Hermit Island Escape Challenge

[Uncrushed]

A DST island survival challenge for players with over 100 hours experience (over 25 if you like pausing to read the Wiki).
Intended for Single-Player - you'll have to adjust if you do it with friends.

World Generation

World Size: Small.  The world sizes affect the space between things, so less rowing.

Start
On spawn, enter the following at the console before gathering any resources or exploring:

c_gonext("moon_fissure_plugged")

That will transport you to Hermit Island (where Pearl lives).  Then enter:

c_give("glommerfuel", 20)
c_give("dug_grass", 7)
c_give("spoiled_fish", 7)
c_give("hammer", 1)
c_give("silk", 4)
c_give("mole", 5)
c_give("goldenshovel", 1)
c_give("oceanfishingrod", 1)
c_give("rope", 10)
c_give("torch", 2)
c_give("backpack", 1)

That's your starting resources.  Here's the challenge:

Rules

• Don't set foot on the mainland (or caves) after your initial spawn and `c_gonext`.  If something from the mainland jumps onto your boat (a spider or pig), you're free to kill it and take the loot!
• If you aren't Wilson, and you want to complete the Hermit Home, give yourself a marble bean and 2 beefalo wool after you've left the island.

  c_give("marblebean", 1)
  c_give("beefalowool", 2)

  Sacrifice something appropriate in exchange, like 6 stone for the bean and 12 wood for the wool.

Goals

• Leave Hermit Island (by boat)
• Upgrade Hermit Home from Stage 1 to 2 (Wilson can get to the final stage)
• Grow an Above-Average Tree Trunk touching Hermit Island.
• Bring a glass cutter to Hermit Island
• Build a dock out from Hermit Island (one square is enough)
• Post your success (or amusing failures) to this thread with:
  • Two screenshots: One of your character on Hermit Island showing how far you got, the other of the world map.
  • Your character choice, day counter, and world seed

    ThePlayer.components.talker:Say(tostring(TheWorld.meta.seed))

     (if it's not visible in the screenshots)
  • Describe any outstanding successes or failures.
  • Suggestions for challenge improvement.
• Have fun!  Pick one goal, or do them all!  A very advanced (and patient) player may be able to kill a Malbatross, or possibly even Crab King with Pearl's Pearl?  That's' not the fun part for me, so I didn't try for that, though Malbatross was tempting.

[-Variant]

Ahaha, it's kinda spooky seeing this as I was looking into making a post about a discovery I made earlier this morning.

A very interesting note.
There's a set command listed as 'island start' and it starts you with this very specific loadout and drops your sanity a portion.

I'm curious if this was testing for anything that might've been scrapped a bit back. What an eerie coincidence seeing a post about an island escape later today!

[BezKa]

2 hours ago, -Variant said:

Ahaha

There's also a command like 'goboating' or something that gives you a bunch of sailing equipment

[-Variant]

2 hours ago, BezKa said:

There's also a command like 'goboating' or something that gives you a bunch of sailing equipment

Right on, there's a few like that! 

I just thought this one felt a wee bit more specific than the rest of them and wanted to share, is all.

[Uncrushed]

8 hours ago, -Variant said:

There's a set command listed as 'island start' and it starts you with this very specific loadout and drops your sanity a portion.

I'm curious if this was testing for anything that might've been scrapped a bit back. What an eerie coincidence seeing a post about an island escape later today!

You mean like 

c_goadventuring()

or

c_doscenario(scenario)

I want details!

[_zwb]

7 minutes ago, Uncrushed said:

You mean like 

c_goadventuring()

or

c_doscenario(scenario)

I want details!

Use c_makeboat() to spawn a boat with full setup under your cursor.

[Uncrushed]

Playing as Wilson, world seed 1026908922.  I got the hermit home completed.

The stone fruit bushes are planted from seed, so don't need fertilizing.

Most exciting failure: I decided I'd just hop onto the island for a moment, while my boat was still moving.  Oops!  You can see here that I used a boat base and didn't build on the island hardly at all.

I was able to make a second boat and row out to get it.  The three chests are Food (near the crock pot) Resources/Minerals (near the science machine) and Boating/Fishing (near the Pinchin Winch).  I eventually added a 4th chest for Tools.  I like to keep a clean ship so I can hold the spacebar to pick everything up.  Anything I didn't really need I dropped on Hermit Island, eventually making a chest there (in the light of the upgraded Hermit House) for minerals the Moles would otherwise stash in their burrows.

