Should there be more challenges with going insane?

[Gameplayer143]

After you learn how to kite and fight shadow creatures, sanity isn't too much of an issue. Granted I don't think you should always be insane unless you need the nightmarefuel, as shadow creatures can still be annoying to you when youre fighting something else or are doing any other tasks besides farming fuel. Aside from the shadow creatures you can go a long way with the sanity meter halfway or lower without really affecting you that much. Sure there's the shadow hands snuffing out flames and wavy jones messing with your boat, but I feel like there could be more they could experiment with insanity effects.

Maybe as you go more insane you craft things slower and when you reach insanity near to spawning hostile shadow creatures, you can't prototype new crafting recipies. 

Maybe they could add personal effects interacting with insanity.

• Woodie would occasionally accidentally equip Lucy instead of any non axe equipment.
• Wickerbottom would either need to have enough sanity to read her books or will consume more durability of books when she doesn't have enough sanity.
• Mr skitts will be an entity that will try to scare Wolfgang and when he successfully scares him, Wolfgang loses like 10 mightiness.
• When Wendy tries to summon Abigail or use one of her potions, theres a chance she'll spawn hostile ghosts around her.
• There's a chance that Wortox will poorly aim his teleportation and his destination will be slightly off centre.
• Warly has a chance to make a random recipie instead of the desired crockpot recipie. The random recepie defaults to wet goop when really insane.
• Wilson has a chance to make an entirely different outcome from his alchemy recipies. (pinecones from wood alchemy, monster meat from meat alchemy, normal rocks from rock alchemy, etc)
• Items smolder and catch fire sooner for enemy drops from Willow even if she has the controlled burning skill enabled, when she's really insane
• Wigfrid loses inspiration faster 
• Theres a chance one shadow puppet will just sit around and do nothing for Maxwell when really insane (chances lower and can be lowered to zero the more shadow enchancing equipment Maxwell equips)
• Wormwood will occasionally lose 5 more health from crafting recepies that require HP (think of it him messing up a surgical cut)
• Walter will tell scary stories at campfires that drain sanity for him and for others that join it
• Wanda will have dementia at old age and forget how to craft things that require prototyping them as long as she's either still old or still really insane
• Shadow hands will try to take away fuel or unsocket gems from Winona's generators
• WX-78 will get less bio data from scanning creatures and removing circuits expends double the durability
• Wurt loses her strong equipment grip ability including from wetness 
• Pigs chasing after Webber will remind Webber how he was chased out of his home from his father

Idk how people will think about these though and it may be that some of these could be more so annoying rather than a challenge to overcome and encourage players to manage their sanity. Like Willow used to have her own personal insanity effect in solo Dont Starve occasionally leaving things on fire around her, but I can get why Klei removed that for multiplayer for good reason.

[DegenerateFurry]

Nah, it's fine where it is. 

[A random guy]

I dont want to be mean but these seem Disease Level pointless

While its true that fighting shadow creatures once you know how to kite them makes them less of a threat, wouldnt that apply to every enemy?

Wendy's hostile ghosts, WX-78 double energy cost, Wigfrids inspiration loss rate,Maxwell's useless puppet,Walter's insanity story and Wormwood's 5 extra health cost sound like minor annoyances that can be ignored or just taken care of REALLY quickly

Other stuff like 
Wanda dementia, Willow's faster fire burn, Warly's random recipe, Wurt's grip and wilson's random craft really go against their characters and just seem like add a penalty for the sake of adding a penalty, reasons like that were why disease got removed.

While maybe adding character specific insanity disadvantages could be a good idea if fleshed out correctly i dont feel like these would be great for the enjoyment of the game.
 

[Wormboi]

If you want harder nightmare cretures just go play Uncompromising mode

[kehun]

Nahh 2 terrorbeaks vs me as Maxwell is enough  xd 

[Gameplayer143]

26 minutes ago, A random guy said:

I dont want to be mean but these seem Disease Level pointless

While its true that fighting shadow creatures once you know how to kite them makes them less of a threat, wouldnt that apply to every enemy?

Wendy's hostile ghosts, WX-78 double energy cost, Wigfrids inspiration loss rate,Maxwell's useless puppet,Walter's insanity story and Wormwood's 5 extra health cost sound like minor annoyances that can be ignored or just taken care of REALLY quickly

Other stuff like 
Wanda dementia, Willow's faster fire burn, Warly's random recipe, Wurt's grip and wilson's random craft really go against their characters and just seem like add a penalty for the sake of adding a penalty, reasons like that were why disease got removed.

