Burning Passions: Summer Surface Survival?

[Archswifter]

After going through a full summer in a new world a few times, all the heat and fire made it memorable as I was overheating most of the time on the surface away from base since they're were things that needed to be built. While I was running around however it made me remember the sheer difference in quality Winter has over Summer in keeping your temperature regulated.

Comparison & Contrast:

For instance, in Winter it's really easy to keep warm. You have torches to light something like a tree on fire for quick warmth/light. Campfires are easy to build, and if you manage, you can even get ahold of a Scaled Furnace that can keep you warm along with everything else it does for you (and maybe an Extra-Adorable Lavae with enough luck).

In Summer, it's not as good to say the least. The only dependable way of getting cool when traveling is Snow Chester, Endothermic Fire, Ice Cube, Luxury Fan and... Chilled Amulet I suppose? I realize there are a few more options but they're just... bad. Whirly Fans, Fashion Melons, Water Balloons I mean.

There are more ways to keep yourself cool compared to keeping you warm but the difference in item quality is nuts. The ingredients to make a torch and campfire are really easy to get and farm. The furnace and chance for the Lavae require you to beat a raid boss and some luck and that's it, you get a forever heat source that can cook and provide minor light in the form of the furnace, and the Lavae does the same except it can be bundled whenever you need it.

In contrast, the Endothermic Fire's main ingredient Nitre can't reliably be farmed compared to wood. There is only one Chester and more than likely he's not in Snow form. The Ice Cube sucks to maintain, slows you down, makes you really wet, and lowers your movement speed. The Luxury Fan is really nice to have, but more than likely you won't have more than one or two to go around given how Moose/Goose spawns around the world (or doesn't half the time). The Chilled Amulet is the only good one for the first or second summer, I'd use it more often if it lasted a bit longer than it currently does.

Suggestions & Ideas:

The short term proposal I have is to just change somethings around (internally/number-wise?) so that the nesting sites always spawn a Moose/Goose during Spring, they're scattered throughout the world anyway so it probably won't matter that much if it spawns near the ponds in a random place. Another thing I think would be fitting is to have the Moose/Goose Eggs themselves drop some Nitre after it breaks/hatches since it isn't a normal eggshell after all and is conductive. Another is to just buff some of the items to make them worth using, like the Ice Cube for instance.

The long term proposal on the other hand could be apart of the long awaited Summer Rework that gets talked about from time to time, maybe Fire as a whole since it's such a big part of Summer. I remember some talk about how fire in general could be changed and improved overall but I haven't seen much talk about Cold Fire which I feel as a part of the long term solution.

Freezing Flames:

Cold fire is amazing, it looks great and has a lot of potential beyond having it just sitting there in a firepit for one season. Maybe have it's effects be applied to things that help us keep us warm during winter, the only two that come to mind at the moment are the Torch and the Furnace. Endothermic Torch is pretty self explanatory, it'd be made of minerals rather than twigs and grass, maybe some combination of flint or rocks and Nitre. As for the furnace, maybe instead of the Charcoal and Red Gems used it could be made with Nitre and Blue Gems. Maybe like the Watering Can and Ice Flingomatic the cooling effect of the Cold fire currently in-game could apply to withering plants in proximity to it while fueled, the same would apply for the Polar Light from the Moon Caller's Staff. Cold Fire itself could have some effects that regular fire has such as making the enemy panic when set alight but instead of dealing fire damage it could build up frost in them similar to an ice staff, and maybe if set alight long enough it would freeze them for a short amount of time similar to what Klaus does to you with his Ice Deer.

Closing Thoughts:

Finally at the end now, I'm sure there's more I missed in terms of possibilities, these are just somethings that've been floating around my head as of late. There are some more but they're sort of redundant since other items exist that would make them somewhat pointless or are a bit too "out there".

(Harvesting the "rocks" around the Magma Pools, a unique attack and drop with Dragonfly during Winter's Feast like Deerclops, giving a Blue or Red Gem to Antlion, Salt Balloons/Bombs, Sulfuric Experiment additional effects etc...)

