Wildfires, What are they good for?

[Captain_Rage]

4 hours ago, _zwb said:

Refueling a million ice flingomatics everyday and not go anywhere outside my base so non-renewable wild resources won't burn, or forced to play one of the two characters to spam books, or never leave the caves and do nothing in this empty and boring place? Yes please!

These are outright lies. In the 900 day solo world I am playing only one wildfire accident took place and that was because there many heaps of items lying on the ground in the base. Ice Flingomatics are in no way mandatory. Above-average trees are easy to obtain and negate all smoldering. They require zero maintenance. Summer completely stopped being a hazard after the fire mechanics got changed. A single Ice Staff will last more than two summers on average when it comes to controlling random smoldering and fires.

Without wildfires building and planning the layout of your base would be very boring.

[Mike23Ua]

I know this isn’t the answer some people Want to hear but maybe there should be some features in the game that are toggled to “Off” by Default, that SHOULD the player Opt into.. can be Toggled “On” in World Gen Settings.

Taking Root is a really good example: it’s content that’s toggled to Off by Default unless the player does a ton of end game tasks then LoL you deserve the punishment coming to you I mean it’s literal “End Game” & you had the OPTION to trigger it or not, Yeah? Alright then.. that’s on You.

However- If your crazy like me, you find said Lunar Rifts in game settings and toggle them to On. This is how I’d like to see most content updates handled from now on to be honest..

Rather than just throwing something into the game some people may not enjoy, give them the freedom to choose if it’s part of their play session or not.

This is the ONE advantage DS/DST has over other Sandbox games, if you don’t like a particular part of the game you can remove it from the equation.

Those of you who don’t enjoy wildfires are wanting them changed to be more tolerable, more easy to counter, etc and I just strongly feel that defeats the entire point of their existence.

Maybe lesser liked features (like wild fires or wild rifts) can be off by Default & should the player Opt into that additional suffering: that’s their choice to make.

I’m not ashamed at all to admit I’ve based in a Meteorfield unknowingly a few times and had to toggle meteors off.

But that’s the difference between Minecraft & DST- I CAN remove the parts of the game that I dislike while doubling down on the stuff I DO like and all without needing to buy a PC & install mods for it.

[Baark0]

Wildfires are most comparable to disease, both being a mechanic that incentivizes not interacting with it as the best way to deal with it (wildfires by hiding in the caves/oasis, disease by using gekkos/twiggy trees). 

[Gotheran]

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

Without wildfires building and planning the layout of your base would be very boring.

Wildfires are about the only mechanic that dictate how or where you build your base.

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

Ice Flingomatics are in no way mandatory. [...] Summer completely stopped being a hazard after the fire mechanics got changed. A single Ice Staff will last more than two summers on average when it comes to controlling random smoldering and fires.

It is true that fling-o-matics are not the only option but its one of two options that does not require a great deal of interaction from the player once setup.

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

Above-average trees are easy to obtain and negate all smoldering. They require zero maintenance.

This requires a lot of time investment to setup and can take your attention away from other major long term sustainability goals in the early game. Having to go interact with Pearl for the Pinch'n'Winch, having to find a waterlogged biome, transplant the seed, making sure to have glommer as early as possible to start stockpiling goop, collect as many figs as you can from the waterlogged biome for tree jam, and then fertilize your knobbly tree like 4 or 5 times over several days to finally see it grow, it works but its a very time heavy investment, the sort of task i'd wait till i could survive a full season cycle to think about going for. It also only covers a limited area along. Sadly its also possible for this to be the only long term solution to players with a gear drought world, my last world had 5 total surface clockworks and i didn't setup caves right away, even with tumbleweed farming gears were tight in the early game.

[Evelo]

12 hours ago, Gotheran said:

I'm not sure how servers behave in DST I've mostly played solo, I've been watching Beard777's videos many of them are old or out of date but it does sound as though wildfires will still occur on the surface even if you go turtle down below, so it doesn't stop it being an unfair damaging mechanic that players have no real answer for.

I play exclusively Solo DST. Wildfires only occur within 2 screens of a player's location. So no, they won't happen if you live in the caves and are solo.
Also please don't watch Beard. You can go to reddit to find out why.

[Gotheran]

9 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Also please don't watch Beard. You can go to reddit to find out why.

