Progression feels impossible for solo play

[aidankocherhans]

I want to try to "beat the game", but the focus on extremely hard battles scaled for multiplayer makes it feel like a pointless endeavor. Even something as simple as the moonstone event seems practically impossible without looking up cheese strats.

I'm not that great at fighting in this game, but am fine with everything else, but so much of this game is locked behind absurdly difficult fights for a solo player that I might never actually experience any of it, unless I rely on online strangers to help me, which I'm less comfortable with.

I really wish there was some multiplayer scaling, not just for heath values, but also for the intensity of some of the fights that make them unfeasible alone. This includes raid bosses, it doesn't feel good for something like bee queen to be practically unbeatable for some people because they don't have friends to consistently play with.

The only potential solution I see is to switch to a combat oriented character, but I think that's a problem if only expert players can beat the game with characters like Wilson.

[Auth]

To offer my perspective, I'd sincerely just recommend practice. You're right, the fights are tough, and in some cases, borderline unfair, but it is truly, amazingly satisfying to beat them solo, and further, beat the odds by doing so.

Balancing around scaling is very difficult to do, and can be a pretty slippery slope into a terrible direction. Bosses are in a weird spot already that's kind of difficult to perfect, where most of them feel ridiculous for solo the first time, but crumble into dust and ash with 3, much less 6 players. Or others are like nightmare werepig, where it's honestly easier to do him solo as bringing multiple players makes him less predictable and can overall ruin the flow of the fight.

But usually, ultimately, it's pretty fair and reasonable given enough practice or preparations, and those moments where bosses crumple into nothingness to multiple players is usually balanced out by the fact that the boss really only drops enough stuff for one player to have the loot, meaning multiple players will have to do the fight multiple times if everyone wants the wonderful whatever-it-is-you're-fighting-for. In that way, the bosses are already designed for multiplayer and solo play, if you consider the end goal.

For actual arguments against scaling though:

If you scale a boss down for less players, then what happens if there's more players? Does it scale up? What if you're wanting to fight a boss but other players are on the server who don't want to? Does their presence add to the scaling, or is it only players nearby? If it is, then, how do you stop that from being abused, where players wait on the sidelines before jumping in just so they can cheese the lower health? And if it's intensity, then how do you make sure it's still fun and challenging at all levels? How do you make it feel like you're not just fighting a lame, watered-down, weenie hut jr. version of the boss solo, while on the flip side, not making it absolutely insanely overwhelming just because you want to tackle it with friends? If it's already hard enough for someone solo, and you're going to tell them bringing along friends makes it WORSE, then what will motivate them to do that? Especially when the loot of everything is still only designed for one player? Is there a limit to scaling, leading to the same thing where bringing enough players causes the fight to just become a joke? At that point, why is it even a thing? Or is the idea of fighting a boss on a 20 player server just a fantasy unless everyone shows up?

That's my perspective on the concept of scaling. It'd be very difficult to implement and raises a ton of questions about balancing it to make sure content remains engaging.

If you'd like my advice about improving on your situation though, open up this spoiler.

Spoiler

If you aren't playing on console, I'd recommend making a test world. Spawn in gear you want to try with, spawn in the bosses or fights you want to practice with, take your time with it. Rollback if things go wrong, use godmode just to learn patterns without getting battered, whatever. If it's something you genuinely want to improve with, practice makes perfect.

Don't doubt the utility of certain items. A lot of people are scared to use strong equipment like thulecite for fights just because they've seen/heard of players doing the same thing with less, or because they fear it may be too expensive, but everyone does things at their own pace, so why not crank yourself up to 11 if you feel you need to? Seriously, thulecite crowns? Game changer for a ton of stuff. I always end up having way more rare materials than I use, even in regular playthroughs, so splurging every once in a while can be worth it.

If anything, the nice thing about Don't Starve's progression is that it's not really necessary for the core survival element of the game. There's no need to feel any pressure for not having any of the items from challenges you can't currently complete provide- unless you put it on yourself. Which is fine, it's good to have that pressure to improve! But overall, if you can enjoy yourself with where you're at, take that time to build yourself up. Hone your skills, farm for resources, and then use them for those challenges. Moonstone for example, there's tooth traps, walls, houndius shootius, bunnymen... Lots of different ways to tackle the same issue, even if you're not the kind to like cheese. Some strategies (like walls) can take tons of resources to pull off, but at the end of the day, it still gets you to the end goal, albeit a little more messy. Make the world work for you, yknow? For me, it helps to constantly try and think about how some game elements can interact with each other, and if I can use those interactions to my advantage.

