Add Boulderbough Seeds to Giant Cave Worm's Loot Table

[Catapult 2.0]

  In my long-term saves (thousands of days) where I frequently play with friends, we consistently clear the caves and build elaborate underground bases. However, we almost always disable the Giant Cave Worm in world settings because—unlike other raid bosses like Deerclops (which can be preemptively summoned with Hostile Flares) or Bearger (which won't attack unless provoked)—the worm's attacks are far less predictable and controllable.

  Here are some optimization suggestions for the Giant Cave Worm:

Changes to Summoning Mechanics:

1.Convert to a Territorial Boss:

• The Giant Cave Worm lies dormant in a specific area of the Rocky Biome (e.g., near Stone Sloths). Players must actively awaken it to initiate combat.
• After defeat, reset the worm's raid probability, and impose a cooldown (at least 20 days) before it can reappear.

2.Hostile Flare Summoning:

• Allow players to proactively summon the worm using Hostile Flares. Defeating it would grant loot and reset its raid timer.

Revised Loot Table:
Add the following to its drops:

• Boulderbough Seeds
• Transplantable Glow Berries (small variants)

PS: I highly recommend referencing the excellent mod Beneath The World Below, id=3360553731 ,which successfully reworks the Giant Cave Worm into a territorial boss and introduces unique drops for crafting powerful utilities.

Edited September 6, 2025 by Catapult 2.0

[lowercase skye]

Renewable boulderbough seeds would be a welcome change, but I really really really do not want the Great Depths Worm to be made into a raid boss that you have to seek out on purpose. It is one of the coolest and most fun active threats added in years, it would be incredibly sad if it was instead yet another boss that you go to a single area of the caves to summon on purpose.

[Catapult 2.0]

25 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

Renewable boulderbough seeds would be a welcome change, but I really really really do not want the Great Depths Worm to be made into a raid boss that you have to seek out on purpose. It is one of the coolest and most fun active threats added in years, it would be incredibly sad if it was instead yet another boss that you go to a single area of the caves to summon on purpose.

One of the coolest and most fun active threats in added years' = A mechanic with zero counterplay or prevention methods, that destroys your base structures spread across the entire map, and permanently devours your items like fire?

You're probably a short-term player who's never maintained a thousands of day save—focused on linear progression and survival adventure, restarting after experiencing all content. But not all players play this way. We long-term players transform the entire map through renovations. For attacks with destructive capabilities, we should at least be given preventive measures.

Imagine this: your entire underground map is covered with meticulously constructed landscapes and bases that took thousands of in-game days to build. When the Giant Cave Worm's warning appears, you have to travel extreme distances just to find a small, undeveloped area—and unless you're playing a teleportation character, it's impossible to reach it in time. You're forced to let it spawn midway, destroying your structures along the path. Does this truly qualify as 'the coolest and most fun active threat added'?

Edited September 6, 2025 by Catapult 2.0

[Captain_Rage]

Then you rebuild it.

[Crestwave]

12 minutes ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

One of the coolest and most fun active threats in added years' = A mechanic with zero counterplay or prevention methods, that destroys your base structures spread across the entire map, and permanently devours your items like fire?

You're probably a short-term player who's never maintained a thousands of day save—focused on linear progression and survival adventure, restarting after experiencing all content. But not all players play this way. We long-term players transform the entire map through renovations. For attacks with destructive capabilities, we should at least be given preventive measures.

Imagine this: your entire underground map is covered with meticulously constructed landscapes and bases that took thousands of in-game days to build. When the Giant Cave Worm's warning appears, you have to travel extreme distances just to find a small, undeveloped area—and unless you're playing a teleportation character, it's impossible to reach it in time. You're forced to let it spawn midway, destroying your structures along the path. Does this truly qualify as 'the coolest and most fun active threat added'?

That is a very niche scenario—I have played in worlds with tens of thousands of days and never had quite literally the entire caves map as a megabase.

34 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

Renewable boulderbough seeds would be a welcome change, but I really really really do not want the Great Depths Worm to be made into a raid boss that you have to seek out on purpose. It is one of the coolest and most fun active threats added in years, it would be incredibly sad if it was instead yet another boss that you go to a single area of the caves to summon on purpose.

I think just implementing the loot table change and the hostile flare mechanic (letting mapbasers summon it in a dedicated arena but still keeping it an active threat if not regularly killed) would be a good compromise.