I'd just as soon not, his commentary style is hard to listen to, but there are not many creators on youtube with tutorial information on DST. And I needed something to catch me up to speed with the additions and changes I wasn't familiar with.

[bloopah]

24 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Also please don't watch Beard. You can go to reddit to find out why.

Ew Reddit, here's a video to explain why:

 

[Gotheran]

Lets keep this on the topic of Summer and Wildfires please

[_zwb]

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

These are outright lies. In the 900 day solo world I am playing only one wildfire accident took place and that was because there many heaps of items lying on the ground in the base. Ice Flingomatics are in no way mandatory. Above-average trees are easy to obtain and negate all smoldering. They require zero maintenance. Summer completely stopped being a hazard after the fire mechanics got changed. A single Ice Staff will last more than two summers on average when it comes to controlling random smoldering and fires.

Without wildfires building and planning the layout of your base would be very boring.

Above average trees requires SAILING and actually engage with OCEAN content. Ugh, nope thank you. Let's say I did get one seed, then I need 20 days and multiple visits to the waterlogged to get the materials I need. I'm not wasting my time on this :/

Plus this tree only protects a small area, this kinda limits my build and for some reason my pc struggles whenever I see a avove average tree, idk why but it makes the game literally unplayable.

My base might be "boring" but I don't care at all. I built it and I love it.

4 hours ago, W0l0l0 said:

Maybe wildfires could be replaced with flaming meteors that could come down every now and again during summer (avoiding landing directly on structures) and require either a full can of water or a deadline of 1 day before it extinguishes itself.

Did you mean: Volcano from Don't Starve Shipwrecked

[Gotheran]

2 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Plus this tree only protects a small area, this kinda limits my build and for some reason my pc struggles whenever I see a avove average tree, idk why but it makes the game literally unplayable.

Mine as well, my system is very low end so there's all sorts of reason for performance issues but I think the canopy effect on the top of the screen causes a big part of the impact within this biome, and i'm not sure if there's any mods to remove it or make it less of a performance impact.

[_zwb]

Just now, Gotheran said:

Mine as well, my system is very low end so there's all sorts of reason for performance issues but I think the canopy effect on the top of the screen causes a big part of the impact within this biome, and i'm not sure if there's any mods to remove it or make it less of a performance impact.

There is a mod to remove the effect, haven't tried it yet though.

[Mike23Ua]

2 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Lets keep this on the topic of Summer and Wildfires please

Very well, Wildfires are fine and need no changes, Summer as a Season though… Summer Sucks. It needs to be full of content and things to do like Winter. That’s why people Aren’t complaining too much about Winter because instead of just sitting in your base freezing to death trying to stay warm you have season exclusive mobs, resources etc..

Summer on the other hand, is Meh, not Wildfires.. I’m pulling those entirely out of the equation, and targeting the real culprit- Lack of World Changes in Summer.

TL:DR- Pretend Summer is Winter, Winter would be boring too with just the freezing mechanic & a completely optional boss huh? It needs more to see, do, gather, interact with etc… Leave Wildfires alone, give me new mobs and resources I can get from those mobs that help make Summer worth not hiding in a cave & skipping.

Here’s an Idea: Give Brightshades a Seasonal Weakness, let them Wilt in Summer unable to grow in large herds, let them be weaker to being attacked.

Hell Code SkitterSquid so they run out of the boiling hot ocean and try to find cooler places to be on Dry Land..

But Don’t just blame Wildfires for Why Summer sucks.

The season simply didn’t get as much love as Winter, Same can be said about spring too if you want to open that can of Worms.. they both could use the same kind of interesting love & care that went into making Winter unique & interesting.

 

[ShadowDuelist]

I think a fully fueled ice flingomatic should last 14 days (currently lasts only 5 days). That way as long as you craft flingos to cover your base, fuel them all to the max, and turn them on during the first days of summer your base will be protected.
You’d just have to refuel them at the end, or before the next summer.

