A lot of people claim DST is easier than DS - Why is that, exactly?

[cropo]

8 hours ago, abrocator said:

 

DS SW and Hamlet are harder than DST

 

I take the most objection to people saying SW is harder than anything. Shipwrecked is the easiest way to play Don't Starve period. When it first came out, people were suggesting you start in Shipwrecked and then move to RoG because it's much easier to ''set up'' and offers ungodly amounts of goodies. 

 

For every problem Shipwrecked throws at the player, it's solution is two steps away. Can't craft an antidote? Eat a venom gland. Storms and rain a problem? Build a leaf hut and find the dumbrella in one of the four corners of the map(dumbrella is essentially the SW variant of the eyebrella) and become immune to jellyfish. No light? Easy, lightbugs are scattered around the ocean and can be captured with a net. A lantern can be made along with one you can hang on your boat.

 

Don't want to wait till Winter for a walking cane? Kill quacken, also probably have enough obsidian to make an obsidian firepit which has double the range of a suncaller staff, lasts longer, and is immune to rain.

 

Low HP character and a hound wave is coming? Get on a boat and facetank, they have 300HP and you can make repair stations that passively heal it all around the ocean for an easy heal.

 

Want to defend your base? Go to the volcano and dig up some cactus, they auto-attack with an AOE thorn attack(think of the recent brightshades, only slightly ranged and less damage). These are immortal and can't be uprooted, when they die you just dig them and replant them and give them an ash and they're good as new. Don't want to use them offensively? use them defensively, they act as an impassible and unbreakable stone wall when unfertilized.

 

Don't feel like walking anywhere? Coffee! Amass farms of the godliest resource to ever grace Don't Starve.

 

Have a hard time finding food? Jelly fish are all over the ocean! Just hit it twice with a spear and eat it raw, it restores enough HP to heal the electric damage they cause and gives you no sanity penalty. If you wear the dumbrella that you found, you are insulated from lightning and they do NO damage!

 

Don't know how to make a lantern? No problem, Shipwrecked has you covered with literal colonies of rainbow jellyfish that light you up like a glowberry for an entire night at no sanity cost. You can even get bundling wrap now, so you can stockpile them for when you move over to Hamlet to rush the aporkalypse calander once you've set up.

 

Ruins too hard for you for some reason? Head on over to the slot machine! The backpack Quacken drops, a boss that you can farm every 15 days that drops thulecite gear, walking canes, obsidian gear before the first season has you covered. It drops Dubloons every 2 days, so you'll never be wanting for money, the dubloons can even be crafted into gold!

 

Don't feel like visiting Hamlet to make a cool city? Not, a, problem. The brain of thought when worn lets you access any crafting tab you wish, including the key to the city structures, a slanty shanty, the pseudoscience station, etc. Make an entire city island getaway! Make shops right next to your base that you can visit daily to farm oincs by giving each shopkeeper a twig or silk that you set a farm for with your almighty cactus. Easily farmable with no special method to obtain other than finding the brain biome, it even regenerates every now and then so you can stockpile them.  You can find the Hamlet portal and the RoG portal, hammer down both. Make an RoG portal, find the Hamlet portal in RoG(Because it lets you choose between all DLCS). Make the Shipwrecked portal on RNG right at your base, go back to Shipwrecked base and put down your Hamlet portal and move to Hamlet.  Now you're in Hamlet with bundled coffee and rainbow jellyfish, godly armor and speed, all the gunpowder you need, all the needed protection from poison biomes that you made with the brain of thought, and undo the aporkalypse. Then you can make a base, plop down your second Hamlet portal and now you have an ultimate 3-way base, saved Hamlet, and you get to grab the hammer as your first item from the Pig Queen to really start building an empire.

 

Oh also, not only does Shipwrecked give the player coffee which increases their movement speed...you can make a literal shark hat that also increases your movement speed. With a magilumenessence(that you can get from the slot machine), shark fin hat, walking cane, coffee, and if you really hate balance WX overcharged, you're gonna be going so fast you might be able to break map boundaries.

 

 

As for starting in Hamlet, yes it's actually a challenge. It's a challenge because it takes away everything RoG and Shipwrecked gives the player, and acts as a different game in its own right. The fact that it is harder than RoG really shows just how easy Singleplayer is compared to DST.

 

 

This isn't even going into detail the kind of crap you can pull with Hamlet, it giving you a backpack/armor combo, another form of resurrection that you can easily farm and plant(water of life), and with a teleport staff you can farm the robot boss on BFB's island to stockpile ancient artifacts. An item that gives you godmode, night vision, makes your fists do tentacle spike damage, a beam cannon just for the lolz, and a movement speed boost yet again.

[_zwb]

10 minutes ago, cropo said:

 

I take the most objection to people saying SW is harder than anything. Shipwrecked is the easiest way to play Don't Starve period. When it first came out, people were suggesting you start in Shipwrecked and then move to RoG because it's much easier to ''set up'' and offers ungodly amounts of goodies. 

 

For every problem Shipwrecked throws at the player, it's solution is two steps away. Can't craft an antidote? Eat a venom gland. Storms and rain a problem? Build a leaf hut and find the dumbrella in one of the four corners of the map(dumbrella is essentially the SW variant of the eyebrella) and become immune to jellyfish. No light? Easy, lightbugs are scattered around the ocean and can be captured with a net. A lantern can be made along with one you can hang on your boat.