[Catapult 2.0]

8 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

Then you rebuild it.

How casually you say that! I suspect you have little experience with creative construction. Anyone who has ever built elaborate landscapes knows it's an inspiration-driven process—the spatial arrangement of structures, the intricate layouts... Once complex builds are destroyed, it's nearly impossible for the creator to perfectly recreate them. And why should players' painstaking work be so easily destroyed without any preventive measures?

[Hungry French]

There are too many territorial bosses today... I still can't forgive Klei for Moose and Dragonfly...

If only Moose and Dragonfly had come... The sound of their screams is still in the DS...

[Dingle]

5 hours ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

  In my long-term saves (thousands of days) where I frequently play with friends, we consistently clear the caves and build elaborate underground bases. However, we almost always disable the Giant Cave Worm in world settings because—unlike other raid bosses like Deerclops (which can be preemptively summoned with Hostile Flares) or Bearger (which won't attack unless provoked)—the worm's attacks are far less predictable and controllable.

  Here are some optimization suggestions for the Giant Cave Worm:

Changes to Summoning Mechanics:

1.Convert to a Territorial Boss:

• The Giant Cave Worm lies dormant in a specific area of the Rocky Biome (e.g., near Stone Sloths). Players must actively awaken it to initiate combat.
• After defeat, reset the worm's raid probability, and impose a cooldown (at least 20 days) before it can reappear.

2.Hostile Flare Summoning:

• Allow players to proactively summon the worm using Hostile Flares. Defeating it would grant loot and reset its raid timer.

Revised Loot Table:
Add the following to its drops:

• Boulderbough Seeds
• Transplantable Glow Berries (small variants)

PS: I highly recommend referencing the excellent mod Beneath The World Below, id=3360553731 ,which successfully reworks the Giant Cave Worm into a territorial boss and introduces unique drops for crafting powerful utilities.

Please make it a location based boss, devs. I wanted this even when it was introduced. This loot also seems great, a renewable source of boulderbough seeds alone wouls be interesting and plantable glowberries sounds fun (if not particularly strong, as the surface fuelweaver + lureplant trick exists).

Also: I've still never, ever seen this boss in a normal game. It has just never legitimately spawned for me.

[Maxil20]

11 hours ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

One of the coolest and most fun active threats in added years' = A mechanic with zero counterplay or prevention methods, that destroys your base structures spread across the entire map, and permanently devours your items like fire?

I feel like this would be true if it was the First rendition of the worm, but Klei has made several tweaks to it to make it much more fair to counterplay:

-Instead of randomly appearing offscreen and moving towards you (destroying structures along the way), the worm now spawns directly next to you.
-The worm got a proper 60 second boss warning compared to the 30 seconds it had preivously.
-Now easily has the most obvious "boss approaching" warning in the entire game, both with it's unique growl and the fact it causes mini quakes while spawning.

Even before they tweaked it, the worm's biggest quirk you can take advantage of is it takes several seconds to go from spawned to actually moving, and the worm despawns entirely the instant you get it offscreen. I'm pretty confident you can avoid just about all of the destruction by quickly moving away from it with a cane/LE + magi + cobble roads, and/or using a few telepoofs in a lit area (either induced by things like mushlights or wearing the moggles) to unload it as fast as possible.

And look, even with these tweaks, it's okay to not like it. No one is going to judge you if you tweak it in the settings if it's just not your thing, especially if your world was made before the worm existed (I currently have it disabled on my ~22K day world because it wasn't made with the worm in mind at all, and I haven't really been interested in adjusting some areas at the moment, though I do wanna eventually to snag its sketch/adornment). It's just that saying there is zero counterplay to the worm is flat out wrong, and has been for quite some time.

Edited September 6, 2025 by Maxil20

[Mike23Ua]

5 hours ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

How casually you say that! I suspect you have little experience with creative construction. Anyone who has ever built elaborate landscapes knows it's an inspiration-driven process—the spatial arrangement of structures, the intricate layouts... Once complex builds are destroyed, it's nearly impossible for the creator to perfectly recreate them. And why should players' painstaking work be so easily destroyed without any preventive measures?

The thing is you wouldn’t have ever been able to make something like this if the game had more active destructive elements from the offset. Just for a moment let’s pretend that your a brand new player to the game, forget the picture above, this base doesn’t exist yet.

