Winter, regrowth and food overabundance affecting gameplay health

[Frosty_Mentos]

Anything growing in winter, period, should not be grown in winter in my opinion. The fear of loss of food and not being forced to go out to forage makes the season feel more of a suggestion of struggle than anything. Farming update made food a lot more producible and regrowth introduced us to free food supplies if you know where to find it, but it created a very easy way to playing the game without the fear of lack of food.

Foraging been a big mechanic in the game for a long time, and nothing growing in winter made much sense as you'd have to overcome the barrier of finding that food. With some plants that grow all seasons around and player made farms exist makes it less of a challenge.

I highly advise for Klei to rethink Winter and what it means, as in summer we have to struggle smoldering, in winter should be a food shortage than anything. Reduce regrowth of mushrooms or don't even introduce to any until winter ends (that is blue caps in caves or surface), make cactuses, stone fruit and banana bushes not regrow, and any crops planted in farms not need much tending BUT would not consume water and grow EXTREMELY slowly as the winter climate isn't a very hospitable to plants. With stone fruits it could just be that they'd give more rock than fruit, or just only rock as they can't give anything grown organically.

I think many people said this and before to you, Klei devs, that food production has become an all year around nonsense that we can do now. Bundles made it into concern at first when they came out, but the most they did is food security later in game and everyone's using them for that good reason, but crop growth and world regrowth ruined some aspects of the game that we had to fear and be concerned about before.

I believe many would agree with this and revision on food that you just go out to get has been too generous all seasons around, it taken away the challenge for the more experienced players and makes progression overall too fast as we don't bother about feeding ourselves as much.

I been playing enough and as a player with more hours than for mental sake that should have I'm concerned for the health of the game in that regard.

I think Wicker and Wormwood being able to provide food security makes sense as well as Willow's self sufficiency and Walter to provide some scraps for a living. Nothing much or anything should be nerfed about those cause they do their job well.

Crop growth could be secured by using star callers or scaled furnaces to keep the farm land warmer in winter as a sort of a 'beat a boss and you secure this part of your life' kinda thing.

Berries been the desperate option of secure food we keep all together for a while, I think berry bushes are mostly fine, since ones are longer lasting and not as abundant and others are very abundant but lasts barely at all.

[arubaro]

Always bugs me that bananas grow in winter. They shouldnt but, to compensate, surface summer could make them grow faster

[grm9]

nerfing farms and replantable stuff seems pointless since they're already inefficient, you get food automatically from killing stuff and berry bushes and carrots that no one took/replanted, i usually don't even make a base other than an alchemy and a furnace and spend less time on getting food than people that make farms and replant bananas/stone fruits, only killing spiders if i haven't killed anything that drops food recently for cooked monster meat and glands, i don't use any food sources that got added since RoG except bosses and getting food still isn't an issue

[Reiko24]

2 minutes ago, grm9 said:

nerfing farms and replantable stuff seems pointless since they're already inefficient

xd

[Mike23Ua]

Ponds freeze over in winter in an attempt to get players to stop using ponds for fish, this really only effects the Wigfrid or Wurt players but then Klei added an actual ocean and ocean fishing making fish available even if the ponds freeze over for winter.

The game did get easier with the continued introduction of new food sources and character skills.. But I am clinging onto hope that Klei will offer up harder difficulty modes where those rules start to change..

We need more ways to play the game (difficulty settings, world presets, game modes etc…) that actually affects how the world and its mobs will react.

[Szczuku]

I think that exotic plants like bananas and figs should only grow during the spring and summer, removing their availability from autumn. Also, during winter, all of the food-producing plants and structures should become frozen-over, yeilding ice when harvesting. That'd remove the 'infinite storage' of keeping harvest-ready plants untouched till winter arrives

[Valase]

My dear, you forgot to include the best forage item in winter, meat.

Nerf that one and you will have a hard winter.

also three out of the five questions are just "you agree with me or do you agree with me?".

