2023 Wishlist

[JaxckLl]

With presumably only one major update before the end of the year (Maxwell & Winter's Feast), here is my wishlist for next year in DST. This is absolutely wishlisting, so other than a couple of obvious things it's mostly pie in the sky stuff, here to start a discussion.

• Spring Festival Rabbit - Hope is for something with the big rabbits, perhaps bringing them to the surface in a special set piece or two. Another recipe with Cotton tails and perhaps a way to farm them from regular rabbits would be awesome.
• Boats
  • 1/2 person boat - DST sailing is much better than it used to be, but it still feels like the current boat options are lacking. Namely, navigating through Salt biomes to collect the salt is sometimes literally impossible due to how the pillars can spawn. A smaller boat that could quickly navigate into & out of these fields would be greatly appreciated. Additionally having a small sloop would be ideal for quickly scouting or getting between locations by sea, with the current boat reserved for ramming, fighting pirates, and as a mobile sea base.
  • Ocean Trawlers - Having a net that could be mounted on the boat would be awesome, especially since the best fish aren't available near locations where you'd normally place trawlers.
• Characters
  • Woodie - Man Woodie needs a touch. Being unable to collect Glommer (needed for Knobbly Trees), activate the Moonstone event (needed for the Ancient Archives), or do the Moonstorm event properly sucks. No character should be locked off from so much content, especially some of the newest content. His random transforms are also especially punishing at sea, since there's nothing you can really do if you roll Moose or Beaver, and god forbid you're using a sail without an anchor. His sanity gets drained like nobody's business when doing his preferred activity (chopping wood) due to the rapid appearance of Treeguards and the Halloween event. Woodie needs some way to prevent his transformations if he so chooses and should really gain sanity when chopping. It would also be nice if Lucy was more powerful against Treeguards, since that would really cement his niche as a super strong Living Logs gatherer.
  • Winona - If any character could get an automatic sprinkler, it's Winona.
  • Walani - If I had to pick one DLC character to add to DST, I'd choose Walani. Why? Because her surfboard would open up a lot of early game exploration options (start with, cost 1 board, lasts 1 minute in moderate water, 5min in shallow, cannot enter deep). To spice up the character, I'd also give her the ability to plant bonsai pots in which she can plant diminutive versions of the existing trees. These mini bonsai trees can be harvested to produce their fruit (Birchnuts, Twigs, Pinecones, Scales, Mushrooms) without having to chop down the trees or risk treeguards (they'd also be cool decor and useful on boats). Finally, it's high time we had a character who was an exceptional fisherman, and Walani seems like the obvious choice.
• Bosses
  • Enraged Raids - There's currently a bit of a debate about whether boss scaling should exist in DST. Personally I do not believe that it should, instead mechanics should remain player directed. DST is much like Minecraft in that almost every aspect of the world can be controlled by the players actively playing the game (and those that can't exist in the world settings). Having such an important part of the game as the difficult of bosses be largely outside the players's control seems at odds with the overall design of the game. Instead, I would suggest that every boss gets an Enraged form of some kind. This form would have much more HP, more aggressive attacks, and several times the rewards of the normal boss. Enraged bosses would be clearly designed with multiple players in mind, potentially altering mechanics to better suit many opponents (such as Klaus's deer no longer being tethered to his rotation, and instead able to move & target other player's independently). Some of the harder raid bosses could be scaled down slightly to better fit the skills of the average player (Bee Queen, Crab King, Toadstool), while enraged forms can be scaled up even further. Many bosses already have some aspects of this idea, the thinking would be to extend & formalize this across the board so every boss has multiple scales at which they can be fought.
  • Malbatross - Change to roaming instead of being locked to shoals, in a similar fashion to pirate raids. Targets player craft with sails, especially those with Lightning Conductors and full Tin Fishing Bins.
  • Treeguards - Twiggy, Scaled, and Mushroom variants pls (ideally with some ranged attacks). Having a way to force spawn guards, such as a corrupted form of Tree Jam, would also be super cool as a means to set up unique farms. Treeguards could also have Mandrakes added as a rare drop for fully grown Guards, to make that resource more renewable and to encourage fighting bigger Guards rather than letting Bearger/Deerclops deal with them.
  • Bee Queen - Some kind of Honey Boot that lets us ignore the movement penalty from Sticky Webs & Bee Queen's Honey would be ideal. I'd also scale down the default fight a bit to reduce the need to cheese. A Honeycomb Turf made from Royal Jelly would also be a welcome addition since the stuff tends to pile up a lot in longer running worlds.
  • Shadow Pieces - The Shadow Atrium should probably only drop once per Shadow Pieces fight, so that cheesing large numbers of pieces for Nightmare Fuel does not also create massive piles of black hearts to be sorted. Alternatively, make the other Guardians into an actual fight, which if the player wins, destroys the Heart for a pile of goodies (Nightmare Fuel & Glow plants would make the most sense).
• Biomes
  • Rocky Rework - Tallbirds turning into a useful mob is great, but Rocky Biomes still feel remarkably lifeless & empty. Perhaps Rock Lobsters steadily petrify over time into mineable boulders if fed enough rocks/flint/nitre, each of which contains a Geode that can be cracked for a gem or two. That would turn these biomes into an exciting and essential farming zone.
  • Guano Islands - Guano Islands were such an important commodity that they became the focus of several near wars during the early 19th century. It would be great to have one or more Guano Islands on the overworld loaded with birds. Perhaps it's the nesting site of the Malbatross, or home to a giant Pelican boss?
• World Settings
  • Basic Resources - In my current world, I was very unlucky and did not get any Saplings other than the Lunar Island (I found one in the caves). The basic resource regrowth function also has yet to generate any in the overworld, which is quite perturbing to say the least. I also did not get any wild Grass Geckos, which was similarly disappointing. It would be great to toggle which of each of the basic resources we would prefer spawn in our worlds before they generate.
  • Force biome - Similar to a lack of Saplings, my current world also has no surface Rocky biomes. This isn't nearly as upsetting, but it is kind of lame to have several Evergreen Forests, two Giant Savanah, and only one relatively small Mosaic biome that contains actual boulders. Having a setting to "Force All Biomes" would be awesome for those of us that want a little bit of everything the game has to offer in a single world.
• Item Balance
  • Repair - At the moment we have several ways of repairing cloths, but no way of repairing tools, weapons, or armour. It would be awesome to have some way, perhaps resource intensive or requiring the presence of a structure, to repair gear to reduce the "use it & lose it" feeling of very cool but highly expensive Thulesite gear (the Pick/Axe in particular would really benefit from this). Perhaps a new Blacksmith character that can make a Smithery to repair gear using Nightmare Fuel & Coal?
• Farming
  • Moon Fruit & Mud Lumps - The farming rework has been fantastic. It's an engaging little puzzle that's fun to set up in every world and has numerous ways to be played by various different characters. However one of the big downsides of the system is that it tends to be "build & forget", with most of the work coming from initially applying nutrients & producing seeds. Once that first cycle is down, every crop comes out Giant with minimal effort. This is a great reward for understanding the system, but it also means there's little incentive to keep engaging once those rewards are realized. I would suggest adding some new crops to the Lunar Island & the Caves which would require a permanent imbalance of nutrients to maintain. This would serve as a nice challenge for those of us already experienced with farming, as well as enabling & encouraging a few new areas for basing. Perhaps Giant Carrots on the Lunar Island pop out as a Carrat instead? Or using Dragonfruit to farm Saladmanders? Maybe one of the new fruit turns into some kind of hostile fruit mob, a fun surprise for the normally placid activity of farming.

