food (meaning, you get taffy). Any idea how to modify that challenge?

Maybe allow winter feast snacks or hallowed nights candies. They dont spoil, fairly easy to get but give minimal stats. 

Not sure how you want to count stone fruits. They dont spoil until pickaxing. And ice dont spoil in winter, but might be too far.

Also challenge is going to be broken with WX (g e a r s + hunger upgrades + funcap + hunger belt).