Caves design and identity problem

[BB Marioni]

Personally, me and my friends spend waayyy less time in the ruins than other parts of the cave. Not everyone boss rushes, so we usually stay in the caves for the entire summer. What we end up doing is fight nightmare werepig, get pillar blueprints, farm shadow rifts and inkblights. The recent cave additions actually made it quite challenging to stay in the caves, specially early game, and more so if you are not an elite DST player who can just solo all bosses.

[WilsonHiggs]

44 minutes ago, BB Marioni said:

Personally, me and my friends spend waayyy less time in the ruins than other parts of the cave. Not everyone boss rushes, so we usually stay in the caves for the entire summer. What we end up doing is fight nightmare werepig, get pillar blueprints, farm shadow rifts and inkblights. The recent cave additions actually made it quite challenging to stay in the caves, specially early game, and more so if you are not an elite DST player who can just solo all bosses.

But that is because you activate the rifts day 1 via settings. Atleast is what you suggest with your comment

Even with the rift content there isnt much to do in the caves and i dont think that we should consider game settings to make suggestions for the base game.... would be like saying "forests have so much pigs and trees " while you play with those in 'tons'...

[BB Marioni]

1 minute ago, WilsonHiggs said:

But that is because you activate the rifts day 1 via settings. Atleast is what you suggest with your comment

Even with the rift content there isnt much to do in the caves and i dont think that we should consider game settings to make suggestions for the base game.... would be like saying "forests have so much pigs and trees " while you play with those in 'tons'...

Even if you do not activate rifts on day 1, which honestly everyone should, people who rush ruins, will activate rifts right after anyway, and rift content is not ruins content. Also we normally don't even touch rift content on our first summer as we just explore the cave and build base essentials

[PonyOfApocalips]

5 hours ago, readkey said:

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). 

Ruins are super easy to find if u know how to do it. And i think we shoudn't be punished from exploring more than ruins in first days- It would be much coller if we could find something usefull on batilisk biome or we get some diversity between muschroom biomes. Most people who never rushed ruins dont actually spend their time to explore caves cause they find it boring- and didn't see any unique resorces from them in their crafting menu. The whole gameplay now is skip cave to rush ruins, and it could be- explore caves for unique resorces and maybe you decide go to rush ruins if u find any. 

[Dingle]

Caves needs more stuff like the lunar mushroom forest and Archives.

More bosses outside of ruins than Toadstool would have been nice. I was really disappointed that the Great Depths Worm wasn't a 20 day respawn boss in the Cave Swamps or something. The devs could have had it drop a nightberry tree seed or a plantable big glowberry plant in addition to its other loot, and it would have been great.

Same thing for making the Rictus be something that replaces the trio. A real wasted opportunity to have a new cave POI.

The last caves update could have breathed new life into the caves a little, with just slight design changes.

[Wawchik]

6 hours ago, BB Marioni said:

Personally, me and my friends spend waayyy less time in the ruins than other parts of the cave. Not everyone boss rushes, so we usually stay in the caves for the entire summer. What we end up doing is fight nightmare werepig, get pillar blueprints, farm shadow rifts and inkblights. The recent cave additions actually made it quite challenging to stay in the caves, specially early game, and more so if you are not an elite DST player who can just solo all bosses.

But all of that is locked behind ruins

[Milordo]

27 minutes ago, readkey said:

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.

MEGA AGREED, in terms of progression. Always thought that Caves should be locked a bit harder than needing just a pickaxe and Ruins should be locked even a lot harder. Just some walls of progression to not let people wander there, have some sense of accomplishment and progression + making caves more important since you need them to unlock Ruins (instead of being something in the way...) but not too hard so people can explore it at the right time and not forcefully hours later. Then should be mirrored for ocean and lunar island too (with a good new generation for ocean...).  

[kehun]

12 minutes ago, Dingle said:

More bosses outside of ruins than Toadstool would have been nice. I was really disappointed that the Great Depths Worm wasn't a 20 day respawn boss in the Cave Swamps or something. The devs could have had it drop a nightberry tree seed or a plantable big glowberry plant in addition to its other loot, and it would have been great.

