Ancient trees are kinda... bad?

[chaosmonkey]

5 minutes ago, arubaro said:

That is what hyped me the most 

My dream with the gem trees is to decorate my ruins avenues with them. I don't think I'll ever pick them lol.

[lowercase skye]

36 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

Bottles don't despawn when unloaded, so what probably happened here is you actually missed some/all of those bottles in the past.

It was during early game exploration, the map was being actively uncovered as I went there. The sort of mechanic you're describing would make sense, but it would be weird if they were somehow spawning in a spot that functionally didn't exist yet.

[chaosmonkey]

3 minutes ago, finn from human said:

It was during early game exploration, the map was being actively uncovered as I went there. The sort of mechanic you're describing would make sense, but it would be weird if they were somehow spawning in a spot that functionally didn't exist yet.

ah yeah alright. Probably what Maxil said in that case that it was a random spawn from worldgen.

[lowercase skye]

27 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

Probably what Maxil said in that case

Oh, woops!! I didn't see his quote. Haha sorry for continuing to plead my case right below the explanation as to why it happened.

[Entomology]

20 hours ago, Hi. said:

I did some testing and I think it's around 7-15 days?

Insight mod says it's about 3 real hours and 20 minutes (25 DST days)

For... 3 gems, with chances heavily skewed towards red/blue/purple (I spawned 200 geode fruits and hatched them - 64 red gems/59 blue gems/47 purple gems/11 yellow gems/9 green gems/10 orange gems)
I'd reduce the growth time to some 15-20 days at least.

[Maxil20]

32 minutes ago, Entomology said:

I'd reduce the growth time to some 15-20 days at least.

Apparently the trees are supposed to have a quality variance that makes them sprout between 12-25 days, with the average being ~19. However, due to a bug, the variance isn’t working properly and will instead use the max timer of 25 days.

[cameron8800]

21 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

Bottles spawn up to once every 2 days within ~5 minutes of being on ocean. Or get 2 from crab king every 20 days. In 20 days of playtime you can get max like 12 bottles if you work for it. 14 if you're lucky from CK.

Those bottles have a 60% chance to reveal a treasure, so we're down to 7 sunken treasures. Sunken treasures have a 60% chance to have a seed which is ~4 seeds in 20 days. seeds have 50% chance to not be the tree you want. If you're after a specific seed, that's max 1 every 10 in game days. You could get 7 gem trees per year if you engage with the ocean _nonstop_. Plus the gem trees don't really give the useful gems. It's a low chance for the ruins gems.

I suggested elsewhere that they add a treasure map mechanic to pirate raids to increase the acquisition rate a bit and make a fun gameplay loop.

For me, I'm more interested in the trees for decoration than farming gems as the ruins will remain far more efficient for stuff like green gems. Would like to be able to acquire more than 14 trees per year and for it to not be utterly reliant on bottle RNG.

Idk I’ve gotten five trees in two years just from super casually messing about with the ocean. 

[GreenBowers]

Instead of buffing the tree's by just cutting the time it takes them to grow, I would like them to involve Tree Jam into speeding them up, so people have a reason to go to the waterlogged biome in order to speed up their gem/nightvision production. It promotes more ocean content interaction. 

My thought is just like, 'oh I want to mass produce some gems but I dont want to go do ruins', lets go to the waterlogged biome, farm up some tree jam, and make the tree's produce stuff like 3 times as fast for a duration after applying the jam.

It could maybe tie in the idea that the Waterlogged biome is just 3 different types of ancient tree's that grew at the bottom of the ocean, and their gimmick was they grow really big, opposed to growing gems, or nightvision.

[Jakepeng99]

The gem tree probably needs higher chance for ruins gems. 5% is weak for the effort, time.

[Mysterious box]

4 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The gem tree probably needs higher chance for ruins gems. 5% is weak for the effort, time.

I mean as your world goes on and you get more and more of them it'll probably balance itself out.

[Quadratordo]

Hindsight is 20/20, but I'd say that now, with the update that has just happened, ancient trees are sitting at a perfectly fine and powerful place.

