I think I now understand why Pearl’s eviction bothers me so much.

[JazzyGames]

The character’s entire relationship with Pearl is built around efforts to improve Pearl’s life on her island. You bring her berry bushes, plant flowers for her bees, destroy a lureplant that spawned, clean up the trash around her island.

Then when the rifts start and Pearl gets whisked away to Monke Land, most of the stuff you did to improve her home gets left behind. The flowers for her beebox stay, the berry bushes, and any aesthetic improvements the player may have made. It was all for nothing. She takes with her exactly what she already had the first time you visited her island. Everything you did to improve her home, aside from the house upgrades, was for nothing.

And I’d be ok with that if it was part of separate arcs but all of this happens within the same progression. The friendship tasks that improved Pearl’s life on this island and built a relationship of trust and acknowledgement with the player were clearly meant to be an important aspect of the game’s progression. And then we nullify so much of that progress by convincing her to move to an island that is already occupied by hostile pirate monkeys. I just don’t see the consistency from a lore perspective.

Here’s the thing: having Pearl eventually trust you with choosing a location for her to live does seem like a natural progression of the relationship you’ve built, and I’d hate to see that go away. Problem is, the process of moving her off of an island that you’ve both invested so much into by the time Wagstaff has you effectively force her off, it just doesn’t seem at all consistent with the progression.

I realize that at this point the progression is likely here to stay, but I at least wanted to say my piece about this aspect of the game before I move past the grieving phase.

[Echsrick]

and all that could been avoided if there was just a new trashyard island that you then still had to increase the size of

[GenomeSquirrel]

Pearl is all take and no give, it’s weird people call that a friendship, and weird that as the one sidedness embiggens, people have the urge to call it “developing,” as if Pearl is any way reciprocating, and still weird people don’t see how one sided the king relationship also is, and I really get the feeling he might have given her a fish one day, she said it was too small and refused it, and he left after realizing she’s an insatiable black hole.

[Echsrick]

28 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Pearl is all take and no give

treasure maps

 

[Ridley]

I thought it just meant that the characters would collectively agree to deceive Pearl if it meant finding a way home. These characters also have a history of doing horrible things to the other sentient creatures in the Constant.

[Flarezen]

When you go to monkey island she does reply to you saying junk man (wagstaff) trick us, sad for people who lost alot their time building on that island. 
 

However i do enjoy having her as my neighbor and not having to sail to her house everytime i want to farm broken shells, and fun having her walk around my base.

[00petar00]

I really dislike Pearl and her quests so I have no issue with doing anything to her and have suggested before to give us more options like stealing pearl or killing her.

What is the problem though is that Hermit island is really pretty including the shape but we have to make it a square arena with scrap docks that are very ugly.

[cybers2001]

 

3 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Pearl is all take and no give, it’s weird people call that a friendship, and weird that as the one sidedness embiggens, people have the urge to call it “developing,” as if Pearl is any way reciprocating, and still weird people don’t see how one sided the king relationship also is, and I really get the feeling he might have given her a fish one day, she said it was too small and refused it, and he left after realizing she’s an insatiable black hole.

She straight up gives you her most prized possession, which you then promptly crack and hand back to her.

[Lovens]

Thanks for this post, Jazzy. I needed to read this from someone else, I was trying to put into words the unique aspect of her island but I always felt like I would look stupid if I say I also liked it for sentimental/attachment reasons. The eviction arc does indeed stomp on everything player did for Pearl, nullifying their progression and destroying a place that the game itself "told" you to decorate. Not a single other place in the game requires you to build or plant things in the game - every other structure or craft is pretty much optional. And taking all of this away from us just to not give us the choice to protect our friend's place is very discouraging. 

It's very common here for players to jump on Pearl's hate bandwagon as well, calling her quests annoying and boring, and a waste of time. Lots of them argued with me that Pearl deserved this and were happy to see the destruction of her home. But regardless of whether or not you liked her quest line, your efforts are nullified by making her move away. 

