maybe hot take: void/brightshade repair kits should get reworked

[aidancode]

In DST, nothing is free. Weapons and armor especially tend to be relatively hard to come by. I'm sure I'm not the only one who distinctly remembers worlds where I used too much pigskin and couldn't use football helmets, or found myself basing in or near a swamp and having enough tentacle spikes to never need a ham bat. One of my favorite parts of the variety DST provides is that it makes it so different weapons are going to be your best bet in different situations. There's the debate between the ham bat, tentacle spike, shield of terror, and dark sword. All 4 have tons of fans. All 4 have people saying that their favorite is clearly the best. I absolutely love these kinds of decisions that people get to feel passionate about and really shape their playthroughs, in a way. The same goes for armor, there's tons of different types available, and each requires different resources.

 

At the end of the day, durability defines choice when it comes to weapons and armors. The most iconic weapon in the game reached its status by having a totally unique durability system! So... why did we throw that out with the rift gear?

 

Just to be clear, I'm NOT saying void and brightshade repair kits are free, but they certainly aren't challenges to amass. The reason the durability aspect of the 4 midgame weapons is important isn't based on how long it takes to gather the resource necessary, its the availability of that resource. Ham bats require meat and pigskin. Great early game and in spring after a moose goose, but if you don't have a stable meat supply you'll find yourself with a spoiled weapon. Tentacle spikes are great and can often just be found lying around, but they don't last forever and eventually your supply will dry up. The shield is quite difficult to get, and it can break if you're not careful and get hit too much. And the dark sword... is honestly pretty cheap so it doesn't apply the same. This durability problem is the same reason the thulecite club isn't very strong - it's just too expensive to make a lot of.

 

On the other hand, there is never a question of whether you will be able to get pure horror/brilliance, brightshade husks, and tatters. Their source is easily obtainable (once you get some gear), infinitely respawning, and very easy to deal with once you get your first set of gear. If the intention is to make an armor and tool set that rarely breaks for endgame base builders, then I guess this is okay, but consider that it leads to players purely considering raw power instead of the versatility of weapons.

 

What I propose: I think it would be okay to limit the amount of repair kits that can be made at a time. One potential solution would be to limit the rate at which the brightsmithy and shadow plinth can be used. So, you can only craft each item once before that craft goes on a day long cooldown. Ultra late game players can get around this by making multiple rift crafting stations to use when one goes on cooldown, but it would just provide a little more meaning to durability.

 

Did I just ramble for several paragraphs about why I think dst should add a cooldown to two crafting stations, the most insane idea since adding misery toadstool? yes. Is this the best solution? I have no idea it's just the best I got. I like the idea in games of sometimes locking powerful stuff behind a grind or careful resource management rather than a specific boss. But this idea would definitely make warbis armor better in comparison since it wouldnt sink into the oh-so-precious brightshade repair kits you probably want to use on the other stuff. This would also slow down the pace of the rifts a bit which I think it really needs.

[Well-met]

Putting up with rifts should let you have a permanent dark sword or log suit, don't really see the issue.

[DVGMedia]

I think the main problem is that these items are actually supposed to be disposable. As things get upgraded.

These items are only basic gear in the eyes of whats planned ahead. They are not darkswords but instead a spear and an axe.

[Well-met]

9 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

These items are only basic gear in the eyes of whats planned ahead.

please no more of this "let them cook" mindset. Brightshade stuff is already two full years old. 

They're finishing the lunar side with a boss and then they'll put some more bosses for the shadow side and then the RoT update model is probably getting shelved.

[Milordo]

30 minutes ago, Well-met said:

please no more of this "let them cook" mindset. Brightshade stuff is already two full years old. 

To make devil's advocate, I don't think DVGmedia meant that (especially after knowning his positions and opinions).

He meant what Klei literally said at the start of Rifts content. No really, no joking. Full terraria mode or whatever other tons of videogames already do. It (was?)'s supposed that you would upgrade the existing gear with better gear that we would have in future Rift content (which probably is just numbers....eugh lame). If you all forgot about this, we're very much "cooked" 

[GrapeVruit]

7 minutes ago, Milordo said:

To make devil's advocate, I don't think DVGmedia meant that (especially after knowning his positions and opinions).