While maybe adding character specific insanity disadvantages could be a good idea if fleshed out correctly i dont feel like these would be great for the enjoyment of the game.
 

The thing with shadow creatures is that they're one of the main deterrents to encourage players to keep their sanity up, but that also means it gives characters with better combat abilities and people who have better armor and weapons more of an advantage with dealing with the challenges of insanity. Im trying to brain storm ideas of insanity effects that would still challenge players but not mainly through combat (like with wavy jones mainly messing with your boat as opposed to attacking you)

If some of these skills aren't really challenges than there's nothing a little tweaking can do. Maybe if Wigfrid isn't literally attacking an enemy, she immediately starts draining inspiration. More of maxwell's puppets will do nothing and you need higher tier shadow enchancing equipment to reduce the chances more. Wormwood loses 10 more HP.

I also don't really see how these downsides are really contrary to the characters. Old people get dementia. Willow can be too enthuastic with burning she loses restraint with burning things. Wurt could have shakey hands from stress. Warly and Wilson could be too stressed to do their cooking or alchemy. Idk is there a reason why you have shadow hands try to snuff out your flames as opposed to the personal effects I proposed?

[NPCMaxwell]

I adore insanity so if it was for me, I's love to have more sinister shadow creatures and more funny insanity effects (like the music box fire stealing shadow hands). Or effects on other stats (e.g. wetness from sweating in fear, healthloss from negative chronic / traumatic stress response, hunger loss caused by nausea from stress response, slower work because of depression / reduced ability to focus, Characters having a chance to not react to an input because of being frozen by panic)

[Mike23Ua]

Your sanity already effects the appearance and behavior of several in-game mobs so they should probably explore that area of the game a bit more..

 but there are things in the game you will NEVER see or experience if you don’t do a specific “Thing”

For example, yesterday was the first time since the RWYS update that I actually engaged with RWYS Gardening update content, and this was my first time ever neglecting a “Crop” to be infested by Binding Weeds? Whatever they were it was cool for me to attempt to pluck a potato and to end up stuck in vine roots.

Winona’s shadow side perks let’s her create vine bridges to cross ocean gaps using the Queens powers.

It would make lore sense if these binding weeds could root you in place at low sanity, instead of being tied exclusively to failing to tend to a garden.

It could fit as both a Charlie attack, And as  Lunar Rift content to go alongside things like Deadly Brightshades.

Charlie and her signature Roses and thorns should mean things like the thorn bush set piece versions of hounds which currently only spawn for the stage play stuff, could spawn (without the free rewards) to attack low sanity players, outside of the timed hound waves.

small stuff like that to bring excitement and danger back into the game. Etc..

[NPCMaxwell]

Also @Gameplayer143 I absolutely ADORE and crave for the personal insanity handicaps you thought of for the characters!

2 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Your sanity already effects the appearance and behavior of several in-game mobs so they should probably explore that area of the game a bit more..

 but there are things in the game you will NEVER see or experience if you don’t do a specific “Thing”

For example, yesterday was the first time since the RWYS update that I actually engaged with RWYS Gardening update content, and this was my first time ever neglecting a “Crop” to be infested by Binding Weeds? Whatever they were it was cool for me to attempt to pluck a potato and to end up stuck in vine roots.

Winona’s shadow side perks let’s her create vine bridges to cross ocean gaps using the Queens powers.

It would make lore sense if these binding weeds could root you in place at low sanity, instead of being tied exclusively to failing to tend to a garden.

It could fit as both a Charlie attack, And as  Lunar Rift content to go alongside things like Deadly Brightshades.

Charlie and her signature Roses and thorns should mean things like the thorn bush set piece versions of hounds which currently only spawn for the stage play stuff, could spawn (without the free rewards) to attack low sanity players, outside of the timed hound waves.

small stuff like that to bring excitement and danger back into the game. Etc..

I didn't know you could get stuck in evil vines. I'd love to have this as well then with low sanity! OR at least have shadow hands randomly capture you and hold you hostage for a while or at least taunt you somehow (I thought of it like a shadow prison but you're the imprisoned)

[The Starver]

22 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Binding Weeds

My friend and I are big into all the RWYS content, so we encountered those pretty early on.