[Auth]

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

• Woodie - Man Woodie needs a touch. Being unable to collect Glommer (needed for Knobbly Trees), activate the Moonstone event

Woodie can do both of these things. However I do agree that he needs some serious help (especially in moonstorm, as you mentioned) & it's not super intuitive to do either of these as him.

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

-His random transforms are also especially punishing at sea, since there's nothing you can really do if you roll Moose or Beaver, and god forbid you're using a sail without an anchor.

That's kind of the nature of the transformations in general. The ocean is one of several places that transforming can be disastrous, so part of playing Woodie is knowing when they're coming and mitigating them or using them to their full extent.

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

-It would also be nice if Lucy was more powerful against Treeguards, since that would really cement his niche as a super strong Living Logs gatherer.

I think it'd be neat if all axes did more damage to treeguards than normal, but that's just me. Obviously not something where like "The default axe outdamages a hambat" or something but you know. A neat little thing.

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

• Walani - If I had to pick one DLC character to add to DST, I'd choose Walani. Why? Because her surfboard would open up a lot of early game exploration options (start with, cost 1 board, lasts 1 minute in moderate water, 5min in shallow, cannot enter deep). To spice up the character, I'd also give her the ability to plant bonsai pots in which she can plant diminutive versions of the existing trees. These mini bonsai trees can be harvested to produce their fruit (Birchnuts, Twigs, Pinecones, Scales, Mushrooms) without having to chop down the trees or risk treeguards (they'd also be cool decor and useful on boats). Finally, it's high time we had a character who was an exceptional fisherman, and Walani seems like the obvious choice.

None of these features seem to really make sense with each other or mesh well. Also don't seem to really have much of a common theme. And, just like in SW, she would face the issue of having a good head start but having next to no unique utility in late game. And I'm not entirely sure what could be done to make a character better or worse at fishing; the system seems pretty tightly contained to itself.

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

• Perhaps a new Blacksmith character that can make a Smithery to repair gear using Nightmare Fuel & Coal?

This getting possibly added to Winona's kit would give her more depth and more purpose to be played. It also fits her character well. Adding another character just for that feels like it'd just be diluting the process more than necessary.

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

• Enraged Raids

Hm. Knowing most people's opinions of Misery Toadstool & similar I can't say for certain if this is a good idea.

 

Overall, I like your ideas!

