Feedback about Drowning

[Milordo]

Klei one of the core aspects why the ocean is the worst, hated, horrible, others bad adjectives, thing ever is because of drowning. To recap;

• You suffer a maximum health penalty hp Changed
• You loose items randomly (unless stored on backpacks)
• You loose all your ship/ships with TONS of items and structures (if you drown after the boat has been destroyed)
• You get teleported randomly to the nearest land

I know on paper this seemed okay during all 2019-2024 but it's absolutely not. It's absolutely not. It's a big artificial difficulty spike, annoying, tedious, and others raw emotions that I can't, I literally can't describe to you on this post when going blind and/or traversing the ocean in other runs. Leading drowning being worse than death ironically. It's thanks to this (and others designs problems) that the ocean has a bad reputation.

I'm very happy that you're revisiting it, but you're missing the focal point, that's why ---> Leave the changes as they are (where you loose HP and items based on the depths of the water) AND add a new state to the game called "floating" after you drown;

When the character is in the floating state you can slowly, very slowly ""walk"" in the ocean (the visual aspect is the picture of Wilson grabbing on a plank) until you jump back on land OR a boat. In the floating state you can craft and place boats but you also rapidly gain wetness. If you loose even more hp and go to 0 hp during this state, you simply die, loose all your items on the spot and became a ghost. 

I'm just giving ideas, of course it doesn't need to be this way. The point Klei is that you must fix the teleport aspect of drowning, to alleviate the horrible painful experience of the ocean artificial difficulty.

Edited May 23, 2025 by Milordo

[Creatorofswamps]

Hmm, I've never noticed the negative effects of drowning, I don't understand what you're talking about, florp  

Spoiler

 

[Milordo]

1 minute ago, Creatorofswamps said:

Hmm, I've never noticed the negative effects of drowning, I don't understand what you're talking about, florp  

  Hide contents

 

Ahahaha is this about Wurt? Jokes aside, Wurt unfortunately is affected as well. You don't loose hp and items but you still get teleport randomly, which IS the problem. If you play with more players with a bigger ship this design flaw is more obvious. It's already horrible in a solo world.

Btw now that I think about it, we could give perks/bonus/mechanics/interactions to Wurt for the floating state. Maybe faster speed? Maybe faster crafting for placing the boat?

[BattleOzze]

The problems with the ocean are that it has little content and time-consuming to explore, with arguably mediocre to none rewards (no, i don't count lunar island). The only profitable thing in the ocean rn is monkey island, but for that you have to kill a horde of them, get cursed, probably twice, and then wait around portal for like a hour to gather enough recources and bananas to cure yourself. Honestly, hard pass from me.

Drowning is more of an icing to a cake, really, removing it doesn't change much, sadly.

[Milordo]

4 minutes ago, BattleOzze said:

The problems with the ocean are that it has little content and time-consuming to explore, with arguably mediocre to none rewards (no, i don't count lunar island). The only profitable thing in the ocean rn is monkey island, but for that you have to kill a horde of them, get cursed, probably twice, and then wait around portal for like a hour to gather enough recources and bananas to cure yourself. Honestly, hard pass from me.

Drowning is more of an icing to a cake, really, removing it doesn't change much, sadly.

Absolutely, that's why I specified on the second paragraph "(and other designs problems)".

That being said, just because other parts are broken doesn't mean we should ignore completely the others ones until we have "the toys".

Imagine, in the nearest future more ocean reworks updates and now hypothetically the level is great. New threats, new animals, new items, new rewards, new environment hazards, ecc... everything we wanted. You will die a lot, as it should be normally on Don't Starve, and while you learn all the new cool stuff, you drown. And drown. And drown. Loose all your boats, items, structures AND being teleported at random in the map.                           

I'm not proposing to remove it but to change it into a more fair and correct punishment than a random bs punishment. Again think about it, if you die in the first level of the game, the game doesn't teleport you each time in the florid postern (aka the spawn). You revive through touch stones, meat effigies, life giving amulets, specific characters items and florid postern itself if you have the easy mode activated. It does make zero sense through all the game design to cancel and remove all your progress through the teleport and already as of now it's a very BIG problem that agonize all players from all ranges of skills and should be fixed as priority. Veterans/experts ones just rush the ocean to the only 4 important spots. Plus the teleport hurts the ocean status as a level of the game because it means you need to rely on the main-land to do smaller travels from the main-land to the ocean, back to the main-land instantly each time to risk less the chances of drowning. 

 

That's why we should propose to Klei the floating state or others ideas/mechanics to fix it, exactly because Klei is tackling it right now. This drowning problem could become worse with time/updates. Btw bravo on "I don't count lunar island". 1 extra point for you. Lunar island is a separate level of the game, it's not linked with the ocean. You need the ocean to go to the lunar island but lunar island doesn't share content and designs with it. It's the same for Caves and Ruins.

[cybers2001]

Honestly, I like this idea. It would still be extremely punishing to crash a boat, but it would turn situations like staying on Crab King’s ice a tad too long and falling in the water into at least a salvageable event.