[Parusoid]

Just make wickerbottom books be able to grow ancient tree fruits

[Bumber64]

11 hours ago, Parusoid said:

Just make wickerbottom books be able to grow ancient tree fruits

Instantly growing tons of gems is stupidly broken.

[cybers2001]

On 6/13/2024 at 12:51 PM, Hi. said:

IMO I feel like the amount of effort it takes to grow either of the 2 trees is not worth it. There are WAY easier ways to get gems (varg farms, ruins, earthquakes, hounds, bishops, graves, dfly, etc.) so the gem tree does not at all feel worth it. My main problem is not how long it takes to grow the tree, its how long it takes to grow the fruit. I did some testing and I think it's around 7-15 days? though I could be waaay off. I would improve it by either giving more gem fruits or maybe making the tree grow more fruits more often.

 

The Gloomthorn trees are even worse IMO. It's much easier to just use moggles or a lantern.

 

My main issue with the trees is that they (at max) are a 60% chance to drop from a sunken chest that you have to find from a bottle  in the middle of the ocean that has a 34% chance to spawn one.

 

Though that was just my opinion and maybe they would be too op if they were buffed so idk. I am aware that this is just a beta and klei might change both of the trees in some way later on.

 

This just sounds like yet another opinion churned out off minimal experience with the content.

As others have said, gem trees keep scaling into the late game, and night berries are certainly not inferior to moggles or lanterns (try a single ruins run with a dozen night berries to see for yourself)

[Parusoid]

19 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

Instantly growing tons of gems is stupidly broken.

I don't see anyone having issue with instantly growing dozens of other valuable items already

[Catteflyterpill]

Didn't they say in a stream that they were working on multiple variants for the trees? I thought they'd have more than 2 for the update's full release, really hope they still plan to add more and didn't scrap the other designs. 

[mkemal23]

7 hours ago, Parusoid said:

I don't see anyone having issue with instantly growing dozens of other valuable items already

Farming basic resources, food and other stuff can not even come close to how broken green gem farming is.

There is a reason why they are by far the hardest gem to get. And it should stay like that.

[lowercase skye]

Green gems are over-hyped and I'm very glad they're so easily available now with Sproutrocks. Crafting rarely use enough ingredients for Construction Amulets to be anything more than an occasional convenience, and Deconstruction Staffs are just a way to recycle garbage into usable items. I'm at the point where I regularly deconstruct sea fishing rods from treasures because there are just so many green gems.

[Mysterious box]

9 hours ago, finn from human said:

Green gems are over-hyped and I'm very glad they're so easily available now with Sproutrocks. Crafting rarely use enough ingredients for Construction Amulets to be anything more than an occasional convenience, and Deconstruction Staffs are just a way to recycle garbage into usable items. I'm at the point where I regularly deconstruct sea fishing rods from treasures because there are just so many green gems.

The way they're used is you use the construction amulet with the deconstruction staff to duplicate really rare resources it's fair removed from being overhyped.

[lowercase skye]

27 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

The way they're used is you use the construction amulet with the deconstruction staff to duplicate really rare resources it's fair removed from being overhyped.

Can you give specific examples? I know of some things you can dupe like scales or thulecite and still stand by my statement.

[Mysterious box]

6 minutes ago, finn from human said:

Can you give specific examples? I know of some things you can dupe like scales or thulecite and still stand by my statement.

There are multiple things you can dupe but some more commonly duped items are things like shroom skin from toadstool or post rift crafting material like dreadstone basically once you have a supply of green gems you can bypass boss fights and some other forms of resource grinding it's the reason they're supposed to be so rare as it's intentional.

[lowercase skye]

12 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

like shroom skin from toadstool or post rift crafting material like dreadstone

The thing is, I just don't see anything you can dupe with them as being "broken" like the reply I was quoting said. Shroom Skin is for mostly-decorative lights, and Dreadstone's only use in large quantities is either decorative walls or for dreadstone pillars (a megabase luxury). Their classic use of duping Thulecite is also largely unnecessary now with our repairable rift gear, and Dragonfly kills are so easy that duping scales is more of a luxury than anything else, 'specially since Scaled Chests are a fair bit less appealing nowadays. I just don't think there's anything you can do with green gems that makes the jump from "convenient" to "broken."

