A potential way to make clothing slightly more appealing

[Guille6785]

A lot of threads have popped up in the forums about how to make clothing better because unfortunately almost everything they do is done better by simply using thermal stones, which don't take up any equipment slots and are incredibly flexible. The only real advantage clothing has over thermal stones ATM is that by stacking insulation items you can get significantly more mileage out of each degree you heat up by compared to thermal stones, but this is unfortunately not that big of an advantage since thermal stones can be swapped out on the fly, bypassing the time you have to spend sitting next to fires almost entirely anyway.

I'd like to bring up something I haven't seen suggested before, which is to simply make body insulation increase the rate at which you either heat up or cool down (depending on the season and whether it's summer/winter insulation; the same 35 degree trigger for either would apply here). If you didn't know, the fastest rate of temperature change the player can achieve in the game in 99% of circumstances is 1 degree per second, which doesn't get affected in any way other than being slowed down by your current insulation (this means that the fastest speed at which a player can go from 0 degrees aka freezing to 70 degrees aka overheating will always be 70 seconds; there's currently no way to achieve a rate of temperature change faster than this).

I think if the rate was something like 1 extra degree/second for every 60 insulation worn this could be quite good, as even lower tier insulation items would massively reduce the time you'd need to spend around fires to heat up. Thermal stones would still have the advantage of being able to be swapped instantly at furnaces/ice boxes or wrapped in bundles, but I'd argue clothing would be much more convenient to use long-term for someone who simply doesn't want to micromanage thermals, as well as adding more flexibility in how clothing can be used since you could (for example) put on a beefalo hat to heat up 5 times faster than base (only needing to stand next to a tree for 14 seconds to reach 70 degrees as opposed to 70 seconds) and then swap out to a tam o shanter for the sanity regeneration, and in situations where bundles and furnaces aren't available, clothing would actually have the unique advantage of being more time-efficient than a thermal stone because you already have to spend multiple minutes every winter simply standing next to heat sources and this would cut down on that time.

Another suggestion that could go well alongside this is to make clothing increase the player's base temperature, in such a way that medium tier insulation would allow 1-3 more days of winter to be ones where you don't have to heat up at all (since your base temperature would be above 0 degrees) and stacking 2 max-tier insulation items would make your base temperature high enough so that you don't freeze at all during winter, which would be a huge incentive to go with this strategy in long-term worlds instead.

[HowlVoid]

Also wouldn't hurt for clothing to have 2 pockets... 

[Quadratordo]

I especially like the first suggestion. With that one in mind, perhaps a little something on top of that to encourage using both clothing and thermal stones at once would be worth considering, as your suggestion wouldn't do much for those; maybe having clothing's insulation factor into a thermal stone's temperature decay at a rate of, say, one third of its total?

[Guille6785]

16 minutes ago, Quadratordo said:

I especially like the first suggestion. With that one in mind, perhaps a little something on top of that to encourage using both clothing and thermal stones at once would be worth considering, as your suggestion wouldn't do much for those; maybe having clothing's insulation factor into a thermal stone's temperature decay at a rate of, say, one third of its total?

I personally don't think thermal stones and clothing should stack for gameplay purposes, it'd be wildly unintuitive and imo they should be differentiated more in their roles

[Cheggf]

I wanted to disagree because I find being able to go half an hour before needing to warm up unlike the stones where you need to warm up every 4-8 minutes way better, but the suggestion you've proposed is actually a fun one that doesn't change anything about how clothes function and just shortens the boring waiting around bit so I'm a huge fan.

You've done it, Guille. You've found the one single buff to clothes that I'm in agreement of instead of immediately hating. 

[Cheggf]

3 hours ago, Ratituee said:

Regardless, there is no reason that obtaining a winter or beefalo hat should be more difficult than a thermal stone...

On public servers rocks and/or flint are often scarcities which are 50x more valuable than beefalo wool. Your proposal of implementing gems into the recipe doesn't really do anything positive. In a private world it's not really that big of a cost. You probably have found several of each gem before winter started so you aren't any worse off, you don't notice much of a change. But on a public server, where tons of people love to just make things then disconnect or die with them, and you need 5, 10, maybe even 20+ thermal stones? That would suck. That would be horrible. Nobody would start using clothes, everyone would just huddle around the firepit even more than they do while repeatedly asking for someone to bring them a thermal stone, or just disconnecting because they're too difficult to make. 

[WilsonHiggs]

9 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I personally don't think thermal stones and clothing should stack for gameplay purposes, it'd be wildly unintuitive and imo they should be differentiated more in their roles

I dont think is unintuitive, a lot of players already use them together until they are told how they work

[Cheggf]

Clothes & thermals shouldn't stack, I see no point to thermal stones existing if they're just meant to be used with clothes. Clothes are body slot items that let you go a very long time before managing your temperature, thermal stones are inventory slot items that don't go very long but can have their temperature adjusted while on the floor or in a container, and they take an inventory slot instead of an equipment slot. Thermals are good for things like fighting near temperature sources like boss fights, since you can just swap them out and not really worry about temperature at all. Clothes are good for things like extended journeys without needing to think about adjusting your temperature.

I genuinely do not know what the point of thermal stones would be if they just made clothes better. They'd be nothing but an annoying inventory slot that I'm forced into using for no reason. If I'm already using clothes the whole temperature thing is solved. If I'm already using a thermal stone the whole temperature thing is solved. Why should I want to combine them? They serve two different purposes. 

[Cheggf]

1 minute ago, Ratituee said:

I would prefer if they were alternatives of each other, two different items that serve the same purpose in a different way... problem is that thermal stones are objectively a better option than clothes most of the time

That's objectively not true for the reasons I just said. The only time I use a thermal stone is if I didn't manage to make clothes in time, or if I'm currently doing something like fighting in a small area such as a boss fight. 

[nicolas103]

My only problem besides maybe the durability of some clothing items, is that they make it harder to get out of max or minimum tempature.

Sucks overheating during something like Klaus and staying overheated until you take off the clothing. Just feels awkward to me.

Or freezing during summer and having to remove items or drop thermals.

On top of that theres like this weird threshold where you visually arent overheating or freezing, but you are still taking damage from it.