How do you think we can make some cave biomes useful and interesting?

[Mr.Oshiro]

As is well known, most cave biomes, except for ruins, moon mushroom forests, and archives, are both empty and uninteresting, they are just passing stations on your journey.
Although three types of mushroom forests can provide a large number of mushrooms, they are mostly used as food or dishes and are very easy to replace. There are no unique creatures here either. Cave spiders, rabbit humans, and white spiders were all brought over from other biomes.
Similarly, the stalagmite cave has almost unlimited stones, but there are already enough stones elsewhere, and there are no unique minerals for missions here. Bat wings can only be used as one type of object, and their effectiveness is not very good. Cave spiders do not have special loot, digging stalagmites is just to obtain fossil fragments. The Stone Lobster was indeed very strong in previous versions, although slow in speed, its health and attack power were not low. However, as the game was updated, he gradually fell behind.

How do you make mushroom forests and stalagmite caves useful and interesting?

 

 

 

[Well-met]

Setpieces is the key, but klei's too busy with skill tree nonsense.

And it took them like 7 years to add skeleton ships in the sea...

[Jakepeng99]

I see this same kind of post reposted alot. Its a sign we need and want updates to our world, rather than our characters. 

[Mike23Ua]

If I had creative control (& extra especially now that we can craft bridges to cross cave gaps) I’d replace the void with rivers of lava, players who choose to base near the edges of this lava will get free heat and light, but at several extreme risks for doing so.

#1- it’s freaking LAVA so it’ll spit out magma embers (much like the animation in Minecraft) which if you don’t have a fire prevention method (Ice Flingo or late game Crystalizer as examples) it will set fire to things placed near it.

#2- it’s freaking LAVA so I’d have cool lava themed creatures be able to spawn from it, such as Magmatic spiders (Webber has this as a skin) and yes.. he would be able to interact with and recruit them. Magma Golems (those floating rock things from the Forge Event) and hmm let me think, oh yeah.. Post-Rift Lava Infused Rock Lobsters, because yeah… molting hot lava rocks just make sense.

Thats just what I’d do to the void though..

Id add a new biome similar to Lunar Grotto, I guess we can call this the “Lush Forest”?? It will basically be a beautiful underground forest (with designs based on those premium fairytale like skins we can buy on the skin shop) this area was able to grow mossy trees, etc because it has frequent rain drops leak through and gently drip into the cave area.

of course near the edges of land (where the lava rivers flow) the area will be scorched and dried up (perhaps hardened magma turf?) 

the third biome I’d want to rework is the bat guano/mud biome.. the new Winter Feast Update lets us collect snowballs off the ground, throw them as projectiles, or roll them up into larger snowballs.. that’s cute for Snowman building, but it would also work exceptionally well for a Muddy/Clay biome… and yes- I’d totally throw mud in the face of the bats that over populate it.

Anyway those are three changes I’d make to caves.. but I doubt that would be enough to make the caves as a whole more interesting.

[Chewabacca]

Primarily addressing the "interesting" piece of your question and setting the "useful" part aside: One of the big issues with the caves is how static they feel. Apart from the summer, where the caves are enough to prevent overheating and Antlion periodically drops boulders, the seasons' only effect on the caves is their temperature and to make it rain all the time in spring. Compare this to the surface, where winter brings in the pengulls and MacTusks and removes bees and frogs, and in spring frogs occasionally rain down from above while beefalo and bees turn into hostile mobs and rabbits disappear.

Aesthetics are also important: even if functionally the same thing is happening, seeing winter snow being replaced by the lush green of spring feels different from just having it rain and get warmer alone. Aboveground, the four seasons all look distinctly different, and that contributes to the overall experience. Belowground, not so much. The insanity filter also has a greater impact on the surface, where there are more colors to wash out. In the caves, it just goes from "dark and colorless" to "even more dark and colorless", which is a shame considering the constant sanity drain.

