Cave update. TLDR: Ideas for new upcoming updates and necessary fixes.

[Swiyss]

My beta feedback.

We did it. We got an ocean update, and it was honestly great. Klei said they wanted to do X and did it. Even if I disagree with the crabking fight direction, I see it as a win/fix because of the new loot. The only thing for me left to be fixed on his fight is the fact that people will always use only 1 type of gem instead of a gem combination.

-Skill trees (Wurt and Winona).

I did played Winona, but not Wurt so I can't give her my feedback. But for Winona, it was everything I wanted, more wagstaff minigames, more exploration features and obviously, more damage. Really I have nothing to say about it, it was THAT good.

The big problems.

Better for me to list these things and discuss them down here, so I won't type too much.

1. Cave update.
2. Old items in the game having no place in current meta.
3. Skill Trees powercreep.

1. Cave update.

Skip these texts if you don't wanna read my yapping. tldr: add atmosphere to the cave, new biomes, fix old biomes and ruins gen changes.

Seriously, do I need to explain this one? We had a magma/lava cave in progress since the cave beta on original Don't Starve. This one should be MAIN priority as we head to this new era. It can take some years until the ground is setup for this massive late-game that their planning to add alongside skill trees, so no need to rush anything.

I always had a special place in my heart for the caves, and seeing them being left out slowly release after release really bothers me. The ruins are really bad, like, really bad compared to the amazing generation we had in singleplayer DS. I think it's time we finally fix this. We have a bunch of ideas pilled up that can all be expanded upon.

I can only speak for myself, so I'll try to be as honest as possible here with my experience. The ruins loot (staves and thulecite gear) is amazing; the nightmare phases balance brings a great challenge; the AG fight is fine -I would maybe add 1 more shadow alligned attack (?), that would be fun- but the loot is incredible; the sheer amount of useless biomes is concerning; ruins generation is too compacted and the bridges look personally really bad, It's basically not a satisfying place to be, it doesn't feel right to loot anything there knowing it looks more like a hidden treasure chest instead of a cool atmospheric LOST ANCIENT CITY OF A LONG TIME DECEASED POPULATION. In resume, the caves are a place I go to just to loot thulecite, kill some bosses and then leave. Then I just repeat this cycle every summer or autumn. And.. most of the time I'm not really excited to go there, as opposed to the lunar island for example, no matter how many times I raid that island, it always feels satisfying. (I'm using this example as the lunar archipelago is basically the opposite of the ruins).

If I could give my best possible advice, it would be to focus solely on one thing. Atmosphere.

My argument: I have played games where the place I go is so useless I could probably spent a better time elsewhere, but if the music is great, the graphics are good looking and the Atmosphere is spot-on, I ignore every problem it may have.

But then we would need to focus on What is the main atmosphere of the caves. Gloomy and Dismal would be my 2 best guesses. So, how do we fix it? I got some pretty simple and exciting ideas here reguarding this problem.

Please, for the sake of an un-biased opinion, read this as if they're official Klei additions, and then judge them accordingly (Also if Klei wants to take inspiration of these to the game please feel free to use my ideas).

