Caves design and identity problem

[PonyOfApocalips]

Hello guys!

I feel like i need to share some thouths about game design of caves- but first i need you to Imagine something. Lets assume you play as Willow and you can go to caves- but you can't go to ruins. What part of caves would you explore? What items would you get from caves?

After you thnik about this a while you can notice that most cave content are actually linked one point of intrest- ruins. I tried to show this in some connection map and graphs, soo here u go (rules in spoiler)

Spoiler

Rules:

-I dont count every single Item or mob as separate feature. It would be too easy to say "look more items are post ruins". Mobs and their drops are same feature, same crafting stations and their craftings.

-No features that there is no reason to use. I know rock lobbsters exist but they are mostly useless

-I count every Boss even it have no usefull loot or fun fight.

Soo as u can see more than half caves content are locked behind ruins- in my opinion it's just bad that most players skip all the caves to just do ruin rush- i dont think endgame rushing is something wrong cause i did it myself, but it would be nice if caves would have something more to offer than being road to ruins, cause not every player (especially new one) want to do that.

Lack of cave identity

There is one more problem with caves- more in terms of art style, in recent updates almost all features added to caves are shadow related- I really dont like that especially after Charlie gate rebuild caves lost most of their identity- caves are no longer caves, they are just "shadow place"(Second graph is about those "vibes"). It's easer to notice if we compare caves to other endgame relited area.

As u can see- most of ocean faetures are actually well.. ocean realted, we have pirates, mangroove biome, salt, fishes. Ocean isn't just "Lunar place" it have their own identity even if lunar island is main point of intrest.

In terms of progress is also nice cause most of it features are not locked behind lunar island. Ocean is also more open to new players- you can notice messege in bottle, try to get and then u got new point of intrest on map- it's simple but design of the ocean encourages new players to explore it.

In my option caves deserve some love, like new cave plants, mobs, more unique biome features, or even new biomes to explore

But maybe i just delusional and nobody else think it's a problem. xP

 

 

[AliceShiki]

1 hour ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

In terms of progress is also nice cause most of it features are not locked behind lunar island. Ocean is also more open to new players- you can notice messege in bottle, try to get and then u got new point of intrest on map- it's simple but design of the ocean encourages new players to explore it.

... What?

Caves have lightbulbs, Ocean doesn't have lightbulbs. New players will care way way waaaaay more about Caves than about Ocean... As in, they'll enter caves, grab lightbulbs, explore a bit, get scared by the angry bunnymen and leave, and proceed to only do that in caves for the rest of their current run and the next few runs.

Meanwhile, with Ocean they'll make a boat, explore, find nothing they care about, and leave while thinking they'll never go to the ocean again.

[Ginosaji]

Slimy Salve isn't rift locked.

Yea, you'd think the only point to make it is to use it against acid rain which only occur when the shadow rift is active.

It's effect also works for normal rain in spring. It's like warly's fish cordonbleu dish but the effect is only 4 mins instead of 5.

 

So if you just want rain protection in spring while fighting some boss using a thulecite crown you can use the salve to stay dry.

[PonyOfApocalips]

11 minutes ago, Ginosaji said:

Slimy Salve isn't rift locked.

Yea, you'd think the only point to make it is to use it against acid rain which only occur when the shadow rift is active.

It's effect also works for normal rain in spring. It's like warly's fish cordonbleu dish but the effect is only 4 mins instead of 5.

 

So if you just want rain protection in spring while fighting some boss using a thulecite crown you can use the salve to stay dry.

Well i used slimy Salve as representation of acid rains- but yeah i should use something else

[Maxil20]

20 minutes ago, Ginosaji said:

It's effect also works for normal rain in spring. It's like warly's fish cordonbleu dish but the effect is only 4 mins instead of 5.

…Wait, what?

That doesn’t sound intentional (the scrapbook doesn’t mention it working on normal rain whatsoever), but that also sounds like a neat perk that kinda makes sense.

[PonyOfApocalips]

47 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

... What?

Caves have lightbulbs, Ocean doesn't have lightbulbs. New players will care way way waaaaay more about Caves than about Ocean... As in, they'll enter caves, grab lightbulbs, explore a bit, get scared by the angry bunnymen and leave, and proceed to only do that in caves for the rest of their current run and the next few runs.

