What do you think of wildfires? (and the ways used to prevent them)

[DownloadADuck]

In my opinion I dislike them and turn them off because I megabase a lot, but if i have them on i usually just use a flingo and a ice crystallizer when i can get it but i do think the crystallizer could use some tweaks, but what are your thoughts

[Gotheran]

I think i brought up this mechanic sometime last year. I think in their current form wildfires are just too damaging, and not just to your base but to the world at large, world regrowth doesn't seem to do enough to prevent eventual heat death from wildfire damage, or does so so slowly that even in a regular year length the summers will still do more damage than you can prevent or reverse.

I felt that a good way to rework the system is make wildfires more of a world state mechanic similar to forest petrification. A large radius of trees become engulfed in special fire that doesn't spread around, similar to the new fire mechanics of Willow. Trees will remain on fire for days in the area and the whole zone can even have a higher ambient temperature making overheating more likely if passing through. In return you get large piles of charcoal and ash you can come by and harvest out of the area and D-Fly might leave her nest to forage for food in the burn zone.
Staying out of the zone the player will get some visual indications that a fire has begun, a flash in the sky and a marker on the map similar to Lunar Rifts. While the fire is going a larger radius around the burn area will occasionally get a cinder rain effect that can cause things to catch fire, little floating cinder "mobs" float around before deciding to latch onto an object causing it to smoulder, players can extinguish or catch the cinders with a bug net, as well as deal with the smouldering objects. Some objects can also be immune to cinders, like desert plants, most animals, any player built structures made of stone, science machine for example, but stuff like the science machine can still catch fire if something near it does. Pig houses, merm houses etc.

[Mike23Ua]

I play in worlds sometimes that are permanently locked to 24/7 summer, And let me be real with you on this one, Wildfires are just about the ONLY mechanic that separates Summer from Winter..

Yeah there are a handful of niche things you can do (like fish in the oasis, pick cactus flowers, or fight Antlion boss) but outside of that- Without Wildfires Summer is JUST Winter, but without any unique mobs or gameplay mechanics, A Cooled Thermal Stone (the same stone that also solved winter..) solves the entire season *Yawn*

Wildfires bring about a unique gameplay dynamic to summer, and while it isn’t the best thing ever invented it’s been a staple part of the DS franchise since RoG and probably shouldn’t be messed with..

Klei keeps adding more and more methods to lessen the effects of Summer and Wildfires, which is fine.. but I don’t think it should extend beyond much more than that.

Reworking the way wildfires work would probably do some really lame crap like smolder for significantly longer time before starting a “controlled” fire (Aka Willows new non-spreading magical fire perks) before bursting into a raging inferno if the controlled fire isn’t put out in time.

For me personally- I actually LIKE needing to build protective areas to prevent or lessen the effects of wildfires- Such as building fling machines in pig kings village, moving things closer to large canopies on the shoreline etc.

the Ice Crystal whatever is too late into the game to be a valid response to Wildfires.

If Klei removes or reworks wildfires they had better have SIGNIFICANT changes to summer as a whole to go alongside it..

Otherwise- Your literally just playing reverse winter, without any unique mobs, or world effects. 

(And I can’t believe yet another remove/rework wildfires topic has been made, I fear that someday much like disease.. it’ll be removed )
 

 

[Sikers]

Few years ago wildfires were terrible but right now with Ice Crystalaeyezer, Knobbly Trees and Wickerbottom's rain book they are really fine and easy to prevent 

[Gotheran]

should mention i don't know what the ice crystalizer is, i think its new to the posessed bosses correct? i haven't played since about march last year.

[Uedo]

Wildfires are pointless, just like overheating it can be completely avoided by going into the caves. I like overheating as it makes me put a hold on my surface plans and gives me an opportunity to go on a ruins farm.

[chirsg]

I don't like them, but perhaps it's one of those subconscious game design choices. Makes you hate one thing so you can love another thing more.

I've said that there needs to be a luxury fan alternative that is focused more on fire fighting than cooling and I was lucky to leave with my head connected to my neck after I said it.

 

At this point, all I'll say is for hosts of a game or admins of a server, there should be a choice to switch a game from private to public and back again when a world is open.

 

If Klei was able to add midgame pausing, I can't imagine there wouldn't be a way for a dynamic password system. I manage wildfires sensibly in my world. I cannot rely on other players to do the same. 

 

To add, I don't really care if I'm stepping on the toes of any developer at klei, but the flingomatic is one of the biggest eyesores in base building. It just doesn't look right very often and emergency mode is a spit in the face to add to all that. I'd rather have a function that just turns the flingo off rather than have the absolutely patronizing "Emergency mode"

It's an insult.

