Are MacTusk's drops too pivotal?

[Uncrushed]

Killing MacTusk is the only way to get:

• A Walrus Tusk
  • the walking cane (arguably the best speed boost unless you're Woody, WX-78, or Wormwood)
  • the brush is the biggest aid to rapid beefalo domestication (which is the other speed boost available to all characters)
• The Tam o' Shanter - one of the best early-game sanity and warmth boosts

I feel like my job the first autumn is to find all the walrus camps and be ready to raid them (without dying) on day 21 until I get a tusk and the Tam.  Ideally, I'll have a sewing kit ready to go, so I can forget about MacTusk after that (and maybe even break down my MacTusk mini-base).  If I don't get the deerclops eyeball for the eyebrella, I can use an umbrella and hat and spend summer in the caves (which I usually do anyway).  But the winters I don't get the right drops from MacTusk are a huge setback.

Have you ever considered splitting the Tam, walking-cane, and beefalo brush so they come from different sources?  They could still be winter-only sources if that's a factor.  That way if you found one, but not the others, it wouldn't be as big of a deal.  Having more than one way to 'win' these items might also accommodate a wider range of play styles.

Elite players can rush the ruins for the magluminescence, but even after 300+ hours playing, I'm not at that level and may never be.  It also seems incredibly high-risk, even for pros.  Even then, the maglum is not a true substitute.  It plus a top-hat gives +5.33 sanity/min with no insulation vs. the Tam's +6.67 sanity and 120 insulation.  The mag gives 20% speed boost vs. the walking cane's 25%.  Also, the walking cane is required to craft the lazy explorer, so the pros are still probably going to circle back to MacTusk for that.  The mag is also chest slot, so precludes armor or a napsack.  A ruins rush is also the opposite of my preferred play style (I love catching butterflies and planting flowers).

Or maybe provide different items to substitute for speed and sanity?  Or maybe an alchemy option to craft a tusk from bone shards, hounds teeth, and glommer's goop?  Or to craft a Tam from tentacle spots, a sewing kit, and a slurper pelt?  Still hard items to acquire that require exploring most of the map and maybe caves, but they provide an alternate path in case MacTusk doesn't work out for you that year.

[Evelo]

Don't worry about not rushing ruins at 300+ hours. I'm at 2k and while I can, I don't like doing it.
Regarding the Walrus Tusk, yes. I think so. I concocted the idea (probably not original but I thought of it on my own :P ) that there would be an island in the ocean, a small one, where you can find the Mactusk camp where it is always active outside of winter.
If you head to the island during winter maybe there would be a blueprint for an upgraded Ice Staff, or just a ton of ice. Eitherway it would be a way to obtain Winter only items (except Deerclops?) in the other 3 seasons. It would also be a benefit of exploring the ocean.

[Last_epilogue]

I would suggest something like a periodic speed booster. The walking cane from hamlet and coffee are all good, sadly Klei don't import them.

[Uncrushed]

I'm currently playing a solo world where I killed MacTusk every other day without getting a tusk.  I may have missed a day or two when Deerclops spawned, but not more than that.  I then defeated Ancient Guardian and there was no Lazy Explorer in its loot.  So now I can't craft one until next winter?  Can you fight Ancient Fuelweaver without one?  I think people generally bring two Lazy Explorers to that fight.

I understand some things are supposed to be hard to get, but impossible until the 2nd winter and then not guaranteed?  I'm not feeling the fun part of that.

At the very least, if no tusks have dropped yet, when the last MacTusk despawns at the end of the first winter, they should be guaranteed to drop a single tusk near their igloo. Like, "That darn ornery pengull made me lose a tooth!"  Or maybe it should be left at an abandoned pengull camp come spring (what are the walruses hunting, anyway?)

My current world is the first time I have played Maxwell.  By mid-autumn, I had a beefalo hat, a saddle, and partially trained beefalo (I would start this even sooner next time).  The two Tam's I got were useless to me and I left them on the ground at an early base.  I managed to finish the training with a beefalo in heat in early spring.  In retrospect, if I had gotten a single tusk and spent it on a brush, that would have been a mistake.  No amount of pain with beefalo training is worth a year without a Lazy Explorer.  The brush is ridiculously expensive to require a tusk AND steel wool.  Ironically, I managed to get 3 steel wool in my single Ewecus drop in this world.

I love the game.  Love the tam, the tusk, beefalo, etc.  Just this one thing feels glaringly unbalanced from a gameplay perspective.  It's like a single-point of failure for year-1 that's completely in the hands of the pseudo-random number generator.

[Uncrushed]

OK, maybe I get it now?  If getting the tusk were guaranteed, there would be much less reason to tame a beefalo?  Is that a good reason, or am I just justifying it to myself now.  I definitely have 2 play styles:

1. Get walking cane / lazy explorer and pave cobblestone roads everywhere I go often
2. Tame a beefalo

I have not fought many bosses with a beefalo yet.  I'll have to try that.

[Guille6785]

beefalo have made the walking cane quite pointless for me for a couple years now lol

[Mike23Ua]

There are several other places you can get a walking cane besides needing to luck out on MacTusk camps, you can get them from Fallen Survivor set pieces if your extremely lucky, you can get them from sleeping next to a WinterFeast Tree in any world that’s built WF Trees, You can ALSO get them from Sunken Treasure chests out at Sea.

A day 1 Beefalo Mount makes the cane pointless for everything but combat situations.

That said, I think MacTusks should Guarantee dropping Tusks when killed. I mean for them NOT to that’s the absolute worst kind of RNG in a game.. what am I supposed to believe? That the Walrus I’ve been fighting was toothless?

Cookie Cutters should guarantee drop shells too but that’s another topic.

[Gotheran]

As with most things in Don't Starve these items are largely optional but available, there are alternatives in many cases, granted for speed boosts the options are limited, if you're Wolfgang or WX the cane can be ignored, if you have the patinence for ruins diving the magiluminesence is also a decent speed booster and if you need some local speed buffs of course there is cobble stone turf. The general speed boost is nice but hardly impacts your movement to the point of life or death. That said more options for general speed buffs would be appreciated, maybe make fire nettles crock-able into tea that buffs your speed or some such, or other fashion items that provide small speed bonuses.

The Tam as well is not the end all be all, the beefalo hat is actually warmer though lacks any sanity gain, and sanity is readily handled by crockpot foods, jerky, blue mushrooms, other fairly decent clothing options like the top hat, sanity regen in general is to keep an even keel rather than to outright restore your lost marbles. If you can get a winter vest from hunting a Koalefant and jump into farming early on enough to purposefully cultivate a crop of Fire Nettles you can actually get by through winter without even needing a campfire.