An alternative I can think is that flingos stay the same, but wildfires only start on trees. So, as long as you protect trees, build away from them, or make your transplanted forests on oasis or under knobby trees you’ll be safe.
I mean it makes sense that the forests burn during summer, but it doesn’t make much sense that your boat in the middle of the ocean burns out of the ambient heat only, at least to me (If a fire hound did it that’s another thing)

[W0l0l0]

16 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Did you mean: Volcano from Don't Starve Shipwrecked

If it spawns temporary smoldering areas with meteors then yeah. Especially good if we can learn something from the implementation of already existing ideas.

[Szczuku]

I always believed that wildfires would be better if they happened in a cartoon-fashion of flames covering the object for like 2 seconds and then its over.

At least then you wouldn't need to worry about the fire spreading

[Gotheran]

40 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

[...] but wildfires only start on trees. So, as long as you protect trees, build away from them, or make your transplanted forests on oasis or under knobby trees you’ll be safe.

 

28 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

I always believed that wildfires would be better if they happened in a cartoon-fashion of flames covering the object for like 2 seconds and then its over.

At least then you wouldn't need to worry about the fire spreading

Putting these together perhaps it can function similarly to forest petrification, random areas of the world get targeted for forest fires, only the trees are directly effected but stuff near the trees might catch fire but the trees don't linger on fire for eons just go up in smoke really quickly and when summer ends the scorched trees all despawn and a handful of saplings grow in place of the old forest to avoid total tree extinction, basically it turns summer into a sort of free but temporary charcoal farm?

It can even have early warning, say the trees take on a "wilted" appearance similar to berry bushes, grass tufts, etc, and they can be called "extra dry" for as long as they remain this way, marking them for a possible wildfire later, fling-o-matics will revert extra dry trees to their normal state preventing them from being burned down.

And when a fire occurs the players are warned with a big fire marker on the world map, showing where it started, in addition to a temporary weather effect where ashes and embers rain down from the sky, occasionally spawning ash piles and embers which behave sort of like butterflies, moon gleams, spores etc, and can possibly choose to "land" on structures or flamable objects around the player causing them to then smoulder, fling-o-matics will automatically snuff embers and ember caused smouldering if for some reason it couldn't stop the ember.

[Hornete]

58 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Mine as well, my system is very low end so there's all sorts of reason for performance issues but I think the canopy effect on the top of the screen causes a big part of the impact within this biome, and i'm not sure if there's any mods to remove it or make it less of a performance impact.

The canopy UI itself is fairly fine. From what I found the real performance hitting sources are from the rendering of the trees themselves and the bloom eminating from the light rays. It is awfully unoptimized compared to a lot of other things in the game.

[Mysterious box]

Personally I feel like there's only one fix that wildfires need and it's to reduce the distance it can occur from the player to reduce the odds of getting hit by it off screen. The rest of it is fine as we have tons of ways to deal with wildfires as we go like water balloons, ice staffs, and watering cans.

Edit: Actually maybe even add a reactionary quote for if something is about to catch fire on screen.

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Summer as a Season though… Summer Sucks. It needs to be full of content and things to do like Winter. That’s why people Aren’t complaining too much about Winter because instead of just sitting in your base freezing to death trying to stay warm you have season exclusive mobs, resources etc..

I do kinda agree here summer should have more content that rewards you for exploring the surface while Wildfires are going.

[Gotheran]

Indeed, one of Summers Most notably lacking features is unique rewards for putting up with it. In Winter you get ice for dealing with summer, tam o shanter and winter koalefants that help out in-season, the eyebrella for spring and summer, the walking cane as a frankly year round buff. Some things can be found in other ways now thanks to sea treasures and Klaus but they remain the easiest to acquire in winter.

In summer the only rewards come from a boss who spawns in a very particular and remote part of the map, you may not even find the Oasis desert by summer, and then you have to deal with another of Summers unfun mechanics if you don't just disable it, but if you do deal with Antlion your rewards are a teleportation alternative that only functions if you're playing with people and still requires someone to go to the far side manually to initiate it. Or a silly hat that makes turf changing easier, I'm sure the latter is a nice QoL for base builders but has little value for the rest of us who either do not bother with turf or only mess with it enough that a golden pitchfork is more than sufficient.

There's also the in-season "reward" that is a floral shirt, which while incredibly powerful only lasts for the season and requires you to make a new one each summer, but has little use once summer is over.

