Mushlight light radius is abysmal and needs a buff

[Guille6785]

While a lot of people complain that toadstool is way too much of a time sink for basically only having a decorative item as its only drop, I think what's really worse is that said decorative item doesn't even fulfill its one purpose properly, case in point:

The biggest problem in these pictures is that despite being within only a couple tiles of a fully fueled glowcap, and despite my character being entirely visible I am still taking the full sanity drain of nighttime; this doesn't just apply in the spots where I'm standing, it applies to my entire ice box area, and there is no reason why that should be the case considering I'm surrounded by 3 of them, and even disregarding that issue you can still clearly see how dimly lit my base is despite having so many of them which certainly shouldn't have to be the case considering how much effort it takes to get these alongside the enlightened crown shards needed to make them permanent.

IMO there is no reason why a glowcap shouldn't produce at least as much light as a fully fueled campfire, or at the very least the problem with the darkness detection should be addressed. I've seriously tried to give mushroom lights an opportunity in my bases in recent months but I've only been very disappointed

[HowlVoid]

I'm glad you shined a light on this issue.

 

[Lokena]

I think it's because you use blue lighting? If I recall things correctly, the radius of the blue light is the smallest possible, just two tiles or something? I'm not saying it's right - blue is my favorite color and it's really annoying. This lamp CAN light further, just make the radius for all colors the same and maximum.

[Pig Princess]

Recently I set up base in the ruins on public server in room with 5 columns and relics. That room is not huge as many can remember, but litting it with only glowcaps looked like this (take into account that I'm in the crown which also lits the space):

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Fully lit with polar lights and dwarf stars base:

As one can see, I didn't even bother with glowcaps near banana bushes and drying racks (as well as near cannons) because I would need 2 rows of these to lit whole thing (or subsitute every other banana bush in the middle row), let alone without sanity drain. Problem with toad lamps is that they take a lot of space: their own building and walking collision is actually fine, but they need to be put too close to each other because of small light radius and thus they block bigger structure sets between them (cannons line, drying racks + banana bushes row here, 4x4 farm plot would need a bit too much lamps to my taste to be fully lit, and farm plot would still have dark spot in the center). I would have to sacrifice a lot of structures and/or convenience of their placement (for example, I would need to split row of cannons and leave emply line of otherwise unused space while blocking movement on the way to repaired pseudoscience station (lureplant bridge), same split for farm plots). At this point I might as well use astral detectors + polar lights instead of lamps, would be cheaper and more thematic.

I wouldn't mind increase of light radius, but I wouldn't push it because I found ways of counter this problem by excluding lamps most of the time.

[hhh2]

The survivors have not yet discovered how to take the lampshade off.

[Qairon]

23 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

Recently I set up base in the ruins on public server in room with 5 columns and relics. That room is not huge as many can remember, but litting it with only glowcaps looked like this (take into account that I'm in the crown which also lits the space):

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  Reveal hidden contents

Fully lit with polar lights and dwarf stars base:

As one can see, I didn't even bother with glowcaps near banana bushes and drying racks (as well as near cannons) because I would need 2 rows of these to lit whole thing (or subsitute every other banana bush in the middle row), let alone without sanity drain. Problem with toad lamps is that they take a lot of space: their own building and walking collision is actually fine, but they need to be put too close to each other because of small light radius and thus they block bigger structure sets between them (cannons line, drying racks + banana bushes row here, 4x4 farm plot would need a bit too much lamps to my taste to be fully lit, and farm plot would still have dark spot in the center). I would have to sacrifice a lot of structures and/or convenience of their placement (for example, I would need to split row of cannons and leave emply line of otherwise unused space while blocking movement on the way to repaired pseudoscience station (lureplant bridge), same split for farm plots). At this point I might as well use astral detectors + polar lights instead of lamps, would be cheaper and more thematic.

I wouldn't mind increase of light radius, but I wouldn't push it because I found ways of counter this problem by excluding lamps most of the time.

Off topic, but I just wanted to say I really like your ruins base lol. I've played in pubs for a few years and I've never been lucky enough to catch a ruins base that intricate. That's cool. You mentioned cannons, how well do those do down there and do you just use it for splumonkeys? Does it kill monkey trains in one hit?

 

And back on topic, as someone who actually rushes the hell out of Toadstool in pubs often enough, I do agree with the light radius being pretty lackluster. However, to play devils' advocate, the light duration of a mushlamp (or even glowcaps if I'm lucky enough after the toad kill with that 33% chance) is so convenient in a game that prides itself in generally hard to obtain light sources (that must be constantly maintained such as a lit firepit or placing stars with the ruins staffs). It's pretty overlooked how convenient toad lamps can be when placed in areas you just want to chill at, like by the kitchen, farms and berry/banana bushes, and chests+alchemy.  That's all three of toad's skins used, plus 12 lightbulbs, for about a season or more of light.  Granted, as Pig Princess pointed out, the radius is too smoll to accommodate them all perfectly, but I like to see them as supplementary lighting, not really a one-stop solution to light the base up. Mooncaller does that pretty well in lategame worlds anyways. 