I'm still very heartbroken about this new update. I didn't open my world since beta came out and struggling to find any motivation to continue it. I also had a pretty build on her island that I never bothered to share, with a cool unfinished boat bridge from nearby waterlogged, that I started decorating with shells and never finished. The new boss doesn't feel appealing to me at all, and the rewards it offers are definitely not worth it for me (especially with the downsides and issues of the new crown, and the changes they did to the jewels themselves). Not a single update of this game stomped so hard on the base builders community and I'm also sad to see the majority of them silent about it (especially after the introduction of the relocation kit, which to me unfortunately doesn't solve the problem at all). 

3 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Pearl is all take and no give, it’s weird people call that a friendship, and weird that as the one sidedness embiggens, people have the urge to call it “developing,” as if Pearl is any way reciprocating, and still weird people don’t see how one sided the king relationship also is, and I really get the feeling he might have given her a fish one day, she said it was too small and refused it, and he left after realizing she’s an insatiable black hole.

This is not true. She immediately acknowledges your efforts by starting giving you bundles of thanks with unique lures and even shares her food with you (honey appears in all bundles after you improve her bee box situation). She gradually adds better items to the shop to buy from her. She rewards you with the pinch & which craft and countless ocean treasure which give a lot of great items, she teaches you how to build pretty furniture to decorate your base and gives you the unique adverts for lure crafts. Her shop has a lot of cool fishing gear items too - all lures, fish food and tackle boxes are super useful if you want to collect all the ocean fish in the game. If Winter's Feast is on, she even rewards you with cute ornaments to decorate Christmas tree with! And at the end she gives you a shiny pearl for all your efforts, as well as a lot of encouraging and heartwarming dialogue thanking you for all your efforts. Discovering Pearl and her quests in this game was one of the things that "sold" going out to explore the ocean to me, even before sawhorse and better ocean treasures were added. 

Edited June 22, 2025 by Lovens

[raniskog]

I feel this way too. The game encourages the player to beautify Pearl's island, to befriend her and complete all these tasks for her. I've seen some people on the forums argue that Pearl doesn't care to stay on her island anymore after she receives the cracked pearl back from the player because the whole purpose of coming to the island was to find Crab King, but I disagree. Pearl's glad that the player is still coming back to visit her--she cares, lots of her quotes upon seeing you arrive at the island again once you've reached max friendship are concerned and caring for the player. I think that her island, even if it was originally a place she settled in the hope of finding CK, became her home because of the player's efforts, and this update has ruined that entirely. Not only is Pearl forced to move and all the tasks we did for her made irrelevant, but the player actually lies to her to help Wagstaff.

I feel like the boss fight could occur somewhere else, but if not, we should at least be able to restore her island. Bring her back and make it the way it was before for her. It's a unique and gorgeous little island, and Pearl's friendship is a big part of the Lunar questline. The relocation kit helps, but it doesn't solve the problem. As @Lovens has highlighted elsewhere, the structures are smooshed closer together so they can't even be placed back the way they were on Pearl's actual island, and frankly placing her anywhere else doesn't quite have the same charm for me.

[DegenerateFurry]

I've always liked Pearl and rushing her quest early so I can get the good fishing lures. I've based on her island several times and even get her fish when I don't have to on occasion. As such, you can probably imagine I am absolutely the hell not happy about this whole "let's evict the lonely old lady from her long-time home on a nice island after we spent so much time helping her" arc. It makes me question the morality of the developers who designed it. Who even thinks of this kind of thing? It's the mindset of someone who'll tear down a family-owned restaurant to put in a McDonald's.

I could get it if this was a game where there's an emphasis moral decision-making like Fallout: New Vegas or something and this is just one path to go, but DST's evolved into a boss rush game and we don't have the option to choose a good path. If you wanna do everything, you have to defeat all the bosses... and the only way not to be a heartless prick is to refrain from beating the final one. Why are they forcing us to play villains? This isn't Hatred. But apparently that's the role Klei has in mind for us.

