feedback Feedback on the Rifts + the Brightshade Plants

[lakhnish]

I've finally had the chance to play the new beta in my current long-standing world.

I'm basing my feedback on this AND how it's currently implemented, not how it might be in a future content update b/c I am tired of banking on future updates to make a current update good. I did that for 3-4 years, I'm tired of constantly waiting.

Rifts (In the Short-Run)

The rift first spawns 5 days after killing CC and then takes I want to say about another 5 days before it is a global icon, which is where the first Rift Crystals form. Then you spend about another 10 days (?) farming the Rift for its loot.

IMO, this is far too long for the first encounter.

Farming the new Pure Brilliance is straightforward, just use a Weather Pain and you'll never have to deal with the Grazers lmao. 

I did get about 30 Pure Brilliance in profit by the end of the rift, but I do not know if this enough b/c I did not get enough husks to craft the new materials, which I'll get into later.

SUGGESTIONS:

1. Speed up when the first rift spawns. Waiting 10 days after killing CC is too long since at that point, I was just figuring out ways to kill time, which was not fun.
2. When the portal first spawns, that should be when the player gets the message + icon of the rift. That way I can at least prepare the area to farm the Deadly Brightshades.
3. Allow the player to speed up the rift forming process somehow. Babysitting the rift while wait for the new Rift Crystals to spawn isn't fun. 
4. The last Rift Crystals that spawn before the Rift closes needs to be fixed. Unless you Weather Pained them, the Rift immediately closes and destroys the crystals it just spawned, making that last spawn moot.

Deadly BrightShade + New Gear

IMO, the Deadly Brightshade are reasonable to deal with IF they are spaced apart from each other. I could handle having one plant root attack me while I tried killing one stunned Brightshade, but it's definitely faster when it's a one on one and especially when they are not on top of each other. Short clip here:

Spoiler

 

The biggest problem is actually getting enough of the new husk material.

The player is heavily incentivized to craft the new Brightsword for both speed and your IRL sanity, which nets you about about 6 Husks. Problem is that you then need 3 Husks to make a new one so you can continue to reasonably fight the Brightshades, making it so you barely turn a profit.

I did not need nor did I have enough materials to craft the new armor, so I can't say if its any good.

Unfortunately, Green Gems are your best friend for this update as it currently stands.

SUGGESTION:

1. Deadly Brightshades should drop 2.5 Husks rather than the one (honestly, maybe even more since again, I did not enough to even craft the new gear outside of the sword).

Rift (In the Long-Run)

For this part, I will be straightforward and say this is an educated guess b/c I need to play for several more hours to get a more solid opinion, which is going to take time (time I'm short on). My educated guess is based on the encounter with the rift in my world.

B/c the rifts will keep spawning in the world, your world will eventually be littered with the new plants alongside a bunch of stuff on the ground b/c of terraforming and uprooting stuff in the world (this includes mushrooms + glommer's statues btw).

I can forsee this being a massive nuisance where it is no a survival based challenge but instead a chore you do if you want to keep your world clean.

I say that something needs to be done about this because there is no way to disable rifts via gameplay, ONLY via a world setting. At least with the moon storms, you can choose to keep them active or not via gameplay, but with the rifts, if you kill Celestial Champion, you will forever be forced to deal with the rift.

[Dextops]

Nice informative post but i noticed you used about twice here

7 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

which nets you about about 6 Husks

so i've decided to ignore everything you've said

[Cassielu]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional design, but I found that Rifts only spawn three times after you kill CC, and then they stop spawning.

[lakhnish]

4 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional design, but I found that Rifts only spawn three times after you kill CC, and then they stop spawning.

If that's the case (and it's intentional) then that is nicer and helps my fears of the world being infested. Do you know if killing CC just restarts the cycle? And what happens if you kill several CCs in a row?

I've been making an effort in testing the content in a real world setting, which unfortunately means I lack a lot of long-term info since that takes a lot of time to figure out.

[Nweeky]

I havent played the beta myself, but couldnt you just place a bunch of plants very closely together and then use the new bomb AoE to take them out all at once? Assuming the bomb does AoE damage which it seems like it does.

Also assuming the rift tries to form a certain minimum distance away from player made structures, spawnproofing the entire world is possible by placing walls / fences in a grid, forcing the rift spawn in the same location every time making farming it convenient?

[gamehun20]

6 minutes ago, Nweeky said:

Assuming the bomb does AoE damage which it seems like it does.

