Beat the C.Champion, now seeing what the update has to offer: Rifts are pretty destructive...

[ShadowbirdRH]

Plants are uprooted, mushrooms are destroyed. I hope it's safe to assume there's something planned in this series to compensate for that.

I could suggest things like giving Wormwood the ability to cultivate new plants including mushrooms, or giving gobblers a slight chance of dropping berry bush seeds when feeding from berry bushes, but if there's already something in the works, I'm content to patiently look forward to it.

[1moregame]

Mushrooms and berries regrow.  

[goodguythatguy]

As of now, from my perspective, triggering the Rift spawn process by defeating the Cel Champion is mostly a punishment, waste of time. I don't get the sense I'm being rewarded with anything that helps me. 
The crap that's made available at the Brightsmithy Kit isn't particularly useful. Tools that last longer, a Staff and a Bomb that I can't use with my Controller. Armor and Sword that...I don't even know what to do with this crap. it's not helping me much. 
I do all the crap needed to complete the "End Game" content, and this is what I get. Stress, destruction of World and poo poo Brightsmithy loot.

I don't think anyone at Klei actually plays DST.

Sorry if this is a mean, trolly and wrong post. It wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong. 

 

[ShadowbirdRH]

Mushroom planters aren't a 1:1 replacement; they require periodic fertilization with living logs and are useless during winter on the surface, both points where naturally growing mushrooms, which regrow only so long as they're not dug up and destroyed, which the rifts do, have the advantage. Berry bushes and grass tufts also require periodic fertilization after being uprooted, which is a fair trade-off for moving them to a convenient location, but not a fair consequence for a random spawning rift that you have no control over, outside of disabling them in the setting. Bee hives drop a required material for building bee boxes, so that's not too bad, but killer bee hives can be useful too, and there's no killer bee boxes for players to craft.

It should be kept in mind though that the notes do specifically say that this is but one of three parts, and the value of what this update brings will become more apparent as more content is released, but because of rifts' capability to destroy that which players can't create, a need has been created for players to be able to create them. That I've been calling for such for a while, these rifts seem fitting, as if a requirement to balance the scales were players to have the ability to create more natural boons.

[1moregame]

Both berry bushes and mushrooms are part of world regrowth.  Berry bushes only in certain game modes, but as you point out, they can be replanted.  I don't know which type of regrowth the mushrooms have been added to (last update), but I suspect it is similar to that of the reeds, where if destroyed, it will attempt to regenerate in the same area. 

[bloopah]

Big misconception: Berry Bushes and such are not part of the usual world regrowth. They do respawn in Endless, but only in a radius around the Florid Postern and only when every other resource of its type has been dug up and there are no players around.

If they were actually part of it you'd think they'd each have their own setting, right?

[Mike23Ua]

Rifts don’t “Destroy” Berry Bushes, it just Uproots them forcing you to replant them, it DOES destroy Mushroom spawners, but those are part of World Regrowth now so it doesn’t matter.

[chirsg]

Boulders. Rifts destroy boulders. I choose to not have rifts active because of this. 
I hate that I actively have disabled a part of the game which is useful, but the cons SEVERELY outweigh the pros. 
The new tools are the best part of the update and would be infinitely useful, but for the downsides? Nah. It can act as if it never happened.
I'm upset that I can't emphasize my disappointment more by making the red highlighted text even bigger than what I've highlighted it as.

[ShadowbirdRH]

Sounds like a good adjustment to make would be to have rifts not desolate the areas upon which they form, but instead temporarily petrify anything within, or render them out of phase, in either case being unable to serve their normal function, and return to normal after the rift recedes. Perhaps in the case of petrification, players could mine them, deliberately destroying them for additional pure brilliance.

This also highlights something that's probably a good rule of thumb: no permanent consequences for events outside of the player's control. Either give players a way to control the event, maybe by having rifts target the site of a moon dial or the celestial orb, or a telelocator focus socketed with opals or pure brilliance, or maybe something new, or give players more of an ability to undo the damage.

Regrowth doesn't really cut it; it's OP in the sense that it makes precious resources too easy to restore and leads to clutter, and insufficient in that players are unable to choose placement. I'd rather players have more agency when it comes to resource management, that getting new resources should be the result of players' actions, but not come cheap or easy. That idea with the rare chance for gobblers to produce berry bush seeds when eating from berry bushes I thought was a good one, boulders could have better renewability by having the meteor strike zone follow the celestial orb, the opportunities that would bring, counterbalanced by the risks involved, and actively renewing other resources could use more brainstorming.