A suspicious marble should be guaranteed to spawn next to the sculpture set piece

[Guille6785]

There are few things I think could be added to the game that would undoubtedly make the experience better for every type of player, and to be honest, I think making one of the three suspicious marbles be guaranteed to spawn next to the set piece with the sculptures (within 5-10 tiles at least) would make the game better for everyone:

-For most normal players, simply reducing the potential time that has to be spent finding the marbles by a third would help take away some of the tedium that comes with one of the least interesting parts of the game, while still requiring exploration for the other two suspicious marbles. This would also hopefully make the process of assembling the sculptures less reliant on beefalo, since a lot of people simply don't like having to saddle a beef just to use it for a couple days and then abandon it somewhere. The game has already been giving players more options for this (with Wolfgang's refresh and Wortox's skill tree giving them the ability to move heavy objects with no penalties), so giving characters who don't have these abilities a small leg up to make it more viable to move the sculptures without a beefalo (since you'd only need to move 2 instead of 3) would be nice to see.

-For completely new players, this would help remedy at least a bit the common complaints about the unintuitiveness of the Fuelweaver questline. I remember when I was a new player I was unable to put 2 and 2 together that the marbles were meant to be attached to the sculptures, since I would frequently find them hours apart, and frankly, both the knight and bishop heads barely look like what they're supposed to represent and the rook nose looks like anything but a rook nose when it's dropped on the floor, and I ultimately had to just look up what they were supposed to do. If a new player came across the sculptures, mined them, and them immediately after saw one of the suspicious marbles, they would be significantly more inclined to see if they could attach them and that would give them a tasteful clue that they're supposed to find 2 more of them, which is exactly how this kind of sidequest should be designed.

-For more experienced players, particularly those trying to do the shadow pieces on day 21 while multitasking other objectives, the sculptures are simply insufferable because you either find them all pretty quick or they spawn in the most random corners of the world imaginable, particularly in worlds with only 1 statue set piece. This would make that experience less frustrating without taking away from the fact that you have to explore to find them.

-For speedrunners and very advanced players, this would make it vastly more consistent to fight the shadow pieces before day 21, especially for characters other than Wortox and Wolfgang, without taking away any difficult aspects or infringing on how anyone else plays the game.

Spoiler

inb4 “you speedrunners are insufferable, you just want the fun taken out of the game and you think the developers should listen to your every whim!!!”

 

[Radicaljoe]

I can see it being very useful for newer players. Aside from being able to figure out what the suspicious marbles do, it would be far less daunting. A new player picks up the suspicious marble piece, immediately they drop their backpack, are moving really slowly, stripped of their hand slot. I imagine they won't want to interact with it for much longer than a minute or two. If they did maybe think about bringing the pieces together, it probably wouldn't motivate them enough to carry the rook nose halfway across the map just to check, on the off chance they are wrong and wasted 30 minutes lugging a weird rock.

[DegenerateFurry]

This isn't actually a terrible idea, especially if they also make the suspicious marbles shake like the assembled statues do during full and new moons. It's nice to see you actually considering the perspective of less experienced players for a change.

[Prinha]

I wanted to get the sketches on day 11. Rushed a beefalo and everything. Explored the entire map yet somehow found the setpiece in the last place I looked late into day 10. No chance of assembling it on time. That was very frustrating.

In general I don't have any strong feelings about this. Wouldn't mind the change but also don't care enough to advocate for it. 

[Walrusst]

Believe it or not with the last wave of people who I introduced to the game I had a funny issue where one player was killing themselves repeatedly trying to use suspicious pieces on EVERYTHING.

I MEAN EVERYTHING.
Including trying to use the rooks horn on dragonfly, an inspired effort but they were burned.

What might make sense is a skeleton set piece with an extra broken chess piece next to a corpse, a pickaxe, and the corresponding suspicious marble. With gears from one of the chess pieces having cracked open to imply the corpse was made by the shadow piece. This concisely implies everything that's needed.

[Gashzer]

Good idea.

Also a shadow "beckoner" should spawn beside the player the day of a new moon, encouraging players to follow them back to the assembled marbled pieces.

New players have no way to know they need to mine the assembled pieces during a new moon night. And it would act as a good reminder to experienced players who may not be tracking the moon cycle.

[NeoDeusMachina]

To be fair, for any new player who gets lured into assembling the statues and mining them earlier while not knowing what they're getting into is just straight up a death sentence (at least if they try to fight all three).

In theory it sounds nice, but in practice it will most likely only benefit those going for a day 1 shadow following them around until they find the other 2 pieces, so that they can do chess pieces before cycle 21. The others will not gain much out of this, if not just big scare and a (near) death experience.

(Edit: Btw, I don't mind this benefit at all. I'm just not convinced it will really benefit other players at all. This doesn't mean such feature couldn't be implemented.)

I think the more likely outcome is new players googling what they are and ending up on the wiki or some other youtube guide etc.

[WilsonHiggs]

6 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

To be fair, for any new player who gets lured into assembling the statues and mining them earlier while not knowing what they're getting into is just straight up a death sentence (at least if they try to fight all three).

In theory it sounds nice, but in practice it will most likely only benefit those going for a day 1 shadow following them around until they find the other 2 pieces, so that they can do chess pieces before cycle 21. The others will not gain much out of this, if not just big scare and a (near) death experience.

I think the more likely outcome is new players googling what they are and ending up on the wiki or some other youtube guide etc.

But i doubt a death by a summoned boss would discourage playing more to be able to beat them. It adds something to beat into the task so they can know that there is a new boss waiting for them when they improve. What could be bad is to see their efforts only rewarded by a mysterious heart and basic shadow loot and not even a statue sketch.

Atleast is how people usually work...there are others that simply would like that boss killed in one hit and would cry if they need to make a minimum effort to kill the boss

[loopuleasa]

7 hours ago, Walrusst said:

Believe it or not with the last wave of people who I introduced to the game I had a funny issue where one player was killing themselves repeatedly trying to use suspicious pieces on EVERYTHING.

I MEAN EVERYTHING.
Including trying to use the rooks horn on dragonfly, an inspired effort but they were burned.

What might make sense is a skeleton set piece with an extra broken chess piece next to a corpse, a pickaxe, and the corresponding suspicious marble. With gears from one of the chess pieces having cracked open to imply the corpse was made by the shadow piece. This concisely implies everything that's needed.

precious