Edited June 22, 2025 by DegenerateFurry

[Lovens]

14 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I've always liked Pearl and rushing her quest early so I can get the good fishing lures. I've based on her island several times and even get her fish when I don't have to on occasion. As such, you can probably imagine I am absolutely the hell not happy about this whole "let's evict the lonely old lady from her long-time home on a nice island after we spent so much time helping her" arc. It makes me question the morality of the developers who designed it. Who even thinks of this kind of thing? It's the mindset of someone who'll tear down a family-owned restaurant to put in a McDonald's.

I could get it if this was a game where there's an emphasis moral decision-making like Fallout: New Vegas or something and this is just one path to go, but DST's evolved into a boss rush game and we don't have the option to choose a good path. If you wanna do everything, you have to defeat all the bosses... and the only way not to be a heartless prick is to refrain from beating the final one. Why are they forcing us to play villains? This isn't Hatred. But apparently that's the role Klei has in mind for us.

Couldn't agree more here. I already wrote it down in another comment, there could have been a choice here offered for the players on which route to take, resulting in the final boss arena happening in a different place if you wanted to. But developers are forcing us to be the "bad guys" and a lot of people say here that we, players, deserve "real consequences" for opening rifts to teach us a lesson or something. But why? Why should I as a player have my game enjoyment and game experience ruined simply so I can say I "completed" the game by beating all of its bosses? 

Having said all this, I changed my mind about the new boss and I don't think I would go for it under any circumstances, even if it didn't involve destroying Pearl's island in the process. The perspective of having new OP hostile gestalts in all areas with lunacy permanently, and being forced to wear lunar gear all the time, and be threatened every time you use any form of AoE around them... all of it doesn't sound appealing to me at all. 

Edited June 22, 2025 by Lovens

[gaymime]

23 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I could get it if this was a game where there's an emphasis moral decision-making like Fallout: New Vegas or something and this is just one path to go, but DST's evolved into a boss rush game and we don't have the option to choose a good path. If you wanna do everything, you have to defeat all the bosses... and the only way not to be a heartless prick is to refrain from beating the final one. Why are they forcing us to play villains? This isn't Hatred. But apparently that's the role Klei has in mind for us.

except canonically you've been a heartless bastard since day one(and not just you you. all of us). you kill spiders, you abuse pigs, you steal land, steal resources and you destroy and build without regard for the inhabitants or even the world itself and if anything opposes you  you murder it. the game makes no bones about you being a net bad for the world and you have to make a LOT of heartless prick choices to even get to this point. without hacking the game or purposely inviting another person to commit some carnage for you there is no way to get this far without you personally doing some serious damage to others. this is not the first heartless choice you've made but the last in a long line of them that also says "hey by the way, this is you." as you butt up against it. it is just the one that tells you directly that you are the problem instead of silently letting you commit atrocities without any self-reflection

 

the problem is that, generally speaking, the player wants to see themself as a good and moral being who owns everything they can touch. they see pearl's island as their own personal belonging and are mad that their personal belonging can be ruined by their own actions. they desire their belonging to be immune to their own destructive touch because that feels nicer. you will notice very few of the people who are angry mention pearl herself as being worthy of compassion but instead talk about the work -they- put into developing the land into something nice to look at.

Edited June 22, 2025 by gaymime
weirdly phrased sentance

[Lovens]

7 minutes ago, gaymime said:

except canonically you've been a heartless bastard since day one(and not just you you. all of us). you kill spiders, you abuse pigs, you steal land, steal resources and you destroy and build without regard for the inhabitants or even the world itself and if anything opposes you  you murder it. the game makes no bones about you being a net bad for the world and you have to make a LOT of heartless prick choices to even get to this point. without hacking the game or purposely inviting another person to commit some carnage for you there is no way to get this far without you personally doing some serious damage to others. this is not the first heartless choice you've made but the last in a long line of them that also says "hey by the way, this is you." as you butt up against it. it is just the one that tells you directly that you are the problem instead of silently letting you commit atrocities without any self-reflection

 

the problem is that, generally speaking, the player wants to see themself as a good and moral being who owns everything they can touch. they see pearl's island as their own personal belonging and are mad that their personal belonging can be ruined by their own actions. they desire their belonging to be immune to their own destructive touch because that feels nicer. you will notice very few of the people who are angry mention pearl herself as being worthy of compassion but instead talk about the work -they- put into developing the land into something nice to look at.