He meant what Klei literally said at the start of Rifts content. No really, no joking. Full terraria mode or whatever other tons of videogames already do. It (was?)'s supposed that you would upgrade the existing gear with better gear that we would have in future Rift content (which probably is just numbers....eugh lame). If you all forgot about this, we're very much "cooked" 

Can't believe this was over 2 years ago and we STILL haven't gotten anything better. With how half-baked everything feels, I fear they might just scrap the rifts all together come the next arc.

[Maxil20]

I feel like I am going mildly insane at people talking about weapon variety or the like. In most of my DST experiences, including my Megabase world pre rifts, my weapon of choice is just the ham bat, and only the ham bat. That weapon carried me through well over 10K days on my base world alone, and countless other servers. 

Most players picked a reliably accessible weapon and stuck with it. The dark sword and ham bat in particular were the main choices because their materials were easy enough to gather and stockpile, they could be made anywhere, and they didn't have any noteworthy quirks that impacted using the weapon a significant amount. I never experienced any extreme struggles or the like when farming mats. I just kinda did it and I was set for hundreds of days.

Compare this to something like the Thulecite Club, which can* be* Stronger* than a dark sword

*The target needs to be slow/preferably stay still so the tentacles can hit, and keep in mind they will only hit twice
*The weapon practically necessitates the use of a construction amulet for bulk crafting
*The weapon can't be prototyped so you need to head to Cave Antarctica every single time you want to craft more

All this for a weapon that might, with the Keyworld being MIGHT, Outpreform a dark sword in optimal circumstances, and even then doesn't even go above 10% of a dark sword's damage on average. It's faster to just attack the enemy a few more times with a slightly weaker weapon than go allllll the way to the ruins and craft comparably expensive clubs.

The only weapons that kinda came close were the shield of terror and the glass cutter. The shield has the weakness of breaking if you don't constantly micromanage the heck out of it, and the glass cutter is moreso a complete accident since the main decor I use on my world, moondials, ended up being my by far best source of moon shards in my world by an exceptional amount (I have amassed hundreds of thousands of shards for those alone), and the cost pretty much only became a board to make. Even then, cutters need the orb to be made anywhere, which meant carrying them to and from the caves was a pain, all for an experience that didn't really differ too much from using a ham bat, which I ended up going back to.

The rift weapons aren't an overwhelmingly different approach. You gather mats to craft the weapons and armor, and then you make repair kits to maintain them. I stated this before, but this isn't really too different compared to having a bundle of meat/pigskin/rope/twigs to craft new hambats and football helms on demand when needed. You still will drain resources and you will need setups to stockpile the resources, the same of which could be done prior for just about any other weapon, people just bolted to 2 since they were the most consistent/bang for your buck.

 

1 hour ago, Milordo said:

He meant what Klei literally said at the start of Rifts content. No really, no joking. Full terraria mode or whatever other tons of videogames already do. It (was?)'s supposed that you would upgrade the existing gear with better gear that we would have in future Rift content (which probably is just numbers....eugh lame). If you all forgot about this, we're very much "cooked" 

...where?

I looked a bit, and my best bet of what you were referring to was this post talking about Taking Root's update. Joe was talking about how we can't see the "Bigger Picture" because shadow rifts hadn't been implemented yet, and there was no real incentive to utilize the rift gear outside of rift encounters, which by extension made it so nobody wanted to deal with rifts because they were all risk for no reward, which is also why they added the Wagstaff shard feature. Nowhere does it talk about how you upgrade existing gear in the future. It was a common community speculation, but I don't think the devs ever said definitively that they would do that.
 

1 hour ago, GrapeVruit said:

With how half-baked everything feels, I fear they might just scrap the rifts all together come the next arc.

I highly doubt they would do something like that. I was thinking something Similar to ROT's ocean where we randomly get bits of content after the arc completes as they focus on something else. The only time I can remember something getting entirely scrapped outside of beta content was Disease, which was universally hated. Rifts by comparison have Decent merits (They are not perfect, but they are not horrible either), and I would find it very bizzare if they just shoved it to the side when there's a lot of aspects people are alright with. My only real gripe is how they handle world options with various rift features, since there are still a lot of options you can't toggle without outright disabling the lunar/shadow rifts entirely.