• Faint monkey screams every couple of minutes put into the cave ambience.
• Rock lobster and rocky biomes in general having dusty particles while mining boulders.
• A familiar face. Some sort of npc or anything friendly close to the Cave Portal. Something to gives us a cozy environment outside of the big and intense time in the ruins.
• New soundtrack in the archives for both phases (calm and activated).
• Slurpers or Depths Worm variations on other biomes.
• Piles of poop/rot when getting close to the ruins and close to the monkey pods. (piles of things that monkeys stole/gathered, similar to the pile of junk from the junkyard).
• Ancient traps. Basically expanded labirynth traps. Example 1: Some labirynth dead ends have a skeleton instead of a chest, and mining that skeleton hits the player for 20 damage and makes them groggy, but an item can be scavenged from the pile of bones. Example 2: A second use for the Ancient Key! A secret key lock can be found at an end of the AG lab (or in a secret place in the ruins) that unlocks something in the caves (ancient statue will spawn in random biome). Then a sound can be searched with something. Entering the right biome will start the location device, an altar with an ancient statue can be found for an additional Secret Chest without the key. Opening the chest will consume the key at the labirynth (or ruins) location and reset the ruins without the need to kill Ancient Fuelweaver, however the Ancient Statue at the Secret Chest location will poison/curse you for some days with a temporary -5/min sanity aura or something. That would motivate the casual player to explore the map and a minigame could also be placed at this secret chest. Of course we're also considering adding a bunch of cool sounds and atmosphere at these places. Maybe some cool character quotes too. Example 3: Wearing a Belt of Hunger while opening a Labirynth Chest will convert any negative debuffs (-sanity/-hunger/-health) into positive ones (+sanity/+hunger/+health), consume durability of the belt and add a chance of substituting and equipment for 1-3 thulecite fragments. Example 4: A secret Bulbous Lightbug shining yellow light can be found at the Lunar Fungal biome. Giving this lightbug a Lune Tree Blossom/Bath Bomb will make it fall as an item. This item does not spoil, and will work similarly as having a normal lightbug in your inventory, meaning other lightbugs will follow you. Every ruins reset will take him back to a different bulb. It can't go to the surface and it's a unique item. It will guide your way to the caves with a very tiny light radius. It can be recharged with Light Bulbs for this light durability. Taking a hit however will scare it, making it's light dimmer and dimmer until he breaks and returns to the lunar forest (made this inspired by legends of zelda's Navi).
• The swamp biome can possibly be my favorite cave biome if done correctly, and my suggestion is to add a new plant item in place of those small light bulb areas. This plant will have medicine properties that can heal players, but it's main use is for exploration. The plant is not transplantable, and it has a recipe with lichen and honey for a 15% speedboost for 1 day. We players have been asking for a new coffee plant for ages.
• A new magma biome can be found, entering it requires a Brightshade Helm/Atroggles/Desert Goggles as it is filled with dust. Falling Stalactites can hit the player in earthquakes for double the regular falling rock damage. Magma Boulders can be mined for Magma Stone (15% chance), and this stone can be added to thermal stones for a +30°. It can also be used to craft a new torch which lasts double the regular torch, but heats up the player holding it until 40°, If this torch expires on hand, it damages the player for 20 damage, if it's dropped, it creates a little fire for 8 seconds. The place has a bunch of magma pools and a new mob, the Magma Saladmander, which don't have a herd mentality, has 900 hp and drops 1x Dragon Fruit (100%) 1x Magma Stones (100% for one and 20% for more, maximum of 5). Magma saladmanders can eat Lavae Eggs, and will cough 5 Magma Stones. In this biome, you can also find Monkeys pods, but they'll throw burning manure for 10 damage if provoked. Magma stones are set to make Wilson's Torch Skill basically a campfire on hand, as a Magma Torch placed with his skill will heat the player and close by thermal stones similar to a large campfire. Magma stones can also be carried in winter to recharge thermal stones Heat. In summer, this place will replenish it's boulders slowly.
• Ruins generation getting an overhaul. With this, we could finally focus on other biomes, and making them more unique.
• Currently, every single cave biome has either 1 or 2 things unique, and the rest is just ported from above. If the spiders from blue mushroom biomes dropped like 2 silk instead of one, or maybe a guaranteed gland, it would mean a reason to check that biome more often; maybe it could even drop blue spores or blue caps, same for other mushroom biomes.
• Acid rain needs more impactful interactions, the ones we got were very forgivable (the mushroom ones, the rest is great) and didn't impact our journey throught the constant at all. So my suggestion is a way to benefit from the rain with a certain structure to farm guano/fertilizers. Maybe a special place to put bottles, ashes and kelp to automatically create Growth Formula Starters with acid rain influence of something. Would be really helpfull on Wormwood.
• The Pirate's Lost Island. With a new ruins map, we can possibly find a very very small island in the ocean with a sinkhole to the ruins, and a rope down there for easy access. That would mean players would use the Bootleg to travel to this new small island (like literally 5 or 9 tiles), and down the ruins instead of having to walk there everytime; this place could only be unlocked from inside the ruins, and requires 10 ropes to use (a fix similar to building the lunar portal or pearl's home)(this could mean the use of the old rope design from singleplayer ds). We all realized how important navigation is in this game, and this is a perfect solution in my eyes. It would be simply awesome.
• Some people suggested the idea of Rock Lobsters being a Dreadstone farm and I loved it, if Klei could expand on this it would be really really cool. Of course it would have to be balanced to not substitute current Dreadstone Outcrop farming. But nonetheless, it would take our cool lobsters to work on our side.
• New insanity hallucinations. Man, this is a no-brainer. We're getting closer to the source of all nightmares, the obvious thing to happen is for new effects and fake things happening while the character is insane to scare the player or simply add some atmosphere to the place. Fake Earthquakes, shadow walkers, nightmares hanging from the bridge edges. Anything to +up the idea of being closer to Them.

