Feedback - Ice Crystaleyezer and Polar Bearger Bin

[extremyt]

Some of these have already been suggested, but it's important to send the message.

Polar Bearger Bin:

Is a nice late game item for carrying food, but at its current state, it isn't much better than bundling wraps since it only accepts cooked food and the spoilage is still there, for all the trouble you have to go through to even have the possibility of getting this item, it's better to just use bundles which you can get first autumn, the mere convenience of not having to use rope, bundle/unbundle and drop items doesn't make up for it, my suggestions for this item are:

1. Stop spoilage completely, literally no reason for an endgame food preservation item to be worse than an item you can get first autumn, specially considering its limitation to only storing crock pot foods. Or keep the food always fresh (no stale and spoiled stages, so you can always have the full effect).
2. Allow you to open it from your inventory so you don't have to pick it up from the ground (QoL change and useful when fighting).
3. It should store regular food, if an Ice Box and an Insulated Pack can, why cannot this? Reminding you that this is an endgame item that requires you to kill Celestial Champion and at least three of the new post-rift bosses. It would work well with the first suggestion.

None of these will completely replace bundles as you can store more than just food and/or completely stop spoilage.

Ice Crystaleyezer:

This one is just terrible, it can't even be considered a reward (you craft this and in exchange your base becomes unlivable?). I'll simply ignore this since it doesn't give me anything (protecting from wildfires becomes pointless since you're forced to stay away from your base anyway). It should:

1. Cool you enough without freezing you (the most important one).
2. Have a bigger radius for summer protection because crafting those ain't easy (a lightning rod radius would be nice).
3. As it has been suggested previously by some users, simulate winter mechanics within its radius (MacTusk and Klaus always available, snowbirds spawning, blue mushtrees blooming, ponds freezing etc...).

These will make the Ice Crystaleyezer a much better summer item and not only that, will turn it into a global item that allows you to change the environment and the way you play by allowing winter exclusive elements to be available all year round.

[chaosmonkey]

Bundle wrap is always going to be better if the bin doesn't have 0% spoilage. Although I would love for the bin to store regular food as well, I would happily accept the crockpot food limitation if it actually stopped spoilage. Feels like a fair trade for the convenience plus extra slots and being so incredibly late game.

[GelatinousCube]

I haven't said or posted anything about the Crystaleyezer as of yet and while it does very much sound like the worst of the three new Lunar bosses drops I think it would be an amazing item from one simple change - no longer freezing players to a point where they take damage. I just don't really understand why on earth it does this? It's a super late game item that's meant to be quite powerful/useful. I get the mechanics and how it's almost meant to be like an artificial winter of sorts in a particular area but I just don't see the logic benefit wise. Having to wear insulation or hold a hot thermal simply to use its other effects just doesn't seem worth it. I've seen plenty of other cool and useful suggestions to make it better or more useful in other ways but I still doubt I'll use it at all with the freezing effect and damage it causes. 

My suggestion is maybe it could only cause freezing damage and temperatures low enough to cause thus during every season but summer. That way it could at least be placed in your summer base. I'd like it simply provide temperatures just above freezing but maybe this could be a nice compromise? Makes sense too that during summer (the hot season) it still provides cooling etc but not to a freezing point because the heat from summer prevents that. 

The howlitzer sounds absolutely incredible and so does the bearger bin (even in it's currently state and I honestly don't think it needs many if any buffs or changes to be honest). Howlitzer turns a near useless plethora of hounds teeth late game into ammo for the best ranged weapon and bearger bin even as is, is a huge boon and for me at least will not only saving me from using so many bundles of food (and grass and tedium) but will also save inventory space and trips to base. Not sure I agree that it should stop spoilage completely but some neat other suggestions like not dropping it to open it would be appreciated.

Even with how unique it is and what I'm sure could be a pretty useful effect in certain situations I just don't see myself using the Crystaleyezer in its current form. It basically creates a trade-off and negative in exchange for its benefits. There are no downsides or drawbacks to the howlitzer or bearger bin they're both just amazing late game items similar to say enlightened crown and bone armor/bone helm.