[chirsg]

tl:dr

It would just create an environment where you'll never want to be insane and take as much effort as possible to stay sane. This slows down the game's pace. The game already has a sluggish pace in the beginning of the game.

[Mike23Ua]

21 minutes ago, The Starver said:

My friend and I are big into all the RWYS content, so we encountered those pretty early on.

Problem with that though is that people who never actually do gardening stuff never experience being rooted by the binding weeds (which also look an awful lot like Charlie’s rose thorn bushes)

Theres a lot of things in DST that the player never actually experiences unless they go out of their way to engage in a specific event that activates the content.

Take X Marks the Spot Treasures as an example, (the ones pirate monkeys create and bury their stash of loot they’ve taken from you inside) these never spawn in the world at all until you first get attacked by pirate monkeys.

A lot of the game is structured in a way that if you don’t ever do X thing you never get to experience Y thing.

If you never do the stage play stuff (or interact with their set pieces), then you’ll never be attacked by rose bush hounds. 
 

I had a few ideas that when insane players would see a more twisted version of the games mobs (like how Beefalo attack you when in heat, or how Pengull attack if you attempt to steal their eggs or Catcoon attack if your playing as Wortox, but otherwise they’re peaceful mobs.) Etc.

Id REALLY love to see the game go in this direction.. 

[RozeMeteor]

Would love to see more interactions with insanity BUT uncompromissing mode made me apreciate being sane a lot more and above all shadows are just annoying to deal with in some situations and not hard in any way, the worst it can happen is try align them so you can kite consistently. Maybe if game combat receive some changes this could be further improved on.

[NPCMaxwell]

12 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Problem with that though is that people who never actually do gardening stuff never experience being rooted by the binding weeds (which also look an awful lot like Charlie’s rose thorn bushes)

Theres a lot of things in DST that the player never actually experiences unless they go out of their way to engage in a specific event that activates the content.

Take X Marks the Spot Treasures as an example, (the ones pirate monkeys create and bury their stash of loot they’ve taken from you inside) these never spawn in the world at all until you first get attacked by pirate monkeys.

A lot of the game is structured in a way that if you don’t ever do X thing you never get to experience Y thing.

If you never do the stage play stuff (or interact with their set pieces), then you’ll never be attacked by rose bush hounds. 
 

I had a few ideas that when insane players would see a more twisted version of the games mobs (like how Beefalo attack you when in heat, or how Pengull attack if you attempt to steal their eggs or Catcoon attack if your playing as Wortox, but otherwise they’re peaceful mobs.) Etc.

Id REALLY love to see the game go in this direction.. 

it's also extremly sad for me how much game content is indeed "hidden" for players who haven't explored all of DST mechanics yet. I'm simply not /used/ to DST's gamestyle yet in comparison to DS to have found time to experience probably half of the games "hidden" content. Though I know the stage and the rose bush hounds xP I'd love to see "Charlie" variations like those more often, after all Maxwell made lots of evil mobs from the old DS world, so now Charlie should proof she is as worthy of calling herself a villain and should send HER creations to send the survivors to their doom!

[Golden Daemon]

 

3 hours ago, Gameplayer143 said:

Maybe they could add personal effects interacting with insanity.

personal effect could be cool if done correctly, but i have to say, most of the things you suggested will only make the game more frustrating to play, specially since insanity itself is mostly present whenever the player is either dealing with longterm draining effects (like wet clothes or cave exploration) or fighting scary bosses, which can be very very not fun.

 

1 hour ago, RozeMeteor said:

Would love to see more interactions with insanity BUT uncompromissing mode made me apreciate being sane a lot more and above all shadows are just annoying to deal with in some situations and not hard in any way, the worst it can happen is try align them so you can kite consistently. Maybe if game combat receive some changes this could be further improved on.

In my opinion Uncomp mod does a lot of things right, the insanity creatures is not one of them.
They tried to make insanity a bit more entertaining by adding new shadow creature variants , but in the end they have only made it more frustrating by either making regaining sanity harder due to the dreadeye shadow always running away and dragging the process and going over the sanity threshold not removing aggression from shadow creatures, or just straight up buffing shadow creatures with higher number cap and stats while lowering their nightmare fuel drop at the same time(and by extension, encouraging the player to never go insane to avoid dealing with all that trouble).

I have to mention that i really liked the NightTerror events but sadly they had no connection to player sanity.

 

ive already discussed  this before, but I believe the concept of insanity needs to move away from "spawn a bunch of annoying stuff" part of it and move towards introducing new prespectives towards already explored content.