[JaxckLl]

The problem with Woodie is no other character has a downside like he does. It makes playing the game normally literally impossible for a period, which means if you're in a scenario that requires tight play he's non-viable. He'd be much, much more fun to play if you could switch off his transforms, for a cost of course.

Walani's theme would be boats. Surfboard so you can scout the close ocean biomes/spots quickly & early. Bonsai so she can harvest tree-based resources at sea (also a major longterm buff since this would allow for unusual farms. Moon Blossom farms in particular!). Fishing boost (I imagine slightly better odds at hooking or perhaps slightly more generous windows for reeling) so she can more easily keep herself fed at sea. 

Winona's already one of, if not the, best character in the game for farming bosses. Bee Queen, Dragonfly, Toadstool, Shadow Pieces, any giant or Treeguards, all can be easily farmed with some catapults and a couple of gems (or some Nitre if that's your thing). I killed DFly earlier today for 2 gems, a Tentacle Spike, two Pan Flute uses, and half a Thulecite Crown. That's an insanely good value proposition considering I got 2 Greens, an Orange, and a Yellow back, plus a couple of Red/Blues to refill what I spent. Winona already has really strong passives in her Charlie protection & fast crafting, I don't think she also needs to be the magic repairer. All that being said, a sprinkler of some kind should really exist and I feel that giving it to Winona would diversify her game in an interesting way. Spending Nitre for crops is fine if it opens up time to do other things for example.

The point of the Enraged Raids is that they don't drop different things than the regular raids (maybe a special statue blueprint or ornament), but instead drop more of their normal stuff. The point is not to go for the drops but for the challenge of the fight itself. Blueprints are something that should probably automatically scale with any players involved in the fight (if a player dealt 200 damage or more in the fight, they get a copy of each blueprint or something like that).

[MadMatt]

9 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

It would also be nice if Lucy was more powerful against Treeguards, since that would really cement his niche as a super strong Living Logs gatherer.

I would just like to say say they should make the Beaver stronger against treeguards instead. He already gets extra damage, but it's so bad in comparison to even the Moose in DPS  

[Mike23Ua]

As much as I would love to have Walani in the game I have given up any shred of hope that the chill surfer gal ever makes it into the game.

My 2023 wishlist is actually for Klei to re-design the game.

I don’t mean that current DST sucks.. it’s just that: Characters have been being updated and made better with amazing new abilities, Farming became more complex in depth and involved more player interaction, Fishing received the same kind of updates, and Boating was made more interactive, and all of these are amazing changes, but i would still like to see gameplay mechanics and weather hazards that were introduced in Klei’s other DLCs present within DST.

New Seasons, New Mob Behaviors, Tons of new world Gen options, I want the game to feel less like it’s still in 2015, I’d absolutely LOVE to see something like Archipelago world Gen options or even more unlikely but would still be highly fun: Elevations in land heights.

I have a feeling Klei didn’t spend all this time making characters more enjoyable, easier to pick up and play- if they weren’t gonna add some pretty cool content later.

[BezKa]

Quick reminder the current roadmap extends into a quarter of 2023 as well

[JaxckLl]

3 hours ago, BezKa said:

Quick reminder the current roadmap extends into a quarter of 2023 as well

Hence why I mentioned the Spring Festival at the top

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

As much as I would love to have Walani in the game I have given up any shred of hope that the chill surfer gal ever makes it into the game.

My 2023 wishlist is actually for Klei to re-design the game.

I don’t mean that current DST sucks.. it’s just that: Characters have been being updated and made better with amazing new abilities, Farming became more complex in depth and involved more player interaction, Fishing received the same kind of updates, and Boating was made more interactive, and all of these are amazing changes, but i would still like to see gameplay mechanics and weather hazards that were introduced in Klei’s other DLCs present within DST.

New Seasons, New Mob Behaviors, Tons of new world Gen options, I want the game to feel less like it’s still in 2015, I’d absolutely LOVE to see something like Archipelago world Gen options or even more unlikely but would still be highly fun: Elevations in land heights.

I have a feeling Klei didn’t spend all this time making characters more enjoyable, easier to pick up and play- if they weren’t gonna add some pretty cool content later.

I dunno about elevation changes. The world of DST is pretty intentionally abstracted to make it easier to play. Elevation would I feel get in the way, in the same way the walls did in the original version of the Ruins. I do love the idea of some more serious weather. Especially if it is localized, like the Moonstorm or Meteor Showers. A Volcano island with an eruption ala Shipwrecked is something I've wanted since boats were first announced for DST.
 

I disagree that the game "feels like 2015", mostly because that's a pretty meaningless statement. DST has evolved a lot and is a very different game than even just a couple years ago. New seasons is maybe outside the scope for DST as it is now, but definitely giving the seasons a once over so each has even more unique mechanics would be great. Summer for example doesn't have its own Giant since DFly is a raid in DST. The Moonstorm event is close to a "season" in terms of scope, perhaps some more events like that in the vein of Aporkalypse that are wide reaching & player-directed, to layer on top of the existing seasons.