Boulderbough Trees should drop fossils

[Pumking7]

Hello,

The new update adds a new biome with three distinct things in it, the shadow centipede, the fumahole which spew miasma, and the boulderbough trees. The Boulderbough trees can be chopped with an axe and drop a boulder on the player if doing so. The boulder then can be mined for rocks, flint and nitre along with a chance for red and blue gems. When mining the boulder you receive one seed to plant one other tree.

I bring up the Boulderbough tree specifically for currently it doesn't stand out compared to other methods to get rocks. Petrified trees already exist and by a few hundred days already take over a lot of some forests. Rocks, flint, and nitre also have ways to be mass produced by their own special methods. So I think having one more special use would be perfectly fine to seek them out.

Currently fossils are only renewable by a 1% chance to drop from a segment of the great depths worm, found only through RNG on a time gated event. Fossils after making enough to summon the respective skeletons from the atrium, only serve to function as decorative pieces to use around your base. The ability to use fossils to guard against mob attacks or mob fencing is long gone as placing changed for fossils to have a decent amount of space between each other. If fossils only retain a decorative purpose why make them so hard to get/unrenewable in the long run? If each boulderbough had a 25-50% chance to drop a fossil I think this would be a great incentive to grow them long-term. (Could be unpopular but maybe only make them grow in the caves to get players to actually visit the caves more often?)

I know the other suggestion to renew fossils via bone armor/bone helm deconstruction was denied as their deconstruction only drops bone shards. Maybe understandable with fossils use as mob fencing but now that we have much stronger versions of gating with "TINGLE nodes", and fossils placement being reduced so they are only decorative. I don't see the harm in making fossils renewable over the long-term for the players that want to decorate their base with them.

[kroban]

I agree to this, I think its a cool idea!

I also want to add that it seems like the boulderbough trees can also drop other gems, I saw one dropping a purple gem and another with a yellow gem in it. It seems like Klei wants to give us some sort of a "budget gem tree" for early game and another reason to spend time in caves, which I think its pretty cool.

But yeah boulderboughs also giving fossils would be pretty nice! I like to farm the surface Fuelweaver for bulbs and berries but its pretty annoying to farm fossils for both the atrium and surface Fuelweaver, specially if theres many players on the server

Edited September 5, 2025 by kroban

[Pumking7]

16 minutes ago, kroban said:

I saw one dropping a purple gem and another with a yellow gem in it

They do spawn with ruins gems then, thank you for clarifying! I got one green gem from destroying 50 of them at once and didn't include it since I didn't know if it was a mistake. The rate for getting gems seems super rare and since new tree seeds appear unrenewable at the moment, since each tree drops one seed with no chance for a second to my knowledge, I wonder how many people will use these for farming gems?

[Dingle]

Why not just go back and make deconstructing fuelweaver loot give fossils?

[HopelessBot]

1 hour ago, Pumking7 said:

They do spawn with ruins gems then, thank you for clarifying! I got one green gem from destroying 50 of them at once and didn't include it since I didn't know if it was a mistake. The rate for getting gems seems super rare and since new tree seeds appear unrenewable at the moment, since each tree drops one seed with no chance for a second to my knowledge, I wonder how many people will use these for farming gems?

Doesn't the world regrowth affect them?

[Well-met]

3 hours ago, Dingle said:

Why not just go back and make deconstructing fuelweaver loot give fossils?

both!

[Swiyss]

But it doesn't make sense that something that we grow from 0 has fossils in it. Fossils take centuries to form.

[lowercase skye]

2 minutes ago, astareus said:

But it doesn't make sense that something that we grow from 0 has fossils in it. Fossils take centuries to form.

It has gems, though! And we don't need to wait hundreds-to-thousands of years for those to form.

[Popian]

2 minutes ago, astareus said:

But it doesn't make sense that something that we grow from 0 has fossils in it. Fossils take centuries to form.

What the roots are doing here is bringing buried things to the surface. Could expand on this by introducing a "metal detector" to point to places to plant to get better loot.

[Swiyss]

4 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

It has gems, though! And we don't need to wait hundreds-to-thousands of years for those to form.

Just now, Popian said:

What the roots are doing here is bringing buried things to the surface. Could expand on this by introducing a "metal detector" to point to places to plant to get better loot.

Still I don't feel like these should drop fossils at a 25% rate. Maybe 0.5%

[Bumber64]

I'd like these to be able to create new sea stacks on the surface.

[Swiyss]

3 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

I'd like these to be able to create new sea stacks on the surface.

This is a very cool idea. Being able to finally replant some sea flowers for barnacles and not depend on rng to get a somewhat underwhelming item would instantly bump it to something actually usable.

[Milordo]

54 minutes ago, Popian said:

What the roots are doing here is bringing buried things to the surface. Could expand on this by introducing a "metal detector" to point to places to plant to get better loot.

Yup! My same first reactions.

48 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

I'd like these to be able to create new sea stacks on the surface.

This big brain time 

[WhackE]

they do now!

they can lift up fossils when they grow depending on the biome, so the chance is there.

Edited September 6, 2025 by WhackE

[gamehun20]

6 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I'd like these to be able to create new sea stacks on the surface.

That's what i was thinking when i originally saw the seed. I think the vine is supposed to look like it lifts the stone out of the floor under it so maybe we could plant it/throw it in water and it would take longer to grow depending on what depth of water it's in.

[Milordo]

At this point we should push absolutely Bumber's idea

7 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I'd like these to be able to create new sea stacks on the surface.

to be able to plant these new tree on the ocean to gather new sea stacks. Like, it's there, it's there! On a silver platter!

Edited September 6, 2025 by Milordo

[Hungry French]

Then need to do this' that they would not fall after killing AFW.

[Pumking7]

18 hours ago, Popian said:

What the roots are doing here is bringing buried things to the surface. Could expand on this by introducing a "metal detector" to point to places to plant to get better loot

Very cool this exact idea got put in the game to slightly alter the loot depending on the biome! 

On 9/5/2025 at 1:53 PM, irangod said:

Doesn't the world regrowth affect them?

I haven't really tested this part yet since it just involves waiting. There is no world generation option to alter the speed at which they regrow, so I'm not sure. I assume the renewal of the seeds is going to be event tied like palmcones due to their uniqueness. (I am hoping it wouldn't be left to the pile of things that don't have world regrowth but definitely should at this point in the game's life)

If we base the idea of what they can grow with what biome they are grown in, then maybe only in super nutrient rich soils they would be able to grow more seeds. (Maybe using farm turf I'm not sure)

Edited September 6, 2025 by Pumking7