I’m looking for more elements like obelisks reacting to player sanity or rabbits transforming into beardlings. These are fascinating and add depth to the gameplay.

Insanity could serve as a means to introduce a dynamic difficulty system , making the use of sanity-reducing items or effects both more dangerous and rewarding.
For instance, incorporating more nightmare variants of creatures that behave differently and drop new items could significantly enhance the experience.

Imagine certain bosses gaining new moves during boss fights based on the player’s sanity (or lunacy) similar to how Ancient Fuelweaver can stun the player if they have very low sanity. This would make sanity management more intricate and crucial, adding another layer of strategy beyond just dealing with terror beaks spawning mid-fight to annoy you.
Another example of how i would like insanity to be implemented could be things in similar fashion as tie certain events like treeguard spawns to player sanity while chopping wood (the lower the sanity the higher the chance for treeguards to spawn) or the scrapped version of mutated koalafant  or even instead of limiting undead hounds to lunar island , they could be tied to player sanity.

Additionally, magic items could become more potent the more insane/sane you are. This would mean that insanity wouldn’t always be a disadvantage; instead, it could be a trade-off. The current system largely penalizes being insane, except for when you need a lot of nightmare fuel.I find the existing punishment (spawning shadow creatures) a very outdated design concept (it worked in single player dont starve because the game had a somewhat different vision and players were not as proficient in dealing with shadow creatures as they currently are).

Making such changes to insanity would allow it to benefit from changes that make insanity more interesting and engaging, rather than just a source of mild annoyance.

[goblinball]

I think insanity is fine where it is. Nightmare creatures are in that perfect Goldilocks zone in terms of difficulty where new players struggle with them but they aren’t annoying for more experienced players. I agree that when you’re sitting at your base and the nightmare creatures are on their own, they’re pretty easy to deal with. But adding a single terrorbeak to any boss fight or hound wave or some other big problem can make a huge difference and make things a lot more hectic.

id like to see more mechanics that interact with sanity. I like the obelisks, and fw’s sanity mechanics. I think more stuff like that would be fun. Same thing with enlightenment; it doesn’t interact with anything outside of gestalts and I think that’s a massive shame, there’s a lot of potential there, and I’d love to see a boss with fw-esque mechanics but for enlightenment.

[benfroyobro9381]

I think insanity is a well made and interesting mechanic. It's relevant almost all boss fights, especially fuelweaver, and necessary to traverse the labyrinth. Lunacy complements it well and makes sanity loss useful and makes items like raw greencaps, glommer goop, night armor, etc, more useful. I wouldn't mind more unique insanity interactions and mechanics but currently it's in a strong spot. I think if insanity gets far more difficult then it would impact the balance of a lot of fights, specifically boss fights. Not in necessarily bad ways but that's something to consider. 

I think ambience effects like maybe Wendy sees Abigail briefly would be interesting. 

[ChintzyGnat]

If it aignt broke don't fix it

[arubaro]

Insanity and specially enlightement needs more weight, be present in more situations and have more effects

[reddocc]

Being constantly insane was recently nerfed, now if you're always at low sanity shadow creatures will always spawn almost instantly.

Nightmare fuel doesn't have a lot of value and it's just a waste of time to be constantly insane

[grm9]

3 minutes ago, Pedro cc said:

Being constantly insane was recently nerfed

when?

[reddocc]

3 minutes ago, grm9 said:

when?

I don't know when exactly but before after killing certain amount of shadows you had a grace period where no shadows would spawn but, now it's not longer the case

[grm9]

8 minutes ago, Pedro cc said:

I don't know when exactly but before after killing certain amount of shadows you had a grace period where no shadows would spawn but, now it's not longer the case

i'm pretty sure that that never existed, shadow creatures component got changed 2 years ago last time except putting TWOPI instead of 2 * PI into it a month ago

[marshyds]

wanda could take inspiration from her trailer and have shadow creatures constantly stalking her (very rarely when at full sanity, being at 0 is basically a death sentence since they would have an increased cap and spawning speed.)

[Mike23Ua]

Some more things I can mention is that the silly limited time “Year of” Events have cool features that could be used In an “Insanity Update” such as:

Shadow Carrats (insane player could see these while trying to pluck carrots from the ground)

Shadow Pirate Monkey.

Rabbits that have digging into the ground and popping back up somewhere else animations.