[Hornete]

I hope they don't remove the <0 freezing temperature! It makes for a fun exchange/trade of downsides. You get the good of Winter, and the bad of it! They just need to push in on making more upsides from Winter available through the Crystaleyezer and it'll be perfect

[chaosmonkey]

10 minutes ago, GelatinousCube said:

Not sure I agree that it should stop spoilage completely but some neat other suggestions like not dropping it to open it would be appreciated.

 

I would really like to understand this perspective, would you mind elaborating? A few other people have mentioned it, but I'm struggling to see that side of it. I've already made a big post about it so I won't repeat myself here, but suffice to say the combination of being limited to crockpot dishes and the non-zero spoilage rate make it objectively worse than a bundle wrap while also being exponentially more difficult to obtain.

[GelatinousCube]

Addition: I really don't think that the bearger bin is designed or supposed to replace bundling wraps for food, it exists to compliment it. Why not use both? Wraps for long term storage and bearger bin for your yearly food which it can very easily store and keep fresh. 

I'm super excited for the bearger bin and only having to unwrap/cook food in one massive go once an in-game year as that already sounds pretty damn good to me. It stopping spoilage completely just sounds a bit broken to be honest. Yes bundles do this now but you have to expend rope every time you rebundle them, you can't see exactly what's inside and it's a process. Yes it doesn't take long to unbundle and rebundle but if you're doing it every day it's a big time sink and a bit of a hassle. I currently use wraps plus Ice chester so that I only have to unbundle every ten or so days. 

11 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

I would really like to understand this perspective, would you mind elaborating? A few other people have mentioned it, but I'm struggling to see that side of it. I've already made a big post about it so I won't repeat myself here, but suffice to say the combination of being limited to crockpot dishes and the non-zero spoilage rate make it objectively worse than a bundle wrap while also being exponentially more difficult to obtain.

I'll post a proper reply a little later, at work!

[Brago-sama]

14 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

I would really like to understand this perspective, would you mind elaborating? A few other people have mentioned it, but I'm struggling to see that side of it. I've already made a big post about it so I won't repeat myself here, but suffice to say the combination of being limited to crockpot dishes and the non-zero spoilage rate make it objectively worse than a bundle wrap while also being exponentially more difficult to obtain.

My monkey brain is giving me Dopamine at the thought of having 10 bundle wraps full of food and only having to unbundle once every 100 days vs every 5-10 when you use em both together

Idc if it gets buffed or not, bc atm it looks like we're getting an upgrade to our playstyle either way compared to pre-patch. Itd be nice for a buff but i aint crying either way.

Personally for me, its less of an argument against a buff and more of an indifference

[GelatinousCube]

4 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

I would really like to understand this perspective, would you mind elaborating? A few other people have mentioned it, but I'm struggling to see that side of it. I've already made a big post about it so I won't repeat myself here, but suffice to say the combination of being limited to crockpot dishes and the non-zero spoilage rate make it objectively worse than a bundle wrap while also being exponentially more difficult to obtain.

While I feel like I already elaborated in my last post on this thread I'll do so a little further.

I just don't see it that way and don't think the bearger bin is objectively worse than a bundle wrap personally. It can hold 6 stacks of foods (instead of four like a bundle) which you can see (unlike a bundle) that for all purposes are as close to never spoiling as we have ever received (other than bundle wrap obviously). You can save a bunch of inventory/Chester/backpack space by having these 6 full stacks of crockpot food in the bearger bin. You don't have to always be unbundling and bundling your food eating up a ton of grass (late game this is the biggest sink for grass honestly, I'm not even sure what else I use it for in large quantities other than certain decorative builds) and time. 