 

Don't want to wait till Winter for a walking cane? Kill quacken, also probably have enough obsidian to make an obsidian firepit which has double the range of a suncaller staff, lasts longer, and is immune to rain.

 

Low HP character and a hound wave is coming? Get on a boat and facetank, they have 300HP and you can make repair stations that passively heal it all around the ocean for an easy heal.

 

Want to defend your base? Go to the volcano and dig up some cactus, they auto-attack with an AOE thorn attack(think of the recent brightshades, only slightly ranged and less damage). These are immortal and can't be uprooted, when they die you just dig them and replant them and give them an ash and they're good as new. Don't want to use them offensively? use them defensively, they act as an impassible and unbreakable stone wall when unfertilized.

 

Don't feel like walking anywhere? Coffee! Amass farms of the godliest resource to ever grace Don't Starve.

 

Have a hard time finding food? Jelly fish are all over the ocean! Just hit it twice with a spear and eat it raw, it restores enough HP to heal the electric damage they cause and gives you no sanity penalty. If you wear the dumbrella that you found, you are insulated from lightning and they do NO damage!

 

Don't know how to make a lantern? No problem, Shipwrecked has you covered with literal colonies of rainbow jellyfish that light you up like a glowberry for an entire night at no sanity cost. You can even get bundling wrap now, so you can stockpile them for when you move over to Hamlet to rush the aporkalypse calander once you've set up.

 

Ruins too hard for you for some reason? Head on over to the slot machine! The backpack Quacken drops, a boss that you can farm every 15 days that drops thulecite gear, walking canes, obsidian gear before the first season has you covered. It drops Dubloons every 2 days, so you'll never be wanting for money, the dubloons can even be crafted into gold!

 

Don't feel like visiting Hamlet to make a cool city? Not, a, problem. The brain of thought when worn lets you access any crafting tab you wish, including the key to the city structures, a slanty shanty, the pseudoscience station, etc. Make an entire city island getaway! Make shops right next to your base that you can visit daily to farm oincs by giving each shopkeeper a twig or silk that you set a farm for with your almighty cactus. Easily farmable with no special method to obtain other than finding the brain biome, it even regenerates every now and then so you can stockpile them.  You can find the Hamlet portal and the RoG portal, hammer down both. Make an RoG portal, find the Hamlet portal in RoG(Because it lets you choose between all DLCS). Make the Shipwrecked portal on RNG right at your base, go back to Shipwrecked base and put down your Hamlet portal and move to Hamlet.  Now you're in Hamlet with bundled coffee and rainbow jellyfish, godly armor and speed, all the gunpowder you need, all the needed protection from poison biomes that you made with the brain of thought, and undo the aporkalypse. Then you can make a base, plop down your second Hamlet portal and now you have an ultimate 3-way base, saved Hamlet, and you get to grab the hammer as your first item from the Pig Queen to really start building an empire.

 

Oh also, not only does Shipwrecked give the player coffee which increases their movement speed...you can make a literal shark hat that also increases your movement speed. With a magilumenessence(that you can get from the slot machine), shark fin hat, walking cane, coffee, and if you really hate balance WX overcharged, you're gonna be going so fast you might be able to break map boundaries.

 

 

As for starting in Hamlet, yes it's actually a challenge. It's a challenge because it takes away everything RoG and Shipwrecked gives the player, and acts as a different game in its own right. The fact that it is harder than RoG really shows just how easy Singleplayer is compared to DST.

Add on to that, due to how temperature is calculated in single player DS, you can completely avoid overheating by holding a tar lamp, even if you stand in an erupting volcano, your temperature stays at 65°(instead of 90°). Not to metion tar extraction is basically free so congratulations you just skipped the whole overheating mechanic.

[cropo]

7 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Add on to that, due to how temperature is calculated in single player DS, you can completely avoid overheating by holding a tar lamp, even if you stand in an erupting volcano, your temperature stays at 65°(instead of 90°). Not to metion tar extraction is basically free so congratulations you just skipped the whole overheating mechanic.

I didn't even know that lol. Shipwrecked is so broken the seasons usually break after the first year so most of the dry seasons detriments don't even work, and just in case they do I simply just have a second base in the volcano the same way I have a second summer base in RoG for summer. Also great for Monsoon season(if it actually decides to work after the first year).

 

Also forgot to mention floaty boat knights spawn like candy and drop gears, you'll be throwing the excess out because you have entire stacks of them. WX never goes hungry in Singleplayer, truly overpowered.

[Spep]

10 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

there is no wrong way to experience the game

Ok throwing *everything* else in the argument aside this one is just not right, playing with a 3k all stats modded character and disabling everything even mildly threatening is absolutely the wrong way to experience the game.

[Paxtonnnn]

27 minutes ago, Spep said:

Ok throwing *everything* else in the argument aside this one is just not right, playing with a 3k all stats modded character and disabling everything even mildly threatening is absolutely the wrong way to experience the game.

counterpoint - it'd be funny

[abrocator]

1 hour ago, cropo said:

For every problem Shipwrecked throws at the player, it's solution is two steps away.

None of those are two steps away. Except for Quacken, most of those things requires traversing the map. And traversing the map in SW is harder than in RoG for the first half-year.

In RoG you have two hours to make a thermal stone for winter. A cap cat is easy to make. For spring you might get unlucky and not get Deerclops. But then you just use an umbrella. And make lightning rods.

For summer you need a thermal stone and maybe also an ice flingomatic. For Dragonfly you can give it enough ash to appease and despawn it.

