Allow Brightbirds to Store and Digest Multiple Infused Moon Shards

[Sofy Happy]

  Let players continue feeding Infused Moon Shards to Brightbirds even during their production cooldown period. These shards would be stored internally, with the Brightbird converting 3 shards into 1 Pure Brilliance every day. A Brightbird can store up to 120 Infused Moon Shards in its body.

  Currently, Brightbirds require a full day's cooldown after producing each Infused Moon Shard before they can be fed again. Since Infused Moon Shards spoil after just one day, players have to bundle them up after each use for future feeding. This process is not only tedious but also consumes extra wrapping materials.

  I genuinely can't imagine any player - unless they're: an obstinate traditionalist who absolutely refuses to switch characters, and a strictly solo player without any teammates , would choose this inefficient method over: switching to Wickerbottom during Celestial Storms to mass-produce shards using "The End is Nigh" from a bookshelf, then changing to Wilson to convert them into enough Pure Brilliance to last 1000+ days.

  This storage modification wouldn't make Brightbirds more productive than Wilson's method, but at least it would transform bird-feeding from a monotonous "daily chore" into a "seasonal task" - making the mechanic actually worth using. Otherwise, we're just left with "yet another game mechanic that nobody uses."

[Maxil20]

I personally feel the idea is you are meant to catch several of the birds in birdcages and feed several of them at a time for brilliance, similar to how players used to store several canaries in cages for the feathers they gave. 1 bird isn’t a lot, but add 9 more cages with birds in them and you start getting somewhere.

 

Edited August 1, 2025 by Maxil20

[Sofy Happy]

4 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I personally feel the idea is you are meant to catch several of the birds in birdcages and feed several of them at a time for brilliance, similar to how players used to store several canaries in cages for the feathers they gave. 1 bird isn’t a lot, but add 9 more cages with birds in them and you start getting somewhere.

 

Did you really think we hadn't considered something this basic? Yet I still have to come feed it daily - why wouldn't I just switch to Wilson and solve this permanently?

[Captain_Rage]

No, you don't have to feed it daily unless you want to. Yes, you can play as Wilson if you would like.

[Maxil20]

54 minutes ago, Sofy Happy said:

Did you really think we hadn't considered something this basic?

You did not, in any capacity, mention that in the original post. You simply mentioned how you need to feed 3 per day to a bird and bundle the rest of the shards. The reason I proposed having multiple is to allow yourself to get more per day while also lessening the burden of needing to rewrap the shards.

I’m not even trying to say it in a theoretical context. My goal in my world is to get 54 bright beaked birds so I can feed exactly one full bundle’s worth of shards to the birds and reap the ~53.33 brilliance expected per day. That would both eliminate the need for rewrapping while still providing a solid return of brilliance for a daily/bi-daily amount of work. Given the various activities you do later on into a world, adding an optional past time like this isn’t exactly a terrible thing.

56 minutes ago, Sofy Happy said:

why wouldn't I just switch to Wilson and solve this permanently?

Wilson doesn’t solve it permanently, though. You still need to pick him, spec into the lunar alignment, and go and mass craft the shards into brillance.

If you mean moreso he is better about it, then, yeah? Wilson being able to transmute charged shards into brilliance is one of his main affinity perks. It wouldn’t make sense if that was outclassed by the birds to the point no one would want to invest in his perk later on.

[Pumking7]

10 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

’m not even trying to say it in a theoretical context. My goal in my world is to get 54 bright beaked birds so I can feed exactly one full bundle’s worth of shards to the birds and reap the ~53.33 brilliance expected per day. That would both eliminate the need for rewrapping while still providing a solid return of brilliance for a daily/bi-daily amount of work. Given the various activities you do later on into a world, adding an optional past time like this isn’t exactly a terrible thing.

Is there a reason as to why this is much better than wrapping shards though? If you were going to collect 54 bright beaked birds and keep them around for an extended period of time you would need to constantly still feed the birds shards to keep them alive. This is a similar form of needing to be careful while wrapping the shards up (which after getting a grass gecko farm rewrapping isn't an issue). You would also need to be wrapping the birds when you are finished with them which would require 14 bundles, which the same amount of bundles can be used to store 560 pure brilliance by transmuting glass.

I feel like in DST, even in end game scenarios, you want to make menial labor as efficient as possible to not waste time gathering. I don't understand having to spend several minutes each in-game for something that could be sped up (unless this is done more as a "what-if" or a massively impressive project which you do a lot of great ones).

28 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

Wilson doesn’t solve it permanently, though. You still need to pick him, spec into the lunar alignment, and go and mass craft the shards into brillance.

If you mean moreso he is better about it, then, yeah? Wilson being able to transmute charged shards into brilliance is one of his main affinity perks. It wouldn’t make sense if that was outclassed by the birds to the point no one would want to invest in his perk later on.

