What type of Challenge Modes do you use?

[Evelo]

Not a fan of Uncompromising Mode personally so I like to fiddle with the settings to make the game more challenging or at the very least dramatically change playstyle.
Light's Out is a classic option and quite fun surprisingly.
I've been doing a Very Long winter with the other 3 seasons on Very Short. Cave exploring is a lot more tedious and risky that's for sure. The very short seasons is also quite hectic with the need to bounce between tasks in your very brief window. Tempted to do a Very Short seasons run because of how fast paced everything feels.
What about you? What kind of Challenges do you add to your world settings?

[jrthekidRS]

Damage taken set to more, death reset time set to instant, drowning counts as a death (expect for Wurt), and no rollbacks combined creates a makeshift hardcore more, and it is more fun than it sounds. The extra damage makes a big difference and you will probably have many close calls with death, and if you die, your world will instantly reset. No rollbacks because you can cheat with that. And drowning counts as a death to finish the extra-compromising mode.

I usually use this mode in combination with something else like playing Island Adventures for the first time. I also kinda wish there was a mod that would make drowning automatically kill you.

[DinsdaleP]

Summer start, to get around the boring early game, because jumping into a season that really wants to kill you totally unprepared is fun. First two days are mostly safe (bit of overheating damage), but after that, the surface becomes a scorching hellscape. If you can make a thermal and a fridge, you can pop back up for a day at a time, but otherwise, it's spelunking time until the last day of summer. Luckily, the caves can provide a hell lot of resources, but if you're playing one of the more magic oriented characters (Maxwell, Wanda), it won't be all that much of a fun time.

Increased risk has increased reward thought, you can ruins rush AND use autumn for exploring the overworld map, instead of the darkness and misery of winter.

[-Variant]

23 hours ago, Evelo said:

Not a fan of Uncompromising Mode personally

Asking out of both requirement and curiosity, is it something you wish to disable but cannot or something else entirely? 
If you're not enjoying a specific aspect I'd recommend checking out the config options. There's a lot. Like, a lot. If something's missing let me know!

 

Tthhhaattt aside, Black Death, 100%. Not a config in vanilla, but one of, if not my favorite mod for difficulty.
Brings the plague into the game, both for plants and players, unmistakable authentic artwork alongside complex and diverse mechanics. Not for beginners in the slightest bit, and you've got to be a bit stubborn, as if playing DS for the first time again. I'd absolutely recommend it!

[CameoAppearance]

When I want a challenge I most often either go play singleplayer because the modes that haven't been officially ported over (although the Adventure Mode and Island Adventures mods are pretty good) are more challenging for me than standard RoG, or else I join or host a server with some people who don't know what they're doing and try to keep everyone alive anyway, sometimes one that's already running so it's the middle of winter or something.

Having said that, I've done 'constant rain and extra giant attacks' (I called this one Rain of Giants), 'winter and summer only, start in winter', 'all food sources turned off in worldgen' (this was years before OrangE's Nothing World but a similar idea), and there was a caves-only server but everyone kept dying in the early game and I'm not thrilled about the lack of certain resources in the later game. I've tried Lights Out but I honestly found it too difficult to recover from deaths, which was a rude awakening after spending an excessive amount of time in the Darkness world from Adventure Mode, where touchstones come with free Maxwell lights and there's fireflies everywhere.

[Evelo]

42 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Asking out of both requirement and curiosity, is it something you wish to disable but cannot or something else entirely? 
If you're not enjoying a specific aspect I'd recommend checking out the config options. There's a lot. Like, a lot. If something's missing let me know!