You have about six hours (before summer) to prepare for all of that. Six hours in a world where you can just walk to any point of interest. Even in the swamp with its tentacles you can just keep moving and not stop and you won’t get hurt.

What you seem to talking about is how comfortable and convenient starting in SW compared to RoG can be for an experienced player. But I think that’s irrelevant. For my original statement I only cared about how difficult the respective expansions were. And I don’t see how someone who implicitly states that:

• Finding the Volcano promptly is no problem (this can take a while and a less experienced player might be too busy making a base)
• Farming the slot machine is no problem (even with cactus for killing evil spawn I found it to be way too tedious to farm good items considering the sanity drain (DS/T’s one-trick pony: every interesting thing has to have sanity drain)
• Face-tanking croco waves is simple (easy to get yourself stunlocked compared to on land with the slow acceleration)
• In general “just get all these things from all across the map” (exploration takes time which (see point one) a less experienced player will have less time for since they are busy making their base or just surviving)

Would have even less problems in RoG.

This doesn’t mean that SW is hard in some objective sense; simply that the things in SW are more challenging than RoG, and thus someone who thinks that surviving in SW is trivial will have even less problems surviving in RoG.

Quote

As for starting in Hamlet, yes it's actually a challenge. It's a challenge because it takes away everything RoG and Shipwrecked gives the player, and acts as a different game in its own right. The fact that it is harder than RoG really shows just how easy Singleplayer is compared to DST.

Hamlet (Singleplayer) is definitely harder than DST in the sense of just surviving (see my stipulations). DST for survival is just RoG where the enemies have more health.

Quote

This isn't even going into detail the kind of crap you can pull with Hamlet, it giving you a backpack/armor combo,

Oh yes, you just have to trigger the Aporkalypse and defeat one of the Ancient Heralds. A boss that you might be able to facetank before he sends in too many waves of nonsense, but (given that the general recommendation is to kite bosses) an experienced player might hesitate a bit, attack in bursts, and then get overwhelmed by things like ghosts and frogs. And then you get a bat wave.

And after that you need to go and turn off the Aporkalypse.

Killing the Ancient Herald goes way beyond anything that you have to do in RoG. Just the Aporkalypse questline itself (what you need to do after defeating the Herald) goes way beyond RoG.

This really illustrates that your rant has got nothing to do with ranking the difficulty of the respective expansions.

[Notecja]

In DS you have: 

permadeath, poison, characters before rework (no control over Abigail, ewww!), Wormwood can get on fire by cooking small meat over firepit, meat effigy lowers your max health instead of pierogi price, permadeath, heavy winds pushing stuff to water/egdes of land, funny hot weather that can kill you, permadeath, you need to wear lfg to have revival instead of funny haunting, excintion (unless you want to reset the world, but if you build a base that you want to keep, then it might get annoying), did I mentioned permadeath that is possible no matter the progress, just silly mistake or something...

[Capybara007]

i think you forgot permadeath

either way the point stands still, new players already see dst as too hard, going to some twitch streamer's stream is always a pain because they have to read chat yelling instrucctions like "craft a thermal stone!!!!" and in the end i dont see someone sticking for long, specially in the terraria crossover when a lot of terraria streamers checked out dst for some hours

spoiler, they did not like the unintuitiveness of the game

[cropo]

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

None of those are two steps away. Except for Quacken, most of those things requires traversing the map. And traversing the map in SW is harder than in RoG for the first half-year.

But they really, really are. And how is traversing the map harder? Your HP bar is locked to the boats HP which only takes some logs to make another one at sea to swap to. Most of the sea open space, with jellyfish that heal you and can be eaten raw littered around.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

In RoG you have two hours to make a thermal stone for winter. A cap cat is easy to make. For spring you might get unlucky and not get Deerclops. But then you just use an umbrella. And make lightning rods.

Thermal stones were buffed in DST, they are pretty bad in Singleplayer. Fire also didn't work as well as it does in DST so the famous tree ignition didn't work. As far as I remember, Deerclops will ALWAYS spawn on the first winter, it's only after the first one that she might not spawn. Moose/Goose also had non-traditional kiting mechanics that the average player would not have seen at this point. When she howls, she is immediately ready for another attack and makes you drop your weapon. Compare that to Tiger Shark, which is mostly a deerclops that doesn't freeze you.

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

For summer you need a thermal stone and maybe also an ice flingomatic. For Dragonfly you can give it enough ash to appease and despawn it.

A thermal stone and an ice chester, but I'm not arguing that summer isnt a borked season.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

What you seem to talking about is how comfortable and convenient starting in SW compared to RoG can be for an experienced player. But I think that’s irrelevant. For my original statement I only cared about how difficult the respective expansions were.

By what metric? If we're talking about new and inexperienced players, the game is going to be hard. DST is no exception to this. If we're talking about experienced players, DS is far easier. There is no contest here.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Face-tanking croco waves is simple (easy to get yourself stunlocked compared to on land with the slow acceleration)

An Armored Boat is a type of craftable Boat in the Shipwrecked DLC. It can be found in the Nautical Tab and requires an Alchemy Engine and 6 Boards, 3 Rope, and 10 Seashells to craft. It begins with 500 durability, which will deplete if damaged or as it is used. It can be repaired with the Boat Repair Kit or the Sea Yard. While moving, it loses Durability at a rate of 1 per 3.84 seconds, lasting a total of 4 Days.

The Armored Boat has 2 seconds of “hit immunity”, a period of time in which they will not trigger the hit state after being hit. This is the best out of all Boats. It is also tied with the Cargo Boat and Encrusted Boat for the best map reveal range of 2.5.