Meanwhile, with Ocean they'll make a boat, explore, find nothing they care about, and leave while thinking they'll never go to the ocean again.

Totally disagree- yeah lightbulb are nice and thats why i put them at first place my map xP but you seem acting like ocean is same boring place that was when it was added. Now ocean give you jars with map to Pearl she gives you baits for fishes, later you find map to sea trusers- and even if u dont look at ocean at all you can notice saltbox in crafting menu (food preserving item wihch is really usefull for begginers), this is all beginer friendly features- last time when i played with my brother (i have 3kh in game and he had 50h) salt was one of his main goals. Ocean seems boring but only for people who regulary do bossrushes.  

Also KEELPS, keelps are super usefull for beginers 

[Ginosaji]

hm turns out i was wrong.

the salve doesn't stop regular rain.

ingame someone said that the cordonbleu would give acid rain protection. but idk anymore.

based on that i assumed that both items shared the same perk. maybe it used to be like that and got patched, who knows?

[Edible Coal]

23 minutes ago, Ginosaji said:

 

ingame someone said that the cordonbleu would give acid rain protection. but idk anymore.

 

it does, but not how u think, ur character dont take dmg from acid rain, but ur gear still do

[somethin]

2 hours ago, AliceShiki said:

Caves have lightbulbs, Ocean doesn't have lightbulbs

Skitter squids cries in the corner rn
Yes it is a horrible way to get light bulbs, but it is an option. A shizz one though.

[Milordo]

YES YES! PREACH IT BROTHER! PREEEEACCCHHH ITTTT!!!!!!!! 

YOU ARE NOT DELUSIONAL

Me and others are screaming this for too long. Too many years. We also need to remind caves are NOT ruins!!!! Caves != Ruins. They're completely 2 seperate levels. Therefore the problems are more serious. Never stop push this.

 

Btw, I know you said it on the rules but I'm sorry, I can't. You're undermining A LOT Slurtles. The more you analyze them, the more you understand how Klei in 2014 thought very well their implementation. Therefore Slurtles or their drops needs to be in the map as a good well representation of Caves. Slime salves being most importantly for Rifts, doesn't land the same!

38 minutes ago, somethin said:

Skitter squids cries in the corner rn
Yes it is a horrible way to get light bulbs, but it is an option. A shizz one though.

I appreciate two things 1) You specified that they're a horrible way to get lightbulbs 2) You pointing out skitter squids. It's a small point, but it's still a point. We need to brough all points and objective vision to these types of discussion.

Also can we add, thanks to the unbalanceness of Klei, skitter squids are far more reliable on the land, the first level of the game, then the ocean? It's embarassing.....

[WilsonHiggs]

2 hours ago, somethin said:

Skitter squids cries in the corner rn
Yes it is a horrible way to get light bulbs, but it is an option. A shizz one though.

The crabs from the moonquay island also drop lightbulbs

[DVGMedia]

Caves are kind of just a boost in resources unfortunately.  The first 3 days on a surface world can be dangerous with lots of people. No grass or twigs or flint to save a player from the night.
Caves can potentially provide that if find the flint tax. it is kind of sad that this is what caves have become. however they are kind of like mini worm holes in some places

[PonyOfApocalips]

38 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

Caves are kind of just a boost in resources unfortunately.  The first 3 days on a surface world can be dangerous with lots of people. No grass or twigs or flint to save a player from the night.
Caves can potentially provide that if find the flint tax. it is kind of sad that this is what caves have become. however they are kind of like mini worm holes in some places

Yeah and i wish they would be more- like Imagine people actually want to explore all caves not just to find archves or ruins. I feel like devs are too focused on adding more bosses to endgame than  actually improve exploration.

[WilsonHiggs]

Biomes in general, not only in the caves,  are so damn empty. There are entire huge biomes, like the savanna and some areas of the muddy biome, that only have grass/lightbulbs. Isnt fun to walk during minutes to only discover the 1000th copy of the same asset 

[PonyOfApocalips]

5 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Biomes in general, not only in the caves,  are so damn empty. There are entire huge biomes, like the savanna and some areas of the muddy biome, that only have grass/lightbulbs. Isnt fun to walk during minutes to only discover the 1000th copy of the same asset 

Yeah that's true but sunfrance has advantage of more points of intrests- you need to explore most of it to get all that you need. 

