Forest Rifts are producing excessive amounts of items

[JazzyGames]

I have become increasingly concerned with the amount of items that get passively generated as a result of the surface rifts, and I'm hoping that a game mechanic can possibly help to mitigate the ever-increasing Sisyphean task of keeping my world lag-free.

When a rift forms in the forest it will destroy trees in a large radius and also spawn treeguards. The logs and pinecones that get left behind will not despawn because the stumps also get uprooted from the rifts. I can quickly burn wood, no problem. However the biggest source of excess items will inevitably be petrified trees. At this point, my forest is absolutely saturated with rocks, flint, and nitre, none of which can be quickly cleaned up and has been slowly accumulating over the years I've been playing. This is a different experience from pre-rift where I can go to the forest for these items but they don't passively and continuously spawn onto the ground, hence no lag issue.

This is not sustainable. On top of having to kill five herds of brightshades after every rift, I also need to clean up all the items left behind at the rift site itself and kill a number of treeguards. Otherwise, the constant creation of items and mobs will inevitably lead to serious lag issues on my world. This is not the endgame I signed up for; I really hope it gets addressed soon.

Here are some of my proposals, but usually other commenters will come up with better solutions so I'll wait to see what other people think.

1. Limit rift spawning to biomes without tree regrowth (Rocky, Triple Mac, Desert, Savannah, etc.);
2. Prohibit rifts from spawning in any areas with a certain degree of plant density;
3. Regularly despawn minerals not within range of a player-built structure (least preferred);
4. Let. Us. Cancel. Rifts.

[el_Chuchmay]

1 minute ago, JazzyGames said:

I have become increasingly concerned with the amount of items that get passively generated as a result of the surface rifts, and I'm hoping that a game mechanic can possibly help to mitigate the ever-increasing Sisyphean task of keeping my world lag-free.

When a rift forms in the forest it will destroy trees in a large radius and also spawn treeguards. The logs and pinecones that get left behind will not despawn because the stumps also get uprooted from the rifts. I can quickly burn wood, no problem. However the biggest source of excess items will inevitably be petrified trees. At this point, my forest is absolutely saturated with rocks, flint, and nitre, none of which can be quickly cleaned up and has been slowly accumulating over the years I've been playing. This is a different experience from pre-rift where I can go to the forest for these items but they don't passively and continuously spawn onto the ground, hence no lag issue.

This is not sustainable. On top of having to kill five herds of brightshades after every rift, I also need to clean up all the items left behind at the rift site itself and kill a number of treeguards. Otherwise, the constant creation of items and mobs will inevitably lead to serious lag issues on my world. This is not the endgame I signed up for; I really hope it gets addressed soon.

Here are some of my proposals, but usually other commenters will come up with better solutions so I'll wait to see what other people think.

1. Limit rift spawning to biomes without tree regrowth (Rocky, Triple Mac, Desert, Savannah, etc.);
2. Prohibit rifts from spawning in any areas with a certain degree of plant density;
3. Regularly despawn minerals not within range of a player-built structure (least preferred);
4. Let. Us. Cancel. Rifts.

There is ways to prevent all this but they are too extreme.

Having to place structures everywhere to prevent the rifts from spawning there.

Making a brightshade-proof farming setup is not that big of an issue but is still hard to figure out.

[JazzyGames]

If the mechanic stays as-is I will likely consider putting structures in the forest to prevent rifts but like you said it feels rather extreme. Personally I don't think players should be responsible for compensating to that degree for a world in an unbalanced state.

[Brago-sama]

Personally i just turn off regrowth so that i only ever clean it the one time. Excessive but I aint playing cleanup

[lenship2]

it could just rift-ify any sort of resources (despawning them) so it doesn't destroy anything or leave any messes ^^

then when its done, it can spawn them back in where it left them without destroying anything (no treeguards, no logs everywhere, etc.)

[-Variant]

I'm not big on the idea of limiting their spawns to barren biomes at all. It feels more like pushing them away than directly addressing them. There's so much potential you could do with them that's not just trashing areas where they spawn!

I really do still firmly think I'd enjoy them just mutating what they touch and reverting them when they despawn instead of just digging everything up and leaving barren chunks around.

I'd also favor more passive ways of maintain the amount of rubbish around the world. Bins, automatic clean-up, I'll take anything, I admit. The lag has been a growing concern of mine now, and I've never had issues with it until these most recent updates.

[MrMNWorm]

I did make a proposal for reworking the Lunar Rift Cycle that I think is applicable here since it does allow a way for the player to "cancel" and control the Rifts a little more. I'll include a link for the full details.
 

The main summary of changes are:

1. Move the Flash Signal to the beginning of the Rift Cycle and add an Audio Cue.
2. Allow Rifts to spawn anywhere EXCEPT where Setpiece Statues have spawned.
3. Swap the Grazers for a Gestalt Trio mini-boss fight. Killing all 3 will close the Rift and revert the turf back to normal.
- Two more options for closing the Rifts were added: sacrificing Glommer near the Rift, or using Shadow Hands to close the Rift.
4. Change the Rift cycle to a 20-day period with 4 Phases with a 20-day respawn timer like most bosses have.
- If the Rift is not closed after 20 days, it leaves behind a Lunar Mutation Land Scar, which is basically what Variant purposed.

Then to help players control the Rifts a little more, here are two more ideas that might be helpful that I would like to add:

5. In any biome that the Rift spawns, have it target Cobblestone Turf first for it's spawn location.
- With this, the Rift won't immediately destroy anything in a megabase when it first spawns... it will target the empty roads. And then if a player wishes to force a Rift to spawn in certain locations in other biomes, like Forest Biomes... this would allow them to do that without having to build tons of unnecessary structures... but rather just a few pieces of easily hidden Cobblestone Turf.
6. Have the Rifts cycle through the biomes in an order or list.
- This way they won't spawn in the same biome twice in a row.

I really think the players will ENJOY the Rifts a lot more if there were a few more ways they could "play" with them... by revamping them with some stuff like this... or maybe some stuff exactly like this. 
 

[chirsg]

On 10/28/2023 at 12:37 AM, JazzyGames said:

1. Let. Us. Cancel. Rifts.

I'll get behind this. I don't hate rifts spawning in my forests, but there are places I don't want rifts to be spawning at all.