 

The Encrusted Boat is a Boat that can be crafted from the Nautical Tab in the Shipwrecked DLC. It requires 6 Boards, 3 Ropes and 4 Limestones to craft and an Alchemy Engine to prototype. It begins with 800 health, which will deplete over time as it is used or if damaged. It can be repaired with a Boat Repair Kit or by sailing close to a Sea Yard.

The Encrusted Boat gains a ×4 speed boost from riding Waves compared to most other Boats (excluding Walani's Surfboard). In addition to being able to equip boat attachments, it allows the player an extra 2 slots of storage.

While moving, it loses durability at a rate of 1 per 3 seconds, lasting a total of 5 days. It has 0.66s hit immunity, like most boats, and the highest map reveal bonus of 2.5 (tied with the Cargo Boat and Armored Boat).

 

You will NOT DIE with 800 HP and stunlock protection, and you will almost always outdamage anything with 500HP and 2 second stun immunity.

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Finding the Volcano promptly is no problem (this can take a while and a less experienced player might be too busy making a base)

You're going to find it while finding the dumbrella most likely. Like the dumbrella, it can only spawn in one of the corners in the map and glowing jellyfish lead you straight to it because they form a formational line towards it after some time.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Farming the slot machine is no problem (even with cactus for killing evil spawn I found it to be way too tedious to farm good items considering the sanity drain (DS/T’s one-trick pony: every interesting thing has to have sanity drain)

It's tedious to be sure, but offers power beyond imagining for megabasers and stockpilers without any of the risk of delving into their respective dangerous biomes. If we're going to be bringing up ''inexperienced'' players here, the slot machine is a safer and easier choice and often gives you healing foods, jerky, and other really good items for surviving when trying to get a Magi.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

In general “just get all these things from all across the map” (exploration takes time which (see point one) a less experienced player will have less time for since they are busy making their base or just surviving)

A less experienced player is going to die on anything, even in DST. They're going to have trouble surviving, even in DST. 

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Oh yes, you just have to trigger the Aporkalypse and defeat one of the Ancient Heralds. A boss that you might be able to facetank before he sends in too many waves of nonsense, but (given that the general recommendation is to kite bosses) an experienced player might hesitate a bit, attack in bursts, and then get overwhelmed by things like ghosts and frogs. And then you get a bat wave.

Get the ancient artifact and face tank him without taking any damage, he's a joke.  He's such a joke that multiple variants of him spawn frequently because if only one spawned you'd just kill him and have infinite light. He's not intended to be fought fairly, he is intended to be fought with the literal item designed to defeat shadows from a lore perspective.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Killing the Ancient Herald goes way beyond anything that you have to do in RoG. Just the Aporkalypse questline itself (what you need to do after defeating the Herald) goes way beyond RoG.

The aporkalypse questline is blowing up some walls and standing on a calander. Once you do this relatively simple task, you can avoid it for the rest of your playthrough which effectively makes Hamlet 3 seasons.

 

55 minutes ago, abrocator said:

This really illustrates that your rant has got nothing to do with ranking the difficulty of the respective expansions.

A new player is going to die in any of these game modes, bar none. The initial learning curve might have slight, meaningless variations in them. DST on the other hand is difficult past the learning curve, and takes longer to master its enemies and bosses. When a player in DS passes the initial learning curve, the game becomes Sim City.  Maybe you had a harder time in Shipwrecked, but I personally ''beat'' Shipwrecked before I ''beat'' RoG because I had a much simpler time, it was where I first truly learned to play this game.

 

Hamlet isn't uniquely hard for new players, it's uniquely hard for veterans and experienced players. Are you guys seriously having issue that the first few hours of the game are not going to be mindless torture with obfuscated game mechanics once skill trees roll in? Are you guys angry that the very beginning few hours of difficulty a player will experience might be moved to the later part of the game instead? 

[abrocator]

38 minutes ago, cropo said:

A new player is going to die in any of these game modes, bar none.

But I’m not talking about completely new players. “Experienced” here just means “Oh just do X” as a counter to any point you might concievably put forward. (Just defeat Ancient Herald if you want to wear a backpack while having armor. I guess it’s difficult for such a player to avoid snaptooths and whatnot while bumbling around in the world with a backpack without armor. (I don’t see how it could be difficult for them considering that they just defeated Ancient Herald. That’s the point.))

There’s a large difference between the completely new player and the experienced player. An intermediate player might for example know about most of the dangers that he’s about to face but still die to overheating/freezing/hound waves/etc.

And it’s pointless to talk about relative difficulty if you only talk about said experienced players who just say “just defeat Celestial Champion and get the celestial crown if you don’t have enough grass and twigs to make torches” (hyperbole) since none of the usual challenges are even going to raise their cortisol by one iota.

And that’s the dual to your “but they are just going to die in any game mode”; the experienced player won’t have any issues whatsoever in any game mode. So what the hell is the point of talking about relative difficulty when these players aren’t even being challenged?

Quote

Thermal stones were buffed in DST, they are pretty bad in Singleplayer. Fire also didn't work as well as it does in DST so the famous tree ignition didn't work.

This doesn’t fundamentally change everything. You stop to heat up more often.

You might spend more resources on fires but if you think boating in SW simple because you can just repair with logs then the same thing applies here.

Quote

The initial learning curve might have slight, meaningless variations in them. DST on the other hand is difficult past the learning curve, and takes longer to master its enemies and bosses.