Requirement? Interesting, uh I haven't played it through much but the art of some of the new enemies seems not very polished. ie: The Shadow Jaw thingy when you are insane. Also 1 shots the player seems a little ridiculous for early game but I guess that is to decentivize being insane (which isnt an actual real issue for experienced players) Maybe it just changed the fundamentals of the game too much for my taste. I should really give it another go before i just write it off honestly. I play with a friend who is experienced with the game to some extent but isnt good. Broad knowledge, minimal skill. He thought the game was too easy so we tried out the mod and was too much for him so kind of finnicky but like I said we didnt try it for long. I'm sure I could grow use to it on solo (with the DSTalone mod cause holy crap)
 

28 minutes ago, CameoAppearance said:

I've tried Lights Out but I honestly found it too difficult to recover from deaths, which was a rude awakening after spending an excessive amount of time in the Darkness world from Adventure Mode

For this what I love to do is go into the Underground and capture Lightbugs. I gather around 20 of them and surface, return to base and sprinkle them throughout. That way I have infinite light in my base that is inconsistent but guaranteed for a Meat Effigy respawn. Give it a try! makes it really nice. (also make sure to have spare portable light sources to run back to your corpse)

[Theukon-dos]

8 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Requirement? Interesting, uh I haven't played it through much but the art of some of the new enemies seems not very polished. ie: The Shadow Jaw thingy when you are insane. Also 1 shots the player seems a little ridiculous for early game but I guess that is to decentivize being insane (which isnt an actual real issue for experienced players) Maybe it just changed the fundamentals of the game too much for my taste. I should really give it another go before i just write it off honestly. I play with a friend who is experienced with the game to some extent but isnt good. Broad knowledge, minimal skill. He thought the game was too easy so we tried out the mod and was too much for him so kind of finnicky but like I said we didnt try it for long. I'm sure I could grow use to it on solo (with the DSTalone mod cause holy crap)

Shadow jaw thingy?

I'm... genuinely not sure what that could be. I guess it would have to be the dread eye, which does turn into a jaw when it attacks. But that definitely shouldn't be one-shotting, unless there was a bug where the spike attack could hit multiple times. 

[Evelo]

15 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Shadow jaw thingy?

I'm... genuinely not sure what that could be. I guess it would have to be the dread eye, which does turn into a jaw when it attacks. But that definitely shouldn't be one-shotting, unless there was a bug where the spike attack could hit multiple times. 

Alright, did a little testing. Creeping Fear.

It doesn't oneshot (my mistake) but it does do a hell of a lot of damage at range. It obliterated my friend and he quickly wanted to stop playing. I havent played since then tbh. Just seems like too much for my taste.

[Theukon-dos]

4 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Alright, did a little testing. Creeping Fear.

It doesn't oneshot (my mistake) but it does do a hell of a lot of damage at range. It obliterated my friend and he quickly wanted to stop playing. I havent played since then tbh. Just seems like too much for my taste.

Oh that thing. Yeah, it's a miniboss. But it only spawns when you're at 0 sanity, so I'm surprised you encountered it at all in the early game. 

[Evelo]

4 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Oh that thing. Yeah, it's a miniboss. But it only spawns when you're at 0 sanity, so I'm surprised you encountered it at all in the early game. 

Yeah I play Wormwood and frequently hit 0 sanity. My friend picked up a Fire staff from the Fire Hound trap and instantly hit 0 sanity when it spawned. But hey, learning!

[Primalflower]

5 hours ago, -Variant said:

Asking out of both requirement and curiosity, is it something you wish to disable but cannot or something else entirely? 
If you're not enjoying a specific aspect I'd recommend checking out the config options. There's a lot. Like, a lot. If something's missing let me know!

its screwed up. i don't enjoy so many uncompromising mode features, so many of them are not fun at all, but they are on by default, so my options are either play alone with everything turned off or play pubs where 9 times out of 10 everything is at default settings and the game hurts me to play.

its so so screwed up, even if i enjoy a feature in uncompromising mode, so many of them are made in such a way that you can absolutely tell they made with such vitreol towards the vanilla game, that it sours the whole experience a lot. its sad, it makes me sad.

[BezKa]

1 hour ago, Primalflower said:

you can absolutely tell they made with such vitreol towards the vanilla game

Even the name, "Uncompromising Mode" is a jab at DST. The game calls itself an uncompromising wilderness, but the mod says: actually, no, THIS is uncompromising. As if to say the orginal game isn't good enough to use that label or something. One of the reasons I never touched it.