I want you to now as a new player to the game diving in for the very first time, and has to experience all the game changes, all the added mobs and new gameplay content that’s been added with each update since the creation of the above shown “base” up till this very second: I want you to build this base.

What people like you do not seem to understand is that while YOU have probably been here to learn the new content update by update: YOU as someone who once upon a time ago never had to ever deal with Varglets, Evil Bugs Bunny, Pokemon Onyx of the Caves.. 

The things that you learned bit by bit as it was added, are all the new “Default playing experience” for anyone trying to get into the game for the very first time.

Things you NEVER had to deal with when you created this base because they didn’t exist yet: Is now the Normal everyday experience for people who are just starting.

And even if you say you’ve started new worlds with the new content changes and have still built up these sort of display bases: Good for you! You have Knowledge, you have years of experience of content existing pre-existing content, and you likely throughly read patch notes to learn the ins and outs of each new content update the moment it goes into beta.

But this isn’t the Standard or intended playing experience:

And for anyone who is just now joining the game who wants to make a base like the one your proudly showing off: They’ll have to learn to do so while also fighting or avoiding a giant Tremors Worm.

[kroban]

14 hours ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

A mechanic with zero counterplay or prevention methods, that destroys your base structures spread across the entire map, and permanently devours your items like fire?

Look I agree with your post, I think this boss would have been way better with a "static spawn" and better loot. And your idea that it should drop boulderbough is awesome. But what do you mean by "zero counterplay or prevention methods"? You can literally spawn it on an empty area and it despawns after like, 20 seconds of being off screen.

The prevention method is on you, YOU have to now consider empty areas where you can make it despawn. In caves thats ridiculously easy to do because a lot of areas aren't that viable for basing unless you put some wild amount of work with lamps and all that. But this has always been the case on surface bases where theres waaaay more threats (deerclops, antlion, bearger, fire hounds, or even static bosses like Dragonfly and Scrappy if you want to base near them)

14 hours ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

You're probably a short-term player who's never maintained a thousands of day save—focused on linear progression and survival adventure, restarting after experiencing all content. But not all players play this way. We long-term players transform the entire map through renovations. For attacks with destructive capabilities, we should at least be given preventive measures.

If yall truly, truly have THE ENTIRE MAP full of structures on every single corner possible (which even for long-term players its some pretty niche scenario) yall can also just turn it off on the world config. Theres no shame in that. I have played on countless long-term maps, and on the server I play, we have wildfires turned off, simply because we think its an annoying mechanic that is hard to handle on a multiplayer with many different bases (for example, a base owner is disconnected, and someone else forgets to maintain flingos or unknowingly starts a wildfire from walking nearby due to some spawning outside screen, etc etc)

Edited September 7, 2025 by kroban

[lowercase skye]

10 hours ago, Catapult 2.0 said:

You're probably a short-term player who's never maintained a thousands of day save—focused on linear progression and survival adventure, restarting after experiencing all content. But not all players play this way. We long-term players transform the entire map through renovations. For attacks with destructive capabilities, we should at least be given preventive measures.

Heads up, it is extremely extremely rude to immediately try to other someone who disagrees with you, and insinuate they must not understand because they don't play the same way as you. I megabase! I play worlds for thousands of days at a time, continuing far after the questlines are over, just building and making things that look nice! I can have this differing opinion without it automatically meaning I must not play the way you do.

[Milordo]

Ok, so, slow down. In order.

1) First, adding boulderbough seeds to GDW loot table, yeah. Why not. I'll add it to his "fixing" post.

2) GDW is NOT a raid boss, as well as Deerclops. Deerclops and GDW are categorized as normal bosses. Raid bosses by the rules are bosses with: tons of hp far more than Deerclops or GDW, an arena where often time you need an item or mechanic to unlock it and activate the raid boss fight, and then tons of complex mechanics that involve strategies on how to defeat them instead of using only armor, weapon and healing items just like Deerclops and GDW.

3) Finally, and I say it with no ill will, I think you took GDW by the wrong foot and have an unlimited hate towards it, probably during his first version, when now, almost, everything about him is fixed, even for long terms worlds like yours (he's even better than Deerclops and Bearger griefing.....why not criticize them?) I will not say further because I suspect you have your mind already made up about this, just that Klei decided GDW to be a normal boss like this and making all these changes, while possible, don't think will happen at this stage. 