To master all of its enemies and bosses? Yes. But my stipulation from the start was always that DST was harder in that sense. DS SW and Hamlet are only harder than DST when it comes to survival (not for optional things like raid bosses).

Quote

Hamlet isn't uniquely hard for new players, it's uniquely hard for veterans and experienced players. Are you guys seriously having issue that the first few hours of the game are not going to be mindless torture with obfuscated game mechanics once skill trees roll in? Are you guys angry that the very beginning few hours of difficulty a player will experience might be moved to the later part of the game instead? 

I don’t even know what the hell this is.

1 hour ago, abrocator said:

In RoG you have two hours to make a thermal stone for winter. A cap cat is easy to make. For spring you might get unlucky and not get Deerclops. But then you just use an umbrella. And make lightning rods.

One thing I forgot was that you randomly start either in Spring or in Autumn in RoG. So you sometimes have much less time to prepare for summer, the hardest season in RoG.

[cropo]

8 minutes ago, abrocator said:

But I’m not talking about completely new players. “Experienced” here just means “Oh just do X” as a counter to any point you might concievably put forward. (Just defeat Ancient Herald if you want to wear a backpack while having armor. I guess it’s difficult for such a player to avoid snaptooths and whatnot while bumbling around in the world with a backpack without armor. (I don’t see how it could be difficult for them considering that they just defeated Ancient Herald. That’s the point.))

There’s a large difference between the completely new player and the experienced player. An intermediate player might for example know about most of the dangers that he’s about to face but still die to overheating/freezing/hound waves/etc.

And it’s pointless to talk about relative difficulty if you only talk about said experienced players who just say “just defeat Celestial Champion and get the celestial crown if you don’t have enough grass and twigs to make torches” (hyperbole) since none of the usual challenges are even going to raise their cortisol by one iota.

And that’s the dual to your “but they are just going to die in any game mode”; the experienced player won’t have any issues whatsoever in any game mode. So what the hell is the point of talking about relative difficulty when these players aren’t even being challenged?

I mean i think you can venture a guess on how difficult each mode would be for various progressions of skill. My stance is still that Shipwrecked is the easiest mode in the entire series, the mode wasn't even designed by Klei but by Capy. For new, intermediate, and experienced players, Shipwrecked remains the easiest mode. Even if you can't manage to do some of the things I listed, there are innumerable boons around the sea that I haven't even mentioned. You don't even need a science machine to make your first backpack. The fact that the sea is just littered with rainbow jellyfish and lightbugs make survival much, much easier than other modes. You will never run out of food in Shipwrecked, mobs that do no damage to you, only poison, are marked on your map once discovered and drop glands to heal poison immediately. It does 75 damage, but the jellyfish heal this easily.  If you're ever poisoned, you can return there and kill them with no threat, since you're already poisoned.

 

The only major boss in Shipwrecked you're forced to contend with is the Sealnado, and other than one attack that simply requires you to run away it has the same attack pattern as deerclops, only you're not fighting it in a freezing cold environment and it can't freeze you.

 

All of the crafts you can make are ''Like RoG, but better''. Even if the player can't kill the Quacken, they can make the Chiminea pot which still has rain protection and isn't difficult to obtain for any reasonable player. And snakes drop snakeskin which can be made into a rainproof suit if you can't find the umbrella.  It also lets you create the first iteration of shelter in the series so you can gather your wits without fear of rain. 

All of it's seasonal threats can be avoided by moving to another base. In Monsoon, you can live on the sea with a sea alchemy engine and various crafts. In dry season, you can live in the volcano with ice makers and just eat those to cool down and wear a chilled amulet whenever an eruption happens if you don't want to feed the snackrifice altar. You can even make a Dark Sword without the sanity penalty for some gold and an easily kiteable swordfish. 

 

I guess we'll just have to remain in disagreement here, I still stand by what I said. Shipwrecked is the power fantasy mode of Don't Starve.

 

20 minutes ago, abrocator said:

To mast all of its enemies and bosses? Yes. But my stipulation from the start was always that DST was harder in that sense. DS SW and Hamlet are only harder than DST when it comes to survival (not for optional things like raid bosses).

I disagree with RoG and SW, I think they're roughly the same to a new player and easier in Shipwrecked, but I will agree with Hamlet.

 

22 minutes ago, abrocator said:

I don’t even know what the hell this is.

Not entirely aimed at you. But what I mean is that Hamlet is uniquely hard because it trounces on the very survival mechanics the other modes build upon. A veteran in RoG will have an easy time in SR and vice-versa, but due to essentially playing a different game Hamlet will still be hard because it does everything so wildly differently. You need to focus on survival less and more on figuring out how to make money. It basically made Don't Starve hard by being ''Not Don't Starve''.

[Dextops]

2 hours ago, Spep said:

Ok throwing *everything* else in the argument aside this one is just not right, playing with a 3k all stats modded character and disabling everything even mildly threatening is absolutely the wrong way to experience the game.

Nah that’s still valid if you’re enjoying it/having fun 

[D_Good_Fellow]

I think DST is easier to succeed at but DS Solo is easier to learn.