I'd really like to know what you guys think about Summer/Fire overall, any ideas and possible improvements and all that. I'm crossing my fingers that something is done with Summer to make living through it enjoyable, and if we do get a Summer Rework at some point I hope that it adds in a Fire Rework as well (since Summer and Fire go hand in hand after all).

Spoiler

And if all if that happens then maybe everyone's favorite Fire Starter will have a few new things to play with... 

 

[DajeKotlyar]

Cold fish and just fridges are pretty good for summer. Man, Wicker with only rain book totally disintegrate summer. 

 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, DajeKotlyar said:

Cold fish and just fridges are pretty good for summer. Man, Wicker with only rain book totally disintegrate summer. 

 

and caves... winter is easier but you cant scape or negate it completely like summer

[Pig Princess]

Problem of summer are wildfires mechanic and lack of reward for dealing with it, as well as less summer-exclusive content than other harsh season (winter)

Spoiler

Brief comparison of winter- and summer-exclusive content:

low temperature (+decreased spoilage modifier) - high temperature (+ increased spoilage modifier);

ice - cacti flowers**;

ice hounds - fire hounds;

Deerclops (and eyeball) - Antlion (and desert stones + lazy deserter);

??? - wildfires;

stop of growth of most plants (player can't counter it) - withering of most of the plants (player can counter it);

mac tusks (canes, tam o shanters) - ???;

Klaus - ???;

ice bream - scorching sunfish;

powder monkeys don't leave their huts - ???;

winter as favourite season of crops - summer as favourite season of crops;

worst or 2nd worst season to explore caves (according to majority of players) - best season to explore caves (because summer in the caves is basically disabled and is nearly identical to autumn functionally (with a bit higher chance of raining in autumn)).

So as one can see, summer options compared to winter in most cases are either nonexistent (mac tusks, Klaus, powder monkeys staying at home), are on par (ice bream and and scorching sunfish, being favourite season of particular crops*), are strictly more punishing without way to make it a benefit (increased spoilage rate due to increased world temparature, fire hounds (+ red gems are usually the ones accumulating much more than blue gems, so they are less desired reward), wildfires, Antlion), simply useless or very-very niche (lazy deserter, for solo worlds and multiplayer ones), and only relatively small group of effects can win comparison to winter both in terms of potential benefit and good design in terms of punish-reward (withering, being favourite season of particular crops*, cave exploration - but latter is due to not existing in the caves basically). There are other minor effects such length of daytime, dusk and nighttime, regrowth of particular things, oasis lake filling with water and renewing 3 fireflies per filling with water, etc. but they don't impact game much for me or any other players I played with. So comparison is not in favour of summer majority of the time, and it's not about overall difficulty (I'd welcome difficult to manage but rewarding mechanics and content).

*depending on the character and playstyle summer as favourite season of crops can become very important and win comparison to winter as opposed to tie. Namely, growing dragonfruit and cooking hot dragon chili salad as Warly (and everyone else in the team/with portal switching). Although mentioned dragonfruit also grows in spring, so a lot depends of player's other plans and schedule.

**depending on player's other goals and playstyle in general both ice and cacti flowers can win comparison between each other. I consider cacti flowers stronger because I like to use flower salad as healing food and prefer killing Celestial Champion in new worlds sooner rather than later.

but lets talk about temperature maintanance.

4 hours ago, Archswifter said:

In Summer, it's not as good to say the least. The only dependable way of getting cool when traveling is Snow Chester, Endothermic Fire, Ice Cube, Luxury Fan and... Chilled Amulet I suppose? I realize there are a few more options but they're just... bad.

First of all, clothing is also a good way to stay cool, and even though it won't prevent overheating entirely for the whole duration of summer, slow down of temparature increase rate is enough for not needing cooling sources first and last 2 days of summer, moreover, effect of actual ways of decreasing temperature stays for much longer - single luxury fan or chilling amulet is all one needs in addition to insulation clothing to counter overheating for the duration of whole summer. Even single endothermic fire prebuild (thus not consuming any more inventory space) is enough to last quite a lot with 240+ insulation. Eyebrella and floral shirt each give 240 insulation points, umbrella gives 120 and clothing insulation stacks, plus there is cawnival chirpy cloaks (240 insulation, body slot, 5 days of durability, repairable) - although last one is event-exclusive.

