Dragonfly: rant, review, rework.

[DVGMedia]

if you are playing with multiple people you can always die and haunt hounds from the dragonfly desert to farm for gems. both red and blue gems

[JaxckLl]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

How well (if at all..) do ice flingomatics work in the dragonfly fight? I kinda figure a machine that flings snowballs would subdue little larvae bugs at the very least.

It's okay. It does help suppress the fires, reducing the spam effect. However they can still be destroyed by an enraged DFly stomp, fire fairly slowly after activating, and are expensive. I always have one to cover my catapults (which is the best way to kill DFly btw. Trade two gems & some armour/healing for the boss easy), and try to stand where it's likely to hit to help manage heat. Of course you could just play Willow, which genuinely might be the best option if you want to rush DFly super early.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

45 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

It's okay. It does help suppress the fires, reducing the spam effect. However they can still be destroyed by an enraged DFly stomp, fire fairly slowly after activating, and are expensive. I always have one to cover my catapults (which is the best way to kill DFly btw. Trade two gems & some armour/healing for the boss easy), and try to stand where it's likely to hit to help manage heat. Of course you could just play Willow, which genuinely might be the best option if you want to rush DFly super early.

wolfgang and wanda can kill the lavaes without ice staff pretty easy

Willow is good if you get hit by them a lot but you would need ice staff or other methods to deal with them

[Pig Princess]

3 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

if you are playing with multiple people you can always die and haunt hounds from the dragonfly desert to farm for gems. both red and blue gems

First of all, if there is well-organized team who would agree to help with haunting hounds method, they might as well just kill larvae together without ice staves. Try to read what you are replying to, please.

Second of all, doing something solo in multiplayer is very common situation, it's a norm even if players are generally friendly, because not everyone might be interested in particular activity. If I want to do something others are not interested at the moment, I'm going to do it myself instead of whining in chat trying to convince people to abandon their plans. I'm not the only one who prefers such approach, it's very common, and there is nothing wrong with that since human society (server's population) is not superorganism, nor do people as species behave like colony of bees. And thus decent variety to do something solo in multiplayer setting is still relevant. Speaking of which, haunting hounds is not viable option to get blue gems if player is by themselves. Because not only other players would get sanity drain for no reason, there are no opportunities to meet hounds in bulk, let alone consistently. I don't consider dying every time 1-3 hounds are going to show up serious suggestion, especially since gems have only 20% chance to drop from elemental hounds. Yes, hound fortress can spawn, and yes map could have quite a few hound mounds in Dragonfly desert, but it still is too much randomness. At this point you could just advice to be lucky. And that is the problem people are discussing actually.

Again, hounds are good source of blue gems, but much, much later in the game, where their quantity makes up for low chance to drop gem. We are talking about relatively early period, before blue gems start to pile up.

Also having one and only way to do something isn't a good design and harms replayability, I tried to draw attention to this problem as well.

[DVGMedia]

2 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

First of all, if there is well-organized team who would agree to help with haunting hounds method, they might as well just kill larvae together without ice staves. Try to read what you are replying to, please.

 

I was just saying it is something people could do. Whether or not the server is coordinated for it is another question entirely.

I personally perfer to use beefalo taming to fight dragonfly. The standard saddle is fast enough to avoid the lavae and the dragonfly when she enrages so you can wait down the timer to get her back into her normal pre lavae state.

Just got to make sure the beefalo is tame enough and keep reseting the buck timer so you don't get killed.

[Pig Princess]

15 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

I personally perfer to use beefalo taming to fight dragonfly. The standard saddle is fast enough to avoid the lavae and the dragonfly when she enrages so you can wait down the timer to get her back into her normal pre lavae state.

That could work, although I will check first how viable it is to use beefalo only for avoiding larvaes and enraged Dragonfly (fighting Dfly with it ensures ornery tendency and I don't like that one). Thank you for the idea

[Cheggf]

Most people don't fight dfly without walls. Most people don't fight anything harder than dfly full stop. Most people don't make magic stations. I don't think judging what the people who just got this game do is a good demonstration of whether or not the fight is good. I think it's fun to freeze the lavae with an ice staff, it breaks the fight up. I've never noticed bad luck or bad ai or anything else you brought up as a critique.

[Capybara007]

i wish dragonfly was reworked

[Guille6785]

On 11/16/2022 at 3:06 AM, JaxckLl said:

However they can still be destroyed by an enraged DFly stomp

dfly can't break structures in any way, she can only burn them or damage them (i.e. walls) and a flingomatic is affected by neither of them

[Waynel]

What's all the fuss about ? How hard is it to play Wolfgang or get 2 blue gems and rush a prestihatitator if you don't want to make walls ?

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, Waynel said:

What's all the fuss about ? How hard is it to play Wolfgang or get 2 blue gems and rush a prestihatitator if you don't want to make walls ?

you dont even need ice staffs as wolf

[Mike23Ua]

I kinda just want to really see this boss reworked to be honest.. getting scales from her is absolutely annoying AF when playing Solo. Meanwhile add even just one other player and this fight becomes a cake walk due to being able to drop her to the ground with stuns.