As for challenges, it's a pain in the everything to play on a public server, so sometimes I just hop on and let the game roll a character for me. I swear I've gotten Wes more than any other character.

[flamboyant wolf]

2 hours ago, Primalflower said:

its screwed up. i don't enjoy so many uncompromising mode features, so many of them are not fun at all, but they are on by default, so my options are either play alone with everything turned off or play pubs where 9 times out of 10 everything is at default settings and the game hurts me to play.

its so so screwed up, even if i enjoy a feature in uncompromising mode, so many of them are made in such a way that you can absolutely tell they made with such vitreol towards the vanilla game, that it sours the whole experience a lot. its sad, it makes me sad.

it has its good parts, but then there's also stuff like trapdoor spiders (they're annoying)

[BeeClops]

playing on pubs past day 20 

[JosePapp]

I feel like uncompromising mode was tarnished by its early reputation because it used to advertise itself as "better" than Klei and as having a philosophy "more faithful" to the original, when it was in reality an amateur project.

However the mod and the dev team alike have come a long way and they're genuinely trying to make the best experience they can while avoiding being cheap. They've done away with the more annoying stuff like hay fever or clothing degradation, and while some weird choices remain (clingy dragonfly or monster meat dilution) i feel like it's not as bad as it's made out to be and is actually ok ish 

 

[-Variant]

Alright master post, here we go...

21 hours ago, Evelo said:

I haven't played it through much but the art of some of the new enemies seems not very polished. ie: The Shadow Jaw thingy when you are insane. Also 1 shots the player seems a little ridiculous for early game but I guess that is to decentivize being insane (which isnt an actual real issue for experienced players)

I've been reworking a lot of older art lately. If anything sticks out it'd be nice to let me know.
The shadow jaw shouldn't be 1-shotting anyone, that's unfair. Things have changed a lot, that aside I know the new shadows aren't for everyone, hence them being optional.

16 hours ago, Primalflower said:

its so so screwed up, even if i enjoy a feature in uncompromising mode, so many of them are made in such a way that you can absolutely tell they made with such vitreol towards the vanilla game, that it sours the whole experience a lot. its sad, it makes me sad.

I was hesitant to respond to this since I don't know how exactly I can word this and still sound as genuinely honest as possible and not sound like I'm trying to save my hind since I'm associated by default, cause I really, really do mean it when I say we're all trying to burry that horrid early first impression. Ultimately it is still how others view it that matters, we can only rework so much. 

15 hours ago, BezKa said:

Even the name, "Uncompromising Mode" is a jab at DST. The game calls itself an uncompromising wilderness, but the mod says: actually, no, THIS is uncompromising. As if to say the orginal game isn't good enough to use that label or something. One of the reasons I never touched it.

Christ, even I hate the namesake of the mod. I think half of the upstairs discussions have been of a re-name. Though that's something nearly impossible to do so late into a projects life.

8 hours ago, JosePapp said:

when it was in reality an amateur project.

Appreciate what you mentioned, I think it sums up what I'm getting at.
Amateur project is the understatement of a century, LOL. Trust me, it's been one hell of a learning experience. 

14 hours ago, skile said:

it has its good parts, but then there's also stuff like trapdoor spiders (they're annoying)

Oops. Forgot to respond to this. Did you mean their original state or their current state?
I'm also thinking they're optional as well. If not, let me know. 

[lowercase skye]

My time playing uncompromising mode itself was overall fine (the ocean's content was largely untouched, so I just hung out there when I wanted a break from the difficulty), but the unfortunate fact that both regular users and devs are allowed to publicly shame people they don't like in the Discord unfortunately turns me away from engaging with it at all. Being dissatisfied with the state of the game and wanting to make your own content is one thing, but openly mocking community members for feeling differently (or in some cases for things entirely unrelated to the videogame itself) makes me uncomfortable engaging with the project

[-Variant]

16 minutes ago, sylvia wander o said:

openly mocking community members for feeling differently

Assuming this is current modern day POV and not something from that past, I'll be disillusioned. I thought I had ironed this out.
I take responsibility in my own quips, which I try to be mindful to keep other people out of my discussions, though if there's other people actively doing otherwise this, isn't being brought to my attention and/or the other mods.
It's a very small team and moderation of an awkward community is not a simple feat. It's disheartening being told there's unwell fare you're missing.