Second of all, there are more options of actually decreasing one's temperature while travelling: moon caller staff, asparagazpacho (character-exclusive to cook, but everyone can eat it), cold thermal stone+, ice bream and... whirly fan and trees. Yes, 2 latter won't help to cool down in the middle of summer, but aside from very few summer days they are usually enough to put player under overheating treshold (63 points during first and last 3 days of summer, I don't remember numbers for other days), and even with just straw hat and/or pretty parasol (180 insulation when both are used) it's enough to find better ways to maintain temparature even if one joined in summer. I mentioned thermal stone because one can carry hammer and gold and rebult ice box every time one needs to cool it, as well as carry torch and watering can and also lower thermal stone temperature with little cost (light something near thermal, use watering can to extinguish it, notice that thermal is cooled down too because watering can has AoE; it cools down 5 degrees per watering). Asparagazpacho gives 5 minutes of protection and needs 2 ice, 2 asparagus and Warly to cook. Moon caller staff has 50 uses and gives other benefitial effects, such as light. Ice bream can be bundled, it's durability can be regenerated in tin fishing bin, thus cost of cooling down is 1 rope: one can wear insulation clothing, unbundle ice bream, wait a bit until tempature is decreased, bundle it again and continue travel with insulation clothing; alternatively one can be Wurt (have 4x more time of fish freshness in the inventory) and have around 3 days of time before needing to switch ice breams (and allow one used to regenerate freshness in tin fishing bin); alternatively one can carry bundle with multiple ice breams and just take another one when old fish is about to die, then let all 4 regenerate durability in tin fishing bin (insulated pack also slows down spoilage rate of ice breams). Finally, one can go into the caves to cool oneself to approximately 50 degrees, and thermal stone cools down too; I wouldn't recommend to rely on this method, but this knowledge can save life in some situations.

Third of all, nitre can be farmed reliable since there are meteor shovers in mosaic biome, which is guaranteed biome that spawns close to spawn. The only problem is to reliably farm several stacks of nitre, but one doesn't need that much nitre for summer anyway, and mining petrified forests gives quite a lot of nitre once petrification occurs, enough to last dozens of years with endo fires and insulation clothing.

And lastly, planning one's travels is a key, usually player doesn't stay on the go 100% of the time, sometimes one needs to go to the caves anyway, sometimes it's reasonable to do minicamps with enothermic firepit/ice box in places that player visits often during summer (if one doesn't have mooncaller staff yet). I once created a challenge world with summer start and eternal summer, and it was actually playable, especially with proper planning (it was Shipwrecked's dry season, which is basically RoG/DST summer in terms of temperature and ways to maintain it (without moon caller staff, without renewable nitre), but without option to escape to the caves and with volcanic eruptions that periodically force player to leave base). Also I joined DST worlds in summer and survived perfectly fine, didn't sit at base/caves and was productive.

[Ohan]

52 minutes ago, DajeKotlyar said:

Man, Wicker with only rain book totally disintegrate summer. 

What do u mean by this? You still have to cool yourself down even when its raining. The rain negates wildfires/plant withering and antlion if u dont want to kill it for some reason at a periodic -33 sanity cost. Sometimes the summoned rain literally only lasts a few seconds in summer before you have to read the book again. Ive had this mini drizzle happen several times in a row before lol 
 

4 hours ago, Archswifter said:

Comparison & Contrast:

For instance, in Winter it's really easy to keep warm. (…)

In Summer, it's not as good to say the least.

Summer is traditionally the last season and so the “hardest”. Cant expect it to be made as easy as literally the first “dangerous” season. 

Adding a cold torch so u can endo-fire trees like u burn trees in winter to regulate ur thermal stone sounds like a downgrade. The seasons need to remain distinct, with their own challenges and own solutions. 

Your endo-furnace already exists, its the ice box. 

[Pig Princess]

1 minute ago, Ohan said:

Your endo-furnace already exists, its the ice box. 

And moon caller staff: 50 uses and 2 days of polar light per use is quasi-infinite, and it's infinite cooling station for real if left in moonbase.