[xhyom]

52 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

this post

I'm laughing so hard at how unpretentiously funny this is nowadays. Seriously, the date, the way he admits the update is weak, but just you wait! And then the update from 2 years ago is basically the current arc, like it's literally what we have now, what changed between that weak update and where we are currently in the timeline was like 3 boss variants, the update that Klei called WEAK is still the topic, it's still the starting point to something that never came. Two years at the starting point.
Bigger picture

[xhyom]

18 minutes ago, milsonmeow said:

At this rate, we shouldn't even have expectations of what Klei been brainstorming cuz otherwise we just been set up for further disappointment.

The thing is I'm still excited for what they wrote about the second part after the boss, I don't learn.

7 minutes ago, Wraif said:

If that's what it takes to be less cynical in general, sure.

Ok sure, don't care, leave me alone, defend Klei in peace, you don't need to respond below what I say without quoting, they have already disappointed, they still disappointing and I will continue to think that this will happen until they prove otherwise. Them talking about bigger picture and then delivering absolutely nothing in two years is not my fault, and me talking about it is not toxicity.

[cropo]

3 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel like I am going mildly insane at people talking about weapon variety or the like. In most of my DST experiences, including my Megabase world pre rifts, my weapon of choice is just the ham bat, and only the ham bat. That weapon carried me through well over 10K days on my base world alone, and countless other servers.

A lot of it is nostalgia imo. Back then when we were all new there genuinely was weapon variety and opportunity costs associated with it. What made the Thulecite club special was that it had high damage, movement speed, a special attack, and did NOT have a sanity aura like the Dark Sword did. Before bundling wrap and the general survival knowledge we have compared to back then the Ham Bat was a huge ask due to requiring pig-skin(people weren't aware of forcefully transforming pigs) and meat which you would presumably rather eat to not starve. Likewise a weapon I strongly preferred back in the day was the tentacle spike, it was an upgrade to the spear and did not have the costs that a Dark Sword or Ham Bat had.


But now that we know better a lot of the weapons have lost their purpose and are not worth the hassle to maintain. At least in solo Don't Starve you could more easily farm Thulecite clubs with the brain of thought and Hamlet content.

[Milordo]

6 hours ago, Wraif said:

With how ominous and mysterious they said their plans are come September at the end of the arc, I'm honestly expecting something drastic, to the point where they might just do that, but maybe keep as much of the art and animation as possible and implement them elsewhere, since that'd be a lot of work wasted otherwise. 

Alternatively, they might do something else drastic like scrapping/overhauling skill trees or how they function, or reworking/rebalancing all the base content. 

You know what? I would be very down if that's the case and very happy. 

5 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

--snip--

Ok first, about the hambat and dark sword. That's what we call unbalanced situation my friend and why you stick to those weapons. If the game wouldn't have much problems at balance you would switch periodically to other weapons.

Second, about the rift gear upgrade stuff, I assure you 100% they said it. Search for livestreams instead. Livestreams of that period and you will find what they talked it there. I would search it for you but I'm very occupied at work and stuff. Update me if you find it.

Then, I don't agree particulary with the Joe thing "because shadow rifts hadn't been implemented yet" it could be a bit true but the context there is also about the first big errors Klei made with Rifts during that patch and I remember how the community reacted that time. @xhyom added other considerations.

3 hours ago, Wraif said:

@Maxil20 I didn't want to say it, but this is eerily similar to the Wendy Incident in the last beta, where some people took a dev's word too seriously and ran with it as an excuse to be toxic.

Obviously this instance isn't nearly as bad, but I'm afraid something similar might break out.

What the hell are you talking about it. Where do you saw this movie. Nobody here is toxic. Stop it with the toxic positivity. People here are righteously fed up with how Klei works and manages sometimes the game. You're probably new to this thing.

3 hours ago, milsonmeow said:

At this rate, we shouldn't even have expectations of what Klei been brainstorming cuz otherwise we just been set up for further disappointment.

Yup, keep lower your expectations.

Edited June 3, 2025 by Milordo

[Cruvimaster]

8 hours ago, aidancode said:

In DST, nothing is free. Weapons and armor especially tend to be relatively hard to come by. I'm sure I'm not the only one who distinctly remembers worlds where I used too much pigskin and couldn't use football helmets, or found myself basing in or near a swamp and having enough tentacle spikes to never need a ham bat.