[Cruvimaster]

Wildfire is manageable for me (but forces you to build base in the Oasis). However, disease I always deactivated.

[Gotheran]

8 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

Wildfire is manageable for me (but forces you to build base in the Oasis). However, disease I always deactivated.

This is sort of the general issue with summer in DST, between wildfires and antlion forcing a narrow set of options for dealing with it, caving, oasis or maybe ocean basing for the season which are all flavours of dealing with it by not dealing with it. Which in some cases is the way to deal with some thing in don't starve, as I've said time again my usual go to for dealing with hound waves or giants is to lure them into something that'll either kick their butts or soften them up for me.

[Jakepeng99]

Fig trees too

[Mike23Ua]

I choose “other” for my pole voting options but forgot to explain why I choose other lol sorry my bad.

When I’m playing the game & wanting to play core standard DST I always leave Wildfires on (or turn them to lots) Because I don’t actually mind watching a few trees, a pig village, a couple alchemy engines I forgot to fireproof Etc… going up in Flames- I don’t mind this, because it’s a Core Mechanic of DS, and unless significant voices end up getting it changed… it’s a Core Mechanic of DST too. The game yields back pinecones to replant burned trees, and you’ll get back at least HALF the resources you used to craft something should it meet its fire fueled demise.

Example: If my Pig Village Burns down I’ll just take a hammer to all the ruined homes, and usually still have enough resources to at least restore a few houses, which puts the game into a Gameplay Loop of killing Pigmen from the houses I rebuilt to farm more pigskin to build more houses with & slowly restore what was destroyed.

Megabasers however: Hate the whole “slowly rebuild what was destroyed” so of course they’re going to HATE Wildfires, which brings me to why I choose “Other”

When I’m wanting to play a Limited Time Event (such as Year of the Carrat or Midsummers Cawnival) I don’t want the structures & carnival games I’ve built up going up in a blazing Inferno, so I opt to turn them OFF but only in these situations, where I’m wanting to do something besides the standard DS survival experience.

[Ridley]

I put wildfires up to "Lots" in the settings and then made an base out of hundreds of wood walls. It wasn't a problem except when barely off screen things would smolder before I moved too far away. I'd revisit a corner of the base to see everything burned without ever seeing the fire. This is the only issue I have with wildfires.

[Ohan]

For messy survival “floor bases” 1 maaaaybe 2 flingos is all u need and theyre very easy to keep fueled especially if u have a beefalo. So wildfires effectively get turned off because ur not really concerned about anything outside ur messy base. 

but once u start building a bigger, intentional base u care about and u dont want the world outside of ur base to burn down either, wildfires just become a dull killjoy. 

Wildfires dont add survival difficulty cuz 1 flingo covering ur gross floor base is literally all u need to get to rifts and beyond. 

They only become an issue when u get creative and want to build nice things… 

[Gotheran]

Even with wildfires going i tend to spread my base out a bit too far for just two flingos, and two flingo's are quite fuel hungry, moreso I tend to get like one and have it just cover my grass and twigs, maybe trees, unless you're standing under your beef at all hours with a bucket poo doesn't quite meet the demand of two flingo's running full time. But i often just turn off wildfires because I don't want to spend a whole season topping up flingos and manually putting out smouldering objects, hanging only at base to prevent the rest of the world from suffering for stuff igniting just off screen.

[Ohan]

17 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Even with wildfires going i tend to spread my base out a bit too far for just two flingos, and two flingo's are quite fuel hungry, moreso I tend to get like one and have it just cover my grass and twigs, maybe trees, unless you're standing under your beef at all hours with a bucket poo doesn't quite meet the demand of two flingo's running full time. But i often just turn off wildfires because I don't want to spend a whole season topping up flingos and manually putting out smouldering objects, hanging only at base to prevent the rest of the world from suffering for stuff igniting just off screen.

I was not speaking in hypotheticals lol. This is the gross base i “beat” everything in the game with.

After i placed the second flingo to cover the superfluous grass tuft patch i also placed the two lureplants in its range and stopped using the flingo in the middle of my base. 

Beef poop is the only thing ive used to fuel the flingos. I could count on one hand the amount of times ive topped them up from like 60-70%. 

from a survival perspective 1-2 flingos is all u need to “beat” the game. 

[Gotheran]

I did say continuously running them is a nightmare, switching them on or off as needed saves fuel but is still attention heavy.

