Great Depth Worm + Gloomthorn Tree Idea

[MrMNWorm]

Just wanted to toss out some ideas that might help weave some of the new content and lore together into a more cohesive whole. Main thing I'm going to focus on here is the new Great Depth Worm "boss" and the process of obtaining seeds for the Gloomthorn Tree.

Before we jump in, here are some comments/complaints/feelings that I've seen people share in their posts.

- With this being a Caves update, the Mushtree Biomes were ignored.
- The Great Depth Worm doesn't have a cool/interesting/fun drop.
- Recently, some have felt that past updates are not well put together or thought through and this is causing DST to lose some of it's "magic".

That said, allow me to elaborate on a little proposal here and then explain how it will remedy the items above.

*ahem*

If you look at the Gloomthorn Tree... it's purple-colored just like the Great Depth Worm... it has thorns and spikes just like the Great Depth Worm... and it has light-bearing/night-vision-producing fruits similar to what the Great Depth Worm and normal Depth Worms have. So it's pretty easy to see that these two "organisms" are very similar in design and they might even have a correlation to one another. With that, it might make sense that in order to get Gloomthorn Seeds you would have to fight the Great Depth Worm, right...?

So... what if... there was a Nightberry Sapling that spawned inside one of the Mushtree Biomes. It would be a strange looking little plant that gives off light much like the Mushtrees themselves. It also functions like a Mysterious Plant that aggro Depth Worms or even the Mushcap that summons the Toadstool. A player will be drawn to the hypnotic heart beat noise and odd glow of this plant and when they attempt to pick the fruit they will get a nice little jump scare when they start the fight and get their first glimpse of the new DST Lisan al-Gaib..

Once the fight is over, the GDW would now drop a Nightberry FRUIT, which if eaten acts like a normal Nightberry OR if it's fed to a caged bird it will produce one Gloomthorn Seed. We would probably want there to a Nightberry Fruit that's different from a normal Nightberry so players have an incentive to keep fighting the GDW for more fruits to make more seeds versus farming more seeds from the Nightberries they collect from the Gloomthorn Tree. Basically Nightberry Fruit can be fed to birds for seeds, normal Nightberries cannot.

Then 20 days later a new Nightberry Sapling will spawn in one of the other Mushtree Biomes, restarting the process.

That's it, that's the idea. Make the Great Depth Worm a boss, have him spawn in the Mushtree Biomes with a little Nightberry Sapling, and have him drop a Nightberry Fruit that can make Gloomthorn Seeds.

Now let's revisit the comments and complaints listed above and see if we haven't remedied some of the issues.

- Players will have a very fun and rewarding reason to revisit and investigate the Mushtree Biomes.
- The Great Depth Worm has a very interesting, useful, and rewarding drop with the Nightberry Fruit.
- This will then weave together the already existing content into a more cohesive whole because the Great Depth Worm is now correlated to the Gloomthorn Tree in a clever way. 

Now... if I'm being honest, I was never really able to wrap my brain around why you would find the Ancient Seeds in the ocean. Like sure, go sailing, find bottles, find treasure chests with gold, gems, and thulecite stuff... sure, that makes sense. But seeds... that make Gloomthorn and Sproutrock Trees...? How does that work? The Gloomthorn Tree looks like something you'd find in the caves (same goes for the Sproutrock)... and it provides something that it very helpful in the caves. So why am I tediously sailing around the ocean praying for bottles that lead me to a treasure chest that HOPEFULLY gives me a random seed for stuff I that I want to use in the caves...? I dunno... that just didn't make sense and might be a reason for why players are expressing some frustrations with the updates.

But... fighting a Great Depth Worm in the caves, to get glow-y fruits, that allow you to make glow-y fruit trees, and then using said glow-y fruit back inside the caves... that kinda makes more sense. I think THAT will be a little more cohesive, a little more fun, and a lot more rewarding to the players if implemented.

That is all from me, hope everyone enjoys the beta period!