Yeaah absolutely agree about great depths worm boss i would really like a better loot from it i was thinking about some kind of helmet with lightbulb (Eye mask but with light something like that) i think this boss is one of the worst along with rabbit king...

[Milordo]

Just now, kehun said:

Yeaah absolutely agree about great depths worm boss i would really like a better loot from it i was thinking about some kind of helmet with lightbulb (Eye mask but with light something like that) i think this boss is one of the worst along with rabbit king...

A good portion of: bones, flint, rocks, nitre, monster meat, gold, broken shells, lightbulbs and guano (these are flavours okay), tentacle spots, glow berries, red gems, blue gems, purple gems, green gems, orange gems, yellow gems, heckin thulecite!, fossils and dessicated tentacle and bent spork (for some reason..?) = bad?!?! All of this??? ........................

Ooookayy xD

[Wawchik]

21 minutes ago, Milordo said:

A good portion of: bones, flint, rocks, nitre, monster meat, gold, broken shells, lightbulbs and guano (these are flavours okay), tentacle spots, glow berries, red gems, blue gems, purple gems, green gems, orange gems, yellow gems, heckin thulecite!, fossils and dessicated tentacle and bent spork (for some reason..?) = bad?!?! All of this??? ........................

Ooookayy xD

You don't even need all of that when you encounter it

[Cheggf]

7 hours ago, readkey said:

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. 

Ironically because of resource scarcity you need more preparation to go to the caves than you do to go to the ruins. The ruins have a bunch of resources there that you can use to survive. Lichen, bananas, morsels, monster meat, weapons, armor, light from bulbs and magi. Basically the only thing it doesn't have is grass and twigs. You can literally rush into the ruins with nothing but a torch and use the resources you obtain from the ruins to clear the ruins. I'm not even sure if it's an exaggeration to say that surviving in the caves with nothing but what you find in the caves is harder than clearing the ruins with nothing but what you find in the ruins.

I don't think this disparity makes sense. There shouldn't be any world where it's even up for debate on if being in the ruins is easier than being in the caves. It should be inarguable, being in the caves should be easier than being in the ruins. 

[kehun]

39 minutes ago, Milordo said:

A good portion of: bones, flint, rocks, nitre, monster meat, gold, broken shells, lightbulbs and guano (these are flavours okay), tentacle spots, glow berries, red gems, blue gems, purple gems, green gems, orange gems, yellow gems, heckin thulecite!, fossils and dessicated tentacle and bent spork (for some reason..?) = bad?!?! All of this??? ........................

Ooookayy xD

I have no idea if this is a 100% serious comment but im gonna answer 

By the time you're gonna encounter this boss you will have probably whole world cleared especially ruins (especially that every single item that this boss drops you can farm in more effective ways and more cheaper. Literally every single item from this drop is useless even fossils that you will get from cave spider den (fossils from this boss are only in like 5% to drop to good luck with this) 

Edit: Fossils, thulecite, gems have only 0,85% 

The only reason to fight this boss is probably ornament from winter feasts event, figure sketch or if you never had this fight before and you just want to fight with new boss to have some new expierence 

[Milordo]

26 minutes ago, Wawchik said:

You don't even need all of that when you encounter it

You don't want to progress to the game? Okay, I guess. No judging if you wanna stay stuck in the game. 

22 minutes ago, kehun said:

I have no idea if this is a 100% serious comment but im gonna answer 

By the time you're gonna encounter this boss you will have probably whole world cleared especially ruins (especially that every single item that this boss drops you can farm in more effective ways and more cheaper. Literally every single item from this drop is useless even fossils that you will get from cave spider den (fossils from this boss are only in like 5% to drop to good luck with this) 

It is 100% dead serious. 

1) You don't have experience playing with groups of 4-5-or max 6 people, judging it by your comment. These resources get wasted immediately and if the group wants to experience and have fun to the content they access, big worm is a good (albeit random) supply. 2) Ruins are pure rng. Who said you'll have 100% all gems in a balanced weight? The chances are not slim. Therefore you have after only Dragonfly and Ancient fuelweaver, the latter being extremely difficult 3) You really are gonna refuse some free thulecite? Really? Really? Really?

