Thermal stone

[Dunte]

Why is thermal stone nerfed for these many years, by having durability?
It's a STONE. Why would you break a stone by changing it's temperature?
This does not make sense. It should be done like it's in the DS.

"You can repair it by sewing kit..."
And this is even more idiotic.

Do you think it should be changed? Why, why not?

[_zwb]

It was buffed to be more effective in DST than DS, in DS it cools down way faster

[loopuleasa]

We all hate thermal stones.
You'll get used to it sadly.

[Gashzer]

No change, thermal stone is a quick and lazy but ultimately a inefficient way to handle the seasons. Its good if you didnt have the time to get a beefalo hat or you missed out in the eyebrella somehow but these insulations should always be better than the thermal stone.

I think its balanced as is.

3 hours ago, Dunte said:

 Why would you break a stone by changing it's temperature?
This does not make sense. It should be done like it's in the DS.

You do know that heating up a stone and then cooling it down is a real life method to BREAK stones? Haha so DST's science is spot on here (Wilson and Wagstaff would be proud!) 

[cropo]

I kinda think it should be nerfed more, or outright removed from the game. it has single-handedly invalidated the entire temperature mechanic and made a lot of temperature clothes useless.

 

I don't think i ever had to worry about Willows downside in Winter thanks to thermal stones.

[Mike23Ua]

This thread is quite funny because I’ve actually been playing as Wolfgang lately and one of his new skill tree perks hilariously give him a Dumbell that’s made of Thermal Stones.

Wolfgang now no longer needs to craft or use an actual Thermal Stone because he has a Weight he can lift for Mightiness (I know it’s wasting durability but it’s still something you can DO if you have no better options or have a ton of resources to waste on them.) In addition: It can still be Tossed at birds and rabbits like any other Dumbell to easily obtain meat morsel.. AND while holding it slows Mightiness drain rate (I think.. not sure on this one..)

The Thermal Stone (& Thermbell) do however Trivialize ALOT of the game by letting you literally survive almost every season with just it and it alone (not the most optimal way to survive the seasons.. but it will save you if you have nothing else)

The only Season it’s NOT so great for is Spring.. a Thermal Stone isn’t going to help you much when your drowning from eternal rainfalls.

You can actually prevent durability loss by just never letting the rock return to “neutral” state, and even if it DOES lose durability, one use of a sewing kit pops it back to 100% again.

I think it’s fine as is.. infinity durability would be BORING… I want to at least have to “Sometimes” gather resources in a survival game, Ya Know???

[MondayNight]

2 hours ago, cropo said:

...it has single-handedly invalidated the entire temperature mechanic and made a lot of temperature clothes useless.

People doing the same thing on-and-on gravitate in the end towards most efficient method when knowledge is acquired. The fact players use Thermal Stones and those alone should tell you how bad all other clothes are, starting with a scaled-down inventory. Not to mention Thermal's heating/cooling mechanic doesn't intersect/interact in no way whatsoever with insulation clothes, which objectively is quite un-intuitive and illogical: one would expect wearing in Winter, for example, a Beefalo Hat & Hibearnation Vest to prolong the time said stone remains in orange-red or yellow intervals; that's not the case, hence the superfluousness of employing clothing items - they keep your character temperature up for longer, yes, but no cumulative effect at all (or any interaction, really) with Thermal Stones. For advanced experienced players "efficiency is king" - and Thermal Stones do their job well enough, a lot better than in DS's case, but miles above what insulation clothing offers - most important being light at Winter's long night(s) when in bright-orange state; that alone saves on hand slot, where a Cane can provide the so-much-needed speed bon.

PS: also Rain Coat and Eyebrella have "single-handedly invalidated the entire" rain/wetness mechanic as well. No point persisting in this proverbial train of thoughts. Likewise for Umbralla and Acid Rain.

[Wonz]

It is still so much better than clothes. It isn't even restricted by a slot you need armor/backpack in. It's overpowered compared to clothes. You can leave several in icebox/magma pool/furnace to switch and be back in the job instantly instead of waiting for your body temp to rise as with clothes. It makes klaus fight easier while clothes make it harder.   
It's not even such a big problem to not break the stone. You can repair it with sewing kit thus the nerf being silly, the nerf didn't solve anything. I'm somehow torn how this item is strong and how the nerf was useless and actually just annoyng, the anti QoL change incarnate.

