Small changes to the great depth worm, keeping the danger and risk while making it more manageable

[Malfario]

On the recently broadcasted dev stream, its was stated that the depth worm will be kept as destructive as it is right now, that we are intended to design our bases keeping the mechanic in consideration and that if it gets really bad we can disable it.

After hearing this i decided to hop on a test world and spent a few hours figuring out how to built with the great depth worm been taking into account. And while its posible, and not as bad as one might think there is still necesary tweaks that could be made:

First to say after day 100, the waves are announced 30 seconds prior their spawning, a character can run 57 tiles straight during that time, this makes it so the best way to deal with the big worm is building save heaven each 100ish tiles, which isn`t a big grind neither does it feel to restrictive, the moment you hear the growling you start running there and take it down.

However, the worm spawning in a radious around the player its the biggest problem from the megabase perspective, the worm works similar to bearger in how we can bait it to follow us to the mentioned save heaven. But unlike with bearger the worm can`t be freezed, put to sleep, and most important teleported. Because of the cave generation, in which big areas are conected with thin corridors that many times create ackward paths, Its extremly difficult sometimes to get to our save heaven in time before the worm spawns and destroy the near by structures.

To solve this i sugest changing the spawning of the worm, so when the warning is over the worm spawns directly under the player, having an animation of the ground under our feet breaking, long enough to indicate the player its time to get moving. Having pin pointed where the worm will spawn is enough for the player to be able to direct it to anywhere without it breaking anything, in fact the destruction radious of the worm when it travels in a straight line is less than two tiles wide, so on most roads desings it can be baited without breaking anything, its even fun to desing the turns having the worm in mind.

The only area in which this doesnt work as well are the ruins, because in most ruins, there are spots that are to far away to any posible location to create a save heaven, I think the great worm makes ruins building almost imposible, because the generation itself doesnt provide the players with the space to work around the worm. I dont know how this could be solved, but in all honesty i think it would be fair to make the great worm not being able to spawn on the ruins. It could also create a cool interaction, the most dangerous byome ont he game being also the only one safe from one of the deadliest threats.

Before finishing i would like to reiterate that i am  fine with having to build keeping the worm in mind, but the caves take away most of the versatility to deal with the destruction from the surface, and the worms destruction is the most unavoidable one to date. It can´t be dealt with in any way but fighting it on the spot or bait it into an arena, and both of those methods bring the previously mentioned problems. I think this changes could make the worm more versatile to deal with keeping all its challenge.

Thanks for reading

Psd: For future content i think it could be interesting to give the caves unique methods to dealt with destructive mobs like we have on the surface, i understand why telelocator focus doesn`t work down there, but more movility will be higly apreciated.

[Gashzer]

Got to start using lazy Explorer telepoofs with moggles/gloomberry in the late game.

We got all the tools necessary to get places quickly even when playing solo.

[ADM]

Considering it doesn’t happen at all waves, and that we generally still want to finish the very thing we were doing before going… I'd say if a Great Worm is meant to spawn there should be a special audio clue, at the very least, and maybe extra time for the wave to spawn, but that’s a bonus.

[JazzyGames]

These are great ideas.

Destructive wave raids can work but we need means to deal with them. No other destructive wave threat comes with so little warning. Bearger growls for a full minute and you can cancel his spawning by not killing him. Red Hounds just need a flingo at a trap, Clops growls for a full minute, you can force spawn it or calculate exactly when it’s coming.

Great Worm attacks have none of these safety mechanisms. 30 seconds to spawn in and no way of protecting an area if you can’t get away from builds quickly. Spamming a LE on every worm raid because it might be a big one is not really an acceptable solution.

Give the worm a unique warning with a 60s warmup, then have it spawn directly under the player’s feet. That would go a long way in improving the mob, as Malfario said. Otherwise this is gonna become another thing like lunar hail or rift earthquakes that many of us will just disable until we have means to protect our builds.

[arubaro]

5 hours ago, Malfario said:

To solve this i sugest changing the spawning of the worm, so when the warning is over the worm spawns directly under the player, having an animation of the ground under our feet breaking, long enough to indicate the player its time to get moving

Perfection

4 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Got to start using lazy Explorer telepoofs with moggles/gloomberry in the late game.

We got all the tools necessary to get places quickly even when playing solo.

Like you have the tools to make bosses as easy as you wish, so shhhh dont disturb