Wilson does solve it for a long time though. Having the ability to gather hundreds of brilliance within a few days with Wicker + Wilson beats having to manually feed and gather brilliance using only one character. Even without Wicker this bird method wouldn't remain sustainable due to the amount of infused glass you need to constantly due this. This is the same as using Maxwell/Wicker and books to collect logs. Even though it is not a endless source of easy wood unless you remain as the character it still provides you with enough resources for a super long time so you don't have to wait and check palm cone trees constantly to cut them down. 

I also don't think having the bright beak birds being in competition with Wilson as a huge problem. Investing in his perk sounds like a big deal, but by the lunar rifts part of the game you will be guaranteed to have the blueprint for the celestial portal. This means that swapping characters to gain resources isn't a huge issue at this point in the game as purple gems+moonrocks aren't too useful anyways. While on the other hand setting up a lunar bird menagerie to have to baby and feed everyday sounds like much more work then the immediate benefits of character swapping.

I think bright-beaked birds being able to store 120 days worth of shards is a bit too similar to just being another Wilson. Why not have the birds have a chance to eat one less infused shard or give one more pure brilliance after being fed. This would mean that the commitment to setting up all the birds and feeding them daily compares to the immediate reward of collecting pure brilliance as Wicker+Wilson.

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, Pumking7 said:

Is there a reason as to why this is much better than wrapping shards though? If you were going to collect 54 bright beaked birds and keep them around for an extended period of time you would need to constantly still feed the birds shards to keep them alive. This is a similar form of needing to be careful while wrapping the shards up (which after getting a grass gecko farm rewrapping isn't an issue). You would also need to be wrapping the birds when you are finished with them which would require 14 bundles, which the same amount of bundles can be used to store 560 pure brilliance by transmuting glass.

I feel like in DST, even in end game scenarios, you want to make menial labor as efficient as possible to not waste time gathering. I don't understand having to spend several minutes each in-game for something that could be sped up (unless this is done more as a "what-if" or a massively impressive project which you do a lot of great ones).

I think this is a fair question, and one I admittedly was thinking about when wanting to plan the build.

My idea was utilizing the birds in combination with an ice crystaleyezer to push the time they stay “alive” in the cage to ~26.6 days (the default time the birds stay alive is 5 days, multiplied by 4 times if they are in a birdcage, and then multiplied by 1.33 if the world ambience is cold enough) This translates into ~3.5 hours or so of lenience between the time you feed the bird and the time it dies. I think that’s a pretty solid window to passively check up on them every now and then to get brilliance without worrying too badly about their hunger, especially since they have a visual warning if they are starving or not.

The birds (thankfully) also don’t have to go to sleep at night, meaning you’re not stopped by the wacky mechanic of the birds falling asleep and being forced to wait unless you forcibly shove it in/out of the cage. Once you get your shards ready, you can pretty easily go to every cage and feed them the shards to return brilliance in turn.

I won’t lie and say this somehow would be more practical, since at the end of the day giving everything to Wilson and mass transmuting is always going to be more efficient in large scales, though to me there’s a unique novelty of wanting to keep a bunch of the birds alive for as long as you can to benefit from it, and I think that’s just Neat as a concept given that there’s nothing quite like it. That’s just me, of course.

1 hour ago, Pumking7 said:

Wilson does solve it for a long time though. Having the ability to gather hundreds of brilliance within a few days with Wicker + Wilson beats having to manually feed and gather brilliance using only one character. Even without Wicker this bird method wouldn't remain sustainable due to the amount of infused glass you need to constantly due this.

Yeah, I knew going into this that I don’t think you can really shake Wicker/Maxwell off for this. You need an industrial way to mass produce charged shards if you are trying to mass produce brilliance and the lunar hail is nowhere near enough (especially with its relative uncommon nature compared to the pretty much consistent storms). I myself was planning on doing roughly over 100+ bundles or so and then testing out the bird setup, to give an indication of how much I want to plan on using the bird farm.

 

1 hour ago, Pumking7 said:

I think bright-beaked birds being able to store 120 days worth of shards is a bit too similar to just being another Wilson. Why not have the birds have a chance to eat one less infused shard or give one more pure brilliance after being fed. This would mean that the commitment to setting up all the birds and feeding them daily compares to the immediate reward of collecting pure brilliance as Wicker+Wilson.

I think this is also a nice concept. I know back when they were added it used to be a 33% chance for them to produce brilliance and it got lower, so an inverse of it being 33%-50%-100% for 1 to perhaps a 10% chance for 2 could be a more lucrative alternative to players who want to go this route while keeping the Wilson Transmute method intact. 

[Jakepeng99]

6 hours ago, Sofy Happy said:

Did you really think we hadn't considered something this basic? Yet I still have to come feed it daily - why wouldn't I just switch to Wilson and solve this permanently?

I guess because the shards will spoil so this instantly transmutes them without having hassle with bundling wraps and stuff.