[goblinball]

I’m going to be honest idk anything about uncompromising mode but I’m just mostly posting this so I can say thank you @-Variant for listening to the other ppl’s feedback in this thread and trying to be helpful and supportive with their issues.

It’s great that a lot of ppl in the dst modding community are equally as transparent and passionate for the game and making quality content as klei themselves.

[flamboyant wolf]

6 hours ago, -Variant said:

Oops. Forgot to respond to this. Did you mean their original state or their current state?

I'm also thinking they're optional as well. If not, let me know. 

Their current state. It's probably just a me issue, but I just don't get why they exist. I guess collecting grass early game was too easy? However, they don't exactly add a challenge, but rather make the process more tedious than it needs to be. So, fighting them is not viable, and running away is not that great either, so what's the solution? a trap. using a trap. What's the point of the enemy who you'll, in most cases, instakill anyway? Also, there's not really much reason to visit savanna biom after first autumn anyway, and these little guys don't exactly help in this regard, although tbh that's kinda a dst problem, with some bioms being rather empty at the moment, than it is UM problem. But yeah, they can, indeed, be turned off(which is a huge plus. the amount of customization available in this mod is truly amazing). 

UM certainly has cool stuff, like character rebalances(still a bit salty about Walter being robbed of his slingshot, but whatever) and boss reworks, additions to world gen etc, and while I'm not a fan of some stuff like new shadows and, especially, trapdoor spiders, the option to turn them off is nice. Overall, the mod is quite good, and it's clear that a lot of effort and passion went into it, but at times it can certainly be annoying/irritating, especially with a group of people

[-Variant]

5 hours ago, skile said:

I guess collecting grass early game was too easy?

Not that, the opposite, actually!
The idea was that collecting basic resources gets boring after a while, so Tall grass was added. You get like, 2/3 grass per pick!
Idea is risk/reward, you risk getting bitten whilst the reward is racking in tenfolds more grass then usual. Though as you mentioned they're optional, but the reasoning wasn't to nerf basic resource gathering. :'}

[Scrimbles]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:54 PM, Evelo said:

Not a fan of Uncompromising Mode personally so I like to fiddle with the settings to make the game more challenging or at the very least dramatically change playstyle.
Light's Out is a classic option and quite fun surprisingly.
I've been doing a Very Long winter with the other 3 seasons on Very Short. Cave exploring is a lot more tedious and risky that's for sure. The very short seasons is also quite hectic with the need to bounce between tasks in your very brief window. Tempted to do a Very Short seasons run because of how fast paced everything feels.
What about you? What kind of Challenges do you add to your world settings?

You can always use the config options to change most of the features

On 3/23/2023 at 8:11 PM, sylvia wander o said:

My time playing uncompromising mode itself was overall fine (the ocean's content was largely untouched, so I just hung out there when I wanted a break from the difficulty), but the unfortunate fact that both regular users and devs are allowed to publicly shame people they don't like in the Discord unfortunately turns me away from engaging with it at all. Being dissatisfied with the state of the game and wanting to make your own content is one thing, but openly mocking community members for feeling differently (or in some cases for things entirely unrelated to the videogame itself) makes me uncomfortable engaging with the project

If you see any cases of it I would love to hear about them!

I worry sometimes that some inside jokes to our community come off as hostile to newer members, but we never get direct reports about this kind of stuff

[ShadowDuelist]

I still play around with the caveman updated mod. It’s a game mode where you really have to make the most of your characters unique perks and cons, since you play mostly scienceless, or with very limited items for a while. 

Playing on a team is also fun because even if someone else got something important (like, a hambat) now they are in charge of making that item for everyone else. So a lot of what you can do and can’t do depends on the knowledge your team got so far.