I'm not stating that his loot is the most gamebreaking thing ever, but it is annoying seeing sometimes this random slander to his loot as if it is garbage when it's completely not (and I, together with the community, have created this loot, since small trivia, without me you would have today a boss dropping only 40 monster meats and 40 bone shards...). Having a literal slot machine coming at me, rewarding me also with 40 rocks, 40 flints or 40 nitre through an interesting medium difficult fight, I'll take it anyday.

The only thing that I agree, that diminish all my point, is the rng spawn mechanic. After the fix, I think we still need more practise and time to have a final judge, but I'm starting to get bothered that at my second winter, full year and half in the caves run, no sight of wormy boi.  

[Wawchik]

9 minutes ago, Milordo said:

You don't want to progress to the game? Okay, I guess. No judging if you wanna stay stuck in the game. 

This is literally the least progression-tied boss

9 minutes ago, Milordo said:

1) You don't have experience playing with groups of 4-5-or max 6 people, judging it by your comment. These resources get wasted immediately and if the group wants to experience and have fun to the content they access, big worm is a good (albeit random) supply. 2) Ruins are pure rng. Who said you'll have 100% all gems in a balanced weight? The chances are not slim. Therefore you have after only Dragonfly and Ancient fuelweaver, the latter being extremely difficult 3) You really are gonna refuse some free thulecite? Really? Really? Really?

Have you ever heard about killing ancient fuel weaver? And I'm pretty sure the entirety of ruins have more than enough gems to craft everything you need

It's great that you have fun fighting the thing but it doesn't make it more useful 

13 minutes ago, Milordo said:

(and I, together with the community, have created this loot, since small trivia, without me you would have today a boss dropping only 40 monster meats and 40 bone shards...). 

You did a bad job then, cuz not much changed

14 minutes ago, Milordo said:

 Having a literal slot machine coming at me, rewarding me also with 40 rocks, 40 flints or 40 nitre through an interesting medium difficult fight, I'll take it anyday.

This is just laughable reward for waiting 200 days

[QuboD]

20 minutes ago, Milordo said:

2) Ruins are pure rng. Who said you'll have 100% all gems in a balanced weight? The chances are not slim. Therefore you have after only Dragonfly and Ancient fuelweaver, the latter being extremely difficult 3) You really are gonna refuse some free thulecite? Really? Really? Really?

Oh yeah, this loot changed my life, thanks you very big death worm 

[Waywarbler]

16 minutes ago, QuboD said:

Oh yeah, this loot changed my life, thanks you very big death worm 

For a second I thought you were just extraordinarily unlucky until I saw you only got 1 glow berry.

Are you sure this picture isn't outdated? Because this seems like its loot pool from the beta.

[QuboD]

6 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

For a second I thought you were just extraordinarily unlucky until I saw you only got 1 glow berry.

Are you sure this picture isn't outdated? Because this seems like its loot pool from the beta.

This is Ground Chest Mod, shows items that lie on the ground. This is not his whole pool of drop

[Milordo]

37 minutes ago, Wawchik said:

This is literally the least progression-tied boss

Have you ever heard about killing ancient fuel weaver? And I'm pretty sure the entirety of ruins have more than enough gems to craft everything you need

It's great that you have fun fighting the thing but it doesn't make it more useful 

You did a bad job then, cuz not much changed

This is just laughable reward for waiting 200 days

1) You didn't understand what I meant before, it's okay.

2) I wrote it, it's there. Ancient fuelweaver, albeit extremely difficult. Also not exactly a good thinking "Ah yes, let me finish the game with the final boss to obtain the same drops...?" unless you're megabasing, in a rushing run or normal run this option is invalid. The "I'm pretty sure" shows me, you don't have that much experience in the game....Ruins don't have enough gems never and ever. They're completely random, meaning you can come out with only 2 green gems, 2 orange gems, ecc... and never and ever have enough with a group of 4-5-6 players!!!!!! I wrote it! It's there again! Ruins were control + c, control + v from original Don't Starve. They have max 2, maybbeeee 3 (and it's a stretch due to the drunk generation) players resources capacity. 