Don't Starve was always a pretty carefully balanced game. As such, the amount of effort/risk/time each task completes usually serves to challenge new players just enough to teach them about the game. For example: a new player going in knowing nothing will most likely get killed by Charlie on the first night and lose the save file. That's not very much playtime lost, but the lesson of "being unprepared for night time will absolutely kill you" is instilled very firmly. On that same player's next playthrough, they will easily survive that first night on account of how short the first night is. The gradual increase in night duration gives the player both warning and experience to learn how to keep fires going through the night and eventually winter. Enemies like Warrior Spiders, large Frog swarms, and later Treeguards and Deerclops are all very punishing if approached poorly; this encourages players to tread cautiously and retreat when necessary, prompting players to be more actively studious during combat. The game makes it very clear how squishy you are and that knowledge makes learning how to survive much easier.

Don't Starve Together has to balance these same harsh conditions in a multiplayer setting, which makes this type of game design much more difficult to achieve from a development perspective. If there are more players working together, logic follows that the enemies must be stronger. But because actual player count per server isn't always the same, this can't be balanced as precisely. DS enemies need to achieve an intended difficulty that applies to one player, DST enemies need achieve an intended difficulty that applies to anything from a solo player to a team of six. Additionally, because players need to be encouraged to depend on one another, failure can't be quite as punishing as it was in DS without risking community hostility. Telltale Hearts and such objectively take a great deal of risk and difficulty out of the original game, since death is significantly less of a risk in most circumstances. Other difficulty-enhancing features, like Willow's random fire starting, were removed for similar reasons. (Although by comparison armor was kinda nerfed because it made the game too easy, so take from that what you will).

When I first tried to play DST I found it almost impossible to figure out. I found the complicated crafting menu stressful and didn't realize that enemies were balanced with the expectation that there be at least one other player fighting alongside me. I died a lot and would slowly get frustrated as I ran out of ways to revive, usually frustrated at not fully understanding what was happening.

When I switched to DS Solo, it felt like I was taking training weights off. Enemies were consistently beatable if I was careful, so I learned kiting patterns way faster than I did in DST. The DS crafting menu has an extremely intuitive layout, with gameplay naturally unlocking and prompting new crafts to the player as they became relevant. Whenever I died, I was acutely aware of why because the stakes were so high and as a result I didn't feel as frustrated by the losses (even though the punishment was more severe).

Now that I understand the game better, DST is easier than DS for me. Even playing solo, DST has more resources and generally more solutions to most problems. Enemies are beefier, but once I had memorized kiting patterns that became more or less irrelevant. 

So I guess I would say I consider DST the easier of the two, but counterintuitively I'd recommend DS to newer players because I think it's much easier to learn in that one.

[Waynel]

That's one of the big myths of the community.

DST is actually slightly harder considering a lot of medium mobs (werepigs, spider warriors, clockworks, etc.) as well seasonal giants have double the HP they have in DS.

Now from the standpoint of an experienced player, you could argue that DST has mechanics that make for a more convenient long term experience (the ability to cancel attacks, thermal stone mechanics, etc.).

And I don't believe that being granted 2 minutes for a possibility of revival at a touch stone makes much difference for a player who is still at the survival-learning phase of the game.

[Catteflyterpill]

23 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Depending on what character you play as, and what Klei did to them with their reworks.. can also be a huge factor into how easy or hard the game is becoming.

Pre-Rework Wendy: To Summon Abigail required killing an enemy mob near her flower after you’ve dropped it on the ground, Abigail also did not attack enemy mobs without your luring them to her-

fun fact… I actually learned KITING from playing Solo DS Wendy.

Pre-Rework Wendy also had a Cooldown timer, when Abigail Died, her flower dropped to the ground in whatever hostile area she was in at the time (under Deerclops feet..) and when Abby was down- You felt Wendy’s Downside being without any perks for 4-5 days till the flower could bloom out again.

DST Wendy- There is No Death.. there are no Downsides, There’s only More powerful Abigail.

But wait let’s apply that logic to every other rework!

Woodies Curse can now be less punishing by not having the food penalties or even completely avoided.

Wolfgang can be FULLY STARVING in DST dying out of Hunger but still topped off in Mightiness.. while in Solo DS a starving Wolfgang meant a Wimpy Wolfgang.

These are just off the top of my head examples.

Welcome back from your break, btw.

[oCrapaCreeper]

Difference of death mechanics between the two games is probably what sways lots of people to interpret DST as being easier. That doesn't have to do with the game itself being easier, but the entry barrier isn't there and that may be why lots of people interrupt DST as less difficult. Beyond neutering death mechanics for accessible multiplayer -  in solo context if I were to compare to two directly then DS becomes much easier than DST, no question. SW and Hamlet are harder on a blind run, but balance wise they throw the whole game out of whack once you know what to rush.

At vanilla/RoG level there's even silly things like getting bundling wraps from killing normal bees because Queen just doesn't exist in DS - and ruins restoration is reduced to fighting the Ancient Guardian with half his HP. I'm digressing though, why does this matter when both games have gone down separate paths for a long time now? If someone thinks DS is harder then they can just play DS, the two don't really affect each other.

[Spep]

18 hours ago, Dextops said:

Nah that’s still valid if you’re enjoying it/having fun 

you can use a book as a mousepad too, but its still objectively the wrong way to use it, regardless if you are happy with it or not.

for a better example, you could buy a puzzle game and play it with your eyes glued to a walkthrough, just because its ok to be wrong does not make it less wrong!

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, Spep said:

objectively the wrong way

But what is objectively correct? And how do you know?

[Dextops]

8 hours ago, Spep said:

ou can use a book as a mousepad too, but its still objectively the wrong way to use it

Ok first off you didn’t have to call me out that way, a note book makes a mighty fine mouse pad also your analogy falls apart once you realize that Klei themselves said the intended way to play the game is whatever is fun to you (something around that)

[Copyafriend]

16 hours ago, Catteflyterpill said:

Welcome back from your break, btw.