[DajeKotlyar]

9 minutes ago, Ohan said:

What do u mean by this? You still have to cool yourself down even when its raining. The rain negates wildfires/plant withering and antlion if u dont want to kill it for some reason at a periodic -33 sanity cost.

Wetness cool you down. 1 wetness = -1 degree 

[Pig Princess]

1 minute ago, DajeKotlyar said:

Wetness cool you down. 1 wetness = -1 degree 

This is a good option only for Wurt and somewhat good for Wormwood, because wetness makes tools slip out of hand and drains sanity for every other character (only slippery tools for Wormwood).

[Archswifter]

These are great responses, it also reminded me of some things I'd forgotten about and were never mentioned when playing with others.

17 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

and caves... winter is easier but you cant scape or negate it completely like summer

 

17 hours ago, Ohan said:

Summer is traditionally the last season and so the “hardest”. Cant expect it to be made as easy as literally the first “dangerous” season.

Summer overall confuses me so much in this sense. It can either be the "hardest" season if you want to stay above ground or one of the "easiest" by just going underground and dealing with a few boulders raining down on you occasionally.

The game sort of encourages the second approach as well in a sense, given how Wildfires are something people generally dislike so much that they choose to go one of two places where they're guaranteed not to happen (caves or oasis desert). Both options for ignoring some of Summer's aspects bother me since they're restrictive, that really gives three options in the end. Go through the entire season underground, stay aboveground and live in oasis, or live where you want (a main base) and risk things burning because of one mistake involving a red hound or an off screen object smoldering.

17 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

Problem of summer are wildfires mechanic and lack of reward for dealing with it, as well as less summer-exclusive content than other harsh season (winter)

I suppose you can look at it this way or the other way in terms of it's meant to encourage you to go underground during the first year and explore to find the important things down there like the archives, ruins, or the atrium. I can't say for sure however but for me and many others I've played with see it this way (if not setting up base in the oasis of course). Still, having to deal with staying in one place I don't like/don't want to be and ignoring some or all of the season entirely is a bummer, it's encouraged as well by players most of the time since people generally don't like losing things they built/gathered to random chance or bad luck of a player who wouldn't join them.

17 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

First of all, clothing- 

Second of all, there are more options of actually decreasing one's temperature while travelling-

Third of all, nitre can be farmed reliable since there are meteor shovers in mosaic biome, which is guaranteed biome that spawns close to spawn. The only problem is to reliably farm several stacks of nitre, but one doesn't need that much nitre for summer anyway, and mining petrified forests gives quite a lot of nitre once petrification occurs, enough to last dozens of years with endo fires and insulation clothing.

The clothing portion is something I didn't talk about much, though I am aware of the options.

Spoiler

 

It used to be that only one person on the server got an Eyebrella (or two if Klaus was fought and you got lucky), with the hostile flare that's been made easier but it depends on chance (kind of?). It's up to how much goop you get (2-4 days production) from Glommer (if he's alive and you got him in autumn). Then the Hostile Flare comes into play, a 60% chance for a Deerclops unless you get a Mactusk so it's a 50% within a 60% chance (I think? Unsure if it's a guaranteed 60% if there are no Mactusks to teleport in the world or if it keeps the 50% chance but since he's dead nothing spawns...?).

A similar thing in terms of chance with the Down Feathers for the Luxury Fan, there are about 6-7 Nesting Sites in most cases in a default world and the Moose/Goose doesn't always spawn there (wish I had the chance). There's a set piece to help this adding an extra 3 or 4 nests but it's somewhat dangerous given their proximity to one another.

Chilled Amulet is great and reliable; Blue Gems are plentiful from passive hound waves and Mactusk kills and gold isn't much of a problem if you have a reliable way to get meat and mined a decent bit. If overheating (at 70 temp if I recall) if worn long enough until it reaches about 80% durability it can cool you down enough to get to 35 temp (Though, the additional effect of freezing attackers is a throwaway in this case, it'd be interesting to see it used more often, maybe a durability increase or auto equip like armor would make it worth using more often outside of summer).