3) It does. Why you refuse free items??? I don't get it, zero reasons behind. I would only get you if it was only bone shards, lightbulbs or literal crap. 

4) Explain the bad job. No really explain. As I'm an official Klei developer xD My feedback was more of it. Klei then decided and choosed. 

5) I expressed myself bad. I don't mean you wait 200 days for this. I said it again, it's cool to have sometimes these rewards, especially IF in groups. 

30 minutes ago, QuboD said:

Oh yeah, this loot changed my life, thanks you very big death worm 

2-3 great depth worms. You tell me.

@Waywarbler In fact it was disinformation. 

[QuboD]

11 minutes ago, Milordo said:

2-3 great depth worms. You tell me.

oh 2-3 worm nice.

 What period of waiting for them? 60 years?

[Wawchik]

27 minutes ago, Milordo said:

1) You didn't understand what I meant before, it's okay.

 

1 hour ago, Milordo said:

You don't want to progress to the game? Okay, I guess. No judging if you wanna stay stuck in the game. 

What was I supposed to understand here? I think it's pretty obvious you just tried to ragebait me

27 minutes ago, Milordo said:

2) I wrote it, it's there. Ancient fuelweaver, albeit extremely difficult. Also not exactly a good thinking "Ah yes, let me finish the game with the final boss to obtain the same drops...?" unless you're megabasing, in a rushing run or normal run this option is invalid. The "I'm pretty sure" shows me, you don't have that much experience in the game....Ruins don't have enough gems never and ever. They're completely random, meaning you can come out with only 2 green gems, 2 orange gems, ecc... and never and ever have enough with a group of 4-5-6 players!!!!!! I wrote it! It's there again! Ruins were control + c, control + v from original Don't Starve. They have max 2, maybbeeee 3 (and it's a stretch due to the drunk generation) players resources capacity. 

Oh wow, so 4-5 people can't kill fuel weaver? And did you just call regenerating the whole ruins invalid, while trying to justify killing a boss that takes 100~ days to spawn normally? So people do kill great depths worm in a normal run?

And no, ruins don't spawn with only 2 gems of a kind, that's extremely rare, because even in a ruins rush you can consistently get every gem and sometimes even extra

And what a group of players need? Maybe 1 star caller for each player and a mag, 1 deconstruction staff, everything else is optional and not that hard to make either (nightmare fuel is farmable and there's tons of thulicite everywhere in the ruins)

27 minutes ago, Milordo said:

3) It does. Why you refuse free items??? I don't get it, zero reasons behind. I would only get you if it was only bone shards, lightbulbs or literal crap. 

4) Explain the bad job. No really explain. As I'm an official Klei developer xD My feedback was more of it. Klei then decided and choosed. 

5) I expressed myself bad. I don't mean you wait 200 days for this. I said it again, it's cool to have sometimes these rewards, especially IF in groups. 

2-3 great depth worms. You tell me.

@Waywarbler In fact it was disinformation. 

3) Uhm, no it does not

4) It was more of a joke, because you make it seem like you "saved" the boss from being useless, when in reality, it's practically the same

5) you either wait really long in caves for it to spawn or get (un)lucky and get it randomly when doing something in caves, so I think 200 days is pretty accurate 

2-3? What do you mean 2-3? And yeah, that's just more waiting and still most of this stuff you can get easily in other ways and at this stage of the game you probably won't even need

Please, can you finally understand that this boss doesn't have good drops, it's not supposed to be hunted or smth, it's a just a challenge boss that I think does it's job well enough

[Milordo]

37 minutes ago, Wawchik said:

What was I supposed to understand here? I think it's pretty obvious you just tried to ragebait me

Oh wow, so 4-5 people can't kill fuel weaver? And did you just call regenerating the whole ruins invalid, while trying to justify killing a boss that takes 100~ days to spawn normally? So people do kill great depths worm in a normal run?

