How have the Brightshades and Lunar Rifts been for you so far?

[lakhnish]

It's been a month since Taking Root has come out.

I'd like to know what your experience with the Brightshades and Lunar Rifts have been like so far!

[Mike23Ua]

Well, for me personally I toggle them on in my worlds on Day 1, I know that under normal means your supposed to do a lot of quests and fight several bosses.. Klei for some reason or Another.. Decided they needed to lock these things behind some super super late game progression, However.. from my personal experience with them- Fighting Brightshades is actually EASIER than some of the older content updates that were intended to be “early game” focused, such as.. Fighting Swarms of Cookie Cutters, Water Stryder Spiders or Pirate Raids.

The TL:DR- It’s Easier to fight a group of Brightshades than it is to fight a Spider Queen who now spawns Medic Spiders.

So my Only Question to Klei is WHY are Brightshades such late game content??

Now I want to talk exclusively from the perspective of Toggling them to On in Day One Worlds..

The TL:DR of What I’m going to say is: It Speeds up the Early Game to help Players get to Late Game content Faster.

A more in-depth example of the above too long didn’t read: if a player can manage to find lunar island/Lunar grotto obtain enough Moon Glass to craft Brightsmithy, fight two or three Brightshades that are by themselves (not in a group and preferably with a Darksword) the player can start obtaining husks/brilliance to craft the Brightshade Gear & Weapons. Now remember I’m talking about these from a Rifts on in DAY ONE perspective. 
Obtaining BS Swords is a Direct upgrade to Darkswords, because they deal the same amount of damage- Minus any kind of Insanity drain the DS’s have & as an added bonus: Using the BS Sword with a BS Helmet & Armor boosts its damage. It allows players to fight Deerclops without needing to deal with the additional downside of sanity draining while holding the sword. 

Even the Brightshade Pick/Hammer is a direct upgrade to using Spears spears deal around 31 damage, BS Hammer deals 42 & it can be used to mine pure Brilliance faster, mine anything a pickaxe would, and hammer down things like pig houses or spoiled fish morsels.

From Day One the new gear is an amazing boost forward, however in worlds where you were suppose to do a ton of other tasks and fight other bosses and obtain superior gear to what BS loots offers: I can see why some people are disappointed in it feeling “Mediocre” 

But also there are two other updates that are meant to go alongside this one and we won’t know the full picture until those two other updates get here.

[DSTUser]

Well now we have part 2 so check it out and see if you change your mind

[GenomeSquirrel]

As expected, the Celestial Champion quest line is largely disregarded in pubs, and I don’t expect to encounter this content.

[Szczuku]

Experienced 2 Rifts in my post-CC world so far. Decided that that's enough. Will play other, pre-CC worlds untill the updates no longer feel 'meh'.

No reason to stock up on resources, just so that I can experience new content faster, therefore getting bored of it faster.

[Baark0]

I liked them when they exclusively spawned by my 5 houndius shootius, but now that I've begun decorating with plants again, I find them incredibly annoying. I've already had ice chester die to them since I had planted lunar saplings around my hound area. I really wished they would attach to plant surrounding rifts instead of those plants just getting uprooted, in general they just feel very empty. It's nice having the occasional petrified forest be knocked down though, saves me some time mining them for flint.

[cybers2001]

I actually do enjoy the combat loop with brightshades. Wouldn't mind if they came up half as frequently, though.

[Horsheen]

Being honest I haven't touched it at all, I am not interested in pure combat content, once I can kill CC and enjoy my crown, I'm not interested 

[Popian]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

It’s Easier to fight a group of Brightshades than it is to fight a Spider Queen who now spawns Medic Spiders.

So my Only Question to Klei is WHY are Brightshades such late game content??

Possibly because they hit like a truck. You find it easier now that you know how to deal with them without getting hit.

There's also the burden of constantly weeding and having more materials than you'll ever need, but that is mitigated by the ability to set up ovens to kill them or using their aoe to get semi-automatic to completely automatic kills/high amounts of damage.