My idea of a Rework would go something like this:

Dragonfly starts with Armor (scales) you need to crack through (knock of atleast 3 to open a weak spot) before you can actually damage her, as you damage her scales will drop (no longer requiring that stupid deal enough damage to stun her so she collapses mechanic) When Dragonfly losses all its scales it enrages if not put to sleep or attacked quickly enough starts to recover scales. The scales dropping off her would give the player a visual indicator of how “hurt” she is, as well as when she’s about to enrage. In addition to this: Larvae will now “leak” through walls you build like flowing lava the intent is to make walls “Slow them down” not to completely remove them from the fight equation altogether. However: Larvae can be “extinguished” now so Ice Staffs, Iceflingo, Water Balloons, or Wickers Rain book will remove any currently spawned Larvaes Fire effect.

Dragonfly’s larvae spawn ponds will harden over or burst open depending on how many players are engaging in the fight with her (so that solo players aren’t overwhelmed by endlessly spawning Larvae, and multiple players are challenged by more ponds for them to spawn from)

when all of Dragonfly’s scales are removed and she enrages she will blow her breath like a ranged flamethrower and spin around in a circle a few times attempting to hit the player, When her fire breath connects with a frozen or “extinguished” Larvae it reignites them on fire.

Instead of just having really high health and being annoying.. this fight should be creative & very fun.

[Yuuko]

On 11/13/2022 at 10:19 PM, Gi-Go said:

I'd like to briefly talk about a less known cheese that I would very much like to keep in this game.

Credability 0%.  You aren't some stalwart defender of the "game as intended" fighting against the dreaded eViL cHeEsE.

You just want people to play your way.  Get over yourself.

Walls are in the game for a reason - and mobs interact with walls in different ways.  Some bypass walls complete, either flying over them or plowing through them.  Some attack them.  Others path around them.  If the Lavae needed to work differently, they would.  They don't.  They don't need to.  Don't starve together is not a combat simulator, it is a survival game.  The goal of the game is to survive, not pretend you're in Dark Souls.  Players can, do, and SHOULD use everything the game comes with to deal with any obstacle they want.  If I want to build walls to eliminate lavae from the dfly fight I can, because that's what walls do.  Similarly I can install some catapults, eat volt goat jelly, bring a spider army, or my ghostly sister, or everyone's favorite boss rusher (Wolfgang.)  The choice is up to whomever is doing it.  If you're tackling dfly solo I doubt ppl will kick you because you didn't build walls first, but if you're bringing them with you and they prefer walls that's what you get.  You can try to persuade them to try it without walls, and great if they do!  But to pretend walls are some travesty of game design and need to be eliminated just because YOU don't like it, well that's like...

Spoiler

(tbh - it was really dumb that Klei decided to change klaus loot sack to not longer obstruct him.  wtf up with klei lately that they'd do that?  Unless you're actually going to make something better, leave it alone!  Quit listening to these try-hard haters)

On 11/15/2022 at 10:52 AM, DeadWhereX said:

If you're not desperate to kill DF very early, you can wait for winter. Telolocating Klaus with a telelocator staff  will make their deers drop a red gem and a blue each time, assuming you get at least 3 purple gems from digging up graveyards or other means like cleaning the ruins.

You can use a few wall pieces, and some signs to separate klaus from the deer, then just let him despawn and pick up gems.  You don't need to front load a cost of a few purple gems to get this ball rolling.  Every antler can be a free red + blue gem.

Oh wait, those dang walls again !  How dare a wall be good at obstructing a mob's pathing lolol

9 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

dfly can't break structures in any way, she can only burn them or damage them (i.e. walls) and a flingomatic is affected by neither of them

Are you sure?  Is this new?  I remember her smashing a lot of structures when she goes rage mode.  Its been a long time since I risked any structures to this though...

[Gi-Go]

18 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Credability 0%

I don't see you complaining about removal of ancient guardian cheese. Could it be that reworking bosses that everyone cheeses is actually a good idea?

Either way, original post was written due to some people worrying that beta dragonfly's veggie state was intentional, lazy alternative to cheese removal. 

It was just a bug so now I don't care. Cheese her all you want. 

[00petar00]

9 minutes ago, Gi-Go said:

I don't see you complaining about removal of ancient guardian cheese. Could it be that reworking bosses that everyone cheeses is actually a good idea?

Either way, original post was written due to some people worrying that beta dragonfly's veggie state was intentional, lazy alternative to cheese removal. 

It was just a bug so now I don't care. Cheese her all you want. 

Ancient Guardian was reworked and the fight isn't boring as it was before, now it can even be said that it is fun. If lavae ignored or even destroyed walls the Dragonfly fight would be worse for any player that wants to fight it alone.

 

[Gi-Go]

1 minute ago, 00petar00 said:

Ancient Guardian was reworked and the fight isn't boring as it was before, now it can even be said that it is fun. If lavae ignored or even destroyed walls the Dragonfly fight would be worse for any player that wants to fight it alone.