Alright haha mike made and i’m leaving post and came back.

i’m cool with people poking fun, but its starting to edge a bit closer to bullying, he is allowed to take a break, and he’s allowed to come back too.

@Mike23Ua can and should take breaks and come back as often as he wants.

[MondayNight]

On 7/15/2023 at 1:34 PM, Notecja said:

permadeath

Touchstones. Meat Effigies.

Also there was that cheat to Alt+F4 DS when your character was about to die. If I remember well there were more methods to cheat losing worlds akin DST's Rollback. People's sneaky ingenuity, eh.

As others stated: there's a lot of nostalgia when one reminisce DS's experience. And all boils down to game being new at that time, knowledge not yet acquired.

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

Alright haha mike made and i’m leaving post and came back.

i’m cool with people poking fun, but its starting to edge a bit closer to bullying, he is allowed to take a break, and he’s allowed to come back too.

@Mike23Ua can and should take breaks and come back as often as he wants.

Make no mistake, I never “left” I just feel like my opinions aren’t very valued so instead of commenting in a bunch of various different threads like I had been doing I feel like what’s the point? This is when you go into “Lurker Mode” and just read threads in the forums, maybe react to posts with a cute emote, but don’t actually comment on those posts.

Is it stupid? Probably.. But I also stated in my post that I might still comment from time to time on a new update. Thanks for taking up for me though, I appreciate it.

2 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Touchstones. Meat Effigies.

Also there was that cheat to Alt+F4 DS when your character was about to die. If I remember well there were more methods to cheat losing worlds akin DST's Rollback. People's sneaky ingenuity, eh.

As others stated: there's a lot of nostalgia when one reminisce DS's experience. And all boils down to game being new at that time, knowledge not yet acquired.

I’ll say this one more time, i sometimes go back and play solo DS from time to time, it’s got nothing to do with “Nostalgia” it has EVERYTHING to do with experiencing content & challenges that aren’t present within DST..

Thinks like Un-Reworked Characters who actually had some decent downsides to make them have pros & cons.

things like world generation puzzles, such as a narrow maze of walls littered with enemies such as the Tentacle Maze, or what I like to call “Chokepoints” (an area of the map guarded by enemies preventing access to another area of the map)

For example: a Tallbird Fortress, or a Pig Guardian Checkpoint.

These types of challenges were present within Solo DS’s “Adventures Mode” (You have to find a portal in your sandbox world to start the 5 episode quest to forgive Maxwell & take his place as the thrones prisoner)

These types of “Chokepoints” required you to either travel through this area at a particular time of day (when the mobs are sleeping..) or by armoring up and running through tanking hits, or by getting enough gear (highly unlikely due to the way the episodes were structured) to just kill everything and pass.

Even the DLCs had these kind of map generated puzzles you needed to bypass such as needing a gas mask for the poisoned biomes or to build a raft to sail across a large pond blocking access to another area.

To put that into DST terms it would be like if we needed to INTENTIONALLY build a boat and sail out to find Beefalo on another island but that island is in Powder Monkey Territory and the ONLY way to safely get there is by becoming Wonkey and sailing through Pirate Waters disguised as one of their own Crew so they won’t attack you in that biome.

(or Aka gas mask for poisoned forest)

I’ll give Klei credit, they TRIED to do this with the new Shadow Rifts, by making acid rain/Boulder rain and forcing the player to use the Umbralla to avoid damage.. but the problem with that is they tried to turn the entire caves system into this.. and at the same time: Add nothing new to it.

What they SHOULD have done was add a brand new Island Biome out at sea with new mobs, new resources etc to gather something like a Lunar Island Sized area (or preferably bigger..) where it’s ALWAYS Raining Acid like some kind of Deadly Rainforest, and to travel through the island gathering resources You’d be forced to use the Umbralla.

This would bring back “Some” but not “All” of the challenge I enjoyed from Solo DS..

Other things I enjoyed about Solo DS was that characters had meaningful downsides, a Wendy player who lets Abby get killed has to wait 3-4 game days for the flower to bloom out again, rather then the endless summon she is now.

This brings me to my other point: DST has had character reworks, and re-reworks, and now also apparently skill trees to be even more powerful-

But the game world they inhabit remains largely unchanged… the creatures, mobs and dangers within the world aren’t leveling up with them, they aren’t becoming more intelligent or suffering horrible mutations as we climb in power so it’s literally just a case of More Fluff… but not enough Stuff.

Of course we don’t know Klei’s full grand scheme of things, so we don’t rightly know what their plans are in the long term.

But as for me I’m seeing challenges I actually enjoyed such as Summer Wildfires getting new structures or features to lessen or completely remove those challenges- such as large shade canopy’s when the game had done just fine for YEARS without these things.

And the ONLY WAY it makes sense is if Klei plans to incorporate newer challenges, harsher weathers or whatever.. 

Because we’re currently getting crazily powerful characters and items, or structures to fully prevent the games long-existing challenges that have existed for FOREVER.

Im one of the few people who actually “liked” Disease, I saw it as a challenge that corrupted my food sources and one way or another- almost guaranteed at some point my world would met its demise.

But rather then expand upon disease by making it even more threatening such as if rabbits got into diseased carrots and then become Rabbied Rabbits with foam dripping out their mouths and highly aggressive toward the player (like Rabbid Beatles in Hamlet) Instead Klei REMOVES Disease Entirely from the game.