Part of the awkwardness is due to the next season Autumn having no real unique mechanics either, so there's nothing summer can provide to make the next season easier. And I rather don't want to see Autumn given additional difficulties since it is intended as a sort of down time from all the unique quirks of the other seasons.

[Mike23Ua]

I disagree I’d like to see some variations on all of the games current seasons, as well as introduce some new ones..

Autumn Year 1, Autumn Year 2, Autumn Year 3 etc..

Id love to actually see the seasons change and progress as we climb in years survived, Summer starts with silly wildfires, but by Year 5 the Antlion craters glow like magma and burst open for new fire based mobs to invade the constant.

Perhaps even these guys: Who I’ve wanted in the game since forever-

These things let’s just call them Magma Golems were EXCLUSIVE to the Forge event, an Event that was never even playable on Xbox, oh but that’s okay cause I guess I have this cool profile picture to remind me of content I never got to play, nor may I ever get to.

If Klei would start incorporating those mobs into the game world (such as above Antlion Craters 2.0 by Summer Year 5..) I’d get to at least experience some Dont Starve/DST Mobs I never even got to see because they were exclusive to a limited time event that wasn’t even playable on my platform.

[Gotheran]

Autumn technically presents some variance with Bearger, as he wont likely spawn in the first Autumn unless you set the season to Long or Very Long, and equally he provides possible upgrades to your winter and even year round experience with the crafts made from his pelt.

[ALCRD]

2 hours ago, Evelo said:

Also please don't watch Beard. You can go to reddit to find out why.

I will watch Beard's videos cause they are very informative and detailed and he's covered almost everything DS and DST related and is still uploading regularly.

His videos helped me a TON and still do while i explore the confusing world of solo Don't Starve DLCs (Including things that are either not mentioned by wiki or poorly explained by wiki.)

Petty dramas don't concern me much. (by petty i mean as long as he didn't murder anyone , mugged a grandma on the street or headbutted a kitten etc then i don't care)

1 hour ago, Hornete said:

The canopy UI itself is fairly fine. From what I found the real performance hitting sources are from the rendering of the trees themselves and the bloom eminating from the light rays. It is awfully unoptimized compared to a lot of other things in the game.

Canopy is also the culprit but yea the bloom is a massive one.

For me turning off Bloom worked reducing the frame drop within these trees. Zooming in a bit also greatly helped.

Buddy i played with however would get massive performance hit within the canopies even with Bloom off while having no performance issues away from these.

 

[Hornete]

24 minutes ago, ALCRD said:

I will watch Beard's videos cause they are very informative and detailed and he's covered almost everything DS and DST related and is still uploading regularly.

His videos helped me a TON and still do while i explore the confusing world of solo Don't Starve DLCs (Including things that are either not mentioned by wiki or poorly explained by wiki.)

Petty dramas don't concern me much. (by petty i mean as long as he didn't murder anyone , mugged a grandma on the street or headbutted a kitten etc then i don't care)

Canopy is also the culprit but yea the bloom is a massive one.

For me turning off Bloom worked reducing the frame drop within these trees. Zooming in a bit also greatly helped.

Buddy i played with however would get massive performance hit within the canopies even with Bloom off while having no performance issues away from these.

 

Have you tried turning off the canopy?

Command to hide it.

ThePlayer.HUD.leafcanopy:Hide()

I have my doubts that it's actually a large contributor, but feel free to test if you can.

[ALCRD]

19 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Have you tried turning off the canopy?

Command to hide it.

ThePlayer.HUD.leafcanopy:Hide()

I have my doubts that it's actually a large contributor, but feel free to test if you can.

Oh yea it feels smoother now when moving around the trees with the rolling canopy effect off. I tried toggling them on and off to be sure and there is a noticable difference. (Gonna wite down this command thanks, do you have one for the Hamlet's canopies?)

I have same issue with Hamlet's jungle. The rollng leaves sprites aswell as misc hanging vines cause choppyness when moving through that area and Bloom magnifies this problem greatly.

It's something both with the sprites and how they interact with Bloom (maybe).

[Ryusuta]

I definitely have no issue just turning them off. Unless you're absolutely hardcore, ride-or-die on the pure vanilla experience, then there's really no reason not to. I get that it adds challenge, but when that "challenge" is effectively just a game of Russian Roulette every few minutes... Yeah, I'll pass.