[Brago-sama]

I just turned them off on my current world, but only because I built my base pre-planer update and did not build in a way to soften the invasion and i dont care to spend a whole day reloacating and beuty-fying a new garden area

In newer worlds theyll probably stay on as i dont like turning off/on non event options

[Ridepod]

Way too many brightshades from rifts. Dwarfed the amount of brilliance I went and got. Pivoted to using smasher and shoevels as Wanda and I was still flooded in husks while doing constant culling so the world didn't get overrun. I set the rifts to less because of how absurd it was getting; I would have set rifts to default if there was an individual option to turn the brightshades themselves off. Haven't played the beta yet so I don't know if a way to disable rifts was added but the game desperately needs it. My suggestion was to pause rifts by sabotaging Wagstaff, possibly by putting pure horror or whatever was added in the beta to the shard and give it to him to pause rifts after killing CC again until you do another CC kill and activate rifts again through the normal method.

I don't have any qualms with planar damage or the items themselves - the new materials become common enough that I like the new tools and their durabilities, and I anticipate planar being more important eventually with bosses that are weak to it. The brighthshade armor was pretty bad when I tried to use it defensively against non-brightshades, but whatever. I just really liked the helmet since it acted as infinite desert goggles + gestalt immunity, perfect for doing more wagstaff events and summer oasis basing.

[Spino43]

The sad part about the lunar rift (and shadow rift) updates is that we still can't see the big picture klei is trying to show us.

It's like promising to show you a beautiful mansion but all we currently see are just the materials to build it.

The sudden implementation of new mechanics that don't really mesh well with existing contents don't help much either, all the new contents basically only play with each other.

For now I just turn off both lunar/shadow contents as they currently don't offer much in value, but I will reconsider once klei shows us the big picture of this supposed end game road.

[Vinja]

7 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

The TL:DR of What I’m going to say is: It Speeds up the Early Game to help Players get to Late Game content Faster.

Who would have thought cheating access to endgame gear would speed up the early game?

[Lokena]

I like the combat mechanics themselves, and the visual design of the whole thing is just stellar, but the frequency of their spawn - jeeze! For a single player, this is really too much. Plus, I'd really like them to have a limited search radius for plants around the portal or something. Because they found my base on the other side of the island, even when I purposely planted plants closer to the portal to distract them. And when I defeated one wave, a couple of days later the next one was already there. I don't know. I think I'll turn them off after a while. Because in the state of things right now, I can't farm at all. I can't do anything but chase them off my base over and over again, and for a single player it's difficult and annoying and eats all the resources I get from them, so it's zero sum game.

[_zwb]

Bone bouillon. Stacks of bone bouillon.

Mmmm yummy Wormwood

[Fufuji]

Kind of annoying and I have to move my farm near existing Brightshades to prevent newly spawned Brightshades targeting my plants.

[Blunty_x]

The rifts are nice. The damn brightshades though, after like the 30th I had to kill for spawning in my base are annoying af. 

[1moregame]

Once the rifts are activated, is there any way to turn them off through in-game mechanics?  Or is it once on, always on?

[Mike23Ua]

18 hours ago, Popian said:

Possibly because they hit like a truck. You find it easier now that you know how to deal with them without getting hit.

There's also the burden of constantly weeding and having more materials than you'll ever need, but that is mitigated by the ability to set up ovens to kill them or using their aoe to get semi-automatic to completely automatic kills/high amounts of damage.

It’s a little more than just knowing how to deal with them without being hit.. Brightshades are for the most part: Completely stationary mobs you can either fight, or completely avoid going near.

Brightshades spawn on land, which usually have enough room to dodge & kite on. Which is more than I can say for being on a Boat interacting with swarms of Cookie Cutters, Water Spiders, or Monkey Pirates.

But I think perhaps their most important factor is that killing them gives you the very same resources you need to craft items that help you deal with them.

Unlike Darkswords- Which require you to either A: Play Wormwood, B: Get lucky with Treeguard Spawns, or C: Go to the Lunar Grotto & kill Mushgnomes for Living Logs.

My conclusion is that Brightshades are even more of an “Early Game” threat then most of the mobs that are actually intended to be early game threats.

[finn from human]

Absolutely amazing content that's improved my gameplay a ton. I've replaced the usual flint/rocks/gold in my inventory with moon glass/brilliance/husks, and it feels awesome.

[Neu7ral]

should be a midgame challenge

[BezKa]

The fights were quite fun, looking at them fight bosses was funny. I made one of every piece of equipment but didn't feel like trying it out on anything.

Looked sadly at the savanna where I didn't dig up grass tufts so they can produce grass forever and look pretty get torn to shreds by a rift, accepted it and moved on.

Had to fight Celestial champion again. So I did it as Wilson to get the stupid skill point/whatever. I like that fight still.