[CuteC]

I think this is funny because it is infinitely easier to get food from many other sources than it is from mass replanting bananas, as Wigfrid I can eat nothing but spiders and I don't get penalized for it, everyone else can just get koalephants, lureplants or goats, bananas as a winter-only food would be only relevant to Wurt.

It has always been very easy to get food.

[grm9]

8 minutes ago, CuteC said:

as Wigfrid I can eat nothing but spiders and I don't get penalized for it, everyone else can just get koalephants, lureplants or goats

everyone else can also just eat cooked monster meat and glands

[Mike23Ua]

11 minutes ago, CuteC said:

I think this is funny because it is infinitely easier to get food from many other sources than it is from mass replanting bananas, as Wigfrid I can eat nothing but spiders and I don't get penalized for it, everyone else can just get koalephants, lureplants or goats, bananas as a winter-only food would be only relevant to Wurt.

It has always been very easy to get food.

As Wigfrid you only need 1 small morsel and 3 ice for Bunny Stew, it’s a decent health and hunger restoring dish.

Wigfrids Elding Spear dash makes it easier than ever to charge at birds or rabbits with it and amass morsel now.

[Masked Koopa]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

I think that exotic plants like bananas and figs should only grow during the spring and summer, removing their availability from autumn. Also, during winter, all of the food-producing plants and structures should become frozen-over, yeilding ice when harvesting. That'd remove the 'infinite storage' of keeping harvest-ready plants untouched till winter arrives

Yeah figs are just way too convinient and accessible compared to the much more time intensive setup of killing pigs and spiders. Every server I join people are just surviving off of figs, they make the game way too easy. Quite frankly figs destroy the game balance completely and should be priority number 1 when considering foods thart need a nerf, although mandrakes and deerclops eyeballs both come pretty close to taking that number one spot.

[Frosty_Mentos]

9 minutes ago, Valase said:

My dear, you forgot to include the best forage item in winter, meat.

Nerf that one and you will have a hard winter.

also three out of the five questions are just "you agree with me or do you agree with me?".

my thread, my choice, my short memory loss after redoing every poll option in quicker lazier manner. Don't have to vote still  imo, point still stands for what i mean to say.

Happened before too cause of this damn razor mouse lmao

[CuteC]

46 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Yeah figs are just way too convinient and accessible compared to the much more time intensive setup of killing pigs and spiders.

I forgot figs were even mentioned, you have to do so much setup to get them going and they are not even good, this only makes it funnier.

Getting food in don't starve has ALWAYS been easy, but somehow the line is drawn on mediocre plants just because they are always available? Despite the fact you have to work so much for these sources compared to just walking over to your local village and getting every single pig there or going to your constant meat-spewing bulbs that will make sure you're actually overwhelmed with the amount of times you have to go pick them up.

[ChintzyGnat]

I think forums users need to remember that once you get good at the game, food is obviously easier to collect. Nerfing food early game would really hurt new players and would barely impact veterans at all. 

[goatt]

I want a green house version of Eye-zer after plants stop growing in winter.

Also, a weird idea, I want eye-zer to stop spoilage completely within its center.

[Theukon-dos]

I do think food is a bit to easy as a whole. But even more than that I despise how there's no good correlation between how hard/long to set up a food is vs. How good it is.

Meat tends to give some of the best foods in the game, and is often just a byproduct of getting other resources like Pig Skin, Volt Goat Horns, Silk, ect.

Ocean fishing doesn't give any of those resources, but is still way slower and all the good fish-exclusive recipes can be made with either Freshwater fish or Wobsters.

Farming is an initially complex system, but once you understand how it works, it's very easy to produce a ton of crops with minimial effort.

Barnacles are largely out of the way and all their dishes spoil super quickly, despite the best one only being on-par with Bacon and Eggs.