So, to fix it: I would start by making the caves react more to the seasons in their own way. Mushtrees are an easy way to do this: you've got 3 types of mushtrees, you've got 3 seasons apart from autumn as the "default". Assign each mushtree type to a season and make them bloom more aggressively during that season, with the potential for their spores to act on the player in some way. I'm tempted to say that being within a cloud of spores for long enough could give off a funcap effect corresponding to the respective mushtree, but I don't know how to do that without devaluing the funcap, which is gated behind either Klaus or Toadstool. A fungal infection effect could also be cool, where mushrooms grow on the survivors' bodies, providing them with a quick batch of mushrooms but at the cost of HP. For this to be worthwhile, though, Klei would probably also have to add more dishes that require mushrooms. You could also make some mushtrees go dormant (meaning they stop producing light) during certain seasons, which, while not useful, would still be more interesting.

Beyond that, having some mobs act differently depending on the season would also be good. For this to work, there should be more mobs down there in general. I don't have a lot of ideas on this, but it would be neat if they leaned into the rock lobster type: maybe not as tough as them, but similarly inorganic and alien.

My big problem with the caves is that when you're new you go down there thinking "ooh, what strange & scary things are lurking in the dark?" And then you play more and realize: pretty much nothing outside the depths worms (who are great, don't get me wrong. Great at being both useful and scaring the hell out of me if I'm underprepared) and the ruins. I don't need there to be a threat lurking around every corner, but I do need it to be different from the surface in a way that's not just about what it doesn't have.

[Swiyss]

8 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Primarily addressing the "interesting" piece of your question and setting the "useful" part aside: One of the big issues with the caves is how static they feel. Apart from the summer, where the caves are enough to prevent overheating and Antlion periodically drops boulders, the seasons' only effect on the caves is their temperature and to make it rain all the time in spring. Compare this to the surface, where winter brings in the pengulls and MacTusks and removes bees and frogs, and in spring frogs occasionally rain down from above while beefalo and bees turn into hostile mobs and rabbits disappear.

Aesthetics are also important: even if functionally the same thing is happening, seeing winter snow being replaced by the lush green of spring feels different from just having it rain and get warmer alone. Aboveground, the four seasons all look distinctly different, and that contributes to the overall experience. Belowground, not so much. The insanity filter also has a greater impact on the surface, where there are more colors to wash out. In the caves, it just goes from "dark and colorless" to "even more dark and colorless", which is a shame considering the constant sanity drain.

So, to fix it: I would start by making the caves react more to the seasons in their own way. Mushtrees are an easy way to do this: you've got 3 types of mushtrees, you've got 3 seasons apart from autumn as the "default". Assign each mushtree type to a season and make them bloom more aggressively during that season, with the potential for their spores to act on the player in some way. I'm tempted to say that being within a cloud of spores for long enough could give off a funcap effect corresponding to the respective mushtree, but I don't know how to do that without devaluing the funcap, which is gated behind either Klaus or Toadstool. A fungal infection effect could also be cool, where mushrooms grow on the survivors' bodies, providing them with a quick batch of mushrooms but at the cost of HP. For this to be worthwhile, though, Klei would probably also have to add more dishes that require mushrooms. You could also make some mushtrees go dormant (meaning they stop producing light) during certain seasons, which, while not useful, would still be more interesting.

Beyond that, having some mobs act differently depending on the season would also be good. For this to work, there should be more mobs down there in general. I don't have a lot of ideas on this, but it would be neat if they leaned into the rock lobster type: maybe not as tough as them, but similarly inorganic and alien.

My big problem with the caves is that when you're new you go down there thinking "ooh, what strange & scary things are lurking in the dark?" And then you play more and realize: pretty much nothing outside the depths worms (who are great, don't get me wrong. Great at being both useful and scaring the hell out of me if I'm underprepared) and the ruins. I don't need there to be a threat lurking around every corner, but I do need it to be different from the surface in a way that's not just about what it doesn't have.

That's so true. The effects of the seasons down there can't even compare to the surface. And that makes a huge difference when it comes to perceiving the cave as an actual interesting place to visit.

I would agree too, making mushrooms not bright outside their season, and making them brighter at their season would be awesome. The added branches and spores could also make it a very beautiful place. The addition of fungal allergies tied to their season would also increase immersion.