At the end of the day, my main concerns are about the atmosphere, so as long as that is fixed, I think the last step would be how unique every biome is. Bringing unique resources and unique things in general to the caves instead of a portable surface will make so new players that actually explore the place without a wiki are more intrigued to know what's new and what they can find there. Honestly, I myself would be pretty frutrated to see the same biomes from the surface in there, and the main focus being only 2 places, instead of the Whole Place being fun to explore. Fun is the most important factor overall, right?

Old items in the game having no place in current meta.

Skip these texts if you don't wanna read my yapping. tldr: The Forge into main-game + upgradeable weapons (eg: spear with pigskin handle)

This one is also very self explanatory, we received SO MANY items at once with the Brightshade and Inkblights that old items like Hambats, Dark swords, Glass cutters and Football helms are more of a temporary thing instead of a necessary item. I know that many of you will defend and protect the idea that the intermediate player will be using hambats and dark swords until day 800 when they kill cc, but the reality is that everyone that streams and plays this game regularly KNOWS that these items are just the rite of passage to then be obscured on day 5 after killing the Eye of Terror or the Twins; or after opening the rifts, which I do 100% of the time after atleast 1 year. At the end of the day, no matter how much time you play the game for, eventually you'll get to the rifts content.

So enough of trying to defend my idea of why we need a look into old items, I'll explain it here.

The problem is that pig skin is plentyful early game, scarced mid game (especially in pubs or multiplayer scenarios), and useless late game. Sure it still has it's uses, like saddles, merm king floor, antlion hat; but these uses are exclusively done once and then never again. I'm not complaining that the meta has changed from pigskin to brightshade husks, I'm complaining about these old resources making no sense in the late game environment. And I'll tell you one thing, I've seen this happen before. First is flint, then pig skin, then nm fuel, then moonglass, then bs husks, then X, Y, Z and it never ends; that's powercreep explained simply through weapons.

The ideal world is one where I can somehow upgrade my spear to use it later, even if it looks funny to use a ranged item at close range; but this idea doesn't make sense with our current situation here, we would just substitute the bs sword.

Making so bs sword requires flint or pig skin would also not make sense and be more of an annoyance than an improvement.

My best suggestion for this problem is to make the player choose how he wants to play the game by adding weapon upgrades to current late-game weapons.

I know this is not an rpg, but imagine a spear with a pig skin handle; a darksword with a pure horror effect on the blade's edge; a glass cutter with pure brilliance on it. Heck, they could even make a cutless with dark sword damage, all they have to do is create some sprites and tweak some numbers. This upgrade mechanic could be further incentivised with the addition of a The Forge inspired update. A big forge event with the ability to change your weapons to new stronger/different ones. That would mean the future of new dodging mechanics and inspire the creation of harder bosses. This could probably be made in the future, as it is the only path to further decreasing powercreep in my opinion, as every weapon would actually have it's own unique set of mechanics, damage types and more. Every survivor could get it's own weapon and skill too. They would work together against Them.

Skill Trees powercreep.

To care for the powercreep from skill trees, all we need is harder enemies with stronger planar defenses. I'm asking for new harder bosses (cheeseable so that people can do it the easy way); harder environment mechanics. Harder seasons, lush spread in spring, magma fissures in summer, hungry enemies in autunm and winter blizzards. Harder lunar hail, ocean seasons etc.. Those all will make for how strong the survivors are getting. And I do hope it smashes me.

TLDR: magma cave biome = easier winter. better ruins. upgradeable gear. cave traps. harder seasons. easy ruins entrance etc.

EDIT: Sorry I have no cool pictures and art concepts as I'm not that familiar with art or anything, so If anyone wants to do some sketches please help me with this.

[Wormboi]

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

Acid rain needs more impactful interactions, the ones we got were very forgivable (the mushroom ones, the rest is great) and didn't impact our journey throught the constant at all. So my suggestion is a way to benefit from the rain with a certain structure to farm guano/fertilizers. Maybe a special place to put bottles, ashes and kelp to automatically create Growth Formula Starters with acid rain influence of something. Would be really helpfull on Wormwood.

I heard a suggestion that acid rain should affect more mobs like, making clockworks weaker by degrading them and dealing less damage

[Swiyss]

14 minutes ago, Wormboi said:

I heard a suggestion that acid rain should affect more mobs like, making clockworks weaker by degrading them and dealing less damage

I feel like this is already in the game no? 

[. . .]

I would like if they made it so the game doesn't have delay when caves are enabled

[Swiyss]

57 minutes ago, . . . said:

I would like if they made it so the game doesn't have delay when caves are enabled

Yeah true, that has to be their no.1 prio