Figs take forever to relocate with Above-Average trees, but their recipes also tend to take esoteric ingredients like Frog Legs or Koalaphant Trunks; the latter of which also restores way more hunger on its own than if you make it into a fig recipe.

Tall Scotch Eggs... exist.

 

Ultimately the easiest recipes to make also tend to be the best even though the exact opposite should be true. And don't even get me started on recipes that where imported from the DLCs that wheren't updated to account for changes in DST's mechanics or setting. Like Cheviche being completely uncraftable without Eels, or Puffed Potato Souffle being the single worst recipe in the entire game.

[Toroic]

I feel like this is something that older players will understand is low impact.

Before the Reap What You Sow update, farms and farming were both hot garbage and also didn’t work in winter.  All the food production strategies that players used pre-RWYS are still relevant all all meat based sources of food still work, so the only character hurt by this change is Wurt.

Unless you scale back other food sources you won’t create winter scarcity.

[Copyafriend]

I would like a bit more scarcity in the game, but Toros is right, winter has never really been a season that you struggled with food in. hunting koalephants and spiders on its own provides plenty of food so long as you use a crockpot, if you're still struggling, rabbits are still active all winter long, and with a charcoal board and silk you can kill 10 birds for morsels. Ice is an overabundant and renewable filler, and that's ignoring things like tallbirds, pigmen, volt-goats, moleworms, and tentacles for food.

The only real thing that's changed is now you can survive winter easily without killing anything. But considering that before you could survive winter off the backs of rabbits and birds, it's not a large change.

 

I would personally like a bit more food scarcity in winter, but that's my vain hope of dredging some new challenge out of don't starve, but it's not going to happen. so it makes sense to allow farming to be actually viable, and for it to help new players get through the "noob barrier" of winter. deerclops is still there to challenge them at the end, the freezing is still there to deal with, it's still a good challenge for new players, but it's no so much of a knowledge check for them.

[Echsrick]

the only thing that sould grow in winter are farm plants that favour winter, like potatos, everything else, like berrys, sould not grow in winter

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, Szczuku said:

I think that exotic plants like bananas and figs should only grow during the spring and summer, removing their availability from autumn. Also, during winter, all of the food-producing plants and structures should become frozen-over, yeilding ice when harvesting. That'd remove the 'infinite storage' of keeping harvest-ready plants untouched till winter arrives

Honestly this seems like a cool idea.

18 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

the only thing that sould grow in winter are farm plants that favour winter, like potatos, everything else, like berrys, sould not grow in winter

While this sounds like a good idea it kinda just leans harder on the fact potatoes are the best crop they should probably buff other crops more if they do this otherwise this is a good idea.

While I don't think the game completely needs more scarcity in food I feel like it's hard to argue against the idea that changing what food sources are available per season would spice up survival more than just what seasonal protection you need to account for.

[Cheggf]

Food has always been easy and I don't think it's a problem. I just think it's kind of stupid how much stuff grows in winter not because back in my day it wasn't this easy to get this much food even though it was, but because it's just goofy. It honestly feels like when Klei was adding all the new plants to the game they legitimately just forgot to make them not grow in winter. I know that the banana bush is this silly fictional cartoony way to get bananas, but idk, I just feel like something so tropical shouldn't grow in the freezing cold, where it is so cold you will die of hypothermia even when bundled up as much as you possibly can be.

Also, your poll options are way too long and opinionated, so I voted for things I wouldn't have because of their phrasing. If I had the choice between answering "Is it bad for exotic plants to grow all year round?" with "Yes" or "No" I would've chosen yes, but if the options are "Yes, food is way too easy! I'm not Don't Starving as hard as I want to be! The game used to be so hard!" or "No, it's not making the game too easy" I'm picking that second one.

[AliceShiki]

I dunno how to do any of the meta stuff for Winter, but I survived it with my 2 friends just from killing Spiders and making either Meatballs or Pieroggi, and from putting some Morsels on the Drying Rack for Small Jerkies.