I see it as a great tool to use alongside bundle wraps rather than a competitor. I'll still always have my single bundle with emergency foods at all times but now I won't have two to three additional bundle wraps of food in Ice Chester/my Krampus Sack anymore. I'll gain multiple inventory/chester slots by no longer having these bundle and no longer having jellybeans on me at all times (they can go in bearger bin too), I won't have to bundle/unbundle anywhere near as often and can just eat food straight out of the bearger bin. Only having to cook and replace food once an in-game year (or possibly even longer?) will be a huge time saver. 

It isn't as much of a game changer as it providing no-spoilage ever for sure but I don't know, food is so easy late game already do we really need an item that does that with no cost or drawbacks (I know, bundle wrap already does this but it costs rope, can't see the contents etc). I honestly wouldn't be bothered if it did and its not something I actually care about that much (unlike Hail damaging mobs...... cmon klei really...) it just seems a little bit too good for it to do so. 
I would really like it to accept Jerky and Dried Kelp however, they aren't raw foods and are pretty damn close to Crockpot foods - they take time and an additional structure to create. 

[chaosmonkey]

Thanks for sharing all those thoughts. Reading through your perspective on the bin, I can understand where you're coming from even if I personally don't see it that way. I think the two main differences in perspective, at least for me, are related to playstyle and expectations.

On the playstyle side, the grass cost of the bundle wrap is effectively negligible for me. I'm usually quite early to building a lureplant grass farm in my worlds, and the rope cost is de minimis. Having 6 slots isn't that helpful with 10% spoilage because I can't even fill them all up. After putting in a stack of sanity food, regular food, and jelly beans, I can't really put much else in there without having to risk it being spoiled. This is effectively the same as the bundle wrap in terms of how much food I can carry. A bundle is still required for warly food buffs; I almost always have a stack of volt goat jelly and fish cordon bleu in my bundle.

On the expectations side, I expect an item that is this difficult to obtain, this late game, and with the opportunity cost of the other new items (at least initially), is actually progression from the early game bundle wrap. I don't think such a late game item needs a downside at all, and it already has plenty beyond the spoilage. It falls out of your inventory on use. Beyond the annoyance, this also means it can't be opened in darkness. It also can't store raw/cooked/dried foods. Suffice to say, it has some of the same plus _more_ downsides than the bundle wrap. At the point you don't care about the rope, it's kind of a worse bundle. The only thing it has going for it is a bit of convenience and 2 extra slots which I can't put to use.

I want to ditch my bundle wrap when I get the bin, but it's not really an option since the warly food buffs would either spoil before I can use them all, or I would need to take on the mental overhead of making sure I have precisely how many I can use and would need between base visits vs having the convenience of a bundle. In the end, I'm stuck with a bundle AND the bin.

One other thing that would actually be really nice is the ability to preserve crockpot foods at base with 0 spoilage and not needing to deal with bundle wraps. I would love to collect this "high end" food storage to keep all my crockpot dishes fresh and not deal with the bundle wrap. It would give the bin a lot more life beyond having one per player and actually give a reason to farm them after the first. Maybe Klei has something else in mind for this, though.

[Baark0]

19 hours ago, Hornete said:

I hope they don't remove the <0 freezing temperature! It makes for a fun exchange/trade of downsides. You get the good of Winter, and the bad of it! They just need to push in on making more upsides from Winter available through the Crystaleyezer and it'll be perfect

Hope youre talking about ambient temperature and not the klaus freeze area that spawns immediately after placing an eyeball in the Crystalleyzer. That part of the item is such a dumb and unnecessary inclusion, like why am I being forced to take damage just to set up this mediocre item?

[Hornete]

1 minute ago, Baark0 said:

Hope youre talking about ambient temperature and not the klaus freeze area that spawns immediately after placing an eyeball in the Crystalleyzer. That part of the item is such a dumb and unnecessary inclusion, like why am I being forced to take damage just to set up this mediocre item?

Yea Im talking about the ambient temperature! The Klaus freeze area is for sure a bit annoying, though personally I don't care about it, I'll likely just get the few health I lost with foods like honey.