The biggest "problems" of DST have always been the Ham Bat and Football Helmet. They are cheap items, made in the first days of the game, and that solve all the classic bosses. People used the Ham Bat on day 3, day 300 and day 3000 of their worlds. No other weapon or armor made sense, since all monsters could be eliminated with this combination (AFW would be the only exception, perhaps).

How could Klei encourage players not to use only these items? The developers created the planar system.

The new weapons and armor are repairable and that's great. And the cost of these repairs is ok for me.

When you play alone and have some combat experience (so you don't get hit by enemies so much), it's natural to have resources left over to create new kits. However, when there are more players, the scenario can be different. You can't control the gameplay of other players, and they can quickly consume everything in the base. Imagine this on public servers.

I remember once playing with another person with little experience (she only knew how to press F against any monster) in an old world of mine. Within a few days of the world, I realized that we were simply running out of resources to make the Brightshade Repair Kit.

That said, I don't see any need for a rework.

Edited June 3, 2025 by Cruvimaster

[cybers2001]

12 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Most players picked a reliably accessible weapon and stuck with it. The dark sword and ham bat in particular were the main choices because their materials were easy enough to gather and stockpile, they could be made anywhere, and they didn't have any noteworthy quirks that impacted using the weapon a significant amount. I never experienced any extreme struggles or the like when farming mats. I just kinda did it and I was set for hundreds of days.

Tentacle spikes are the DST equivalent of madcatz controllers. They are for giving to your friends that casually visit your world occasionally.

13 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I looked a bit, and my best bet of what you were referring to was this post talking about Taking Root's update. Joe was talking about how we can't see the "Bigger Picture" because shadow rifts hadn't been implemented yet, and there was no real incentive to utilize the rift gear outside of rift encounters, which by extension made it so nobody wanted to deal with rifts because they were all risk for no reward, which is also why they added the Wagstaff shard feature. Nowhere does it talk about how you upgrade existing gear in the future. It was a common community speculation, but I don't think the devs ever said definitively that they would do that.

I don't remember where I read it, but I do recall JoeW stating that the brightshade sword and shadow scythe were meant to be the introductory planar weapons, and we would get progressively better ones later on. I suppose you could argue we got that on the shadow side with the Maul.

12 hours ago, xhyom said:

I'm laughing so hard at how unpretentiously funny this is nowadays. Seriously, the date, the way he admits the update is weak, but just you wait! And then the update from 2 years ago is basically the current arc, like it's literally what we have now, what changed between that weak update and where we are currently in the timeline was like 3 boss variants, the update that Klei called WEAK is still the topic, it's still the starting point to something that never came. Two years at the starting point.
Bigger picture

Funny enough, my post from that thread still seems relevant.

Edited June 3, 2025 by cybers2001

[Jakepeng99]

18 hours ago, aidancode said:

In DST, nothing is free. Weapons and armor especially tend to be relatively hard to come by. I'm sure I'm not the only one who distinctly remembers worlds where I used too much pigskin and couldn't use football helmets, or found myself basing in or near a swamp and having enough tentacle spikes to never need a ham bat. One of my favorite parts of the variety DST provides is that it makes it so different weapons are going to be your best bet in different situations. There's the debate between the ham bat, tentacle spike, shield of terror, and dark sword. All 4 have tons of fans. All 4 have people saying that their favorite is clearly the best. I absolutely love these kinds of decisions that people get to feel passionate about and really shape their playthroughs, in a way. The same goes for armor, there's tons of different types available, and each requires different resources.

 

At the end of the day, durability defines choice when it comes to weapons and armors. The most iconic weapon in the game reached its status by having a totally unique durability system! So... why did we throw that out with the rift gear?

 

Just to be clear, I'm NOT saying void and brightshade repair kits are free, but they certainly aren't challenges to amass. The reason the durability aspect of the 4 midgame weapons is important isn't based on how long it takes to gather the resource necessary, its the availability of that resource. Ham bats require meat and pigskin. Great early game and in spring after a moose goose, but if you don't have a stable meat supply you'll find yourself with a spoiled weapon. Tentacle spikes are great and can often just be found lying around, but they don't last forever and eventually your supply will dry up. The shield is quite difficult to get, and it can break if you're not careful and get hit too much. And the dark sword... is honestly pretty cheap so it doesn't apply the same. This durability problem is the same reason the thulecite club isn't very strong - it's just too expensive to make a lot of.