The Floral Shirt is alright as well, more or less easily made and lasts a good while (not all of Summer but enough to get through it if you lack one or two of the items above). I feel it's only unpopular along (with other body clothing) since most prefer to hold onto their backpacks. The Event Exclusive items exist in their own right but are there as well for body clothing options if it's active (which isn't the case if we're talking about a world with default settings).

As for the hand slot for a Pretty Parasol/Umbrella, it's more or less the same when it comes to the body slot if you're moving around a decent bit. Most prefer the speed boost of a Walking Cane if they have one. Speed is a big thing in the game so it's more or less understandable

 

The ways for keeping cool on the move are there, some already mentioned in the clothing section.

Spoiler

 

Starting with the Moon Caller's Staff, it's nice and all but not something I see getting in the first year given how many other things there are to worry about. Sure there's always ruins rushing to go for it in Autumn but I don't think that's the first thought on someone's mind when going into a server, going in Winter or Spring is also more trouble than it's worth given that you still have to deal with the cold and rain respectively.

Asparagazpacho is an interesting one, though given that it is a character exclusive (Warly himself being not very popular overall iirc) does bring it's use down. If you do have it, use it I suppose (5 min is alright).

Ice Bream is something worth considering I suppose, it's a great thing to have when you think about it. The only problem is that fishing itself isn't that popular, you need the right bait, lure, the weather can reduce your chance by 50% if not using the right lure for Snow/Rain, the fish itself is uncommon and the hardest of the seasonal fish to catch. Again, something you'd probably need to devote a good bit of the season to get and even then it's not guaranteed. While it can be bundled for a quick cool down you can only really do that if you already have the bundling wrap recipe or the event exclusive Gift Wrap (All this talk reminds me that Winter itself already has so much content going for it on the mainland as is).

Whirly Fan and Trees are kind just there if you don't have any other way of staying cool early on so it makes sense to include them (sort of like the pretty parasol?). The options themselves work during the first two and last days like you mentioned, in saying that, if you're trying to survive in the middle of Summer on the surface anyway you most likely won't use them again in the last 2 days of the season given that you've made it that far in I mean.

The big ones mentioned I feel are reliable and feasible. Anyone can carry a torch, watering can, and thermal stone after all. Not to mention, if you're surviving up on the surface you probably already have a watering can & thermal on you. The same goes with the Ice Box strategy mentioned; it's fairly easy to carry a hammer and a stack of gold on your person to build and destroy as you please, the only thing I see being somewhat of a problem is the gears, sometimes worlds don't generate enough of the clockwork set pieces and you can be left with a small amount of gears (I recall this happening frequently when I joined worlds with default settings sometime ago, maybe this was changed?).

 

Nitre overall is an odd one, the ways to farm are interesting though, and I suppose the only reason I call it odd is because the topic of meteor showers and forest petrification were brought up as reliable ways of getting it. Those two ways being some of the lesser known or talked about things in-game.

Spoiler

Starting with meteor showers I suppose; it's random more or less from what I've read in the sense there are a limited number of spawners and have a different timers for when they're active as well which explains why sometimes you get a lot or very little raining down there's a cooldown as well between the showers but I couldn't find the frequency in terms of days. With all though they do have the benefit of happening off screen, that's a plus. Although in saying that, the chance of an intact flint boulder is low since it can drop 3 different types of Boulders (Regular, Flintless, and Moon Rock) if it leaves one at all.

Forest Petrification was something I felt was on the same level of meteor showers, something I assumed only occurred off screen at semi-random times somewhat late into the world either during the first Summer or afterward in Autumn. At the same time, having some qualities as disease does in that it sort of spreads like it in most cases but with an actual benefit. It can happen in Spring of the first year, that much I know now (after messing around for a bit).

Perhaps this portion of things was somewhat pointless given the likelihood of having a rocky biome, not to mention, if the mosaic biome is large enough you'll probably have enough nitre to go around for the ones on the surface.

