Great Depth Worm's Spawning Mechanic Needs Completely Rework

[yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

"There is a chance for the entire wave of Depths Worms to be replaced by a single Great Depths Worm after day 25. The chance of it to appear will increase by 5% to at most 50% with each Cave Worm Attack until it spawns and then the chance resets to 0%."

According to the description of the GDW's spawning mechanic on wiki, I use AI to calculate the probability of spawning GDW in a Worm Attack. And meanwhile I independently calculated the probabilities for the first six attacks using mathematical knowledge of random variables, and the results align with those computed by the AI. So I believe the data is accurate.

Spoiler

wave 2

occasions 01

calculation 0.05

probability 0.05

 

wave 3

occasions 001

calculation 0.95*0.1

probability 0.095

 

wave 4

occasions 0001,0101

calculation 0.95*0.9*0.15+0.05*0.05

probability 0.13075

 

wave 5

occasions 00001,00101,01001

calculation 0.95*0.9*0.85*0.2+2*0.95*0.1*0.05

probability 0.15845

 

wave 6

occasions 000001,010101,001001,000101,010001

calculation 0.95*0.9*0.85*0.8*0.25+0.05³+(0.95*0.1)²+2*0.95*0.9*0.15*0.05

probability 0.167325

To simplify, let's consider the occasion after Day 101. Because, it is obvious that there is need to kill multiple GDWs to gain the loot we need. The attack happens every 11 days, and has a chance of 16% to become a GDW attack. Generally speaking, it takes a year for a GDW to spawn.

I appreciate developers' work on enriching GDW's loot table. But what makes me sad is that their work is not that effective due to GDW's unreasonable spawning mechanic. This makes any change to its loot negligible, a year is too long.

I understand there is balance problem with GDW's destructive power and spawning frequency. To solve this and to facilitate further improvements on GDW, there is an urgent need to make GDW a territorial boss, spawn every 20 days, like most of the bosses. Or any change that makes GDW spawn regularly and controllable.

Edited September 11, 2025 by yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Keknutui]

1 hour ago, yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy said:

"There is a chance for the entire wave of Depths Worms to be replaced by a single Great Depths Worm after day 25. The chance of it to appear will increase by 5% to at most 50% with each Cave Worm Attack until it spawns and then the chance resets to 0%."

According to the description of the GDW's spawning mechanic on wiki, I use AI to calculate the probability of spawning GDW in a Worm Attack. And meanwhile I independently calculated the probabilities for the first six attacks using mathematical knowledge of random variables, and the results align with those computed by the AI. So I believe the data is accurate.

To simplify, let's consider the occasion after Day 101. The attack happens every 11 days, and has a chance of 16% to become a GDW attack. Generally speaking, it takes a year for a GDW to spawn.

I appreciate developers' work on enriching GDW's loot table. But what makes me sad is that their work is not that effective due to GDW's unreasonable spawning mechanic. This makes any change to its loot negligible.

I understand there is balance problem with GDW's destructive power and spawning frequency. To solve this and to facilitate further improvements on GDW, there is an urgent need to make GDW a territorial boss, spawn every 20 days, like most of the bosses.

Maybe we need an item that summons waves of worms to increase the chances. OR. Make the item that lured the Great Deeths worm

[Kacpert25]

3 minutes ago, Keknutui said:

Maybe we need an item that summons waves of worms to increase the chances. OR. Make the item that lured the Great Deeths worm

Yeah, that would be better in my opinion than making GDW another boss, with a specific spawn point and a 20-day respawn.

[Semind]

Anecdotally, it takes me hundreds of days to get my first GDW in a world. I can almost certainly count on one hand the number of times I've encountered it so far. Also I do not understand at all how you get 16% when it's directly stated to be 50%

[Mysterious box]

I feel like the best solution would be to make the spawn rate much higher but put a cap on how often it can spawn so you can't get too unlucky with it rather than making it like every other fight or nonexistent as it is now.

[SOS-Ouroboros-K]

I hope to summon this enemy with Hostile Flare.

[Milordo]

I mean, I like more people are talking about this (and hoping you will all not forget about 2. Punishment and 3. Fighting) but great depths worm as a raid boss? No, thanks. I don't think also Klei will do it and like it. They decided that it would be a normal boss and we should support it, not tear it apart. We didn't received a normal boss since 2014, or 2015 if we count Antlion but he has some problems. 