Allow me to object, none of the things you mentioned in the game are mandatory, and there are alternative ways to get every single resource in the game without murdering and breaking things yourself. This is why the game was always so appealing to me, it's the free will of players. You can choose to break a pig's house and murder it for instant resources, or befriend them and they will help you chop trees or fight enemies. You can even befriend spiders who are considered monsters, and don't even need to be Webber for that. People have been doing pacifist playthroughs where they are not allowed to attack things, and it's totally possible to survive and progress the plot line by being a "good guy". And killing hostile creatures that attacked you first doesn't really strike me as an immoral action either. The game itself even draws this line by punishing players for killing neutral creatures (the naughtiness mechanics). 

[DegenerateFurry]

17 minutes ago, gaymime said:

except canonically you've been a heartless bastard since day one(and not just you you. all of us). you kill spiders,

Entirely justified self-defense, they're hostile monsters. If you're Webber, they're livestock.

17 minutes ago, gaymime said:

 you abuse pigs,

If you're playing a monster character, killing them is self-defense and is therefore entirely justified. If you're not, killing them is optional. Also, the game doesn't go out of its way to try to make you bond with pigs, and they have no concept of loyalty. They'll turn on their own if ordered and will leave you if you don't constantly do the work of feeding them.

17 minutes ago, gaymime said:

 you steal land

The vast majority of the Constant is unclaimed unless you count Them.

17 minutes ago, gaymime said:

 the game makes no bones about you being a net bad for the world

I reject this premise wholesale. The players were thrust into this survival situation typically through trickery or against their will. Most of them want to leave, which is what Wagstaff tempts them with. The Constant is a hostile wilderness, but it's not apathetic like the nature of our world - it is hostile. The world itself actively seeks to drive you insane and kill you. Do you forget that it is a world created with intent, and one shaped by a then-insane former stage magician with a heart as black as coal? The survivors, finding themselves in this place, decide to band together and fight back against the darkness, building what they can to keep themselves alive, healthy, and sane together.

It's only with the rifts that the player truly becomes a net negative for the world, and they don't know what they're doing when they activate them.

Also, no, Don't Starve Together isn't a game with a deep moral message plot twist about the player being the true bad guy all along. It's a story about some evil cosmic forces fighting with a bunch of (mostly) innocent people caught in the crossfire and used as pawns.

17 minutes ago, gaymime said:

the problem is that, generally speaking, the player wants to see themself as a good and moral being who owns everything they can touch. they see pearl's island as their own personal belonging and are mad that their personal belonging can be ruined by their own actions. they desire their belonging to be immune to their own destructive touch because that feels nicer. you will notice very few of the people who are angry mention pearl herself as being worthy of compassion but instead talk about the work -they- put into developing the land into something nice to look at.

People bring up the work they put into Pearl's island because there's two major problems with evicting her: the morality of it/lore implications, and the gameplay element. Some people don't care about video game fictional moral consequences, and that's fine. Base-builders who like building at Pearl's island are going to be annoyed regardless of whether or not they care about the message evicting Pearl sends.

Edited June 22, 2025 by DegenerateFurry

[Milordo]

Strange that it took you all this time to understannd the problems around it, when people during the first week of the beta said it.

Edited June 22, 2025 by Milordo

[gaymime]

22 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Entirely justified self-defense, they're hostile monsters. If you're Webber, they're livestock.

If you're playing a monster character, killing them is self-defense and is therefore entirely justified. If you're not, killing them is optional. Also, the game doesn't go out of its way to try to make you bond with pigs, and they have no concept of loyalty. They'll turn on their own if ordered and will leave you if you don't constantly do the work of feeding them.