 

Frankly I'm with Klei and the community. I had fun creating him during Depths of Duplicity beta with the community and his finished version is very beautiful. You could however hold this feedback and ideas for maybe a future raid boss for the Caves. Who knows! Thanks to @lowercase skye @Maxil20 @kroban  for writing exactly what I would have said. I couldn't have said it better!

 

And finally important. I don't want, nor care, to advertize my posts, but for those interested in the Great Depths Worm, I highly suggest to visit this post, that talks in-depth about fixing some last errors of the poor big wormy, so that Klei finishes it 100% once and for all.

 

[Keknutui]

It seems to me that the worm needs 2 changes in this update:

1.The ability to summon him as a deerclops with the help of the Hospitable Flare.

2.So that new seedlings sometimes fall from it, making them renewable.

Come on, Klei, @омар_клей, @V2C , don't miss the chance to give such an interesting boss some better loot and cave interaction.

Edited September 7, 2025 by Keknutui

[Milordo]

26 minutes ago, Keknutui said:

It seems to me that the worm needs 2 changes in this update:

1.The ability to summon him as a deerclops with the help of the Hospitable Flare.

2.So that new seedlings sometimes fall from it, making them renewable.

Come on, Klei, @омар_клей, @V2C , don't miss the chance to give such an interesting boss some better loot and cave interaction.

Adding the new seedlings to his loot table is the most straightforward thing ever obviously.

The ability to summon him is not. For starter, hostile flare is banned, because you can't have Glommer in the Caves. So normal flare it is. Then, other people in the community don't seems to be on board to summon him, because they like the unpredictability and no control of its spawning, following the old Don't Starve spirit (of which I agree and love). If Klei will choose this option, I'm personally neutral about it. I would completely accept the flare as a second mean to encounter it. 

Finally, the worm needs absolutely other 3 final changes, making in total 5 changes for ajusting the worm once and for all : despawning (if the flare option is not chosen), punishment, digestion mechanic and again loot.

[landromat]

On 9/6/2025 at 2:17 PM, Catapult 2.0 said:

How casually you say that! I suspect you have little experience with creative construction. Anyone who has ever built elaborate landscapes knows it's an inspiration-driven process—the spatial arrangement of structures, the intricate layouts... Once complex builds are destroyed, it's nearly impossible for the creator to perfectly recreate them. And why should players' painstaking work be so easily destroyed without any preventive measures?

With all respect why anybody should care about you building gigantic base. Bases like these are much more than any player needs and should never be considered when designing new mobs or bosses. You either deal with it or turn it off, But you definitely not ask on forums to make it non-treat because you base is too big. That's your problem exclusively

[Pumking7]

On 9/6/2025 at 4:29 AM, Catapult 2.0 said:

1.Convert to a Territorial Boss:

• The Giant Cave Worm lies dormant in a specific area of the Rocky Biome (e.g., near Stone Sloths). Players must actively awaken it to initiate combat.

 

On 9/6/2025 at 6:34 AM, lowercase skye said:

I really really really do not want the Great Depths Worm to be made into a raid boss that you have to seek out on purpose.

Why not make it a mix of both, an Antlion with a bit more of a bite if you don't clear it out. For reference in Hamlet, the DSA DLC, if you clear out the Vampire Bats in the Cave Clefts it will reduce the amount of bats in the succeeding wave. Why not make it act in a similar way. The Great Depths Worm could have a few set spawns around the world maybe even imitating items that aren't glow berries, but containing a distinct rumbling so the player can't be thrown off. The Great Depths Worm could respawn every 5-10 days this way if you were to defeat it. Killing the Great Depths Worm before it is triggered in a worm wave would have its chance resets/lowers. If you don't its chance keeps building up until it spawns. Its chance to spawn/rising chance per wave might have to be adjusted if this is implemented, but I think this would give players a bit more agency and allow those to seek it out if they want to fight for the battle/loot.

(Also please add a bit more rolls to its loot table if boulderbough were to ever be put in it would be so rare. There are some neat items but as others have said they compete with boneshards and guano so giving them a bit more chance to spawn would be nice)

[Lovens]

23 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel like this would be true if it was the First rendition of the worm, but Klei has made several tweaks to it to make it much more fair to counterplay:

-Instead of randomly appearing offscreen and moving towards you (destroying structures along the way), the worm now spawns directly next to you.
-The worm got a proper 60 second boss warning compared to the 30 seconds it had preivously.
-Now easily has the most obvious "boss approaching" warning in the entire game, both with it's unique growl and the fact it causes mini quakes while spawning.