All in all this was an good read, and made me interested in a few mechanics I didn't even think much about at first given how overlooked they are in terms of how they work. Summer really is just it's own thing, in the sense that you can go about it multiple ways, it can be easy, hard, boring, or interesting. Still, it does have its faults, unlike the other seasons it feels like it could be so much more.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

8 minutes ago, Archswifter said:

Summer overall confuses me so much in this sense. It can either be the "hardest" season if you want to stay above ground or one of the "easiest" by just going underground and dealing with a few boulders raining down on you occasionally.

well, you have omitted many other inconvenience like the constant sanity drain, worms waves (made my friend and i not having courage to go down for many time), needing a secondary base (which can be tough for players that are leaning the game), darkness, etc

new players need to learn and get confortable with a lot of things to skip summer

[themightyone]

I just make 2 thermal stones and leave one in the fridge so I always have an ice cold one when I need to swap. That combined with an eyebrella is enough to almost never deal with overheating. Wildfires can be annoying but they don't usually bother me much. Maybe a little more smoldering time before they ignite would be good. 

 

Summer is a good season to explore caves and to domesticate beefalo since no chance of red ass. 

[Flarezen]

I just play wx with 2.0 speed and during summer one fridge module and whatever one plug stat i want to use. Pretty much free surface summer as i go to my base during dusk/night when wildfires are not active then leave before day to do whatever 

[Archswifter]

10 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

well, you have omitted many other inconvenience like the constant sanity drain, worms waves (made my friend and i not having courage to go down for many time), needing a secondary base (which can be tough for players that are leaning the game), darkness, etc

new players need to learn and get confortable with a lot of things to skip summer

Looks like it, yeah. I should have been clearer in what I meant when I said the caves made Summer "easy". I meant more on the fact that you can just avoid the biggest dangers of Summer entirely by just living & exploring in the caves for the season. In that sense you're trading in one danger for another I suppose. This isn't that big of a deal for a semi-experienced player after all.

New players themselves are a whole other can of worms, especially when it comes to Summer/Cave survival. It's normal though, this is how you learn playing games like this one; fail enough times and learn from your mistakes, or have someone who knows what they're doing with you to give a helping hand in surviving and eventually thriving. 

[Pig Princess]

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

Go through the entire season underground, stay aboveground and live in oasis, or live where you want (a main base) and risk things burning because of one mistake involving a red hound or an off screen object smoldering.

Or use ice flingomatics/luxury fan to extinguish any fire that happens. Unfortunally, wildfire can happen on the verge of visibility range, and smoldering has very quite and hardly noticeble sound and visual effect, but compact bases still do well in that regard. I, for example, design my surface bases around flingomatics - place parts that can smolder in round or close to round shape (hexagon):

Spoiler

These are some old images and with mods that add some structures, but I hope the idea is clear (I'm away from my PC for now, so can't attach more recent and improved designs).

And giant trees are another option (their canopy has radius of 5 tiles). Also if you are Wickerbottom you can carry pyrokinetics explained on you, book extinguishes all fires in 4 tile (16 wall units) radius (a bit bigger range than ice flingomatics).

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

with the hostile flare that's been made easier but it depends on chance (kind of?). It's up to how much goop you get (2-4 days production) from Glommer (if he's alive and you got him in autumn)

Hostile flare has 60% chance to spawn Deerclops if it's winter and player is on land (at sea pirate raids has a chance to spawn instead), mac tusks don't have any influence on that. If glommer is picked during full moon on day 11, considering it produces glommer goop every 2 days one would have 4 goops at the start of winter and 11 goops at the end of day 33 (more if you have Wickerbottom who rushed lunar grimoire before winter and if you are a monster and kill glommer every night). So on average you would have 6-7 extra eyeballs if somebody picks glommer at day 11. Wiki says glommer goop producing period is 2-4 days, but I noticed it's exactly 2 days, and server restart resets timer (so up to 4 days, I'm not sure if rollback resets timer too).

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

there are about 6-7 Nesting Sites in most cases in a default world and the Moose/Goose doesn't always spawn there (wish I had the chance)

But luxury fan only needs 5 feathers and each moose/goose nest gives enough feathers for at least 2 fans, often for 3+. Moreover, feathers can be duplicated via construction amulet and deconstruction staff. I guess you can have shortage of down feathers if you use them for crafting 10+ weather pains, but I doubt you are fighting misery toadstool in the first year, let alone with default damage modifier.