The vast majority of the Constant is unclaimed unless you count Them.

I reject this premise wholesale. The players were thrust into this survival situation typically through trickery or against their will. Most of them want to leave, which is what Wagstaff tempts them with. The Constant is a hostile wilderness, but it's not apathetic like the nature of our world - it is hostile. The world itself actively seeks to drive you insane and kill you. Do you forget that it is a world created with intent, and one shaped by a then-insane former stage magician with a heart as black as coal? The survivors, finding themselves in this place, decide to band together and fight back against the darkness, building what they can to keep themselves alive, healthy, and sane together.

It's only with the rifts that the player truly becomes a net negative for the world, and they don't know what they're doing when they activate them.

Also, no, Don't Starve Together isn't a game with a deep moral message plot twist about the player being the true bad guy all along. It's a story about some evil cosmic forces fighting with a bunch of (mostly) innocent people caught in the crossfire and used as pawns.

the reasons you choose are yours to have, it doesnt really change what the player is as far as everyone else who isnt the player is concerned. you still do the bad stuff regardless of your reasons and which character you choose to play as -shrugs-

22 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Base-builders who like building at Pearl's island are going to be annoyed regardless of whether or not they care about the message evicting Pearl sends.

yep, we are in agreement there and that is what most of this dust-up is about.

 

 

26 minutes ago, Lovens said:

Allow me to object, none of the things you mentioned in the game are mandatory, and there are alternative ways to get every single resource in the game without murdering and breaking things yourself. This is why the game was always so appealing to me, it's the free will of players. You can choose to break a pig's house and murder it for instant resources, or befriend them and they will help you chop trees or fight enemies. You can even befriend spiders who are considered monsters, and don't even need to be Webber for that. People have been doing pacifist playthroughs where they are not allowed to attack things, and it's totally possible to survive and progress the plot line by being a "good guy". And killing hostile creatures that attacked you first doesn't really strike me as an immoral action either. The game itself even draws this line by punishing players for killing neutral creatures (the naughtiness mechanics). 

in a vacuum i would agree. but we are not talking about those players. those are not the people who are angry. we are talking about people who instigated fights with crab king, who open rifts, who woke up fuel weaver to smach his face in, who beat up a bunch of blokes who were minding their own business just for their stuff. we are talking about people who got their stack of pig-skin and spider-glands by taking them proactively and have been helping wagstaff for a while now. those people are the ones who progressed the story enough to get wagstaff onto pearl's island and they very much are the "you" in my prior comments

Edited June 22, 2025 by gaymime

[DegenerateFurry]

39 minutes ago, gaymime said:

who woke up fuel weaver to smach his face in,

Hey, Fuelweaver deserves having his face smashed in!

[Lovens]

48 minutes ago, gaymime said:

 

in a vacuum i would agree. but we are not talking about those players. those are not the people who are angry. we are talking about people who instigated fights with crab king, who open rifts, who woke up fuel weaver to smach his face in, who beat up a bunch of blokes who were minding their own business just for their stuff. we are talking about people who got their stack of pig-skin and spider-glands by taking them proactively and have been helping wagstaff for a while now. those people are the ones who progressed the story enough to get wagstaff onto pearl's island and they very much are the "you" in my prior comments

I would not consider initiating boss fights as something malicious that makes player immoral. A lot of the boss fights in this game are initiated as a result of player's curiosity, exploration and experimentation. Oh, I can hammer this giant bee hive and it drops me some honey, sweet...let's just get one more...Uh-oh! What a nice pretty white sack, must be presents inside, let's try and open it! Oh, a broken statue with a piece nearby, I'll try and repair it. A weird skeleton made from unique ancient fossils I mined, and I placed it in this cool arena, what if I try to reanimate it, it already worked on the surface once, must be something cool! You can see where I'm going with this. None of it is evil or malicious. It's surviving in the world, exploring it and becoming curious about things you interact with. None the boss fights except for Deerclops/Bearger/GDW are forced upon us players either, and even with the worst baddies there is always a pacifist route, you can choose to not fight them or deal with them other way (Antlion is a great example). 

