Don’t Starve Shipwrecked (7 Years Later) and What do you think of it.

[BaconJ]

This is my first discussion board.  
- I just got back to playing Don’t Starve from a 4 year absence.  I also played the Shipwrecked DLC again.  The sense of exploring, and wondering what awaits on a new island always intrigues me.  I’m a bit biased towards it cause this was the 1st Don’t Starve game I played even before RoG on the IOS back then.  The feel of surviving the Hurricane season will always be my best experience of any Don’t Starve game ever.
- So, what do you guys think of the Shipwrecked DLC after Hamlet and DST have been out for a while?  I bet they would be interesting games if Hamlet and Shipwrecked were multiplayer officially.

[mathem99]

I honestly prefer Shipwrecked's boats and sea exploration over DST's. It feels much easier to traverse and quicker. Overall Shipwrecked is a great addition to Don't Starve and one I'm hoping in the future gets another update (although highly unlikely a Home Sea Home pt.2 would be awesome), even if not at this point Shipwrecked feels complete.

[finn from human]

The majority of my DS/T playtime pre-Taking Root was over in DS and specifically Shipwrecked, and, speaking so so honestly here... It's really underwhelming in the modern day. There's always a certain nostalgia to it that I enjoy a lot, and a few mechanics like trawling and whaling are incredible and I can get lost in them for hours, but... the exploration is underwhelming (it's just the same few biomes repeated over and over but with different set pieces) the ocean doesn't feel like an ocean at all (especially since RoT has shown how well such a thing can be done), the boats are basically just a special piece of equipment that lets you walk on Blue-Colored Turf, and a large portion of the DLC's content is dedicated to just reestablishing existing elements from DS and RoG but with a tropical skin to them. I love Shipwrecked and I spent some of the most formative years of my life playing it, but it's definitely a product of its time.

That being said, I do have to give them credit: Capy did an excellent job with what they had available back in the day. It's exceptionally creative in some ways for what DS/T was like at the time, and I don't think that creativity was surpassed in official content for years until Hamlet and RoT.

[palpita]

On 9/10/2023 at 9:04 AM, finn from human said:

... the exploration is underwhelming ...

I have only played shipwrecked since like a week ago, and my experience has been the opposite compared to RoG where everything you will ever need is found by day 10 at the latest and by that I mean lightbulbs with potential bunnymen, glommer (why chop trees by hand?), pig king, desert, walrus camp, 1-2 good wormholes...

In shipwrecked I've had worlds ranging from 7+ islands with only 1 gold nugget (one gold rock)  throughout them all, and world where first 3 islands I found consisted of swamp with 3 fishermerm huts and jungle that was habitable enough, and other had mangrove with water beefalo, beaches, jungle, magma abundant with gold, monkeys and grassy lands with bees.

Worst part to me about shipwrecked ironically is the good old science mechanic which existed since 2013. Thatch sail seems like a total waste of time, and so is armored boat when your inventory space is very limited. Thatch sail also requires more inventory slots to keep spare materials for it than cloth sail does, which makes me avoid it completely. Early on you have no place to call home where you dump your crap in, the troll mechanic of wind pushing everything into water happens as early as day 10 so I avoid dropping things anywhere at all. It's factually cheaper to just hammer down a row boat and rebuild with just very few planks and vines than try to repair an armored boat with repair kits which doesn't really last long enough to warrant building it before you have a healthy stack of stingers either. I'd basically build alchemy engine only for cloth sail early on but that feels like complete waste of gold.

I also tried playing wheeler because I have all DLC's, even though I never played Hamlet either, and I really like thatchpack. She really helps me with finding things, what I do is pick all twigs on starting island then sail in direction of nearest twigs which is more often than not a mangrove biome, and thatchpack helps me with carrying more things before I even found gold, I usually mine 6 coral for prebuilding chiminea before I even have any gold. After finding gold, I also can stop worrying about it as I will always find more when I need it. I'm still reluctant to waste gold on an alchemy engine that's not on island I like though. Since I'm so new to SW I'm not sure what's a good island to base in that's not the perfect 3 fishermem huts with a jungle without monkeys anyway.

I can't wait till I get to the good stuff which is volcano, coffee is a nice bonus, sure, but what I really want is the cacti. Being able to farm stingers, hound teeth, butterflies and even birds if you drop some seeds around all in the same place, with 0 cost after initial investment is just too good.

[Gotheran]

I've never been especially fond of Shipwrecked, the resource scarcity is in stark contrast to the demands of survival. You might have an easier time setting a regular world to only have minimum settings for all resources than succeed in shipwrecked on its default settings. I've also noticed how much harsher SW's first year rotation is than RoG, as you effectively have two springs and a summer ahead of you while having to take twice the time with half the resources to get it done with. I've found gold so limited that it may genuinely make some worlds flat out unplayable assuming none of the other issues in the dlc plague you into an early grave.

Another major concern is inventory, there's not much additional storage options either for basing or on the go storage while the dlc has a dozen or so new resources and tools you'll need to find room for in your inventory while traveling, most notably the extra Machete tool, boat parts, boat repair kits, coral, palm fronds, bamboo, vines all as new resources, many new food types, new tree seeds, empty bottles, all ontop of many of the same basic supplies found in the regular world. The best you get for extra on the go storage? The Cargo boat which has like 6 slots, i think, 2 spaces less than a backpack, it doesn't go very far.