 

On the other hand, there is never a question of whether you will be able to get pure horror/brilliance, brightshade husks, and tatters. Their source is easily obtainable (once you get some gear), infinitely respawning, and very easy to deal with once you get your first set of gear. If the intention is to make an armor and tool set that rarely breaks for endgame base builders, then I guess this is okay, but consider that it leads to players purely considering raw power instead of the versatility of weapons.

 

What I propose: I think it would be okay to limit the amount of repair kits that can be made at a time. One potential solution would be to limit the rate at which the brightsmithy and shadow plinth can be used. So, you can only craft each item once before that craft goes on a day long cooldown. Ultra late game players can get around this by making multiple rift crafting stations to use when one goes on cooldown, but it would just provide a little more meaning to durability.

 

Did I just ramble for several paragraphs about why I think dst should add a cooldown to two crafting stations, the most insane idea since adding misery toadstool? yes. Is this the best solution? I have no idea it's just the best I got. I like the idea in games of sometimes locking powerful stuff behind a grind or careful resource management rather than a specific boss. But this idea would definitely make warbis armor better in comparison since it wouldnt sink into the oh-so-precious brightshade repair kits you probably want to use on the other stuff. This would also slow down the pace of the rifts a bit which I think it really needs.

I dont like the riffs mostly and this is one of the main reasons.

I liked how that grass armour has a niche even when you have thulicite. The durability system in dst was genius, but riffs undermines it.

9 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

The biggest "problems" of DST have always been the Ham Bat and Football Helmet. They are cheap items, made in the first days of the game, and that solve all the classic bosses. People used the Ham Bat on day 3, day 300 and day 3000 of their worlds. No other weapon or armor made sense, since all monsters could be eliminated with this combination (AFW would be the only exception, perhaps).

How could Klei encourage players not to use only these items? The developers created the planar system.

The new weapons and armor are repairable and that's great. And the cost of these repairs is ok for me.

When you play alone and have some combat experience (so you don't get hit by enemies so much), it's natural to have resources left over to create new kits. However, when there are more players, the scenario can be different. You can't control the gameplay of other players, and they can quickly consume everything in the base. Imagine this on public servers.

I remember once playing with another person with little experience (she only knew how to press F against any monster) in an old world of mine. Within a few days of the world, I realized that we were simply running out of resources to make the Brightshade Repair Kit.

That said, I don't see any need for a rework.

Tbh football helmets are overrated. There lacks other options sadly (buff cookie cutter cap), but log armour can compete well in scenarios where skin is expensive.

[Arepantera]

Everything OP says about repair kits is true, but only for singleplayer worlds, but totally false when the world has 3 players or more.

If you've played with friends and opened rifts with them, you've probably noticed how streched thin planar materials become when you divide them equally between players, specially shadow stuff. 9 tatters every 3-4 days divided between 4 players usually leads to 2 friends constantly asking for kits because something broke. Hell, EVERYTIME I enter a post rift world, green gems are used exclusively for duping planar materials, because they are so timegated and there is no way to mass farm them.

I think the repair kits are totally fine and don't need any rework, instead I think there should be is a more dynamic planar enemy sistem. Dreadstone thingies should spawn faster if there are more players in the world and brightshades should drop more materials accordingly too. I was originally going to say that brightshades should spawn faster but I quickly realized that would be horrible because really no one enjoys fighting them, there is nothing fun about playing pest control with a celestial crown and a brightshade staff.

 

[Crestwave]

21 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

The rift weapons aren't an overwhelmingly different approach. You gather mats to craft the weapons and armor, and then you make repair kits to maintain them. I stated this before, but this isn't really too different compared to having a bundle of meat/pigskin/rope/twigs to craft new hambats and football helms on demand when needed. You still will drain resources and you will need setups to stockpile the resources, the same of which could be done prior for just about any other weapon, people just bolted to 2 since they were the most consistent/bang for your buck.

I disagree. Hambat materials actually felt like survival resources; meat spoils, so I would often only have pigskin on hand and obtain meat from any of many different sources. Beefalo, random pigs, otters, even DC, AG, etc.