Then I don't know about A.i and I don't trust it, but your calculations seems correct 👍 I also on my post did good calculations and results with how bad gdw's spawn is. Thanks to people, who were even on the wiki, that helped me today on making this post (it's also thanks to me that you have now a better detailed chart of depths worms attacks, since it was wrong before...)

Anyway having more data and people discussing about this is great! Keep going 💪

1 hour ago, SOS-Ouroboros-K said:

I hope to summon this enemy with Hostile Flare.

No, again. Out of the options. You can't have Glommer in the caves.

[Mike23Ua]

8 minutes ago, Milordo said:

 No, again. Out of the options. You can't have Glommer in the caves.

Am I missing something here?? Can you not just craft the flares and take them down into caves after you have crafted them?? I’m pretty sure when the flare & hostile flare was added to the game that people had made posts about wanting to be able to fire them into the ceiling of the caves to destroy dangling depth dweller nests.

[Dingle]

4 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Am I missing something here?? Can you not just craft the flares and take them down into caves after you have crafted them?? I’m pretty sure when the flare & hostile flare was added to the game that people had made posts about wanting to be able to fire them into the ceiling of the caves to destroy dangling depth dweller nests.

You could even still take the goop down. It's not like Chester's eye bone or anything.

[Milordo]

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Am I missing something here?? Can you not just craft the flares and take them down into caves after you have crafted them?? I’m pretty sure when the flare & hostile flare was added to the game that people had made posts about wanting to be able to fire them into the ceiling of the caves to destroy dangling depth dweller nests.

Just now, Dingle said:

You could even still take the goop down. It's not like Chester's eye bone or anything.

It's not about the items or being able to craft up there and then bring them down. It's about game design. You can't produce and farm gloomer's goop in the Caves.

It's like asking "Why don't you resolve winter by going into the Ruins and craft this item?", in a hypotetical Don't Starve where thermal stones and winter clothing don't exist. Imagine it now for a new player.

If Klei make at the same time a way to farm gloomer's goop in the Caves and increasing chances to spawn GDW with hostile flares, then it's working wonderfully and fixed 👍

[Mike23Ua]

7 minutes ago, Dingle said:

You could even still take the goop down. It's not like Chester's eye bone or anything.

Yes! I thought so.. I may not play all the newer late game rifts related stuff but I was certainly there to play around with flares & hostile flares, And correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t firing flares in the caves also increase the chances of starting a cave earthquake?

[Milordo]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

Yes! I thought so.. I may not play all the newer late game rifts related stuff but I was certainly there to play around with flares & hostile flares, And correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t firing flares in the caves also increase the chances of starting a cave earthquake?

Yes.

[Dingle]

2 minutes ago, Milordo said:

It's not about the items or being able to craft up there and then bring them down. It's about game design. You can't produce and farm gloomer's goop in the Caves.

It's like asking "Why don't you resolve winter by going into the Ruins and craft this item?", in a hypotetical Don't Starve where thermal stones and winter clothing don't exist. Imagine it now for a new player.

If Klei make at the same time a way to farm gloomer's goop in the Caves and increasing chances to spawn GDW with hostile flares, then it's working wonderfully and fixed 👍

Shouldn't pan flutes not work in the caves, by that logic?

[Mike23Ua]

2 minutes ago, Milordo said:

It's not about the items or being able to craft up there and then bring them down. It's about game design. You can't produce and farm gloomer's goop in the Caves.

It's like asking "Why don't you resolve winter by going into the Ruins and craft this item?", in a hypotetical Don't Starve where thermal stones and winter clothing don't exist. Imagine it now for a new player.

If Klei make at the same time a way to farm gloomer's goop in the Caves and increasing chances to spawn GDW with hostile flares, then it's working wonderfully and fixed 👍

Your talking to someone who literally use to go down into the caves server only to collect mass amounts of slurtle slime for its uhh “explosive” properties to take back to the surface, Panflute dragonfly to sleep and proceed to blow her up real good, I also use to do this to hybernating Bearger. 😈 

I think it’s fair that you should need to return to the surface to get ingredients to craft hostile flare, same as how I have to dip down into caves to get more slurtle kaboom ooze.

[Milordo]

1 minute ago, Dingle said:

Shouldn't pan flutes not work in the caves, by that logic?

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Your talking to someone who literally use to go down into the caves server only to collect mass amounts of slurtle slime for its uhh “explosive” properties to take back to the surface, Panflute dragonfly to sleep and proceed to blow her up real good, I also use to do this to hybernating Bearger. 😈 

I think it’s fair that you should need to return to the surface to get ingredients to craft hostile flare, same as how I have to dip down into caves to get more slurtle kaboom ooze.