My friends even used the Tent to recover their sanity, so they had to eat even more food and... It was fine?

Granted, they're both Wendies, so they kill spiders very easily even while being bad at the game (not that killing spiders is hard, it's just that newer players tend to struggle with that more than newer players with Wendy do), so I guess that helps in the getting food department, but... Still, we were able to survive Winter without too much trouble.

Honestly, the hardest portion of the game so far was a MooseGoose spawning near our base, followed by a Frog Rain (after we had already killed the Moose/Goose and the Moslings) followed by a Hound Attack. That was kinda nasty.

Winter OTOH... Well, we had Crock Pots, we had Beefalo hats, we knew how to make Meatballs, so... We managed.

I think Winter can't be hard to get food for for as long as Crock Pot accepts Monster Meat, really.

Now, if Klei eventually added a harder game mode where any Crock Pot food made with Monster Meat always resulted into Monster Lasagna, then I could see how your complaints would be more valid (especially if they also made it so that Monster Meat couldn't be fed to birds)... Because rn, the very newbie-friendly way of Spiders + Ice = Meatballs work perfectly for winter, so the more advanced ways don't change too much, they just make things easier for the experienced players.

[benfroyobro9381]

I don't think food needs to be harder to get. This is a sandbox game; the economy will ALWAYS be broken eventually. And I don't think there's ever been a time in DS or DST history where a moderately experienced player struggles with food.

I think what Klei needs to do is to create more variety or reasons to get out of our comfort zone. I don't feel like there's an overabundance of food; I feel like there's an overabundance of options all at the same time. Bee boxes, trawl nets, lureplants, pig farms, farm plots, berry bushes, bananas, etc. They all overlap too much or do the same thing so they feel less unique and there's too many options for each problem or season. 

This could mean limiting more foods during certain seasons or creating more specific circumstances. Like forcing players to shift to bananas or berry bushes in x season or use meat in x. I don't believe the difficulty of this game should ever be heavily dependent on hunger past a few dozen hours. I think less nerfs and more restrictions, reworks, and buffs could help make the food system feel like there's more variety where you feel rewarded to use every option. 

Some ideas are: 

- Making Banana's stop growing in Winter. They're already strong and deserve to be since Moon Quay is quite a hastle but this will give other options more space.

- Making more fish spawn during Spring or rain. This would encourage more players to use trawl nets, ponds, etc that aren't conventional sources of meat or food.

- This is slightly unrelated, but either nerf the health from cooked farm crops, buff the farm crop recipes, or more. A lot of farm crop recipes are pretty inefficient when it comes to making good use of ingredients due to the cooked version being superior and even the most efficient crockpot combinations giving more when eaten individually. I think this could create more crockpot variety and would give some recipes more love. 

[ryukamiya]

It just feels like there's a lot of food because the people here are used to this game.

If you feel like you might end up with too much food, you can set some restrictions, such as not harvesting bananas or wakame in winter.
There is no need to make any modifications.
Regarding Stone Fruit, I almost never use the maps I play solo. I also don't grow lure plant mesophyll.
I don't even work on the fields.

I think it would be fine if it was a system that people who have just started playing this game can enjoy.
Making major changes now would only confuse people who aren't familiar with the game.

[lowercase skye]

Right now we are in a game full of options, and I would hate for those options to go back to the same few sources of meat in winter that we all used in 2015 just for the sake of making the game "harder." I would rather have the option to spend several mostly-night days farming than NOT have that option and have to go kill volt goats and beefalo again like every fun update to the game never happened.

Also I think it's really odd how much of the posts on this forum are slamming the moon quay as not worth going to, knobbly trees not being worth the effort, and ocean fishing being far too time-consuming and not lucrative enough... and then everyone in this thread is talking about how bad it is that these things are available in winter. Even in my friend group of ocean enjoyers, I'm the only one who actively uses figs. I am begging you not to call for nerfs to things that nobody in the world except me is even using.