Item balance is all over the place. 

Imo there should be a buff to body temperature changing to desired temperature. Standing near cold/heat source is just boring, why not shorten it so we can actually play more?
You've got to nerf stone or buff clothes. 
Anyone played on servers with mod that allows you to wear both backpack and coats/shrits/vests? Winter hat + puffy vest + torch/desert goggles + floral shirt + frozen amulet would be actually some competition to thermal if only you could warm up/cool down faster and use them with backpack, stone still would be better at klaus fight but at least it would be more comfortable on pubs with plenty players since not everyone would have to look for the same item.

[Antynomity]

I'd much rather the less potent but infinite durability thermal stones from DS, I'm tired of crafting these things all the time, it's really damn annoying.

5 hours ago, cropo said:

I kinda think it should be nerfed more, or outright removed from the game. it has single-handedly invalidated the entire temperature mechanic and made a lot of temperature clothes useless.

 

I don't think i ever had to worry about Willows downside in Winter thanks to thermal stones.

or maybe just revert it to the DS state? the only thing that was nerfed in DST about thermal stones is adding durability, other than that they are leagues better than the DS ones at doing their job

[ButterStuffed]

The thermal stone is overrated in my opinion.

Thermal Stone = 120 insulation and 90* top heat capacity

(120/30)*90 = 350 seconds of heat assuming the thermal stone is as hot as it could possibly be.

Player with a winter hat = 120 insulation + 30 innate insulation and 70* top heat capacity

(120+30)/30*70 = 350 seconds of heat assuming the player is as hot as they could possibly be.

It takes less time to heat up as a player with clothing and lasts longer for the same amount of time spent by a heat source.

The only times a thermal stone is strictly superior to a winter hat is when the player is fighting or when it's dark and you don't want to lose the speed from a walking cane. Both of which could be solved by using other equipment or using body slot equipment and maintaining good inventory management.

Feel free to test my math. The thermal stone not having an innate 30 insulation is based off of word of mouth and I haven't tested whether it is accurate in game yet.

--EDIT

It appears my sources were wrong, but I still think they are overrated. Beefalo hat, puffy vest, and good inventory management gang rise up.

[Dunte]

Thanks for replies. I really wanted to see a message from community on this one.
Yeah. Winter hat for me is far superior than a thermal stone. 

And clothing being summoned here aswell is a fine look into the problem.
Maybe one day it would be worthy to wear clothes in a long run, but of course, it takes the backpack slot.

Clothes with pockets or ability to wear both clothes and backpacks would be a good start to do anything with this.

[DinsdaleP]

14 hours ago, Gashzer said:

No change, thermal stone is a quick and lazy but ultimately a inefficient way to handle the seasons.

The thing you seem to be forgetting are bundling wraps. 1 thermal stone in the inventory + 3 thermal stones and a few ropes in a bundling wrap, all heated to 90°C = over 4 days of heat, at the cost of two inventory slots (and a few unfortunate trees).

 

7 hours ago, ButterStuffed said:

Feel free to test my math.

Thermals lose heat at the same rate as a player with 120 insulation, 1°C every 5 seconds, so that would mean it reaches 0°C after 450 seconds from 90°C... however! Difference is while a player freezes when they reach 0°C, thermal stones still emit heat, as long as they're 10°C above world temperature. In winter, world temperature can often dip below -20°C iirc, so your thermal might actually last for 500 seconds or more. What's even better, even if yellow, they keep your temperature around 20°C, so you can add ~60 wetness into the mix and still not freeze, great for spelunking in winter.

tl;dr: thermal stones are very good once you know how to use them.

[cropo]

12 hours ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Rain Coat and Eyebrella have "single-handedly invalidated the entire" rain/wetness mechanic as well

If these could do that job in your inventory, I would agree. If you had to wear the thermal stone on your body/head, I wouldn't be making this argument.