(Discovered crustashines don't drop from monkey portal when you give it a moongleam. I have 4 stacks of moongleams wrapped in a package, I'm gonna unleash it on some poor crowd of spiders some day. But that means afking on monkey island if I want these cute critters on my fig island.)

The crystals from rifts? Just juggling mob attantion and leading them this way and that, it's not new to me. The brightshade husks? I forgot about them because I was fighting the plants for fun, on my ornery beef. Got a few stacks in a chest to use for later.

Overall, my gameplay hasn't changed much. There's just a weird plant I fight every now and then, and a flashbang goes off every season.

[Popian]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

t’s a little more than just knowing how to deal with them without being hit.. Brightshades are for the most part: Completely stationary mobs you can either fight, or completely avoid going near.

Brightshades spawn on land, which usually have enough room to dodge & kite on. Which is more than I can say for being on a Boat interacting with swarms of Cookie Cutters, Water Spiders, or Monkey Pirates.

Cookie Cutters: they're slow enough that you can row away, or if you do want to deal with them wait for one to latch on then hold F

Water Spiders: herd mentality only activates when you've attacked a spider in range so you can avoid getting swarmed by kiting the one that noticed you around while rowing away from the rest of the group, otherwise it's hold F

Monkey Pirates: generally have to prepare a bit more for them, but they are particularly weak to fire panic or freezing with their lower health; if you have Scalemail a raid can be reduced to holding F and putting out the smoldering

With Brightshades you have to navigate around the vines and decide if you want to get all 14-16 hits in while it's vulnerable. The higher damage tends to catch people off-guard, especially when there's more than one around. If you can't deal with them you are locked out from the convenience of using the transplanted plants.

[Evelo]

On 6/1/2023 at 1:23 PM, Mike23Ua said:

The TL:DR- It’s Easier to fight a group of Brightshades than it is to fight a Spider Queen who now spawns Medic Spiders.

You didnt explain how. Please do because from my experience, unless you have bombs, which... requires killing Brightshades first (not in groups as you mentioned) then it isn't actually easier to fight in groups.

[Mike23Ua]

9 minutes ago, Evelo said:

You didnt explain how. Please do because from my experience, unless you have bombs, which... requires killing Brightshades first (not in groups as you mentioned) then it isn't actually easier to fight in groups.

It depends on your world setup, how you build your bases, the amount of room you give yourself to dodge/kite the Brightshades- it will vary from player to player or how the Brightshades are Spawned.

Ive never used the Brightshade bombs, I mostly just fight them with Bs Swords or Bs Hammers.

the trick to fighting them is well mostly in Kiting.. or rather I should say: Paying attention to your surroundings.

What I mean by this is that if you fight a group of 3 Brightshades clustered together (on Xbox I’ve never seen them group any higher than in groups of 3..) you need to pay LESS attention to the Vine you’ve Cut Off and the Plant that’s Stunned, and MORE Attention to the two nearby plants that AREN’T Stunned- Pay Attention to where these two plants Vine ends are (the only part of the plant that can attack you) Avoid these as much as possible: You can Take a few hits if your wearing BS Helmet or BS Armor, or Both at the same time, but ultimately.. you want to try to avoid getting hit by them at all.

if you DO decide to wear the Helm and Armor at the same time then Brightshade weapons get a nifty boost in damage- this’ll make cutting the vines or killing the plants require less hits.

It is VITAL that you remember that just because one plant is cut and stunned, the other two are not and will protect it, in this case: Instead of trying to get in your 12-14 hits, you’ll need to do only a few: like hit it 1-4 times, dodge the two attacking plants, let it recover: Repeat process, don’t get GREEDY, don’t try to just Hold F.. I love the Brightshades because they mix up the gameplay, you have to do a little more then just hit it the maximum number of times and dodging it’s attack like most other mobs in the game.

Example: You can hit a Beefalo 6 times before it attempts to hit back.

With Brightshades- Particularly Groups of them, you have to get in as many hits as you can WHEN you Can.. and move away but don’t get greedy. 2 hits at a time may be a painfully slow process: But it’s better than being hit and dead isn’t it?

It becomes a process of Elimination after that: Focus killing one of the 3 plants then you’ll only need to deal with one vine trying to attack you Etc..

Not complicated, just something Unfamiliar to DS/DST fans because as far as I know of there hasn’t been a mob like it before.