The changes made to the great worm were absolutly marbelous, however, a few more small changes could make it be completly compatible with megabasing

[Malfario]

A couple of thanks are in order before begining, Thank you klei for changing the worm after release, I know it was said that the worm would be kept as it was and the fact that you are open to improve the mob doesn´t go unnoticed or unapreciated. And thanks to all the people i talked to over diferent DST discussion Discord servers that helped me to point out issues i haven´t encontured or thought about, Now with this out of the way.

At time of writing, on the last hotfix, the radious of the area around the player in which the great worm can spawn has been reduced, to aproximatly 3,5 tiles. This is an extremly major improvement over the previous situation, as well as the new animation for the worm spawning that gives the player enough time to calculate the route and aproach to deal with the boss.

However, there are still a lot of major issues related to the worm, These issues mostly involve how the worm affects megabasing, with this change the worm was made able to work around it, but for doing so we essentially need to give up building space, We are meant to do arenas and paths that are able to contain the worm, in the current state this calls for so much space without any room for decor that, essentially, continues to prevent megabasing. Its still better than before because now there are efective building styles to prevent base destruction, problem is that those building styles aren`t really fun or leave much room for creativity.

To solve this, and still keep the work around aproach of the worm, while keeping its destruction as an avoidable threat. I propose the following changes:

Worm spawning radius been reduced to 2 tiles away from the player instead of 3,5

A picture is worth more than a thousand words and i happen to have 4.

     

These are the current area sices of the worm spawning range (around the player), on my testing it seems that the area is sort of a donut shape, because the worm never seems to spawn in a 1-2 tile radious from the player. The player would be the central mini sign and the other 4 with the same skin the limits of the spawning area. And here comes something interesting, because the worm can spawn at those edges, and the destruction range of the worm is 1,75 tile diameter, it efectevly makes it so the range at which destruction can happen around the player its actually 4 tiles. the mini sign witht eh fantasmical skin reflects the actual limit of the destruction area, as well as the yellow circle.

With this information on the curent state, we can stablish that both the arenas to fight the worm and the paths built in the caves have to be 8 tiles wide/ 4 tile radious. Which in the case of the arenas is fine, but the problem comes when we aproach the paths. 8 tiles with nothing on it can`t be made into something that looks good.

A little note, as someone who has megabase for a few years, i can say that making paths desings wider than 8 tiles becomes extremely inneficent from a decorative stand point, the paths begin to take so many space that they become clunky to integrate with other builts. So if we made the worm compatible with this sice, pretty much every other desing can be posible.

Decreasing the range, so the worm can only spawn in a 2 tile radious around the player, would make it so it efectevely was only capable of spawning on the very center of the road, this makes inner decorations tough to implement but not imposible or extemely limiting, as we could even do spaces designated to spawn the worm. It can even make for some awesome desings integrating the arenas into the paths themselves. It gives a lot of room for more expensive decor on the outside, gives the player the need to come up for creative desings while leaving room for creativity. Even sorts of incentivate making big roads instead of the clasic 2 tile cobblestone with 1 tile grass one ach side.

     

Worm not being able to spawn on atrium/archive/ruins : Alternatively update the generation of this places to include natural defences from the worm, such as arenas and wide paths.

Everything i just said to solve the issue with the size of empty spaces on paths to make them worm proved, doesn`t aply to these 3 areas, because they are mostly composed of thin corridors and small areas on which, just making paths the side of the worm restrict inmensly all creativity to be had into designing cool builts on the zones mentioned.

Quite literally, they are to small to build around the worm. Personally i think something that could be absolutly amazing is for the ruins, archives and atrium to have in built arenas and corridors for the worm. A tutorial in the game to show the player how they should built to prevent destruction by the worm, without a piece of text or explanation, just bare exposition, in front of their eyes without them even realising it. It could even be a foreshadowing for when the worm shows up, maybe with an arena on the ruins where the worm was killed in a ritual, and a research space on the archives.

But this can not be made in the spam of a hotfix, so because making the worm posible to deal with in the ruins without reworking it´s generation or how the worm works, i think it could be fair to just make it so the worm can´t spawn on those places. Since, again, all are edifications by the ancient ones, we could justify it by saying the worm is scared of the obelisks and night lights, with character quotes like " Seems the crustacean found a way to keep that slimy horror away".

Make the warning phase 1 minute long

Not much to add this, 30 seconds is extremly tight, no room for error, in fact one might said not even enough room, and between all the other threats that can happen at any time, a bit more time to run would be higly apreciated, and it will keep in pair the spawning of this destructive threat with its cousins upstairs deerclops and bearger.

This could also open the posibility to create less arenas with more space in between, or keeping a considerably high number of arenas with roads not worm proofed, obviously taking away he safety of having both. I would like to emphasize increasing the warning wouldnt make dealing with the worm easier, it would just give more posibilities to deal with and don`t be so intrusive on the gameplay flow.

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That`s all i had to say after last hotfix, once again thanks Klei for considering change the great worm, thanks to people that helped me get information, and last but not least, Thank you for reading this post.

[Anis5240]

28 minutes ago, Malfario said:

Make the warning phase 1 minute long

It already did before this hotfix.

[Malfario]

6 minutes ago, Anis5240 said:

It already did before this hotfix.

It was my understanding it was kept as 30 seconds, did they mentioned it on the patch notes ?

[Anis5240]

3 minutes ago, Malfario said:

It was my understanding it was kept as 30 seconds, did they mentioned it on the aptch notes ?

Well I happened to play the game two days ago, and the warning (thanks Advanced Warning mod) came out a minute before the big worm entered the screen.

And yes, it had two (or three, I can't remember) underlings coming along.

[Malfario]

1 minute ago, Anis5240 said:

Well I happened to play the game two days ago, and the warning (thanks Advanced Warning mod) came out a minute before the big worm entered the screen.

And yes, it had two (or three, I can't remember) underlings coming along.

The more you know

[Anis5240]

3 minutes ago, Malfario said:

The more you know

The big worm did some insane damage onto Nightpig before dying, but I have yet to see how it fared against the pig again for this new hotfix.

[Cassielu]

7 hours ago, Anis5240 said:

Well I happened to play the game two days ago, and the warning (thanks Advanced Warning mod) came out a minute before the big worm entered the screen.

Worm boss wave shares the same mechanics as regular waves, their warning time gets shorter with playtime, down to a minimum of 30s after 50 days.

[Anis5240]

1 hour ago, Cassielu said:

Worm boss wave shares the same mechanics as regular waves, their warning time gets shorter with playtime, down to a minimum of 30s after 50 days.

Said world was over 2k days in already. Didn't you see the pic I sent in this thread?

[Arcwell]

9 hours ago, Anis5240 said:

It already did before this hotfix.

No, it is and has been 30 seconds. This is without any server mods:
(The warn duration decreases as day count increases, a 60 sec timer is possible before day 100, but not after.)

[adminaaassh]