Why though? Cause few people liked it?? Most found it annoying? It wasn’t a good feature? why do we even HAVE WORLD Gen Settings for Endless or Survival if the “Survival” Setting can be just as “Endless” as the Endless setting???

it’s annoying: If I pick a game mode titled Survival, I don’t want features like a large tree canopy that removes the games existing survival challenges.

And sure I can always just NOT build those structures, but that kinda defeats the entire purpose now doesn’t it?

TL:DR- Were getting crazy new powers and structures to deal with the games largely Unchanged already existing Content.. 

people actually want ways to use the new Cave Pillars as a way of preventing a long-lasting surface annoyance Meteor Showers from falling.

And the absolutely horrifying part in all of that? I strongly feel like Klei will actually seriously cater to these players, because rather then making a mode labeled as Survival be based on how long you can Survive… we’re trying to turn it into a open ended Sandbox Experience.

This is why I made my announcement I wouldn’t post much on the forums and in a bunch of different threads anymore, And as far as I’m aware, this has been the only thread I’ve commented within in some time.. but that’s only because the thread allowed me to vent my ever increasing frustrations with how DST is becoming less and less DS with each update.

(Note: Not all updates are like this mind you.. but being given new powers with no new challenges through out the world save for maybe Lunar/Shadow Rifts or getting new structures to deal with the games long existing few challenges it has had for literal years, has been frustrating to say the very least.. )

Klei keeps promising me

“You haven’t seen the bigger picture yet!”

As if teasing that were gonna make everything you know and love about the game easier to ease newbies into, so we can later rip the welcoming mat out from under your feet in later stages of the game.

My concern with that is that they are butchering the again “Long-Existing” challenges I enjoyed within the game, while at the same time.. offering few or no new ones to replace them.

I get it: Not everyone enjoys trying to walk through a meteor field and have meteors potentially crack them in the head, but this has been a staple part of the franchise since forever… do we really NEED a structure that minimizes or removes their threat?

I actually “Enjoy” being randomly struck by a meteor sometimes with a stroke of bad luck trying to traverse past the biome..

Yet here we are having conversations to lessen or remove the games EXISTING Challenges- Rather than introduce new ones.

I’m worried & concerned with the direction Klei will take this game/franchise within. And even though I’m typing out this really long post, I feel like it’s just going to go ignored or unnoticed.

Perhaps it is way way too late to get back the challenges I throughly enjoyed Solo DS & it’s DLCs for..

Such as flipping over stones or plucking grass and chopping trees only for a small mob to pop out those structures and attack.

But dammit I would hate myself if I went into complete silence and didn’t at least TRY to express what I like/dislike about the direction DST has been currently taking.

Sorry for the long rant/post.. I don’t mean to be a forum nuisance. Now I’ll go back into Lurker Mode until a thread or new update that I strongly feel deserves my commenting upon surfaces. 

[Copyafriend]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Make no mistake, I never “left” I just feel like my opinions aren’t very valued so instead of commenting in a bunch of various different threads like I had been doing I feel like what’s the point? This is when you go into “Lurker Mode” and just read threads in the forums, maybe react to posts with a cute emote, but don’t actually comment on those posts.

I mean, i know ive often commented against you, and i know i get really passionate, so i’m sorry if i was too harsh but i do want to say this:

your perspective and opinions are completely fine, and i agree with a lot of points you do make, a lot of the problem is that you sometimes go out of your way to turn a completely separate discussion INTO a discussion about the lack of survival mechanics. Its not wrong for you to want to talk about it, but sometimes its a little frustrating when i go into three different discussions and you’ve started the same conversation in all three of them. 
 

I DO want more survival mechanics, personally i’m hoping for stuff like poison, or slow AOE damage over time thats unavoidable but has no side effects (basically regular characters have to outheal it) or even areas where you cant heal, or worsened seasonal effects for the second and third year. Winter 2: now its even COLDER, you’ll freeze quick without at leadt 240 insulation or 120 and a thermal dtone. Spring 2: now you need 130% rain protection to be safe. Autumn 2: thank god i get a break from all that.

and id love to see some discussion from you regarding specific ideas and ways they could improve or manage what other players want compared to what you want.

the boulders in the caves couldnt destroy bases before, maybe with the pillar they’ll allow it again, i sure hope they do.

 

the acid rain is actually better and required the umbralla, dont you like that change?

 

i mean i’m not upset at you, and i have nothng AGAINST you, but sometimes i dont wanna talk about survival mechanics, and sometimes someone wants to talk about boulders without someone going “THEY RUINED IT”

[Notecja]

6 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Touchstones. Meat Effigies.

Also there was that cheat to Alt+F4 DS when your character was about to die. If I remember well there were more methods to cheat losing worlds akin DST's Rollback. People's sneaky ingenuity, eh.

As others stated: there's a lot of nostalgia when one reminisce DS's experience. And all boils down to game being new at that time, knowledge not yet acquired.

DS touchtones were one time use, meanwhile in DST you just need to change character to use touch stones again (and that game allows within game rules, like whole character swap is within game rules), and as I mentioned in my previous post - meat effigies lowered your max health in DS making player more vunerable, meanwhile in DST you touch them and then all you need is to eat pierogi, like no penalty.

Alf+F4 is kinda not within game rules... tbf you can do same in DST.

[cybers2001]

Reasons why all points are invalid:

Coffee.