What's the actual difference between Endless and Survival modes?

[Parusoid]

Before the big update that significantly increased the amount of things we can customize in terms of world generation, I remember endless apparently had a feature that more resources were re-growing. For example grass tufts spawned if some were completely removed.

How is it now? Besides the obvious reviving at Florid Postern and no sanity drain from dead players, what are the default differences?

[nimzowitsch10]

I don't think there's any difference, I've noticed the same rate of regrowth in endless and survival. Besides the fact you can rev at portal, touchstones regen, and world doesnt have death countdown

[Evelo]

Just reviving at Florid Postern, and I believe the death reset timer is set to unlimited rather than 60 seconds.

[Maxil20]

Apart from what others have mentioned, Endless in particular enables a setting that allows basic resources such as grass tufts, saplings, berry bushes, and flint to spawn randomly at various points. These points are actually the wilderness spawn locations, as these spawn in every gamemode. This is the same as what you mentioned, it’s just now a world option that you can enable/disable at will compared to being tied to the game mode itself.

[Parusoid]

1 hour ago, Maxil20 said:

Apart from what others have mentioned, Endless in particular enables a setting that allows basic resources such as grass tufts, saplings, berry bushes, and flint to spawn randomly at various points. These points are actually the wilderness spawn locations, as these spawn in every gamemode. This is the same as what you mentioned, it’s just now a world option that you can enable/disable at will compared to being tied to the game mode itself.

Can you elaborate on that? 

[Mike23Ua]

Endless used to allow resources that could go extinct to not be allowed to go extinct (hence the name endless) meanwhile prior to Klei changing survival mode to be this endless sandbox mode you spend your entire lifetime in dedicating to lengthy RPG fetch and collect quests and building a Megabase, Survival Modes Resources we’re intentionally set to be able to go completely extinct and prior to the complete removal of the feature- For me this was often the “Disease” Gameplay Mechanic.. once my resources perished and I could no longer sustain myself, I DIED end of Story…

But now days, Klei wants to make survival mode an endless sandbox by introducing a new gameplay problem (like Acid Rain or Cave Quakes) while simultaneously at the same time… introducing the permanent solution to deal with them, Umbralla & Cave Pillars made of DreadStone.

I used to FEAR Wildfires because my Beefalo, my Volt Goat Herds, My Swamp Reeds, My Catcoon Dens, And my Mushroom rings could all go extinct.

But todays version of DST I laugh off Wildfires knowing ehhh “that Catcoon den or that mushroom ring will regrow eventually”

THAT Is well Err I mean *WAS* the major difference.

Besides the obvious respawn at the florid (if you boringly float all the way to it..) no ghost sanity drain from other dead players.

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Can you elaborate on that? 

I don’t know the exact details (and I’m not at home ATM), but in short, the game does a check every few minutes by every wilderness spawn point, and checks for a player being there (in a pretty large radius, IIRC ~20-30 turf tiles?), and/or if said “core” resources exist nearby in a (much smaller) radius. If both of those checks fail, the game will generate a few random resources nearby (which can be twiggy trees, twigs, saplings grass tufts, either berry bush, and flint)

The easiest way to check is to mess with the spawn point by the portal, as that is always considered one of the wilderness spawn points. If you dig up all of the plants/collect all of the resources on the ground and move away for a day or so, you should have some various resources/plants around the portal.

59 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Survival Modes Resources we’re intentionally set to be able to go completely extinct and prior to the complete removal of the feature- For me this was often the “Disease” Gameplay Mechanic.. once my resources perished and I could no longer sustain myself, I DIED end of Story…

Endless Regrowth did not impact any other resource other than the ones I mentioned. While yes, it was possible to lose them due to disease, most cautious players would be able to reliably sustain said resources well into the tens of thousands of days, and resources like light flowers/mushtrees would come back regardless if the setting was endless or not.

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

But now days, Klei wants to make survival mode an endless sandbox by introducing a new gameplay problem (like Acid Rain or Cave Quakes) while simultaneously at the same time… introducing the permanent solution to deal with them, Umbralla & Cave Pillars made of DreadStone.

Why would Klei not do this? Adding a mechanic and providing solutions to the mechanic they just added have existed since DS was in beta and have continued in every single DLC/expansion (release SW/HAM have the altar and apocalypse clock to prevent/avoid their most dangerous gimmicks in particular). Why would they randomly stop doing this?

It’s also important to keep in mind things like the dreadstone pillar are prohibitively expensive (remember, you need 44 dreadstone at minimum to make a single pillar) and are not meant for “casual” use/small cave bases. The normal pillars are the intended way to counter quakes and have maintenance costs, while the dreadstone pillar is meant for long term usage as a luxury item. I inherently don’t think there’s any issue with that.

[Parusoid]

35 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

every wilderness spawn point

Do you maybe know the prefab name for said spawn points?

[Maxil20]

38 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

Do you maybe know the prefab name for said spawn points?

According to a friend, the console prefab for it is “spawnpoint_multiplayer”

[Parusoid]

1 hour ago, Maxil20 said:

spawnpoint_multiplayer

And thats for all the spawn points or just for the florid postern?

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

And thats for all the spawn points or just for the florid postern?

I believe there’s a alternative/variant spawnpoint for the portal itself compared to the random ones (IIRC it’s spawnpoint_master, which functions similarly, but is just the only one used for portal spawns/as a failsafe).

Apologies if I’m a bit hazy on details, it’s been a few years since I last looked into the mechanics of the endless spawners back when I was curious how those worked.