Even before they tweaked it, the worm's biggest quirk you can take advantage of is it takes several seconds to go from spawned to actually moving, and the worm despawns entirely the instant you get it offscreen. I'm pretty confident you can avoid just about all of the destruction by quickly moving away from it with a cane/LE + magi + cobble roads, and/or using a few telepoofs in a lit area (either induced by things like mushlights or wearing the moggles) to unload it as fast as possible.

And look, even with these tweaks, it's okay to not like it. No one is going to judge you if you tweak it in the settings if it's just not your thing, especially if your world was made before the worm existed (I currently have it disabled on my ~22K day world because it wasn't made with the worm in mind at all, and I haven't really been interested in adjusting some areas at the moment, though I do wanna eventually to snag its sketch/adornment). It's just that saying there is zero counterplay to the worm is flat out wrong, and has been for quite some time.

I agree with what you said but I also see no harm in making it summonable like deerclops. Maybe not with hostile flares but via a different method - say, if you induced several earthquakes in a row, it would attract the worm to you. Could be achieved by exploding slurtle slime or gunpowder, or reading Wickerbottom's light books. It should still properly spawn it with a warning sound though, followed by a series of its own short earthquakes. I would actively use this feature to summon the worm before boss fights. The fact that it can randomly spawn during FW, AG, Toad or NMWP fight is terrifying and super unfair. Normally I would be fine with boss on boss violence but when one of them can eat the other boss's loot it's super annoying and has 0 counterplay. Leaving the boss arena is not always an option - FW and Toad will both despawn, nullifying all your efforts, NMWP can heal back when unloaded, and quickly unloading AG is sometimes impossible since you have to navigate through the labyrinth which can still keep you close to AG as you are escaping it. 

If the summoning feature is added I would not mind if it was put on a cooldown as you summon the worm, although I don't think it necessary since its loot is not too powerful. 

And yeah with all the changes to the worm I still don't like that he comes at me unpredictably and I can't control when it happens. Even with Deerclops before hostile flares there was a way to calculate when he spawns again based on when you killed him. And he only spawned once a year meaning the rest of the year you were fine. It's ok to have weaker mobs like hounds and regular worms harass you on a constant schedule since they are easy to kill, are not destructive, and can be dealt with in many ways. But having a giant super destructive boss come to you all year round, even with a 60 second warning is so off putting that I pretty much stopped enjoying playing in the caves and try to spend there as little time as possible, only when it's absolutely necessary. I don't like building bases or living in the caves anymore with this ever looming threat of GDW that can show up at any moment and ruin my day. 

I also heavily dislike that he permanently digests all the items he consumes, which makes dying to him even more unfair - sure it will despawn by the time you resurrect, but there's a chance he will eat some of your items forever (maybe even your amulet if you are unlucky). I think it would be a fair change if he never digested any of the eaten items and they would drop amongst his loot on death. Food and other spoilables can be truly consumed or rapidly spoiled and drop as rot. Or at least make him have an inventory like a lureplant, and make him digest them one by one with a small delay, and drop the items he ate back on his death provided he is killed quickly. It's ok to consume them but doesn't seem realistic he would digest everything so quickly without a trace. 

[viblym]

Clicked on the post thinking. Yeah! The Worm dropping Boulderbough seeds WOULD be cool. What's all this about changing the spawn mechanics for the Worm? Beneath The World Below is a great mod and all, but I very much like that the Greater Depths Worm comes to you. The setpiece with the Worm boss is not the Greater Depths Worm, it is a completely different boss that is a lot tougher to defeat, and actually warrants having its own arena. Again, I do agree with the Boulderbough seed idea, but these other proposed changes are not doing it for me. 

[Dingle]

8 hours ago, viblym said:

Clicked on the post thinking. Yeah! The Worm dropping Boulderbough seeds WOULD be cool. What's all this about changing the spawn mechanics for the Worm? Beneath The World Below is a great mod and all, but I very much like that the Greater Depths Worm comes to you. The setpiece with the Worm boss is not the Greater Depths Worm, it is a completely different boss that is a lot tougher to defeat, and actually warrants having its own arena. Again, I do agree with the Boulderbough seed idea, but these other proposed changes are not doing it for me. 

I've never seen the boss worm spawn. Would be nice to see it without console commands.