I suggest that in Winter the bunnymen could get outside for longer. They could maybe roam around the entire cave in this season. You would find them anywhere but the ruins. They would roam in a group of 3 to 5 eating lightbulbs. If you find a roaming bunnymen in Winter, you could trade with him; Cut Stone for Snurtle Slime, Lesser Glowberries for Bunny Puffs, Boards for Grass and Twigs, Beard Hair for broken shells, any Veggie (except carrots) for spider glands, Lichen for silk and guano for 1 gold nugget. They would do 8 trades per day as to not be an infinite source of resources. They would roam around the muddy biome just like the deers would at the deciduous. In winter still, Bats could no longer leave the caves through the sinkhole. Inside their biomes, they would not leave their homes, and just stay inside. You could be able to give Nitre to their houses, and 5 to 7 bats would come out one by one, getting aggressive towards the player. This would make farming them more consistent, and less annoying in the surface In winter. They could also add a machine that could be attached to the stairs, sorta like a nitre salt lick that would glue to the stairs and it would prevent bats from coming out of the caves forever, however every time you go down to the caves you would find 5 to 7 bats around the stairs.

In Spring, the caves could receive a new plant, the Vinesplatter or Vinespitter which would be attached at most lightbulbs at fields, they would only spawn in Spring at 2 fields per spring. They are angry plants that swing left to right and is placed in the middle of the field. One Vinespitter could attach to around 20 lightbulbs. Picking lightbulbs that are locked by Vinespitters would make them angry, they will lock you in place like the spiny bindweed and deal 20 dmg. You have to hit the vines to unlock the bulbs. If you end up getting to the Vinespitter in the middle, they will start spitting at you like that Moon Bird, dealing 10 damage each (around 5 spits every 3 seconds). I'm imagining them dancing like a Cuphead boss and doing little plant laugh sounds. Killing it would drop 0 to 2 leafy meats, 1 to 3 lightbulbs and a 25% chance to drop a Vinespitter sprout. The Vinespitter sprout can be place at the surface, and it acts friendly or agressive there. The plant can only be placed in grass or forest and deciduous turf and it has 2 variants. The deciduous turf one would be aggressive towards everything and create vines around a 3.5 tile radius, around 15 vines and the grass/forest one would be peaceful and also have 15 vines but in a smaller 2.5 tiles. Each vine will have a chance to create something. The aggressive one will have spikes and the peaceful one will have lightbulbs. The aggressive one can survive every season but will wither in summer. The spikes serve as a protection for your base, just don't get too close to the core. You can expand the aggressive one's vines in a tile by placing a Lichen Meal (2 lichen, 1 bone shards and a filler) next to it. Enemies like Hound will walk over it and get hurt. It deals 20 damage. Giants will destroy the vines when they walk over it. You can upgrade the peaceful one's core by feeding it Lichen Meal for 5 more vines, totalling 30 vines (maximum 3 feeding sessions, they can only be fed in autumn). The peaceful one will not give bulbs if left outside of an Above Average Tree Trunk Canopy Shadow. In summer, it will not wither. As long as it has shades, it will provide 15 to 30 bulbs (1 per vine) every 3 to 4 days. In Spring, it will give bulbs every 2 days. In Winter, it will give bulbs every 5 days. The vinespitter is a helpful but deceiving plant that represents nature at it's best. It will try to survive no matter the circumstance, showing how nature really is.

In Spring still, the caves lichen will have glowing properties. Now, every 1 to 5 lichens will glow and wield a Gum Goop or simply Lichen Gum. The gum will have growth formula properties as to make Wormwood bloom and also be used as fuel in lanterns, it rots in 2 days. It's main use is to craft a gum in a bottle (2 gums, 1 gloomer's goop, 1 ashes, 1 bottle) that lasts forever and has 4 uses, it can be attached to anenemies to stick their tentacles together or add 16 growth formula to plant fields. The stuck anenemy will now work differently. The old one would work off-screen and reset automatically, while this new one now locks the bitten thing for 15 seconds. Icker bottles can now be attached to anenemies as well, locking the bitten mob for 4 minutes instead. It cannot lock giants, shadows or flying enemies. The gum bottle can also be applied to any plantable, and Brightshades will prioritize that plant. The lichen gum will make the plantable wield + 1x additional resource at a 25% chance. It will last until it needs to be fertilized again, cannot be applied to self fertilizing plantables. It can also be used in a maximum sized mushroom planter for 2 minutes of spore releasing.