It does do aoe it's also an uproot bomb and only does 200 damage per also I don't know if it's guaranteed that all of the planter gestalt will go there

[lakhnish]

34 minutes ago, gamehun20 said:

It does do aoe it's also an uproot bomb and only does 200 damage per also I don't know if it's guaranteed that all of the planter gestalt will go there

43 minutes ago, Nweeky said:

I havent played the beta myself, but couldnt you just place a bunch of plants very closely together and then use the new bomb AoE to take them out all at once? Assuming the bomb does AoE damage which it seems like it does.

Also assuming the rift tries to form a certain minimum distance away from player made structures, spawnproofing the entire world is possible by placing walls / fences in a grid, forcing the rift spawn in the same location every time making farming it convenient?

It's not a guarantee that all of the planter gestalts will go to the plants you've placed, as I've seen a lot spawn but then spew out in random directions away from what I've planted. You can certainly try to get a bunch grouped up and then try to take them out that way, but it's not a guarantee.

The bombs are receiving a nerf in the next patch and will require Infused Shards to craft, so I don't know how viable that is gonna be after said hotfix. I did test out darts and they do certainly take them out easily, but I do try to find other ways other than using darts as well since that does require a lot of setup to do.

As for the rifts, it won't spawn in the same place as it did last time but will instead choose a different location for it's next spawn. So if it spawned in your Moon Base biome, the next rift will be somewhere else (where exactly, I'm not too sure. Maybe it's still in the moon base biome but in a different part, but I just remember looking at the lua and it did have this sort of feature).

However, you do bring up a good idea about spawn proofing. Instead of placing a structure throughout the entire world (which I don't know will actually work), you can dig up every sapling, grass tuft, and all berry bush variants as those are the only plants outside of crops/seeds that the planter gestalts will take over.

[Cassielu]

1 hour ago, lakhnish said:

If that's the case (and it's intentional) then that is nicer and helps my fears of the world being infested. Do you know if killing CC just restarts the cycle? And what happens if you kill several CCs in a row?

I've been making an effort in testing the content in a real world setting, which unfortunately means I lack a lot of long-term info since that takes a lot of time to figure out.

Unfortunately, I tried everything I could think of and the Rift spawn didn't recover. So it's more likely to be a bug.

[Nweeky]

1 hour ago, lakhnish said:

The bombs are receiving a nerf in the next patch and will require Infused Shards to craft, so I don't know how viable that is gonna be after said hotfix. I did test out darts and they do certainly take them out easily, but I do try to find other ways other than using darts as well since that does require a lot of setup to do.

I assume the wines retaliate against catapults and catapults cant outrange them? Since if it's possible to force the plants in the same place every time, you could just catapult farm them. What happens if they cant find a plant to latch onto, do they just despawn? I assume you could also just set up groups of 9 plants and pre-drop gunpowder / slurtle slime + firestaff, that would kill the brightshades and uproot the remaining saplings, with only a loss of 5 gunpowder each time. It might also be possible to freeze them with flingos?

I know spawn proofing against pengull camps works if you just place a fence or a wall every now and then along the coast (Im tired of the mess they create in megabase worlds so I do this). I assume you could block rift spawns too. Yea relocating saplings and tufts is easier but it would not protect your world (mushroom spawns etc).

[Szczuku]

2 hours ago, lakhnish said:

terraforming and uprooting stuff in the world (this includes mushrooms + glommer's statues btw).

Wow, that is terrible.

Not only will my world be littered with rot, now natural environments will be destroyed just because

If this is but a taste of things to come in 2023... I'm not that excited

[Evelo]

Rifts do take a long long time to spawn, I agree. The first 5 day wait is fine so long as there is a method for the player to accelerate the process (ie moongleams or something).

In your video of taking on the brightshades, they were spaced apart somewhat making it actually possible to destroy. I have 4 of them clumped right next to each other because they infected my Grass Tuft farm. It makes it impossible to defeat without throwing your body and hundreds of resources to destroy, only for them to come right back. The space between them needs to be long enough where you cannot get 1 brightshade defending another with its vines. If the current HP remains that is.

I really like the corrupting and destructive nature of the rifts. However I would be so happy if there was an option in the world settings to disable the destruction ability of the lunar corruption, that way I keep the awesome flavor and other players keep their worlds in tact.

[lakhnish]

51 minutes ago, Evelo said:

In your video of taking on the brightshades, they were spaced apart somewhat making it actually possible to destroy. I have 4 of them clumped right next to each other because they infected my Grass Tuft farm. It makes it impossible to defeat without throwing your body and hundreds of resources to destroy, only for them to come right back. The space between them needs to be long enough where you cannot get 1 brightshade defending another with its vines. If the current HP remains that is.

Oof.

I got lucky with my rift because I noticed it early as I was heading to my moonbase.

If I hadn't noticed it early and had it spawned in a biome with fast more plants for it to take over, I imagine that it'd be significantly harder to deal with.