Season Refresh: Autumn

[Atkvin]

Seasons as a mechanic, have always felt like a well of potential in DST to me - one that could be expanded to add more depth and challenge to the survival experience.

A year ago, I set out drafting a huge list of ideas to add to each season. Only recently have I come back to it to trim it all down, and focus on the ones that I thought best added to the season - and also started making lil pieces of concept art showcasing ideas in a pretty spread! (see below)

When I say add to a season, what I mean might be in the form of just generally making the season more interesting, adding challenge, or adding value to the game elsewhere - whether by providing new mechanics /accessibility to more powerful character-unique utility, or giving (already existent but) lackluster/undesirable boss drops new uses in combating the new obstacles.

Without further ado, let's start with good ol' Autumn! I meekly present the first part of my little year-old project reworking seasons that I have lovingly dubbed:

'Seasons for the Seasoned!'

 

AUTUMN:

•  New weather obstacle Y2+: Leaf piles spawn sporadically everywhere on the surface, only once at the start of each Autumn.

Mobs and players moving through this turf (exists on a second layer of turf on top of existent turf, similar to sticky webbing) are slowed by 20%. Unlike webbing, leaf piles can be dug up, using either a pitchfork or the turf-raiser helm - though it will not yield the turf in item form, simply clearing the leaves 

Note the turf cannot catch fire, and is covered by & destroyed upon snow falling and covering the ground in Winter.

• New hound attack miniboss (chance of replacing hounds increases with each year): the Wholeworm

The Wholeworm is a miniboss that sometimes replaces hound attacks in Autumn, spawning at night to ambush players and slithering away upon dawn.

It is essentially a live wormhole that attacks/harasses players by swallowing them whole, then spitting them out of the closest existent wormhole. If it is not killed in time, it burps up several hounds, and sends hounds after any players not in range of it - punishing players by then needing to deal with a traditional hound attack.

If slain, it slithers into the ground and remains a closed wormhole. Once the next Wholeworm is slain however, the two Wholeworm mouths will then link and produce a new wormhole for players to traverse, allowing characters to create wormhole travel systems on the surface by baiting Wholeworms to desired locations.

(A world limit of total new wormholes could be set in worldgen options - when the limit is hit, a Wholeworm would drop a Worm Heart that could revive any existent wormhole into a Wholeworm to free up its owner and a slot in the limit)

Insights:

Spoiler

Turf as an obstacle, specifically piles of fallen leaves that slowed travel slightly felt like 1) a logical and natural obstacle of autumn that would be perhaps tedious, but definitely not challenging to deal with - and 2) a perfect counterbalance to the other mechanic of the Wholeworm allowing players to create custom warp systems on the surface!

Feedback I received from proposing an earlier iteration of these ideas on the general forums was that they would be too annoying and finnicky, as players enjoyed autumn for being boring and relaxing to work on their bases.

As a result, I changed the leaf falling weather every few days to just a global, one-time occurrence at the start of the season that wouldn't undo the players' efforts after a few days, that would also incentivize/create a new use for the Turf-Raiser Helm dropped by the Antlion.

A wormhole enemy has always been ripe in my imagination as a source of long-term travel systems not limited only to Wansa or (to an extent) Wortox. It had a more complicated process of obtaining the wormhole previously that needed to be streamlined - now simply requiring another Wholeworm to be killed to make a new pair of wormholes where you once needed to hunt down its other end somewhere in the world.

Also! Here's concept art from the beta Autumn rework I had written a year ago, when there were way more bloated and silly ideas, hah

Previously you were also able to bait and completely bypass the Wholeworm mechanic by feeding it food to satiate it, because I was really worried about players not enjoying it as a mechanic enough. There was also something with giving pigmen turkey dinners to be rewarded with a Guest Jerkey or Guest Kiwi (for Wurt) that once eaten, would allow the monster characters to no longer be targeted naturally by pigmen and allow characters use of houses as tents -- but I really didn't like the execution of the idea and again, trimmed it out with the goal of removing bloat. Nevertheless, that's what this old pic was trying to concisely convey!