[Baark0]

Wildfires discourage interacting with the surface world for a whole season because important resources can randomly be destroyed. Lightning in spring is similar, but it can only occur when it is raining, and lightning rods are cheap and cover a massive area.

The flingo is good for small bases the size of a screen, and manageable for medium bases the size of a couple screens. Anything larger and the time spent gathering and re-fueling flingos becomes very tedious. 

The ice crystaleyzer is way too expensive to use for megabases, and the radius of protection feels way too low given the cost. It essentially works best as a replacement for flingos, and less so a lategame method of preventing wildfires.

Ocean trees would be the best solution for fires (that isn't just going into the caves) if they weren't limited to the ocean, that title goes to the oasis, but even the oasis sucks because you have to deal with the obnoxious sandstorm mechanic.

My idea for a wildfire rework would be to do something akin to Antlion, i.e. a creature or object in the world that, when destroyed, will cease a certain mechanic from occurring. Maybe something spawns in the Dragonfly desert and you have to go there to get rid of it in order to get rid of wildfires. 

Speaking of Antlion, PLEASE remove the god forsaken thermal stone requirement to start the fight, it's so annoying. Why the hell can't I just go stab the thing to piss it off?

[grm9]

On 1/13/2024 at 10:50 PM, Ohan said:

1 flingo covering ur gross floor base is literally all u need to get to rifts and beyond

you don't need any flingos since you can extinguish anything that can start smoldering after it starts smoldering, i didn't have any flingos nearby the base and only one thing started smoldering during summer

On 1/13/2024 at 9:56 PM, Mike23Ua said:

you’ll get back at least HALF the resources you used to craft something

burnt stuff drops 25% of the stuff used to make it

[Kevinnator]

I kind of like them, sort of gives you a reason to either prepare for Summer with ice fling-o-matics or take time to explore the caves (the heaps of food you can make during Spring makes it ideal to stay in the caves for a long period of time). Also giant trees, god they are so useful with docks. I once made an entire base around a giant tree I grew and it just turned Summer into Autumn but hot around my base. Excellent moment to casually sort out my base and farm after beating Antlion, take a cool thermal stone from the fridge whenever I leave the canopy. I'd only need an ice fling-o-matic for keeping plants hydrated so I can keep harvesting them.

I do put them on low so they won't destroy too much of the environment, especially considering more players means more odds of a wildfire happening.

[arubaro]

I just go to the caves or stay in the sand storm ignoring the rest of the surface. Isnt an engaging mechanic, it could be way better while keeping the thread of stuff burning

[GenomeSquirrel]

outside of going for the moth pet, I'm spending spending summer in caves

if rift content would force me out, I'll sparingly wear an ice amulet and scavenge away from base

 

I play on default settings

[Gotheran]

I don't think Wildfires need to go but a rework is definitely not a bad idea. The issue being how few options the player has to directly deal with it vs what it does to more than just the player, winter doesn't destroy things, spring does a little due to lightning strikes but because everything is wet the fire spread is usually contained to explicitly what got hit, and with such little destruction it gives world regrowth the ability to have a say in the limits to that destruction, when applicable since many organic resources don't respawn via regrowth.

Sofar there are only a few choices the player can make each with their own drawbacks.

1) Fling-o-matics and stay at home
Pros:

• Free time to Farm
• Limit destruction the immediate area around your base
• Minimal night hours make sanity easier
• Withered plants won't be an issue

Cons:

• Dull and uninteresting sitting around for a whole season.
• Fling-O-Matics have to be planned for two whole seasons in advanced, most other seasonal equipment is usually found in season or the season prior.
• Fling-O-Matics are very fuel intensive and hard to operate full time off of conventional tree or poop farming.
• Your base may not be in an easy place to deal with Antlion when the time comes.

2) Oasis
Pros:

• No need for fling-o's to handle withering or random smouldering.
• Plentiful fishing for trinkets and food.
• Close to Antlion

Cons:

• Very specific and relatively small area of the world
• probably not ideal for a main base outside of the season
• sandstorms outside the oasis itself
• same problems as previous method
• Doesn't stop wildfires outside the biome, hiding from the mechanic not addressing it.