Map: Pearl was near Lunar Island and three Waterlogged biomes (for grass and slik, but really all the non-mineral resources you need):

 

Biggest Cheat:

I hadn't committed to this challenge at the beginning, or gotten the necessary skill tree points as Wilson to do the transmutations for the Hermit Home.  So I used the console to transport myself to the portal, give myself the necessary stuff to upgrade it, and give myself the Moon Rock Idol so I could reassign the skill points I had.  I think this effectively gave me "longer torches" for the first half of the game for free.  Then I just picked up my stuff and teleported back to Hermit Island.  This also restored my sanity from about half to full and probably health and hunger too.

Learning:

For bone shards:

Spoiler

Hammer the spoiled fish starting resources for bone shards and rot.  Then use the rot (not the whole fish) to fertilize your grass.

For rocks, flint, nitre, and gold:

Spoiler

Repeatedly dig up mole burrows

Mole Management:

Spoiler

Do not drop moles in sea - they are lost!  You can either dig up the burrows for minerals, or harvest the moles for crafting (whack-a-mole with the hammer) or for meat (just kill them).  You cannot do both with the same moles.  When I whacked moles for the Rain Hat, I used 2 that had burrows on the opposite end of the island.  Unfortunately, in Spring, I was in the habit of digging up every mole hole and the bees killed 3 of my 5 moles, leaving me with only 2.  You can prevent this by walling your bees in.  I updated the Wiki article on Bees:Behavior to show how.

How to save on torches (this was more an issue in earlier versions of this challenge)

Spoiler

You can make it through the night by the light of a single lune-moth if you time your tree-chopping right.  Then you can catch the moth at daybreak and still have time to plant it.

How to fish with less

Spoiler

Fish with a stick for a float and either rot or seeds as the lure.

Mid-game tip

Spoiler

There's a limited supply of gold on Lunar Island.

How to get floats and lures

Spoiler

There are resources to build a Tackle Receptacle (the bone shards from spoiled fish), but I chose to befriend Pearl and trade bottles to her instead.

How to prevent food spoilage

Spoiler

I never found Moon Quay Island for gears and no hound dropped any gem, nor did I get one in the sunken chest I salvaged.  I ended up chopping a bunch of trees on lunar island and bath-bombing a bunch of hot springs, then later mined them and got red gems which I used Wilson's special ability to turn into a blue gem for the salt box.

Best weapon and armor

Spoiler

Glass cutter, though I used the spear for most situations because the cutters wear out quickly.  It was fun having to make and use the shellmet with log armor.  That's something that doesn't see much use.

Rain Protection

Spoiler

In spring I made a rain hat and hung out in the Waterlogged biome.  I wasn't prepared in time, so the first few days of spring were rough, though the Cookie Cutter Cap gives 35% and Waterlogged about the same, so at least that was 70% protection.  I still went insane and started freezing.  The Straw Hat (prerequisite for the Rain Hat) was tough in such a grass-limited world.

Not enough Grass?

Spoiler

Ram trees in Waterlogged.  They only drop the grass when they drop a nut, so you can only ram once per day, unless you just want the spiders.

Not enough twigs/gold?

Spoiler

You need 1 gold for a Science Machine and 4 gold for a lightning rod for your boat before spring, but it's not a bad idea from the beginning especially if you're basing on your boat.  I much prefer the Golden Shovel, but if sticks are too rare and flint is plentiful, the basic shovel works fine.  I made a few other gold tools, but eventually replaced them with flint ones.  Also, there are pre-crafted moon-glass axes on Lunar Island.  I also used 4 gold for an Alchemy Engine, possibly for the Shellmet.  Otherwise, the Alchemy Engine upgrade may have been more habit than necessity.

Sanity

Spoiler

Since there's no magic stations, shadow fuel is useless.  Low sanity just means getting hassled, your fires snuffed, boat patches removed.  The Top Hat was a big turning point, but I eventually forgot to repair it with the sewing kit and lost it.  Also, I couldn't wear it much in Spring.  I was able to stay sane with crock pot food choice after that.  I ended up getting 2 nightmare fuel, but couldn't use them.