[Swiyss]

Now, if we're talking about things like rain and other environmental threats, I believe that Water Cascades could be a thing in Summer. They would form close to green mushroom biomes, and would be similar to the grotto's vitreoasis, but instead, they could be a Summer Oasis in the underground. Filled with life, it would have the new mob, the Duckmen. The duckmen are ducks that come from far away to experience the oasis treatment in the constanst, the summer heat is too much for them, so they gather in a pack of Father and Son down there, similar to the Walrus. They scream like a duck to taunt, follow you jumping like a Moose/Goose, and will do rapid wing attacks. They are not easy to fight, as the son will keep trying to hold you in place while the dead flaps his wings in your face. The father drops 2x regular meat, 2x drumsticks and a 25% chance to drop his Monocle. The monocle is a head gear that gives 3.33 sanity and lasts 8 days. It can be used to craft the

"Monoclettes" (Description: Beat the summer in a steampunk style) 
Is the feather really necessary? - Wilson 
It's got some style to it! - Winona

        -Requires 1x desert googles, 1x monocle and 2x downfeathers.
        -Gives 120 insulation (summer), lasts 15 days, help lower the sandstorm effect and gives +8.67 sanity per minute.

[gaymime]

12 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

So, to fix it: I would start by making the caves react more to the seasons in their own way. Mushtrees are an easy way to do this: you've got 3 types of mushtrees, you've got 3 seasons apart from autumn as the "default". Assign each mushtree type to a season and make them bloom more aggressively during that season, with the potential for their spores to act on the player in some way. I'm tempted to say that being within a cloud of spores for long enough could give off a funcap effect corresponding to the respective mushtree, but I don't know how to do that without devaluing the funcap, which is gated behind either Klaus or Toadstool. A fungal infection effect could also be cool, where mushrooms grow on the survivors' bodies, providing them with a quick batch of mushrooms but at the cost of HP. For this to be worthwhile, though, Klei would probably also have to add more dishes that require mushrooms. You could also make some mushtrees go dormant (meaning they stop producing light) during certain seasons, which, while not useful, would still be more interesting..

wait, i am confused. currently each tree is assigned to a season and changes its sprite while releasing spores for the duration of the season(with the spore providing a small amount of temporary light until they expire)

[cybers2001]

Move the giant depths worm into one of those zones, for starters 

[Chewabacca]

1 hour ago, gaymime said:

wait, i am confused. currently each tree is assigned to a season and changes its sprite while releasing spores for the duration of the season(with the spore providing a small amount of temporary light until they expire)

Well, that's an embarrassing amount of egg on my face. Never noticed that that corresponded to season. Alright, then, I guess that my hope would still be that those spores could have a larger effect on the player or environment (here's how fungal infection can still win).

[gaymime]

1 minute ago, Chewabacca said:

Well, that's an embarrassing amount of egg on my face. Never noticed that that corresponded to season. Alright, then, I guess that my hope would still be that those spores could have a larger effect on the player or environment (here's how fungal infection can still win).

it happens! i only know because i used to be a cave-baser(the mush biomes were the prettiest biomes in the game for a very long time and are still gorgeous, especially the blue). if you only go infrequently then it might seem as if sporing is random or you might miss it entirely!

[Mr.Oshiro]

15 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Aesthetics are also important: even if functionally the same thing is happening, seeing winter snow being replaced by the lush green of spring feels different from just having it rain and get warmer alone. Aboveground, the four seasons all look distinctly different, and that contributes to the overall experience. Belowground, not so much. The insanity filter also has a greater impact on the surface, where there are more colors to wash out. In the caves, it just goes from "dark and colorless" to "even more dark and colorless", which is a shame considering the constant sanity drain.

Perhaps because most areas are dark, cave filter is relatively monotonous. I think for caves, the feeling that various plants, boulders, or terrain bring to players is more important than filters, such as bright mush forests and rugged spider stalagmite caves. Filters can be used in some special places, such as producing spore mist when mush trees bloom, similar to HAM's natural gas forest, or adding lava to stalagmite caves. When the lava is active, the filter turns slightly red, indicating that it is very hot here.