[Mysterious box]

3 minutes ago, finn from human said:

The thing is, I just don't see anything you can dupe with them as being "broken" like the reply I was quoting said. Shroom Skin is for mostly-decorative lights, and Dreadstone's only use in large quantities is either decorative walls or for dreadstone pillars (a megabase luxury). Their classic use of duping Thulecite is also largely unnecessary now with our repairable rift gear, and Dragonfly kills are so easy that duping scales is more of a luxury than anything else, 'specially since Scaled Chests are a fair bit less appealing nowadays. I just don't think there's anything you can do with green gems that makes the jump from "convenient" to "broken."

Convenience is powerful which is a far cry from being overhyped though. It lets you bypass respawn timers and yearly limits on items like down feathers for weather pains and decorating would take far more time and effort otherwise as well sure it's not game breaking but something doesn't have to break the game to be powerful. The best example I can probably give is comparing getting reeds from the swamp compared to having monkeytails at base.

[arubaro]

15 hours ago, finn from human said:

Can you give specific examples? I know of some things you can dupe like scales or thulecite and still stand by my statement.

Dreadstone and pure horror via dreadstone armor, thulecite and NF via thulecite armor, carrots and bunny puffs via bunnymen houses, gnarwale horns via strident trident (if you decon it above 34% you never need a new one), both rift materials, living logs via thulecite clubs or telelocator focus... basically everything with high cost

And green gems arent only for dupping, you can also make certain items "infinity" like pan flutes or malbatross peaks...they arent overrated, green gems are an item that can unbalance the cost of stuff. Klei did many changes like not giving us the option to craft the CC crown like in the 1st iteration,  needing to overthink recipe cost (since they can make high cost items because higher means cheaper with green gems) or creating a new crafting system, like pearl house or pillars, to combat this mechanic that is back firing them

Idk what they were thinking by letting wickerbottom amass gems without cost once set up... 

[lowercase skye]

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

Dreadstone and pure horror via dreadstone armor

Dreadstone has little non-decorative uses past the early game, while pure horror is thrown at you like candy with shadow rifts. Not something I'd consider broken.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

thulecite and NF via thulecite armor

Nightmare Fuel piles up ambiently in my experience, and Thulecite in large amounts (past what you would get from a single ruins raid) also has little use past the early game, since thulecite armor and crowns will decrease in usefulness as soon as a rift is open. Not something I'd consider to be broken.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

carrots and bunny puffs via bunnymen houses

Carrots can be farmed in the hundreds just by actually farming them, while bunny puffs have little uses. Not something I'd consider broken.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

gnarwale horns via strident trident

I currently have two full chests of bundled Gnarwail Horns from how common they've become on the ocean. Not something I'd consider broken.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

both rift materials

They're handed out like candy. it WOULD be nice for pure brilliance if there was any recipe that took more than like, 4 of it to craft. There's not really good duping opportunities there, not something I'd consider broken.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

living logs via thulecite clubs or telelocator focus...

This realllly doesn't sound all that powerful, compared to just farming treeguards casually. Not something I'd consider broken.

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

you can also make certain items "infinity" like pan flutes or malbatross peaks...

This part I do think is pretty powerful, deconstructing a Malbatross can does just make a singular bill last forever. This, though, I would still consider a convenience, even if it's a powerful one, considering that that Malbatross is so common and easy to kill now that I just keep ending up having another 100% bill thrown at me any time I go near a shoal. So, not something I'd consider broken.

I'm not trying to say that green gems aren't good, or that deconstruction isn't a super convenient thing, just that the idea of being able to farm those green gems being "broken" is an idea I cannot agree with. They don't break anything, they are just regular powerful. They are proportionate amounts of powerful for something that you either need to regularly clear the ruins or spend hundreds of day treasure hunting to get a steady supply of. In that way, I think they are overrated, and I'm happy to be able to use them way more than I was in the past.