Nowadays, you can even go into world settings and lower the amount of damage you take. If you still can't quite beat something no matter how much you practice, but still really want the content without just outright spawning it, you can always fiddle with world settings to make it easier on yourself. For like my first 500 hours I would turn a lot of hazards just flat-out OFF because I didn't think I was capable of dealing with them.

There's nothing illegitimate about looking up some strategies, or make some friends on public servers, scary as it sounds. I found a lot of unique information out by joining public servers, being silent, and just watching other players while I did my own thing. And DST is pretty much a "The wiki is your best friend" game anyways, not like it's going to be that different...

1 hour ago, aidankocherhans said:

The only potential solution I see is to switch to a combat oriented character, but I think that's a problem if only expert players can beat the game with characters like Wilson.

Those experts didn't likely learn to be experts just by being Wilson. Combat characters are really good training tools, Wigfrid for example taking less damage and healing throughout a fight can be a great tool to lengthen the amount of time you have in a fight to learn the mechanics of it. By using those characters as another method of practicing, you'll eventually learn the ropes of how the fight actually works and the timing of such things, and you'll likely become more comfortable with them when playing other characters, as well.

And ultimately, every character needs to have those different niches they fit into, otherwise, they might as well not be there in the first place. Some characters have mechanics or gimmicks that shine in certain fights, and that's intentional. Try to think in terms that it should encourage you to take on a new playstyle, rather than hold everything to the same standard. If Wilson could do everything just as well as the others, why even have more than one character?

Ultimately that's been my experience and perspective with tackling those difficult challenges. I hope it helps.

And since it seems you haven't been already, welcome to the forums!

[arubaro]

3 hours ago, aidankocherhans said:

but the focus on extremely hard battles scaled for multiplayer

The fights arent balanced for MP, more like the opposite since they are really boring when you play with others

3 hours ago, aidankocherhans said:

The only potential solution I see is to switch to a combat oriented character, but I think that's a problem if only expert players can beat the game with characters like Wilson.

Is the best for learning if you are having problems. Or do you start a game choosing the harder characters or archetypes? No, you start with the easy ones like warriors and later you try others like glass cannon roges and mages

[Mike23Ua]

First of all, DST is a game balanced for at most 6 players (4 if your unlucky enough to be on Nintendo Switch) no idea where you get the thought of 20 player servers from but I assure you the game isn’t balanced around 20 players.

Second of All, DST was only supposed to just be Don’t Starve but now you can play with friends, it was NEVER meant to be a game that you’d struggle to play without said friends.. it’s literally advertised & sold as a multiplayer expansion to Solo DS.

Finally, a lot of multiplayer games don’t really balance “loot” around the thought that everyone gets loot, usually it’s First Come First Serve, and players roll dice (hence the in game option to do so) to determine who gets the loot. Assuming of course people are polite enough to roll for it instead of just snagging it up yelling “MINE!”

But that’s more of a design issue with the game itself more than it is ANYTHING else, if your playing with 4-6 players then that means that in order for all 6 players to obtain say for example Bearger loot then you’ll be waiting a colossally long damn time for it to respawn over multiple seasons so everyone gets to fight it on its spawn timer.

This is in fact awful… and Klei only needs to play their game on an Xbox console for 2-3 hours to instantly understand why.

On Xbox we don’t have dedicated servers, all worlds are player hosted & you can only play in them for as long as the host is hosting them. And I assure you, no one’s going to stick around for spring to roll around for the 6th time to be the 6th person to get a Bearger vest.

it’s far too much time and effort for a game world that only exists for as long as the host is around to host it.

[lowercase skye]

4 hours ago, aidankocherhans said:

I want to try to "beat the game", but the focus on extremely hard battles scaled for multiplayer makes it feel like a pointless endeavor. Even something as simple as the moonstone event seems practically impossible without looking up cheese strats.

I'm not that great at fighting in this game, but am fine with everything else, but so much of this game is locked behind absurdly difficult fights for a solo player that I might never actually experience any of it, unless I rely on online strangers to help me, which I'm less comfortable with.

I pretty much hated combat in this game for a long time, so I know what it's like to feel like there's a huge chunk of content that's way more difficult than the rest. My advice would be to get creative! You know how you can lead a boss like the Deerclops over to a large herd of beefalo to take care of it without fighting? Or bringing a Treeguard to a village full of pigmen so they all punch it to death? Try to stretch that sort of thinking as far as you can: pitting the world's creatures against each other, while learning whatever simple combat skills you can in the process. Bunnymen, Pigmen, Beefalo, Treeguards, even Killer Bees are your best friends here. It'll be more resource intensive and take more thinking than if you were to just smack everything to death, but it's just as rewarding and pretty dang fun to pull off.