Dark sword is amazing for limited inventory space because of its ingredients. Nightmare fuel is something I constantly amass from being insane and I already carry it around for magi, so the only space I sacrifice is from carrying living logs. I get these from Wormwood, TGs, mushgnomes, etc.

The rift sets remove all this diversity and just have you grind for endgame_resource_1 and endgame_resource_2 from endgame_source_1 and endgame_source_2. Brightshades are annoying to constantly deal with so you just plant some dragonfruit near lava pools and call it a day. Taking 20 years to amass pure brilliance is annoying so you use the Wicker/Wilson combo to craft 1k pure brilliance and call it a day.

To make up for this annoying grind, you get gear with artificially padded stats, instead of making the gameplay interesting in the first place. One of the only other alternatives to obtain pure brilliance is to farm mutated bosses, at a whopping rate of 1 brilliance per boss.

It's the end-game MMORPG syndrome; you start out exploring and adventuring, having fun and collecting all kinds of resources. Then you reach the end-game and it's just a spreadsheet simulator grinding the same sets with a macro and doing fetch quests. New update comes and it phases out the old gear with a new set of endgame resources and gear. If you look at it from a high level (the spreadsheet), it's really the same gameplay as when you were starting out. But it's not.

DST's biggest strength to me is its intersecting mechanics and systems. Enlightenment might seem like an exact equivalent of insanity. But insanity affects obelisks and rabbits and mind control and nightmare creatures and bernie and dreadstone gear and books. Enlightenment only affects gestalts and all they do is annoy you.

P.S. The shadow rifts are better in this regard. It's actually interesting fetching a masque and having it infect 1k spiders to get 1k pure horror. Also, icker preserves have some of the most interesting uses out of the rift stuff.

P.P.S. They definitely stated that lunarplant gear was only meant to be introductory and there were concerns about how Wormwood's equivalent perks would age with those. But I wouldn't be surprised if they're scrapping the later gear sets at this point.

Quote

Q: Will there be more Lunar thralls? Will they drop brightshade husks?
A: I can safely say that future Lunar Thralls will not drop **brightshade** husks.
Brightshades will drop Brightshade materials, other thralls will drop their own respective materials used for different armor sets. The plant theme is specific to Brightshades, not all new thralls will have their own sets. But yes, we are designing the next batch right now!

(Quoted from 2023-07-28 stream, thanks to @-Variant)

[Milordo]

3 hours ago, Crestwave said:

--snip--

Holy based comment. Take my potato cup.

[BB Marioni]

in a world with 4-6 players, there's never enough repair kits XD

[Edible Coal]

2 hours ago, BB Marioni said:

in a world with 4-6 players, there's never enough repair kits XD

ususally becuase no one go kill them

 

[cybers2001]

Brightshade mats can easily be farmed. You can get the husks passively using magma pools, and you can grind out stacks of pure brilliance very quickly using Wickerbottom in a moonstorm.  

Meanwhile void mats have limited means to collect and require active effort to do so. It's quite imbalanced.

Edit: Basically what @Crestwave said

Edited June 4, 2025 by cybers2001

[hyoton123]

From a practical matter the only problem i have with repair kits are weapons, and specifically brightshade sword and void reaper. The armors are balanced by being relatively weak against anything except planar enemies, and I am pretty happy that tools are easy to repair. The reaper and sword are pretty much “no reason not to use this” unless you have a physical damage buff and not swinging into planar defense.

 

The practical solution might be to make *weapon* repair kits, or decreasing the amount that repair kits heal to weapons, but problem is i dont think that’d make it more fun. The real problem i think is that the BSword and Reaper are basically improved non spoiling hambats for most characters as long as repair kits exist, and hambats were already really good. It’s easier to get a chest of brightshades than a wrap of meat for ham bats, which seems a little *too* convenient to me. I dont really think theres a good solution there though short of adding more melee weapons to cover niches, or nerfing them. Like a weapon such as the maul or even gloomerang should absolutely be easy to repair. These are somewhat hard to use.

 

EDIT: that said i do agree with you- the kits dont feel dont starvey. I like the effect as a player, but it drastically changes the economy, and the lunar rifts are really fast now.

Edited June 4, 2025 by hyoton123