Anyways, I only really kill Toadstool for the funcap. I like the hobo druid fashion it gives and hunger drain reduction lol.

[Qairon]

23 hours ago, Lokena said:

I think it's because you use blue lighting? If I recall things correctly, the radius of the blue light is the smallest possible, just two tiles or something? I'm not saying it's right - blue is my favorite color and it's really annoying. This lamp CAN light further, just make the radius for all colors the same and maximum.

And yeah, it's worth always noting whenever we're talking about glowcaps in particular: green spores give the best light radius. I'll explain with a quick snapshot I took a bit ago, with a sign you can barely see the closest I can stand without suffering the Charlie drain. For the record, I completely agree that these things should at a MINIMUM be buffed to have a better light radius, better light detection and identical lighting radius between them all (especially since you can get some very pretty colors mixing sproes, like purple and cyan, but it's discouraged in place of green spore's efficiency.) However, this is how the mechanics are for now. 

Green spores give the greatest amount of light you can walk in without suffering the night time drain. They're also objectively the best color so always go for them (Kappa). Ironically, just placing 4 lightbulbs in them also gives 2.5 tiles of reliable light, so if you don't want pretty colors, those are better. They just don't last as long as the green spores (

Red comes in a close second with 2 tiles of light, which honestly is still pretty bad if we're being real. Also, it freaking stings to look at. It's such an intense shade of red, like staring at a laser pointer or something lol.

Don't ever use blue spores honestly. It's so bad. You begin suffering increased drain before you even leave half of the perceived light radius of it lmao. WHY. It sucks they happened to be your favorite color, they're still the best mushroom anyways. Save blue spores for a mush planter.

Oh, and if you weren't lucky enough to get the sexy green funcap from toad/misery, you get green spores from blooming green mushroom trees in cave during dusk in Spring. It's worth catching a bunch and keeping them in a chest, I think they take like 20 days to spoil in one, and 60 days in a glowcap.

And finally, for the ultra lategame setup, all of this is irrelevant once you kill Celestial Champion and just put a singular green shard in a lamp for full max light, infinitely.

[Pig Princess]

2 hours ago, Gramugazy said:

for about a season or more of light.

About 2 seasons with (lesser) glow berries (40 days).

Problem is - why would I kill Toadstool, if I could use star caller/mooncaller staff to chill a few days in the area or activate archives with that same moon caller deconstructed and use astral detector for permanent light of similar radius (I'll have to check exact values later)? That is also free to relocate and easier/more convenient to spam. Maybe building collision of it is larger than lamp's one (I'll have to check once I'm at home), but even if so difference is hardly noticeable.

Offtopic:

2 hours ago, Gramugazy said:

Off topic, but I just wanted to say I really like your ruins base lol. I've played in pubs for a few years and I've never been lucky enough to catch a ruins base that intricate. That's cool. You mentioned cannons, how well do those do down there and do you just use it for splumonkeys? Does it kill monkey trains in one hit?

Thanks! It was endless server (vanilla) with admin periodically playing and some regulars that kicked griefers and trolls quite effectively, so that is what made the difference, most likely.

Regarding base itself. Unfortunately cannonball's AoE is abysmally small, around 0.5 of geometric placement's grid point, so around 1/16 of a tile (radius), which is true for both landing place and path of cannonball to it. Which means that killing monkey train isn't an option even if player was fast and precise enough to aim unless monkeys are trapped somehow in a way that basically gathers them within 1/16 radius from one place. However, 1/16 is ok leeway to plant trees and marble trees (even without geometric placement) and still hit whole line in front of cannon. Cannons are here to farm some wood and marble via planting corresponding trees; each cannon can hit 5 trees so 30 objects can be farmed at once. It's not Bearger-worth amount of wood and such, and cave stalker for mass-farming could be more productive on larger scale, but for farming 3-4 stacks of boards or marble on a few suits cave stalker would be more trouble than it's worth and Bearger is surface- and basically autumn-exclusive. I usually don't need much wood or marble either, so I opted for cannons. Also they can't crack stone fruits, unfortunately, but it's fine since single gunpowder can open a lot of those and I was producing it anyway.

For monkeys one can put statues or antlion boulders in U-shape, and leave them behind or easily kite and kill while they are stuck (blockers should be very close to each other though, monkeys can go through smaller holes than player, for reference).

