Ideas for planar damage and defense rework

[AltR0]

Hello everyone!

In this post, I would like to share my thoughts and ideas regarding the most controversial mechanic in DST. I’ve been playing for a very long time, with over 2000 hours, and I remember the times before the updates with rifts. I can confidently say that, for me and many others, the planar damage and planar defense mechanics feel alien and overly complicated. Below, I’ve outlined some ideas for possible revisions to this aspect of the game. I understand that implementing these changes would require effort, but I believe they would benefit the game.

Rework of Planar Damage:

1. Do not mix damage types within a single attack.

2. There should be a set of monsters and bosses attacks that deal ONLY piercing damage. This would make combat more interesting, as some attacks would be significantly more dangerous than others, providing additional motivation to dodge rather than tank (which is currently the universal tactic).

3. Regarding weapons with planar damage: I think it’s best to remove this component entirely and instead increase the base damage of the respective weapons.

For example:

Brightshade Sword = 76 damage
Shadow Reaper = 68 - 72 - 76 - 80 - 84 - 88 (depending on combo)

Additionally, it would be great to add a +25% bonus to damage against creatures of the opposite element (e.g., bonus for Brightshade Sword against Ink Blight) and conversely, -25% damage against creatures of the same element (e.g., penalty when attacking saladmander with Brightshade Sword). This would encourage situational use of elemental weapons and give this property more significance (since currently, the bonus feels negligible at just 10%, as everyone still prefers cheaper-to-craft weapons like shadow swords or ham bats).

Rework of Planar Defense:

Give horror and lunar creatures a defense that simply blocks a percentage of all incoming damage. For example, all lunar/horror creatures could have 50% damage reduction. Using appropriate weapons (Lunar against shadow creatures and vice versa) would ignore this defense. As for lunar and horror armor: let it have different percentage protections depending on the attacker’s element. For instance:

Lunar armor could have default protection of 85%, but if attacked by a lunar creature, it increases to 95%

Conversely, if attacked by a shadow creature, protection decreases to 75% (less than wooden armor)

This mechanic would add motivation to use different armor types when fighting various bosses and monsters.

It might also be interesting to add some effects to lunar and void armor. For example: Lunar armor could increase movement speed, Void Cowl could grant night vision similar to mologgles.
Of course, these are just ideas; in my subjective opinion, such late-game items often don’t justify their effort and tend to feel like just more practical replacements for wooden armor.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that I respect the work done by the developers and do not blame anyone. I simply believe that these changes could make game systems work better and become more engaging for players.
 

Thank you very much for your attention!

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, AltR0 said:

Regarding weapons with planar damage: I think it’s best to remove this component entirely and instead increase the base damage of the respective weapons.

They don't need that at all. Even if a brightshade sword just dealt 68 normal damage it would still be a direct upgrade to the vast majority of weapons because it's dealing dark sword damage without the sanity drain and being extremely easy to repair. A single inventory slot can provide effectively infinite durability to your weapon, armor, and tools. You would need like 10x the space to achieve this with other things.

Planar gear doesn't need anything to encourage people to use it, it's already inherently BIS and overpowered on its own. Planar damage does nothing except change it from BIS to mandatory, and dramatically nerf the perfectly fine yet underused weapons like the bat bat and morning star.

[AltR0]

12 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Planar gear doesn't need anything to encourage people to use it, it's already inherently BIS and overpowered on its own. Planar damage does nothing except change it from BIS to mandatory, and dramatically nerf the perfectly fine yet underused weapons like the bat bat and morning star.

Cheggf, I agree with your position, but it seems like planar gear is meant to be that way — after all, it’s obtained after completing an incredibly difficult and complex questlines for the Celestial Champion and Ancient Fuelweaver. I also think that items like the Bat Bat and Morning Star could use some buffs. I believe we might see something similar with the rework of electric damage and shocking soon.

In this post, I simply shared my thoughts on the mechanics of planar damage and how confusing it can be, especially in its current form (just look at the formulas). The changes I’m proposing are not aimed at directly buffing this weapons or armor, but rather making them more interesting to use. Currently, equipment from Brightshade outperforms Void gear in almost every aspect, which only becomes useful in certain rare situations after defeating CC.

[Cheggf]

11 hours ago, AltR0 said:

Cheggf, I agree with your position, but it seems like planar gear is meant to be that way — after all, it’s obtained after completing an incredibly difficult and complex questlines for the Celestial Champion and Ancient Fuelweaver.

It's meant to be the best, but it's not meant to exceed 68 base damage. The whole point of planar damage is so that they can make weapons that deal way more than 68 damage without them actually needing to deal more than 68 damage. Which is a dumb point, I don't think there's anyone who was thinking "I'd like all of the variety in this survival sandbox game to be removed, please". It's like they're trying to make an RPG with infinite upwards progression which goes against the whole point of Don't Starve. They realize that there isn't supposed to be infinite upwards progression, it's why they locked it at 68, but they don't actually realize it because they're still doing it.

11 hours ago, AltR0 said:

I also think that items like the Bat Bat and Morning Star could use some buffs.

No they don't. I use them all the time. The only buff they need is the removal of enemies having planar defense. 

[mr_slaad]

In my opinion planar damage should be more unique. My idea is that shadow and lunar creatures should also have different bonus effects that would make players fighting with them harder, for example: decreased players max health equal to planar damage dealt or make creatures with planar entity defense immune to all physical damage (You can only dealt planar damage to them).

mutated variants of varg, deerclops and beager having a "weakness" is unnecessary and make a fight less fun.