[Pumking7]

4 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I won’t lie and say this somehow would be more practical, since at the end of the day giving everything to Wilson and mass transmuting is always going to be more efficient in large scales, though to me there’s a unique novelty of wanting to keep a bunch of the birds alive for as long as you can to benefit from it, and I think that’s just Neat as a concept given that there’s nothing quite like it. That’s just me, of course.

I totally agree and thought this was the main idea behind you doing it. I love the totally impractical but resource producing builds some people make that feel in line with how DST could be played. I just find arguing for utility based on preference a bit odd sometimes, as I see some do around here.

4 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I myself was planning on doing roughly over 100+ bundles or so and then testing out the bird setup, to give an indication of how much I want to plan on using the bird farm.

I am always impressed with the amount of resources you have on your long term world. But having to manage how many bundles to open a time for this farm to not waste infused glass would be another downside, compared to Wilson using it immediately.

4 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Yeah, I knew going into this that I don’t think you can really shake Wicker/Maxwell off for this.

You could maybe use a telelocator on birds, as it would work as a very slow way of gathering infused glass. This is nothing again compared to 10 lightning strikes for a infinitely used item though.

[lowercase skye]

4 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

My idea was utilizing the birds in combination with an ice crystaleyezer to push the time they stay “alive” in the cage to ~26.6 days (the default time the birds stay alive is 5 days, multiplied by 4 times if they are in a birdcage, and then multiplied by 1.33 if the world ambience is cold enough) This translates into ~3.5 hours or so of lenience between the time you feed the bird and the time it dies.

I had no idea this works like this??? That's crazy. I guess the same logic could be used to farm canaries with more lenience, since you have more than a few days to go check on them once they're all poisoned? That's fun, really good use of the crystaleyezer. Thanks for sharing!!

[Sofy Happy]

8 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Wilson doesn’t solve it permanently, though. You still need to pick him, spec into the lunar alignment, and go and mass craft the shards into brillance.

If you mean moreso he is better about it, then, yeah? Wilson being able to transmute charged shards into brilliance is one of his main affinity perks. It wouldn’t make sense if that was outclassed by the birds to the point no one would want to invest in his perk later on.

The term 'permanent solution' refers to using Wilson to obtain thousands of Pure Brilliance in just a few days, eliminating the need to consider Pure Brilliance production in our save files. Players naturally gravitate toward efficiency. When there are two methods to produce a resource, if the first method's efficiency is three times that of the second, with startup costs less than one-fourth of the second, players will invariably choose the first - unless they're stubborn traditionalists or those who deliberately enjoy cumbersome and primitive approaches.

You don't need to worry about Wilson being overshadowed by the birds after this change. Wilson can produce enough Pure Brilliance in one go without waiting or restarting production. He can begin production much earlier without waiting for Lunar Hail. His startup cost is just two Moon Rock Idols, not '53 birdcages'

Let me reiterate my point: If the current production mechanics of Brightbirds remain unchanged, they will inevitably become "yet another game mechanic that nobody uses.

[Tranoze]

10 hours ago, Sofy Happy said:

players have to bundle them up after each use for future feeding. This process is not only tedious but also consumes extra wrapping materials.

from a monotonous "daily chore" into a "seasonal task" - making the mechanic actually worth using. Otherwise, we're just left with "yet another game mechanic that nobody uses."

Just make 1000 bird cages duh...

[Maxil20]

2 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

I had no idea this works like this??? That's crazy. I guess the same logic could be used to farm canaries with more lenience, since you have more than a few days to go check on them once they're all poisoned? That's fun, really good use of the crystaleyezer. Thanks for sharing!!

Mobs that "die" in your inventory basically use a copy/pasted version of the freshness mechanic and are impacted by things that reduce spoilage, so yes, it will work as such! I think the only exception is fish don't get impacted by being "wet" in the inventory. Fun fact, this is why critters starve faster in summer since those also use freshness to determine their "hunger"!
 

2 hours ago, Pumking7 said:

I am always impressed with the amount of resources you have on your long term world. But having to manage how many bundles to open a time for this farm to not waste infused glass would be another downside, compared to Wilson using it immediately.

I should probably clarify when I mean "bundles" I do also refer to gift wraps in that in my case, since gift wraps are basically disposable bundles that are excellent for this purpose. It is also why I do aim for 54 birds, as that's exactly enough to use 1 bundle of charged shards without wasting any excess (technically, you'll be short 2 and will need to do it 3 days for the 54th bird to give a brilliance, but I would much rather have that then have 53 and have 1 charged shard left over).

 

[somethin]

1 hour ago, Sofy Happy said:

Let me reiterate my point: If the current production mechanics of Brightbirds remain unchanged, they will inevitably become "yet another game mechanic that nobody uses.

I mean... I would still use them. I always run into "too much husk, too little brilliance" in late game world, and I'm not going to switch characters since that's how I play. And how much brilliance do you really need? The current sink for them are bombs and repair kits, and both are already very cheap. I guess for megabase purpose??? But that's an optional task and your problem to figure it out on your own. Birds are just a way to supplement your pure brilliance needs which you can also scale up easily if you want to.