 

I mean I agree with the other stuff you said, but definitely not this.

[Guille6785]

19 hours ago, _zwb said:

It was buffed to be more effective in DST than DS, in DS it cools down way faster

this is not true, they behave almost identically between both games

[cropo]

10 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

this is not true, they behave almost identically between both games

It works way better in DST than it does in Singleplayer, unless they changed it in the QoL update. 

[Guille6785]

3 minutes ago, cropo said:

It works way better in DST than it does in Singleplayer, unless they changed it in the QoL update. 

this is a myth, you can test it very easily with any mod that shows temperature, even in older versions

the reason it seems like the stone sucks in DS is because trees in DS burn for 1/3 as long, and many peoples are not going to consciously heat up a stone to its maximum temperature, they'll simply take it away once the tree stops burning and they see that the stone is orange, but because trees burn for way less in DS doing so will result in a lot less time before the stone changes color

[ButterStuffed]

2 hours ago, DinsdaleP said:

Thermals lose heat at the same rate as a player with 120 insulation, 1°C every 5 seconds, so that would mean it reaches 0°C after 450 seconds from 90°C... however! Difference is while a player freezes when they reach 0°C, thermal stones still emit heat, as long as they're 10°C above world temperature. In winter, world temperature can often dip below -20°C iirc, so your thermal might actually last for 500 seconds or more. What's even better, even if yellow, they keep your temperature around 20°C, so you can add ~60 wetness into the mix and still not freeze, great for spelunking in winter.

tl;dr: thermal stones are very good once you know how to use them.

So they do come with the innate 30 insulation! My sources were wrong then.

The tidbit about it still emitting heat even when it's temperature is below 0* is interesting to note. I had assumed they worked like players did.

[cropo]

2 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

this is a myth, you can test it very easily with any mod that shows temperature, even in older versions

the reason it seems like the stone sucks in DS is because trees in DS burn for 1/3 as long, and many peoples are not going to consciously heat up a stone to its maximum temperature, they'll simply take it away once the tree stops burning and they see that the stone is orange, but because trees burn for way less in DS doing so will result in a lot less time before the stone changes color

In summertime, I had to swap out my thermal stones very quickly due to how fast they were expiring. In DST, I can hold onto a cold thermal stone for much, much longer.

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, cropo said:

In summertime, I had to swap out my thermal stones very quickly due to how fast they were expiring. In DST, I can hold onto a cold thermal stone for much, much longer.

if you test what I'm saying with a mod you'll see their behavior is nearly identical besides small things like the color changes and the weirdness that comes from stacking them

[cropo]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

if you test what I'm saying with a mod you'll see their behavior is nearly identical besides small things like the color changes and the weirdness that comes from stacking them

I swear the only time I use them in Singleplayer is in summer and I can notice a huge difference between the two versions. I haven't tested their effectiveness in Winter though.

[Gashzer]

2 hours ago, DinsdaleP said:

The thing you seem to be forgetting are bundling wraps. 1 thermal stone in the inventory + 3 thermal stones and a few ropes in a bundling wrap, all heated to 90°C = over 4 days of heat, at the cost of two inventory slots (and a few unfortunate trees).

The thing you seem to be forgetting are bundling wraps. 1 scorching sunfish in a bundling wrap plus a beefalo hat means 10 days of heat (until beefalo hat breaks), when you begin to freeze unbundle sunfish, pick up and hold for 50secs then rebundle.

Thermal stones are massively inferior compared to proper insulation. They are ok for a lazy first winter but beyond that... terrible.

[Primalflower]

2 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

this is a myth, you can test it very easily with any mod that shows temperature, even in older versions

the reason it seems like the stone sucks in DS is because trees in DS burn for 1/3 as long, and many peoples are not going to consciously heat up a stone to its maximum temperature, they'll simply take it away once the tree stops burning and they see that the stone is orange, but because trees burn for way less in DS doing so will result in a lot less time before the stone changes color

I tested it and you're either lying or simply misguided. it takes significantly less time, several minutes less, to freeze in DS compared to DST. Not only that, but DST decreases your temperature largely in big bursts as soon as the thermal loses a stage, as compared to DS where your temperature seems to decrease alongside the thermal stone. so you're going to just be generally colder in DS. These recorded were both respectively done on a modless-aside-from-combined-status world set to start in winter, after having stood around the campfire at max capacity for a few minutes.