[Prinha]

39 minutes ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

Yeah and i wish they would be more- like Imagine people actually want to explore all caves not just to find archves or ruins. I feel like devs are too focused on adding more bosses to endgame than  actually improve exploration.

Cave worldgen has a large number of enormous biomes that don't have any unique and barely any useful ressources in them. For example Guano biome and mixed mushroom forests.

29 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Biomes in general, not only in the caves,  are so damn empty. There are entire huge biomes, like the savanna and some areas of the muddy biome, that only have grass/lightbulbs. Isnt fun to walk during minutes to only discover the 1000th copy of the same asset

These can't be compared to the savanna because the savanna has beefalo and large amounts of grass (which can be meaningful if you are in a grass gecko world).

The unique ressources from these biomes like mushroom spores, mushrooms (other than blue caps), guano and battalisk wings have barely any uses and those uses are fairly niche making it uninteresting to farm them in large quantities. In turn there is no reason to go to these biomes at because small amounts of these ressources can be aquired on the surface easily. (Except for the mushroom spores I guess)

Rock lobsters would be decent followers if it wasn't so painful to move them.

Interesting ressources in the caves but not the ruins:
+++ lightbulbs

++ blue caps

++ living logs (mush gnomes)

++ rabbit hutches

+ stalagmites / spilagmites

Note how you can get all of that in the blue mushforest, the lunar grotto and the muddy biome. There's always an entrance to blue mushforest which always contains the lunar grotto and directly connects to the muddy biome. And this also contains the nightmare werepig while leading to the ruins. No reason to visit any other part of the caves at all. Unless you are looking for Toadstool or specifically mining for fossil fragments I guess.

[PonyOfApocalips]

U can also get new bugnet from achives  even without ruins- that's why i mark it in post. But mostly I agree.

9 minutes ago, Prinha said:

Cave worldgen has a large number of enormous biomes that don't have any unique and barely any useful ressources in them. For example Guano biome and mixed mushroom forests.

These can't be compared to the savanna because the savanna has beefalo and large amounts of grass (which can be meaningful if you are in a grass gecko world).

The unique ressources from these biomes like mushroom spores, mushrooms (other than blue caps), guano and battalisk wings have barely any uses and those uses are fairly niche making it uninteresting to farm them in large quantities. In turn there is no reason to go to these biomes at because small amounts of these ressources can be aquired on the surface easily. (Except for the mushroom spores I guess)

Rock lobsters would be decent followers if it wasn't so painful to move them.

Interesting ressources in the caves but not the ruins:
+++ lightbulbs

++ blue caps

++ living logs (mush gnomes)

++ rabbit hutches

+ stalagmites / spilagmites

Note how you can get all of that in the blue mushforest, the lunar grotto and the muddy biome. There's always an entrance to blue mushforest which always contains the lunar grotto and directly connects to the muddy biome. And this also contains the nightmare werepig while leading to the ruins. No reason to visit any other part of the caves at all. Unless you are looking for Toadstool or specifically mining for fossil fragments I guess.

Ohhh and glowberries for moggles also xp

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Prinha said:

Cave worldgen has a large number of enormous biomes that don't have any unique and barely any useful ressources in them. For example Guano biome and mixed mushroom forests.

These can't be compared to the savanna because the savanna has beefalo and large amounts of grass (which can be meaningful if you are in a grass gecko world).

The unique ressources from these biomes like mushroom spores, mushrooms (other than blue caps), guano and battalisk wings have barely any uses and those uses are fairly niche making it uninteresting to farm them in large quantities. In turn there is no reason to go to these biomes at because small amounts of these ressources can be aquired on the surface easily. (Except for the mushroom spores I guess)

Rock lobsters would be decent followers if it wasn't so painful to move them.

Interesting ressources in the caves but not the ruins:
+++ lightbulbs

++ blue caps

++ living logs (mush gnomes)

++ rabbit hutches

+ stalagmites / spilagmites

Note how you can get all of that in the blue mushforest, the lunar grotto and the muddy biome. There's always an entrance to blue mushforest which always contains the lunar grotto and directly connects to the muddy biome. And this also contains the nightmare werepig while leading to the ruins. No reason to visit any other part of the caves at all. Unless you are looking for Toadstool or specifically mining for fossil fragments I guess.