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

There's a set piece to help this adding an extra 3 or 4 nests but it's somewhat dangerous given their proximity to one another.

There is optional biome that contains few closely located moose/goose nests, you can force it with "Force Biomes" mod. To kill them you could start from moslings instead of moose/goose (trap them or attack at night, for example), but are you expecting major benefit without any danger? I have to disagree with this mindset.

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

gold isn't much of a problem if you have a reliable way to get meat and mined a decent bit

Or if you went to the ruins and brought some frazzled wires to trade to pig king (each trinket gives 5 gold nuggets). Or if you opened some tumbleweeds/fish in oasis and got some trinkets this way.

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

As for the hand slot for a Pretty Parasol/Umbrella, it's more or less the same when it comes to the body slot if you're moving around a decent bit. Most prefer the speed boost of a Walking Cane if they have one. Speed is a big thing in the game so it's more or less understandable

But in both cases - pretty parasol/umbrella and floral shirt - you have a choice, if you wish to choose backpack and cane, that is your choice, it's not equivalent to absence of options. I'm honestly tired of people immediately discarding body clothing (not even thinking about it) because they see backpacks, same for walking canes. One can ride a beefalo and this frees your hand slot, for example, so no, holding walking canes is not understandable and not choice everybody has to make. Plus in the first year very few people have walking canes, definitely not all players. As for backpacks, both bundle wraps and planning each trip outside of base helps to bypass the need to backpacks; on public servers I tend to use floral shirt + chilling amulet if I don't have eyebrella yet, not on a boat or in the caves.

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

Sure there's always ruins rushing to go for it in Autumn but I don't think that's the first thought on someone's mind when going into a server

Again you are discarding an option for no reason; if it's too hard for you, it's fine, but I, for example, always ask about ruins if I join in summer or autumn (to do them myself if they are not fully cleared yet) and there are players with high daycount. Also even if you can't/don't want to get mooncaller staff in the first year now, in the future that may change, so keeping in mind this option instead of immediately discarding is benefitial. I listed options in case you are not aware of them, for you to consider, not as something you strictly must do.

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

The only problem is that fishing itself isn't that popular, you need the right bait, lure, the weather can reduce your chance by 50% if not using the right lure for Snow/Rain, the fish itself is uncommon and the hardest of the seasonal fish to catch

Are you seeking opportunities or excuses? Sorry for looking rude, but before suggesting something that drastic as changing temperature regulating options, you should expand your knowledge about existing mechanics and practise doing stuff (as generally greater rewards in this game are locked behind greater difficulties).

To catch ice bream all you need are berries (try to not move (reel) it too much when you drop it) as bait in sea fishing rod and swell ocean. If you have stupefying lure - even better, that one you should reel as much as possible. You can identify swell ocean waters by shape of waves, color and time it takes to drop/raise an anchor, but I'll attach examples of 4 main types of ocean "biomes" to help.

Spoiler

Coastal:

Swell:

Rough:

Hazardous:

But in general I recommend to look wiki page for lures, ocean fish and ocean itself, or just learn via trial and error in-game. Also Pearl can trade/gift you really good lures if you do at least some of her quests, including those for rainy and snowy weather.

And the fact that activity is not popular doesn't mean it's badly designed; it can be the case, but it's not 100% correlation.

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

the only thing I see being somewhat of a problem is the gears, sometimes worlds don't generate enough of the clockwork set pieces and you can be left with a small amount of gears

You can open tumbleweeds for gears and/or repair suspicious marble statues and mine them on full moon (+ ruins rush is an option). Even though 1% for gear from tumbleweed seems like too little, it's actually more because you go through 3 rolls per tumbleweed, and there are dozens of tumbleweeds in the Dragonfly desert (you can also wall up Dfly desert (tumbleweeds can't go through 1-wall gap) to make sure tumbleweeds don't leave it and don't unloade in some forgotten area).