Another option for monkey defense are ovens and anenemies+statues, but I didn't build them on this server's iteration because I just unloaded them way before reaching base via riding rider beefalo on glossammer saddle.

This is actually fraction of base since lureplant farming area and pig farm were in different places. This room was bottleneck on the way to naturally spawned repaired pseudoscience station, some rich on thulecite statues rooms and last checkpoint on the way to atrium (you can see gates to the void here), so I made sure monster characters would have no trouble passing by. Ruins were very small (22 statues total, 16 clockworks, 5 cave holes and 3 stations including repaired one, I think) on this server, so people killed Fuelweaver much more times than usually and frequently visited this place (well, relatively).

[Qairon]

 

2 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

use astral detector for permanent light of similar radius

I overlooked that mechanic entirely. Good point. The only thing that would bother me about using it too much is all those glowing arrows that would build up if you did not move all the altars first, unless those don't appear in the cave server shard at all lol. Then by all means that's just better. Though frankly I'm faster at rushing toadstool these days than I could at pulling off the entirety of mooncaller and archives, for the astral light, but now I have extra uses for that detector now that I learned of that. Still not as pretty though!

 

2 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

Unfortunately cannonball's AoE is abysmally small, around 0.5 of geometric placement's grid point, so around 1/16 of a tile (radius), which is true for both landing place and path of cannonball to it. Which means that killing monkey train isn't an option even if player was fast and precise enough to aim unless monkeys are trapped somehow in a way that basically gathers them within 1/16 radius from one place.

Oof. Now cannons are one invention that I truly am disappointed with the potential with. The fact they can be placed on land had given me so many possible applications in mind to them, but they really seem gridlocked to their "intended" purpose of only being used to deter a pirate raid in one shot lol. And from what I've heard they're so clunky to use that it barely works out even for that. At least you've found some uses for it! I like seeing underused things get love personally.

2 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

For monkeys one can put statues or antlion boulders in U-shape, and leave them behind or easily kite and kill while they are stuck (blockers should be very close to each other though, monkeys can go through smaller holes than player, for reference).

That's interesting, I'll try that for extended play. My go-to right now for dealing with monkeys is to to trap one or two rock lobsters near a big mass gathering of splumonkey pods with a few walls, wait for nightmare phase and allow them to be targetted, as they'll attack once drawing many more, and then hide to just literally never die against a massive train. Alternatively,  While they're stuck attacking a literal brick wall of a mob, I just pick them off one by one lol. Hmm, perhaps a cannon would be nicely to kill them off in one or two balls as they focus a lobster... I'll let you know how that works out myself later today.

Alternatively during my hermit warly runs on pubs, I get a gang of 3 to 4 rock lobsters (only costs 4 rocks), bait one splumonkey with a single lightbulb so it is within attack range, feint an attack on it so they all fight that splumonkey. Even in their normal mischeivous form, splumonkeys will attack mobs as normal, it is only players they are so annoying with. Eventually they're cleaned up by the rock lobsters if you keep your distance. Great source of meatballs and banana shakes and the like, if you don't mind the trek to actually finding rock lobster biome lol.

Anyways, this was all wildly off topic and my apologies to OP and everyone else, I just love learning new ways to play.

 

[Pig Princess]

8 minutes ago, Gramugazy said:

The only thing that would bother me about using it too much is all those glowing arrows that would build up if you did not move all the altars first, unless those don't appear in the cave server shard at all lol

They don't appear at cave shard at all, and they don't appear on surface as long as all 3 altar sets are retrieved (if not, astral detector can't stay in deployed state on surface).

8 minutes ago, Gramugazy said:

Anyways, this was all wildly off topic and my apologies to OP and everyone else, I just love learning new ways to play.

I agree.

[Spino43]

Yes please, it would make full lit base a lot less painful and tedious.

And before anyone says it's OP, you have to kill at least 3 raid bosses to get the glowcap (Crap King/Celestial Champion/Misery Toad or Klaus). I am fine if only the glowcaps have their light radius increased, as it's meant to be an upgrade to mushlight anyway.

[EighteenXVIII]

Bump, because it really is terribly dim for how expensive it is. The light from the star caller staff completely dwarfs it (no pun intended). Even when you place four glowcaps, it's nowhere near as bright. And to make a glowcap you need to defeat a 100k HP behemoth. When there's also an alternative in infinite moonstorms the proposition becomes even more absurd.

And frankly, in the broader scheme of things, darkness has already been nerfed so much compared to the pre-caves era that it's really not a balance issue anymore. And to have an infinite glowcap requires so much time and resources that at that point you deserve to get something that's worth the effort.

[Gi-Go]

BRUH

(Fully charged mushlights every 5th tile)