15 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

"ooh, what strange & scary things are lurking in the dark?"

The fear brought by darkness is really suitable for ruins. I have always felt that there is a need for darkness debuff here. Especially connecting the ruins area happens to be the brightly lit biome at the center of the cave, where more lighting related things can be added to prepare for exploring deeper ruins. This place can gradually change, and the closer it is to the ruins, the darker it becomes.

These are the demonstration pictures I made:

         

[cybers2001]

1 hour ago, Chewabacca said:

Well, that's an embarrassing amount of egg on my face. Never noticed that that corresponded to season. Alright, then, I guess that my hope would still be that those spores could have a larger effect on the player or environment (here's how fungal infection can still win).

Used to suck back when spores only lasted 30 days in glowcaps, as you basically couldnt have certain colors for more than half the year in your base.

[Echsrick]

1 hour ago, Chewabacca said:

Well, that's an embarrassing amount of egg on my face. Never noticed that that corresponded to season. Alright, then, I guess that my hope would still be that those spores could have a larger effect on the player or environment (here's how fungal infection can still win).

its more spesific, i think it was blue only make spores on winter night, green spores on spring dusk, and red on summer days, autumn is...no spores

[GimplyGoose]

I've been pretty happy with the changes that have been made to caves. I think that Nightmare Werepig was a great addition, the atrium tentapillar was great too, and great depth worm is really cool. I would like to see more additions like that.in the future. Maybe it would be cool to have more options to allow a caves-only world to allow further boss progression.

Generation-wise, maybe there could be more blocked off sections like the archives that you need to mine to get into. Maybe there could be areas that are totally unconnected to the main cave system and they could be accessed with a spelunker bridge (or lazy explorer/wortox).

[Mr.Oshiro]

24 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

I've been pretty happy with the changes that have been made to caves. I think that Nightmare Werepig was a great addition, the atrium tentapillar was great too, and great depth worm is really cool. I would like to see more additions like that.in the future. Maybe it would be cool to have more options to allow a caves-only world to allow further boss progression.

Generation-wise, maybe there could be more blocked off sections like the archives that you need to mine to get into. Maybe there could be areas that are totally unconnected to the main cave system and they could be accessed with a spelunker bridge (or lazy explorer/wortox).

Your words remind me that in the promo the road to the archive is completely hidden, while in the actual game it is just an obvious road blocked by boulders. At one point I thought this was a placeholder because it really didn't "hide" and KLEI should have optimized it.

[Frosty_Mentos]

At some points I wanna say something to be added, but biomes feel complete as they are. My only annoyance is the cave rocks not being renewable for more fossil mining.

Other part to make those biomes interesting maybe us being able to do archeology and uncover some old ancient sites. After all, we have the ancient drill structure we can build to dig out some remnants of the old civilization or what was before. But most things probably decayed and turned part of stone by now, considering how barely intact some to many ruin areas are and atrium is just holding on it's last pillars to survive as is in the deepest depths of the caves.

[marshyds]

its much easier to think of threats than rewards all things considered, as i feel that many of the 'reward' aspects have been drained by hamlet and sw (id really love a less overtuned coffee in dst.)

While many items simply help you survive, i think more funsie items like the living artifact could exist.

[Mr.Oshiro]

11 hours ago, marshyds said:

its much easier to think of threats than rewards all things considered, as i feel that many of the 'reward' aspects have been drained by hamlet and sw (id really love a less overtuned coffee in dst.)

While many items simply help you survive, i think more funsie items like the living artifact could exist.

I think some small rewards are really suitable for adding to the game, such as temporarily improving speed, work efficiency, making tools more durable, etc., which can easily attract players. Overuse of coffee can indeed lead to dependence, but we can definitely add some small drawbacks to make it balanced.

I have always had an idea that mush forests and stalagmite caves are two major biomes in the game, and their function is to provide buffs after players explore the surface. The difference is that various mushrooms can be mixed with other materials to make potions that provide buffs for players themselves. And various minerals can be used to upgrade tools or armor, all we need is an anvil. At the same time, redesign the ruins to provide more threats and rewards, and players need to use things that explore other cave biomes to challenge the various dangers of the ruins. This can provide a clear exploration route for the entire cave.