Summer cooling without fridge or caves

Spoiler

At first I ran to the Waterlogged biome, which worked for a while.  Then I made a mistake and hammered my fire pit in the middle of my boat, then found I couldn't fit an endothermic fire pit without also hammering a bunch of other stuff.  The boat was never the same after that.  If you catch 3-4 Ice Bream and you're careful, you can swap them between your inventory and the Tin Fishin' Bin to stay cool and keep them fresh.  I only caught 4, gave the heavy one to pearl, and let one die by accident before I figured this out.

This was fun for me because I had to learn a lot of weird things and play a pretty different game.  I had never caught many seasonal fish before (except by accident) and that was fun to discover.  I spent a lot of time looking stuff up on the Wiki and asked a few questions on these forums.

[Jakepeng99]

I imagine Woodie would be op since you wait for hounds and then make a goose idol.

[Uncrushed]

18 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I imagine Woodie would be op since you wait for hounds and then make a goose idol.

In an earlier version, I gave the player 1 spider eggs to start.  Woodie is why you get 4 silk now instead.  I think I always have a boat made before the first hound attack, and it's usually not until the 2nd attack that you get enough hounds for 3 monster meat.  Once Woodie is off the island, he's just as likely to get monster meat quickly from Cookie Cutters or Spiders.

Being able to scout quickly, even mid-game in this challenge is a huge advantage.  Woodie one of the strongest characters and certainly one of the best picks for this challenge.

It's still hard.  You're playing with very limited grass and sticks until you find a Waterlogged biome, then gold is still limited.

[Uncrushed]

Wurt.  World Seed: 1831270085.  The only two Waterlogged biomes I found were at the opposite end of the map.

I got 2 knobbly trees by day 59, 2nd day of summer, but no hermit house upgrade.  I burned too many trees for charcoal at the very beginning and that set me behind.

Wurt did a lot of starving and living with low health.  Her 5 heavy fish for Pearl were all popperfish - why catch anything else if you can't eat them?  I'm going to up the number of grass tufts at the beginning to 5.  Not enough for a grass raft, but grass was so tight forever.  I'm reducing the torches from 3 to 2.  If I keep playing this world, I'm building a boat with many sails to get from one end of things to the other quickly, but I may abandon it.  If I'd caught 3 or 4 Ice Bream in the winter...

 

 

[Uncrushed]

I went back to Wurt's world and gave myself 3 more grass tufts, so the starting amount should be 7 now.  Here's Wurt with her glass cutter, dock, and hermit home upgrade.  This was a really unlucky world-gen: all 3 Waterlogged biomes, Lunar Island, and Moon Quay are all clustered on the exact opposite corner of the map!  A second sail allows me to sail there in about 1.5 days instead of 3.

I seriously considered digging up my grass tufts and basing on lunar island.  I didn't know how to manage sanity.  Wurt can't eat raw meat and Kelp Fronds has no sanity penalty for her.  Now it occurs to me I could just keep a spoiled fish in my inventory on the island!

I accomplished all my original goals, but I may have to make a summer boat and catch a heavy scorching sunfish for Pearl.  I also may have to bait out some pirate raids with my new thulecite armor (from a lucky AF Sunken Chest) to kill the Prime Mate in the fall because they stole my last 5-10 Tree Jam sacks!

Here's the latest map:

 

My biggest learning was where to find grass!

 

Spoiler

• Found randomly on the ocean
• From salvaging Ocean Debris (I always thought those were rockjaw spawn points and avoided them)
• From Great Tree Trunks and Above-Average Tree Trunks (when lightning strikes, or ram them gently with a boat up to once/day). If you chop down the spider nests early, you'll use less grass making spears and armor, but leave some nests in at least one Waterlogged biome for silk.
• From the Unnatural Portal on Moon Quay

I think I died and had to rollback for each of the first 4 or 5 pirate raids, before I stopped trying to fight them.  Probably 1 or 2 rollbacks for rockjaws.  Another 4 or 5 before I learned how to bait out a single monkey on Moon Quay so as not to aggro all of them.

Spoiler

Drop an item every 3 tiles or so.  One monkey will end up following the trail while the others return to what they were doing.

I wonder what Wickerbottom could craft?  The darksword is no better than the Glass Cutter, but I'm sure she'd be able to make something useful!

[GimplyGoose]

You can duplicate mole worms by hitting them with a hammer to pick them up and keeping them in your inventory until the burrow respawns them (2.5 days) during which time you will need to feed the moleworm at least twice

After the burrow respawns a moleworm, you need to dig the burrow up because otherwise both the respawned moleworm and pocketed moleworm will be linked to the same burrow.