3) Caves
Pros:

• No wildfires at all
• generally cooler temperatures
• antlion penalty is less harsh

Cons:

• Constant darkness increasing sanity and light demands in what is otherwise the least dark season
• Caves are trickier to navigate and have more threats
• Withering still occurs still requiring fling-o's for at least resource growth
• Requires running a caves server which is taxing on even decent systems while also playing the game itself.
• Lot of time spent on loading screens to hop between surface and caves just to setup a basecamp
• Also like Oasis not an active response to wildfires, just hiding from them

4) Knobly tree Nut transplanting
Pros:

• Prevents wildfires under the canopy
• Keeps temperatures below the canopy lower
• Small boon to wetness resistance not that it rains much in summer
• Generates a few harvestable figs

Cons: (tl;dr just live on the ocean)

• Time consuming to setup average 16 days for the tree alone
• Somewhat rng dependent on finding the actual waterlogged biome adding more setup time
• requires visiting pearl to get the pinch-n-winch adding yet more setup time
• canopy is very limited and forces you to base up against the ocean
• docks can extend base size but means further grinding and finding the moonquay island
• Has been known to fail to prevent objects from smouldering under the canopy
• Not a performance friendly solution

5) Wickerbottom method
Pros:

• Works across the whole surface
• Prevents both withering and wildfires
• If kept up makes the world wet limiting any fires that do start and giving some extended use to electric damage

Cons:

• Character dependent method
• basically trading summer for a less painful spring, once again dealing with the mechanics by simply avoiding them altogether.

TL;DR the cons mostly outweigh the pros for most of these methods. And save using Fling-O-Matics none of them are a direct answer to the mechanic of Wildfires, and certainly nothing lets a player deal with containing the mechanic outside of their chose base location, save Wickerbottom.

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, grm9 said:

you don't need any flingos since you could extinguish anything that starts smoldering, i didn't have any flingos nearby the base and only one thing started smoldering during summer

burnt stuff drops 25% of the stuff used to make it

Is it really only 25%? Huh well whatever it’s usually just wood or stone that gets ruined and isn’t that hard to replace, as long as burnt pig houses & bunny houses yield back the pig skin or bunny fluffs used to make them, you can hammer them down and build new ones, then just use the mobs that spawn from your replaced huts to gather resources to make more huts.

A lot of people aren’t aware that Wildfires can only happen if the time of day is in the Yellow Portion, it’s intended so the player does most their activities during dusk & night to minimize risk of Wildfires.

When you play MULTIPLAYER- like all things in DST, Knowledge can make.. or in this case break, Everything.. 

Over the past Id say Year or so Klei has been making the harshness of wildfires easier to recover from, such as: Burned away Catcoon dens respawning on their own after 20 days of none no longer existing in the biome, and more recently- Mushroom Regrowth should those happen to catch fire.

Theres also Flingos, Tree Canopies, & even just carrying around a watering can, that help to deal with them.

[Yuuko]

Wow, surprised with how many people turn off wildfires...  imo there are enough prevention methods for non-megabasers that its kinda a non-issue imo.

I always base near a river, and what I do is I get a lureplant and put it on a boat in my base.  I put a flingo in range of this and my plants.  Because the lureplant takes priority while I'm close enough to it (anywhere in my small early game base, its about 1 screen-ish tops) the flingo always covers it and my plants.  When I'm entering / leaving my base I'm a bit cautious of wildfires, but its not a big window so I rarely have issues.  Next I grow a tall tall tree next to this lureplant, and then I don't need the flingo except to restore my plants.  The lureplant still takes prio but won't smolder b/c its under the tree so I don't need to fuel the flingo.  This works for any base that doesn't go beyond 1 screen from the river.  You can extend your base easily along the river with more tall tree nuts and lureplants to build a pretty sizable base that is mostly immune to wildfires.

The crystallizers are pretty alright.  They are expensive BUT they are end-end game so I think that is fine.  You put a crystalizer surrounded by furnaces and you extend this pretty much as far as you want.  iirc the main complaint I've heard that resonates with me is that they keep the areas loaded dramatically ramping up server lag...  otherwise I don't think they need any changes.

(PS I'm compelled to ask for the votes to be visible so we can name and shame ppl who turn off wildfires.
Also sneaky that you introduce this as a flingo poll when it seems your real target is the crystalizer.)

[chirsg]

I think it was a mistake to lock so many things that influence the environment like rain on demand and the root trunk behind Maxwell. 

Maxwell and Wicker by extension are the best characters in the game and aren't by any means the best fighters. I said fighters because I wanted to highlight that ability in combat isn't necessarily the marker of a character who is excellent. 

 

The precedent was set in single player that the root trunk and dripple pipes were extremely welcome additions to the game, and guess what, the min maxers were still picking wickerbottom in spite of those two tools being available to every single character.

 

Guaranteed, no one would be complaining about wildfires as much if every character had a method to make it rain on demand.