Edited June 22, 2025 by Lovens

[Edible Coal]

"Survivor, I remember you're genocides"

[raniskog]

12 minutes ago, Lovens said:

I would not consider initiating boss fights as something malicious that makes player immoral. A lot of the boss fights in this game are initiated as a result of player's curiosity, exploration and experimentation. Oh, I can hammer this giant bee hive and it drops me some honey, sweet...let's just get one more...Uh-oh! What a nice pretty white sack, must be presents inside, let's try and open it! Oh, a broken statue with a piece nearby, I'll try and repair it. A weird skeleton made from unique ancient fossils I mined, and I placed it in this cool arena, what if I try to reanimate it, it already worked on the surface once, must be something cool! You can see where I'm going with this. None of it is evil or malicious. It's surviving in the world, exploring it and becoming curious about things you interact with. None the boss fights except for Deerclops/Bearger/GDW are forced upon us players either, and even with the worst baddies there is always a pacifist route, you can choose to not fight them or deal with them other way (Antlion is a great example). 

Exactly, and when the boss fights are initiated, it becomes self-defence again. Fuelweaver and BQ and the like all start attacking the player whether the player attacks them or not.

[NeoDeusMachina]

There are so many ways to play this game based on each person's preference, just stating the obvious here. Why is it that one would like to play the game "all the ways" in a single world? That, I don't really understand.

If the story leads me to a place where my actions transform the world permanently in a way that doesn't fit how I would like it to be when playing a more, sandbox-y, long term world (like, megabasing for 1000 days+++), then I will have a world where I get the cake, and a world where I eat it..? For instance:

- have a game where I will clear all the content, bosses, etc. and break the coziness of a pre-rift world until I am done with the content I want to clear

- have another game where I will make decisions only based on what I want the world to be like for those 1000 days+++ I want to have (and if that includes rift content, then so be it)

Then in each, choose whatever world settings that best fit with how I want that specific game to be like for however long I will plan to play it.

If a change in an upcoming patch is about to change the world I currently play in a way I don't like, I might also just restart a new one to leave the old one as it is (basically what I did with this latest update).

Is it like the hurdle of starting over a new game that is incompatible with that for some? Or "losing" the time invested in a world? Although, I don't think it is ever lost. It was spent doing something entertaining and that cannot be taken away by starting a new world. In my opinion, it's just another opportunity to spend more time doing something entertaining. Just trying to understand the nuances here.

 

[Wawchik]

1 hour ago, raniskog said:

Exactly, and when the boss fights are initiated, it becomes self-defence again. Fuelweaver and BQ and the like all start attacking the player whether the player attacks them or not.

You smash bee queen's hive => she attacks you for that. You try to open Klaus's sack => he attacks you for doing so. It doesn't become self-defense. Raid bosses don't even chase you so you can just leave the fight

Edited June 22, 2025 by Wawchik

[SilverSpoon]

2 hours ago, gaymime said:

except canonically you've been a heartless bastard since day one(and not just you you. all of us). you kill spiders, you abuse pigs, you steal land, steal resources and you destroy and build without regard for the inhabitants or even the world itself and if anything opposes you  you murder it. the game makes no bones about you being a net bad for the world and you have to make a LOT of heartless prick choices to even get to this point. without hacking the game or purposely inviting another person to commit some carnage for you there is no way to get this far without you personally doing some serious damage to others. this is not the first heartless choice you've made but the last in a long line of them that also says "hey by the way, this is you." as you butt up against it. it is just the one that tells you directly that you are the problem instead of silently letting you commit atrocities without any self-reflection

Klei could have done a better job of following that storyline than having players build things and then forcing players destroy them, especially considering this was a rushed update for Klei Fest.

[Uedo]

8 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Pearl is all take and no give, it’s weird people call that a friendship, and weird that as the one sidedness embiggens, 

That's a perfectly cromulent point