 

But didn't I also wrote my suggestions to make larvae not suck? These suggestions go with each other obviously I'm not saying to just remove the walls and be done with that. 

[00petar00]

7 minutes ago, Gi-Go said:

But didn't I also wrote my suggestions to make larvae not suck? These suggestions go with each other obviously I'm not saying to just remove the walls and be done with that. 

I don't think there is a good solution when it comes to reworking minions for bosses like Dragonfly or Bee Queen. As I and many others have said we prefer to fight bosses alone even when we play with other players and minions just make boss fights more of a team fight compared to something you should be deciding to do on your own.

Bee Queen has two reliable methods, bunnymen and catapults but that is the case because grumble bees don't cause fires when they die and bee queen has no AOE attack or does any damage to structures. Catapults are already usable with Dragonfly but you have to be careful as enraged Dragonfly can destroy them and you need to wall off the lava pools individually.

The solution to boss fights as a solo player shouldn't be a specific character craft like Winona's catapults either.

[Gi-Go]

9 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

I don't think there is a good solution when it comes to reworking minions for bosses like Dragonfly or Bee Queen.

Yes there is. I wrote them in original post. 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

kinda just want to really see this boss reworked to be honest.. getting scales from her is absolutely annoying AF when playing Solo

just hire some mobs

[Guille6785]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Are you sure?  Is this new?  I remember her smashing a lot of structures when she goes rage mode.  Its been a long time since I risked any structures to this though...

she can bring walls down to 0 hp but she can't actually "hammer" anything, nothing gets destroyed

[Owlrust]

Cheese is kinda inevitable in a survival game with raid-bosses to be honest.

Raid-bosses work well in MMOs because they don't conflict with the way the game is normally played, and they are typically a cornerstone of the game's fleshed-out combat system. DST is a very resource-heavy game and that conflicts with most raid-boss fights. If you run out of Weather Pains, your Toadstool fight is essentially over; if you didn't bring enough Boat Patches, your Crab King fight is essentially over; if you didn't bring a Walking Cane then forget about even trying to fight Bee Queen. Most raid-boss fights require AI manipulation or an extensive amount of items and preparation.

That's not even counting the environmental factors that make choosing your fight difficult such as weather, hunger, sanity, darkness, and how-long-since-your-last-hound-wave or even the specific mechanics of each fight themselves. MMOs are centered around combat, so the combat systems reflect that whereas DST is based on survival with the occasional skirmish and the survival systems reflect that. You either need multiple players to fight bosses in DST (which isn't always possible in non-pubs) or you need to give yourself an edge in the fights, and that tends to culminate in cheese. I think the devs have done a great job translating a complex mechanic such as raid-boss fights into a survival game, and hopefully we'll see new ways to fight in the future.

[JaxckLl]

11 hours ago, Owlrust said:

Cheese is kinda inevitable in a survival game with raid-bosses to be honest.

Raid-bosses work well in MMOs because they don't conflict with the way the game is normally played, and they are typically a cornerstone of the game's fleshed-out combat system. DST is a very resource-heavy game and that conflicts with most raid-boss fights. If you run out of Weather Pains, your Toadstool fight is essentially over; if you didn't bring enough Boat Patches, your Crab King fight is essentially over; if you didn't bring a Walking Cane then forget about even trying to fight Bee Queen. Most raid-boss fights require AI manipulation or an extensive amount of items and preparation.

That's not even counting the environmental factors that make choosing your fight difficult such as weather, hunger, sanity, darkness, and how-long-since-your-last-hound-wave or even the specific mechanics of each fight themselves. MMOs are centered around combat, so the combat systems reflect that whereas DST is based on survival with the occasional skirmish and the survival systems reflect that. You either need multiple players to fight bosses in DST (which isn't always possible in non-pubs) or you need to give yourself an edge in the fights, and that tends to culminate in cheese. I think the devs have done a great job translating a complex mechanic such as raid-boss fights into a survival game, and hopefully we'll see new ways to fight in the future.

Well said. One way to view boss fights is a risky way to convert relatively abundant resources into much rarer & more valuable resources. DFly in particular feels like that; trade healing food & armour materials for Gems & Scales. This is why I'd most like to see bosses reworked by being split into a high difficulty & low difficulty fight. Some bosses already have this, Eye vs Twin of Terror, Enraged v Regular Toadstool, etc. High difficulty fights should test your skills as a player as well as your accumulated resources. Regular difficulty should be a much more straightforward (and potentially highly cheesable) resource conversion system that also works as a fun distraction from base building & regular resource gathering. DFly seems like the most obvious boss to have this split as she already has an unused Enraged mode (unused in a practical sense). Perhaps in her Enraged mode she destroys buildings with impunity, making her not cheesable using the traditional strategies and much more of a dynamic skill check? I also wouldn't mind if she could nuke swarms of mobs while Enraged, forcing the player (and really balanced around playerS) to fight mano a mano.

[Waynel]

On 11/21/2022 at 11:07 PM, ArubaroBeefalo said:

you dont even need ice staffs as wolf

I meant either play Wolfgang or rush 2 ice staves