There areas, very big areas, without even beefalos. They dont need to have something useful but some decorative sprites to dont feel empty and repetitive

Still, having only beefs and grass isnt interesting enough to fill 10 screens of just that

And outside of a 0.05% chance set piece of a fallen survivor, you wont find any surprise, once you find 1 or 2 herds you dont need to keep exploring. Also exploring feels boring since you know everything is safe 

1 hour ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

Yeah that's true but sunfrance has advantage of more points of intrests- you need to explore most of it to get all that you need. 

Agree but most of the time you explore what basically feels blank space until you reach the destination

[Walrusst]

If I'm beefalo taming I'll go to convenient blue mush tree biomes when i can just because a handful of blue mushrooms can go a LOOOOONG way in improving your survivability.

The archives are a point of interest if I'm wanda because she isn't married to the psudeoscience station like most people and while ruins rushing *is better* for her most the time, having your first few watches come to you in a relaxing low stress way is highlight appreciated. (I can do ruins stuff if I'm low mistake but its still a little stressful ngl.)

It would be interesting if there were patches of turf where you had unique cropping prospects though in the caves. Say, we could bloom eel ponds to cause lichen to spread just like it does in the ruins area, since we see lichen like substances near the toadstool eel ponds anyhow.

(Possibly have the player cultivated lichen be a tree-like thing that can grow anywhere there isn't sunlight, uses a root item as its planting source. Can still be picked like a bush but we can cut it down and dig it up to get wood and plant more.
This gives us a crop that can scale to large levels very quickly, with the only problem being that the food that comes from it is sort of garbage, but its unique that you have to plant it in shadowy/dark areas of the caves. You won't be starving, but it won't help your sanity either.)

Another idea would be if mushroom planters were cheaper to refuel in no-sunlight areas of the caves.

Since most the overworlds more or less your canvas, as its "Emptyness" mostly until you identify landmarks, world renewal points, etc etc. Part of what you can do to make the caves interesting is just to flesh out your available strategies for making interesting homes there.
Possibly make it so if a worlds a grass geckos world the caves actually have enhanced grass to give people with a distaste for a certain resources better reasons to go there when the world gen isn't to their liking. (So people can find more saplings/grass when the worlds twiggy trees/grass geckos.)

That and maybe fleshing out part of the grassy caves to fit with wilsons comment that its the kingdom of the rabbits.

[Milordo]

4 hours ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

Yeah that's true but sunfrance has advantage of more points of intrests- you need to explore most of it to get all that you need. 

3 hours ago, Prinha said:

Cave worldgen has a large number of enormous biomes that don't have any unique and barely any useful ressources in them. For example Guano biome and mixed mushroom forests.

These can't be compared to the savanna because the savanna has beefalo and large amounts of grass (which can be meaningful if you are in a grass gecko world).

The unique ressources from these biomes like mushroom spores, mushrooms (other than blue caps), guano and battalisk wings have barely any uses and those uses are fairly niche making it uninteresting to farm them in large quantities. In turn there is no reason to go to these biomes at because small amounts of these ressources can be aquired on the surface easily. (Except for the mushroom spores I guess)

Rock lobsters would be decent followers if it wasn't so painful to move them.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

3 hours ago, Prinha said:

Interesting ressources in the caves but not the ruins:
+++ lightbulbs

++ blue caps

++ living logs (mush gnomes)

++ rabbit hutches

+ stalagmites / spilagmites

+++ Slurtle Mounds

[Prinha]

5 hours ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

Ohhh and glowberries for moggles also xp

I didn't mention them because technically depth worm waves deliver glowberries to you eventually. 

 

4 hours ago, WilsonHiggs said:

There areas, very big areas, without even beefalos. They dont need to have something useful but some decorative sprites to dont feel empty and repetitive

Still, having only beefs and grass isnt interesting enough to fill 10 screens of just that

I get what you are saying. It has never bothered me personally but I can see how it would somebody else. 
I think there is still a rather huge difference between a large biome that's boring and a large biome that's not only boring but also devoid of anything useful.