Clocks in at around 5 minutes and 12 seconds from campfire extinguishing to freezing.

takes around 3 minutes and 50 seconds from campfire extinguishing to freezing in DS.

 

 

 

NOTE: the night light does not provide any temperature. that's why i used it.

[DinsdaleP]

7 hours ago, Gashzer said:

The thing you seem to be forgetting are bundling wraps. 1 scorching sunfish in a bundling wrap plus a beefalo hat means 10 days of heat (until beefalo hat breaks), when you begin to freeze unbundle sunfish, pick up and hold for 50secs then rebundle.

Thermal stones are massively inferior compared to proper insulation. They are ok for a lazy first winter but beyond that... terrible.

Yeah, that's... not even close. Assuming -20°C world temperature, scorching sunfish heat you up to 40°C, that's 6 minutes with a beefalo hat. A thermal stone will keep your temperature at 20°C for 8,3 minutes at the same temp, no need to take it out, hold it, then rebundle, just swap to another stone. If you have a campfire precrafted, you can also get about 2 extra days from 4 stones, bit more if you also have fuel for it, and with three trees laying around, you can complete recharge them to 90°C.

You also need to sacrifice your head slot, so no miner hats, if you want light at night, you'll need to use a lantern, meaning no walking canes. Winter rain in caves? Yeah, here comes the wetness.

But the most glaring problem with your setup is the fact you need to catch scorching sunfish, which is one of the biggest pains in the ass in the whole game and will waste days... and if you've caught them anyway, why not use an insulated pack + bundling wraps, so you can have the same 10 days of heat with 4 of them, without sacrificing your head slot?

Sorry, but it seems like you're trying to take something simple and make it as complicated as possible.

source for the temperature values

[Gashzer]

2 hours ago, DinsdaleP said:

Yeah, that's... not even close. Assuming -20°C world temperature, scorching sunfish heat you up to 40°C, that's 6 minutes with a beefalo hat. A thermal stone will keep your temperature at 20°C for 8,3 minutes at the same temp, no need to take it out, hold it, then rebundle, just swap to another stone. If you have a campfire precrafted, you can also get about 2 extra days from 4 stones, bit more if you also have fuel for it, and with three trees laying around, you can complete recharge them to 90°C.

You also need to sacrifice your head slot, so no miner hats, if you want light at night, you'll need to use a lantern, meaning no walking canes. Winter rain in caves? Yeah, here comes the wetness.

But the most glaring problem with your setup is the fact you need to catch scorching sunfish, which is one of the biggest pains in the ass in the whole game and will waste days... and if you've caught them anyway, why not use an insulated pack + bundling wraps, so you can have the same 10 days of heat with 4 of them, without sacrificing your head slot?

Sorry, but it seems like you're trying to take something simple and make it as complicated as possible.

source for the temperature values

Juggling 4 stones around each time is alot more tedious. Lets say your inventory is jam packed from a trip to the ruins. You have to drop 4 items to pick up the 3 stones and rope from your bundling wrap. 

Its much less annoying in the late game to just unbundling a single fish with the rope to remake the wrap. I dont want to burn 2-3 trees and wait around for the 90C you need to be competitive with a beefalo hat, that is also tedious. Unbundle the fish, pick it up an continue what your doing. Takes 2secs to swap out a dying sunfish for a fresh one if you just so happen to be passing through base.

Losing a headslot isnt a big deal. Shield of terror covers armour or just starcaller an area (to fight bishops and rooks in ruins) then use headslot armour.

I use bulbous lightbulbs as my main light source for all stages of the game (drop lantern or use starcaller for combat). Lightbugs are by far the best general use light source (a stack of 20 lasts a long time before needing to catch more). So my walking cane is still usable.

If it rains in caves during winter; bulbous bugs with umbrella and beefalo hat has got me sorted.