6 hours ago, Archswifter said:

Although in saying that, the chance of an intact flint boulder is low since it can drop 3 different types of Boulders (Regular, Flintless, and Moon Rock) if it leaves one at all

You don't need intact boulder, and also boulders breaking offscreen still leave resources, you can often find nitre, rocks and moonrocks lying free in the meteor field because of that. Also you can reliably mine 10 nitre with current frequency of meteor showers, plus players usually leave nitre on the ground anyway; as for initial supply (that allows you to last before petrification if meteor showers don't work for you for some reason), nitre boulders are plentiful in mosaic outside of meteor field, at the entrance to archives, there are some of them in evergreen and decidious forests, sometimes in savannah and Dragonfly desert and you can even farm moleworm burrows if you absolutely can't find any boulders; nitre drops from earthquakes as well. You are exaggerating rarity of nitre for sure, and as I mentioned, reliable nitre production doesn't scale well to the points of farming multiple stacks of it, but one can easily find and continue to farm 10-20 of it per year.

[Cheggf]

In base it is easier to put a thermal in an ice box for free than it is to need to spend resources on a fire. Away from base it is much easier to right click on a blue amulet or luxury fan every 10 minutes or so than need to find something to burn. The only time winter is easier to stay temperate is if you join during the season, but even then you can just go underground to ignore everything about summer.

I don't think summer should be turned into a reskin of winter with summer torches and whatever. Winter is already a season, don't need a second one. If summer has any issues I'd think that it's too easy, but with an annoying wildfire mechanic that requires ugly things like flingomatics to solve and has the chance to randomly get rid of irreplaceable resources if someone happens to wander by them at the wrong time.

[Rylanor]

On 9/20/2022 at 10:01 AM, Pig Princess said:

First of all, clothing is also a good way to stay cool, and even though it won't prevent overheating entirely for the whole duration of summer,

Some do, actually. Due to the fact that wetness lowers your body temperature, Ice Cube completely stops overheating (but you become wet enough to have slippery tools and sanity loss, plus you are slightly slower than usual). Fashion Melon doesnt have such downsides, however it spoils very quickly, excluding that, its simply great, you aren't wet enough to affect items in the inventory and you can farm giant melons once and have enough for the whole team. Since Wurt doesn't have issues being wet she and WX-78 are only characters who can ignore overheating with 0 problems fairly cheap.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

Luxury fan is not that expensive. The only bad thing about summer is if you leave base, some fellow player can start a wildfire there and more often than not, they won't be able to put the fire out. That's the main reason, oasis is so favorite on pubs.

[Guille6785]

On 9/20/2022 at 2:34 AM, Pig Princess said:

This is a good option only for Wurt and somewhat good for Wormwood, because wetness makes tools slip out of hand and drains sanity for every other character (only slippery tools for Wormwood).

it's actually not an option at all for most of summer because wetness only drops your temperature down by 30 degrees at most at 100% wetness, characters overheat at 70 and summer temperatures can go above 100

that said though being wet during summer won't actually make your tools slip out because tool slippery-ness is also dependent on world wetness iirc (you can test this yourself by wearing an ice cube at all times and throwing a few water balloons at yourself, your tools will never slip out afaik)

[Another Vena]

Just use the floral shirt/eyebrella + blue amulets combo. It is way easier if you are boating the whole season, just make an endothermic fire and don't bother with heat resistance.

You could get a lot of blue gems and gold from the ruins for just chilling through the heat. Seems like you are not rushing them, so why not clear them during summer in the coolness of caves?

On 9/20/2022 at 9:23 AM, Archswifter said:

Suggestions & Ideas:

The short term proposal I have is to just change somethings around (internally/number-wise?) so that the nesting sites always spawn a Moose/Goose during Spring, they're scattered throughout the world anyway so it probably won't matter that much if it spawns near the ponds in a random place.

Skill issue.

[EighteenXVIII]

I think your issue is that you didn't list the best universal way of dealing with summer (as well as winter), being the thermal stone. I never craft endothermic fires, because an ice box + a pair of thermal stones achieves the same thing. You can even repair the thermal stones with a sewing kit.

You can strategically place ice boxes near frequent travel points so that you can always cool down your thermal stone.

Another great tool is the luxury fan. You can get through summer with just one of them + an eyebrella. It only costs five down feathers and two reeds. 

Alternatively, the start of summer is a great time to explore the ruins since it's the longest period where weather isn't a concern.