To illustrate the point: Early game I'll commonly be looking for the savanna to start moving around with beefalo speed. 
In my 2,6k hours of playing DST there has never been a situation where I thought "Gosh, I wish I would find the guano biome already!" 

and when randomly moving around the map the savanna will also not bother me. Even if I have moved all beef and every grass tuft. It's a large open space with daylight that can be put to good use in various ways. In comparison when I come upon the guano biome later in the game I'll just be annoyed because it is in the way of getting somewhere else, does nothing for me, and I can't even get rid of the annoying bat caves.

That doesn't mean that I want to get rid of annoying or dangerous places per se. The caves are overall simply more annoying/dangerous than the surface world. In case of the ruins that's nicely balanced by the huge ruins loot payoff. In case of the guano biome... yeah... I haven't met anyone who would miss it. Not sure if giving guano its own purpose would improve the situation though. 

 

1 hour ago, Milordo said:

+++ Slurtle Mounds

Hu? What did I miss? Pearl gives me more broken shells than I'd ever want. Are you hunting for the Snurtle Shell Armor?

[Maxil20]

10 hours ago, Ginosaji said:

hm turns out i was wrong.

the salve doesn't stop regular rain.

You... Just Lied? You really think someone would do that? Just go on the Klei Forums (DST General Discussion) and Tell Lies?

[Cheggf]

8 hours ago, Prinha said:

Hu? What did I miss? Pearl gives me more broken shells than I'd ever want. Are you hunting for the Snurtle Shell Armor?

The snurtle armor is irreplaceable in what it does. 

[Milordo]

13 hours ago, Prinha said:

Hu? What did I miss? Pearl gives me more broken shells than I'd ever want. Are you hunting for the Snurtle Shell Armor?

Okay.

First and first, slime. Slime people, slime. Slime gives you: gunpowder and not-perishable lightbulbs function. (Little trivia slimes and gunpowder are super balanced! Neither of them tramples on each other. One of the few things in the game being completely balanced by Klei! Neat!) 

Then you have Snurtle shell armor and shelmet. Two great armors, with the latter being too damn rare that it's just a plus, not something that you are going to search but something that you will greatly appreciate if found it.

Then you have them clean your caves from minerals (moles are better yes but -->) and if you're smart you can abuse it and force them to literally poop slimes depending on the quality and quantity of the minerals.

Now there is also a healing item, which sure, you use them mainly for acid rains, so post game content, but still, a healing of 20 hp + it makes you neutral towards slurtles, like beefaloes with beefalo hat, so no annoyance for your inventory + it's not-perishable healing. The crafting is not super cheap since it uses marbles, but you're in the caves and thanks to earthquakes you can waste sometimes 1-2 marbles to craft it. 

And finally broken shells, which mind you were originally from slurtles (in fact I do NOT like this unbalance created from Klei, diminishing a point to Slurtles --> thus indirectly nerfing Caves) but having an another option, instead going in the ocean and searching bottles to trade to Pearl (which are completely RNG and have some problems), you can hunt and kill Slurtles to obtain them, plus also all the other marvelous items above ^

 

If you collect all these points with the secret knowledge of torches + watering can or fire staff + ice staff to farm Slurtles better well....As said before, you're undermining a lot Slurtles and what they provide. In the context of this post Slurtles should be number#1 on the list as they're hands down (also demonstrated it here briefly) the best well thought resource/animal/identity for Caves. You don't see a lot of people talk about Slurtles or do farms about them because a lot don't know these things, maybe don't play blind Don't Starve and thus experiment and probably most importantly, they're not meta because others things are too much unbalanced/strong like what you find 5cm after Slurtles mounds...Ruins. 

Thanks to have come to my TED talk about alien slugs. 

[readkey]

I think it is necessary to keep caves not having many resources in the beginning, since it should be a place where you need preparation to go there. And the Ruins should not be too easy to find, so the caves cannot be too small either. 
 

On the other hand, I think Klei can make the caves more interesting post rift, since most of the preparation problem should have been solved at that point. They already tried to encourage us to find the rift for the cloth and the pure horror, and now spawn masked mobs to increase the risk. I think Klei can keep doing it by, rather than making new biomes, making some of the old biomes spawn new weird mobs or plants, and provides hopefully something more than just pure horror (the cloth is a good step but we can have more).