[Jakepeng99]

I made new one. What do you thhink?

 

New cave biome Idea, poison caves with gas that spoil food really fast.

 

[marshyds]

1 hour ago, Mr.Oshiro said:

Overuse of coffee can indeed lead to dependence, but we can definitely add some small drawbacks to make it balanced.

for my hollow grove concept, i made eating the coffee equivelant (guarana) cause an addiction, as its canonically equal parts nicotine and caffeine.

the way it works is that eating any food with guarana in it adds 1 to a value, which decreases the speed boost gradually, until you are so dependent on it that your speed without it is slower.

you need to wait like 4 minutes for the value to tick down by 1. it can go up to 10.

Buff itself lasts 4 minutes though.

[ADM]

Yeah. I heavily dislike vanilla cave generation so I made my own remodel of them, I change it every now and then and I didn’t solve everything but a handful of those things have made my experience with caves a lot better.

My issue with cave worldgen hasn’t been the biomes and their content, aside from rocky ones that deplete really fast of their features, there are some others with unique resources to exploit, with constant accessibility to specific mushrooms, eels, slurtles, lichens, banana trees and others… it’s actually very unlike the surface who features mostly relocatable distributed plants and aside of some setpieces you can erase any differences between the surface biomes.

So they're nice and I basically haven’t touched much of the biome content in my rework, aside of some points I’ll still mention later in my listing because they're a big improvement. 

My actual rework efforts were more on the placement and connection of those biomes and altering the formation and size of the map. The worst about the caves is how massive they are and how much nothingness-roads you must travel from a staircase to another or whatever substantial areas we want to be and build into. There are also branchings between the biomes themselves which gives caves a different style to the surface but it contributes to how much of a time waster they are to move around and increase the map size only further.

These issues are felt incredibly more when we get to the ruins. They're such a big element of the game but when you get to it, it's really just a succession of floating squares that ressemble each others a lot and connected by flimsy sticks of rocks. It’s also very up to random to get any good amount of materials from the ruins or feel very limited.

With all this said I genuinely feel opposed to the addition of other cave biomes if the caves aren’t fundamentally remade so that my recap of issues becomes irrelevant. Giving new rooms to the caves will worsen it if we don’t learn to remove first.

 

But I did mention in introduction that my caves are much different to vanilla, I have little to complain about in my settings and that’s all thanks to these changes :

- Staircases no longer create their own sinkhole biomes and are now present in other types of biomes for more variety, reduction of map size, and a more close and even spread between each exits
- All remaining non-staircase sinkhole biomes are now centered around the map and intersecting with some of the mud biomes also in the middle.
- The other biomes (rocky, mushrooms, bats, etc) generate right behind the sinkhole ring. This makes it so past the "hub center" you can reach all destinations from even distances and with noticeably less gaps. This doesn’t apply to biomes that are generated beyond in those branch such as the grotto or toadstool spawns
- Ruins are now placed and split between 3 total branches around the map, no longer exclusively beyond the mud > lichen > ruins. But also after bat cloisters, or rocky biomes. Basically all those places that already feature fissures.
- Because of this each ruin "biomes" are forced into worldgen (I had to create new ones to divide a bit their content) and split into these different ruins to that they each features a monkey village as starter and branches into the actual ruins. This helps to reduce the floatiness of the ruins and extending lines of nothingness. 

With just this, and some more unmentioned steps because I did remove some rooms I found unnecessary… my caves are seriously smaller and simpler to explore. It doesn’t remove anything to their charm and hostility, makes more in fact especially with the ruins. It helps for when I want to build the main base in the caves, either in interesting places that would normally be super away from any staircase, or to make caves useful for shortcutting my travel between placed of the surface (because yeah my surface world is also heavily changed. It’s more or an archipelago thing). I wanna add that this was achieved by making the less considerable changes as possible, very little was added, lots was removed, but for the most it's only biome data being changed to reposition them in an order that I find harmonious with how I want to explore this world.

[Mr.Oshiro]

22 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

At some points I wanna say something to be added, but biomes feel complete as they are. My only annoyance is the cave rocks not being renewable for more fossil mining.