[Jakepeng99]

10 hours ago, Milordo said:

Klei one of the core aspects why the ocean is the worst, hated, horrible, others bad adjectives, thing ever is because of drowning. To recap;

• You suffer a maximum health penalty hp Changed
• You loose items randomly (unless stored on backpacks)
• You loose all your ship/ships with TONS of items and structures (if you drown after the boat has been destroyed)
• You get teleported randomly to the nearest land

I know on paper this seemed okay during all 2019-2024 but it's absolutely not. It's absolutely not. It's a big artificial difficulty spike, annoying, tedious, and others raw emotions that I can't, I literally can't describe to you on this post when going blind and/or traversing the ocean in other runs. Leading drowning being worse than death ironically. It's thanks to this (and others designs problems) that the ocean has a bad reputation.

I'm very happy that you're revisiting it, but you're missing the focal point, that's why ---> Leave the changes as they are (where you loose HP and items based on the depths of the water) AND add a new state to the game called "floating" after you drown;

When the character is in the floating state you can slowly, very slowly ""walk"" in the ocean (the visual aspect is the picture of Wilson grabbing on a plank) until you jump back on land OR a boat. In the floating state you can craft and place boats but you also rapidly gain wetness. If you loose even more hp and go to 0 hp during this state, you simply die, loose all your items on the spot and became a ghost. 

I'm just giving ideas, of course it doesn't need to be this way. The point Klei is that you must fix the teleport aspect of drowning, to alleviate the horrible painful experience of the ocean artificial difficulty.

It fixes the dumb times you glitch into water.

Wurt will swim faster and longer

[Milordo]

By talking and/or reading with friends and people of the forum, they pointed out to me a new important criticism for Klei, which is more or less linked with drowning and I thought about it.
The crafting recipe for personal floaters and boat patches needs to change.
Why?

Problem = Not respecting a Don't Starve design core and gameplay principles. When you first face new (survival for the most) threats, the game directs and offers you resources and tools to defeat those threats. For example; for winter the game offers you in the first level rabbits, beefaloes, spiders, catcoons and koalefant for clothes, and rocks for thermal stones. This principle also extends to the other levels of the game such as lanterns and miner hats for caves. Ergo, each level will have and must have resources and tools to fight the new dangers presented by the same level. This is literally what Don't Starve teaches you from the start of the game. 

And sure, some items can be used and shared between levels but a safety base of various tiers of items to ensure you can overcome such difficulties of the level must be present, otherwise it will create a super weird situation where you have to rely on other points of the game and break the rhythm of the gameplay. In fact look at that, it's exactly the situation of boat patches and soon also of personal floaters. Whenever I or others start adventuring to the ocean, we prepare in advance tons of stacks of stingers, especially in a large group of 5-6 players. However if I or we loose them, accidentally burned them or consumed too much due to our mistakes (or drowned too much thanks to the boat net code...........), we are then forced to return akwardly to the main-land and do another long refill of stingers. This shouldn't happen at all. There should be a reasource or a point in the ocean that recharges you with boat patches and boat floaters. Yes, Klei. You gave us kelp patches but frankly with how the ocean is generated and how they're not the solution but a delay for sinking, they don't much.

 

Possible Solutions:

• A) You craft them with already existing ocean items. Simple but limiting because there aren't that many, as of now, and also difficult to fit the crafting logic of Klei (mosquito sacks are required for personal floaters due to their elasticity). Still, it's an option.
• B) New added animals or structures in the ocean to provide these items. A very good example of which I go quite crazy about it and it's very simple.....two new fishes! The puffer fish and the stinger fish! The puffer fish drops a new item (or maybe he himself is required) for crafting personal floaters while the stinger fish simply drops 3 stingers. These fishes also require some minimum of sea fishing rod gear to catch them, to match the game progress of the fishing rod with the game progress of the sea. And these are just two new fishes as possible examples. It could be even new weird structures alla Don't Starve that drops mosquito sacks and stingers? Or other new animals to fight in the ocean? Klei is spoiled for choice with this one.
• C) Implement literal mosquitoes and bees on ocean biomes. Examples; bees on waterlogged biomes with simply a more feral and damp reskin compared to normal bees(?) and mosquitoes on rough ocean with sea weeds? Or mosquitoes spawning in a new swamp biome for the ocean where you can see reeds and tentacles inside the water of the biome?
• D) You don't craft them, you can only found them on the level. Tecnicalllyyy it already happens with boat patches inside sunken chests but it's not enough and they're locked behind the pinchin' winch. Unless they can be designed to be findable in great abundance without a big progression wall, this option is not very desirable.

 

And that's it. Please Klei, fix the teleport drowning and the boat patches and personal floaters crafting recipe, and the happiness percentage of people towards the ocean will increase.

[Milordo]

Maaannnn, it makes me very sad that skill trees had more time and work while far important crucial tecnical core mechanics like drowning and boat patches and personal floaters crafting recipe are not getting the love they deserve, atleast that's what I'm assuming since we had 2 weeks of silence and now out of the blue tomorrow the release of the update.   

Please Klei, are we still going to get any form of help for these problems since you have tackled them in this update? 

 

Bump.

[Milordo]

Bump 

[V2C]

I think for now we will take a look at moving you to the nearest land if you are in shallow water.

[WhackE]

3 minutes ago, V2C said:

I think for now we will take a look at moving you to the nearest land if you are in shallow water.

sounds good, thank you!

[Milordo]

3 hours ago, V2C said:

I think for now we will take a look at moving you to the nearest land if you are in shallow water.

Yeeeee thanks V2C! I'll take anything for fixing this problem! I'll wait again patiently to see how it goes and will give you feedback about it.

Thanks! This means a lot!