And no, ruins don't spawn with only 2 gems of a kind, that's extremely rare, because even in a ruins rush you can consistently get every gem and sometimes even extra

And what a group of players need? Maybe 1 star caller for each player and a mag, 1 deconstruction staff, everything else is optional and not that hard to make either (nightmare fuel is farmable and there's tons of thulicite everywhere in the ruins)

3) Uhm, no it does not

4) It was more of a joke, because you make it seem like you "saved" the boss from being useless, when in reality, it's practically the same

5) you either wait really long in caves for it to spawn or get (un)lucky and get it randomly when doing something in caves, so I think 200 days is pretty accurate 

2-3? What do you mean 2-3? And yeah, that's just more waiting and still most of this stuff you can get easily in other ways and at this stage of the game you probably won't even need

Please, can you finally understand that this boss doesn't have good drops, it's not supposed to be hunted or smth, it's a just a challenge boss that I think does it's job well enough

52 minutes ago, QuboD said:

oh 2-3 worm nice.

 What period of waiting for them? 60 years?

You ragebait me that you don't need gems, thulecite, minerals in general. Your words, not mine. Then I don't understand at all your anger in this post. I'm not trying to justifying anything and I think I'm talking to a wall. Ancient Fuelweaver is the end. If you do a normal run or rush you don't care that much regenerating ruins. Maybe if you do Rifts (which are incomplete and a lot of people don't want do it). Maybe if you're megabasing. Maybe if you still do want to continue but it all depends. I'm not justifying anything. Never said anything about a group of people versus Ancient fuelweaver, don't put words where I didn't said. Then Great depth worm can spawn on day 30-35-40 and so on, so who knows, maybe a group of people can kill him, or some player alone. But I guess from your wording day 30-45 is already late for you rushing isn't it?

I don't want to respond to all the ruins stuff, especially on the group part. If you don't want to discuss with me, being rude and listen to someone with more hours/experience, I will not repeat myself. Only kehun understood. You still all didn't respond me why you don't want extra basic and special items such as thulecite and gems in your run. And I already stated about the respawn timer. Reading text comprehension.

The verdict is Great Depth worm has good, not excellent, random drops. Probably need some tunements on spawning.  

EDIT: The drops change made by me, were made thanks to the community that wanted these changes. A lot of people requested for these and made excellent discussions with critical thinking and points. Something that you aren't showing.

[Wawchik]

57 minutes ago, Milordo said:

But I guess from your wording day 30-45 is already late for you rushing isn't it?

1) yes it is

2) it's called rushing for a reason

3) he doesn't spawn that early.

[WilsonHiggs]

12 hours ago, Milordo said:

MEGA AGREED, in terms of progression. Always thought that Caves should be locked a bit harder than needing just a pickaxe and Ruins should be locked even a lot harder. Just some walls of progression to not let people wander there, have some sense of accomplishment and progression + making caves more important since you need them to unlock Ruins (instead of being something in the way...) but not too hard so people can explore it at the right time and not forcefully hours later. Then should be mirrored for ocean and lunar island too (with a good new generation for ocean...).  

The fun of this game is that, before the rift content, there were no real lineal progression. You could rush whatever you want day 1 except seasonal stuff

[Milordo]

24 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

The fun of this game is that, before the rift content, there were no real lineal progression. You could rush whatever you want day 1 except seasonal stuff

I specificed not too hard. Don't worry, you could still rush whatever you want day 1 if you know what to do with my proposal. Rushing should not be the base to balance and design the game around it. 

[WilsonHiggs]

21 minutes ago, Milordo said:

. Rushing should not be the base to balance and design the game around it. 

Agree, what i mean is that there shouldn't be articial lockers to make content be only experience for some arbitrary measurement. Making ruins harder wouldnt be bad

What i don't like is the tendency of other sandbox which reduce the freedom, ironically when kinda goes against the sandbox meaning, by needing X level or Z tier to access some content 

They could also, instead of wasting resources in the best area of the caves (and top in the game), new biomes harder than the ruins with cool loot.