Other part to make those biomes interesting maybe us being able to do archeology and uncover some old ancient sites. After all, we have the ancient drill structure we can build to dig out some remnants of the old civilization or what was before. But most things probably decayed and turned part of stone by now, considering how barely intact some to many ruin areas are and atrium is just holding on it's last pillars to survive as is in the deepest depths of the caves.

Actually, I have always felt that obtaining fossil fragments through stalagmites is not very reasonable, as it doesn't seem like two interconnected things. However, it is really suitable to obtain such a system through archaeology, and we do need it.
I have an idea that muddy biomes is left behind by ancient floods, and cave ponds, eels, and lichens are all its products. There are many ancient artifacts buried in the mud, and we can search for clues to excavate the pits where treasures are buried.
If you observe carefully, you will find that Monkey Village has a lot of ancient furniture. I think this is a great opportunity to create treasure hunting gameplay. Many treasures are hidden in ancient vases, and monkeys cannot destroy them. Survivors have this ability, but they have to be careful of thieves who follow closely behind. Unfortunately, it is currently difficult to generate Monkey Village in the game. I hope KLEI can change this and make it no longer a passing station leading to deeper areas.

I have made a reference for this:

   

   

1 hour ago, ADM said:

These issues are felt incredibly more when we get to the ruins. They're such a big element of the game but when you get to it, it's really just a succession of floating squares that ressemble each others a lot and connected by flimsy sticks of rocks. It’s also very up to random to get any good amount of materials from the ruins or feel very limited.

This is definitely a serious issue. I have provided countless feedbacks to KLEI regarding the issue of Ruins generation, whether it was releasing threads or reporting bugs, but they have never responded to it, which really exhausts me.

 

1 hour ago, ADM said:

With all this said I genuinely feel opposed to the addition of other cave biomes if the caves aren’t fundamentally remade so that my recap of issues becomes irrelevant. Giving new rooms to the caves will worsen it if we don’t learn to remove first.

 

But I did mention in introduction that my caves are much different to vanilla, I have little to complain about in my settings and that’s all thanks to these changes :

- Staircases no longer create their own sinkhole biomes and are now present in other types of biomes for more variety, reduction of map size, and a more close and even spread between each exits
- All remaining non-staircase sinkhole biomes are now centered around the map and intersecting with some of the mud biomes also in the middle.
- The other biomes (rocky, mushrooms, bats, etc) generate right behind the sinkhole ring. This makes it so past the "hub center" you can reach all destinations from even distances and with noticeably less gaps. This doesn’t apply to biomes that are generated beyond in those branch such as the grotto or toadstool spawns
- Ruins are now placed and split between 3 total branches around the map, no longer exclusively beyond the mud > lichen > ruins. But also after bat cloisters, or rocky biomes. Basically all those places that already feature fissures.
- Because of this each ruin "biomes" are forced into worldgen (I had to create new ones to divide a bit their content) and split into these different ruins to that they each features a monkey village as starter and branches into the actual ruins. This helps to reduce the floatiness of the ruins and extending lines of nothingness. 

With just this, and some more unmentioned steps because I did remove some rooms I found unnecessary… my caves are seriously smaller and simpler to explore. It doesn’t remove anything to their charm and hostility, makes more in fact especially with the ruins. It helps for when I want to build the main base in the caves, either in interesting places that would normally be super away from any staircase, or to make caves useful for shortcutting my travel between placed of the surface (because yeah my surface world is also heavily changed. It’s more or an archipelago thing). I wanna add that this was achieved by making the less considerable changes as possible, very little was added, lots was removed, but for the most it's only biome data being changed to reposition them in an order that I find harmonious with how I want to explore this world.

This is very close to my idea. Adjusting the rules of biome generation can indeed be helpful, but they must be improved, otherwise they are still useless. I think this is a significant challenge for developers.

[Echsrick]

cave ocean area? i dont know i think that would be something

[Mr.Oshiro]

15 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

cave ocean area? i dont know i think that would be something

If KLEI can add more lunar mutant biomes (such as mutant spider stalagmite caves), it would be great to add cave water areas. Imagine how beautiful it would be to have a large lake filled with lunar waterfalls and twinkling lights. This also makes it convenient to hide the entrance to the archive.