Yes getting sunfish is tedious but once you have them, you have them forever if you arnt a fool, sunfish are far better and more mindless to use when paired with a beefalo hat than using thermal stones.

If you are quite good at inventory management. You can also just stack two tier-3 insulation clothing together, characters like Walter/maxwell can easily do this without feeling like you are losing inventory space.

Thermal stones are for the noobies. 

[Guille6785]

12 hours ago, Primalflower said:

I tested it and you're either lying or simply misguided. it takes significantly less time, several minutes less, to freeze in DS compared to DST. Not only that, but DST decreases your temperature largely in big bursts as soon as the thermal loses a stage, as compared to DS where your temperature seems to decrease alongside the thermal stone. so you're going to just be generally colder in DS. These recorded were both respectively done on a modless-aside-from-combined-status world set to start in winter, after having stood around the campfire at max capacity for a few minutes.

Clocks in at around 5 minutes and 12 seconds from campfire extinguishing to freezing.

takes around 3 minutes and 50 seconds from campfire extinguishing to freezing in DS.

NOTE: the night light does not provide any temperature. that's why i used it.

The reason you got these results was because
1. Day 1 on a winter start in DST is significantly warmer than in DS, it's above 0 degrees usually (AKA you can't freeze) whereas in DS it goes into the negatives right away, you should've thought of this before trying to call me out
2. A single campfire is highly susceptible to ambient temperature; heat sources in general warm you up to a lower degree depending on ambient temp, and this effect can be mitigated by having multiple at once
3. You probably spent too little time heating up the thermal in the DS video, judging by the world not even being 2 minutes in (it seems like the DS thermal was roughly at 35 degrees when you extinguished the fire whereas the DST one was roughly at 60; you can tell this from your character temperature rapidly decreasing in the DS clip up to a certain point which is when the thermal's temperature is met)

 

The reason we had largely different results is actually due to something I seemed to miss, which is that apparently in DS this effect of heat resources being lowered by ambient temp seems to be much more noticeable and likely not mitigated by stacking multiple of them, unlike DST, which I had no idea was a thing, TIL (I'm playing on the pre-2023 version of ROG if that makes any difference)

After doing more normalized tests to account for ambient temperature (which I made sure was hovering only slightly below 0), heating the thermals to 80 degrees, my results were 6 minutes and 8 seconds to start freezing in DS and 6m20s~ ish in DST

you're right about the "burst" thing and I neglected to mention that when talking about their minor differences; in DS thermals do try to keep you closer to their temperature whereas in DST holding a stone of a certain color will instead make your self temperature try to stay at a particular value, and this is particularly useful to know when combining thermal stones with insulation or when bundling them (because you can actually min/max orange stones as basically portable campfires and then put on insulation clothing), but without insulation clothing the difference between game versions this change causes is pretty minor besides maybe in some edge cases at certain breakpoints where it will give a relatively more noticeable extra time in DST due to the bonus player temperature but this is not the "huge buff" that people think thermals got in DST

so no, I wasn't "lying" to anyone, my point still stands that the thermals didn't get "significantly buffed" like many people claim, but rather that they got the most noticeable indirect effect from general buffs to heat sources (namely trees), which affects ALL insulation and not just thermals, and I would've appreciated if you tried to account for differences in ambient temperature before jumping at me and calling me a liar which likely was meant to just make me look bad rather than you actually caring considering your past history of accusing me of being a bad person on random threads

this isn't without mentioning the fact that the DS thermal was heated up to only half of what the DST one was in your clips

Edit: If you want an example of this exact knowledge being put into practice, the reason I studied all of this in-depth was to optimize the king of winter chapter of adventure mode to waste the least amount of time with just the thermal stone, and you can clearly see in the video that I almost never froze and barely had to heat up despite spending relatively little time actually having the opportunity to do so; all of this would've been utterly impossible if thermals truly were significantly less powerful like so many people falsely claim; I know from experience that a thermal stone is closely comparable to a winter hat in terms of how often you have to heat up (which makes perfect sense since they're both 120 insulation items in both games) https://youtu.be/HP2fenggfNY