No.

I'm not stating that items shouldn't be shared, but if an option must be chose to fix GDW spawning, it shouldn't be something unstable like hostile flares because they can't be craft in Caves and you need everytime to go up, wait for the full moon, pick gloomer, waiting again for him pooping.... It must be something intrinsic on the worm itself or inside Caves. Unless Klei adds a new way to farm gloomer's goop in the Caves, then it's okay too. It's game design and what Don't Starve design do since its inception. Again, you can take my example on winter. 

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Your talking to someone who literally use to go down into the caves server only to collect mass amounts of slurtle slime for its uhh “explosive” properties to take back to the surface, Panflute dragonfly to sleep and proceed to blow her up real good, I also use to do this to hybernating Bearger. 😈 

Btw very chad of you. Didn't expect it from you.

[Dingle]

2 minutes ago, Milordo said:

No.

I'm not stating that items shouldn't be shared, but if an option must be chose to fix GDW spawning, it shouldn't be something unstable like hostile flares because they can't be craft in Caves and you need everytime to go up, wait for the full moon, pick gloomer, waiting again for him pooping.... It must be something intrinsic on the worm itself or inside Caves. Unless Klei adds a new way to farm gloomer's goop in the Caves, then it's okay too. It's game design and what Don't Starve design do since its inception. Again, you can take my example on winter.

I kind of see your perspective, but there's already at least one giant example that shows this isn't part of the game design:

You can't summon Fuelweaver in a caves only world. The atrium comes from the surface, only. No shadow pieces underground, no new moon underground.

Plus we're talking about a method that would speed up gdw summoning. Presumably it would still spawn naturally, too.

Oh, bonus example: Misery Toadstool.

[Mike23Ua]

2 minutes ago, Dingle said:

I kind of see your perspective, but there's already at least one giant example that shows this isn't part of the game design:

You can't summon Fuelweaver in a caves only world. The atrium comes from the surface, only. No shadow pieces underground, no new moon underground.

Plus we're talking about a method that would speed up gdw summoning. Presumably it would still spawn naturally, too.

I mean.. on the Xbox there’s never been an option to host a cave-less world, or a surface-less caves only world, Klei designed the game around the idea that players would have access to both server shards, and that’s why certain characters item kit and skill trees can ask for items from both the surface and caves.

I would actually HATE to play in a world where I couldn’t use caves or couldn’t go to the surface, this would screw up so so many character item crafts, skill trees, craftable items and weapons Etc… how does ANYONE play in a world like that where at least 50% of the intended gameplay is missing?

[Milordo]

28 minutes ago, Dingle said:

I kind of see your perspective, but there's already at least one giant example that shows this isn't part of the game design:

You can't summon Fuelweaver in a caves only world. The atrium comes from the surface, only. No shadow pieces underground, no new moon underground.

Plus we're talking about a method that would speed up gdw summoning. Presumably it would still spawn naturally, too.

Oh, bonus example: Misery Toadstool.

Hmnnn, not really. Wrong.

Ancient Fuelweaver it's not Caves, nor Ruins, nor Ocean. It's the end of the game. As well as lunar quest. Of course those requires everything from the game. The very design of the two quests is to have a grand finale "quest" combining all levels of the game and their resources. Therefore is a special case. The same as Misery Toadstool. Misery is a secret special optional challenge, of a base version, still optional, but manageable on the Caves itself. They don't need items from the same level because they're already on another "plane" of the game.

Again. Winter, raining, earthquakes and gdw are basic first dangers and challenges the game throws at you, that are not optional, not special and as you see that's part of the base game design. Winter? Thermal stones and some clothing from the first level are already available. Raining? Same thing. Acid rains? (because earthquakes are just damage and don't have anything....unfortunately) oh look at that. Slurtles slimes. A base solution for a base challenge/danger must be in place in the same level. This is what Ds and Klei has always done. Gdw is not something optional or special. It's literally the first version of Deerclops, Bearger, Moose/Goose and Dragonfly (Ds) of the Caves (I say first because who knows in the future...). We wouldn't categorize Deerclops as optional challenge, when it literally comes at you to destroy your base, right? Especially in your first blind experience. And I'm sorry the discussion about GDW is not about speeding it up (which shows your confusion), it's literally about fixing it. Two very different words. Option C) Flares or explosions or new item are discussed because it's possible, right now, that you can't literally meet GDW in 2 years in-game (if you want to know more, my post describes it in-depth).

Now you get why all these responses before about hostile flare. Hoping I cleared a bit and expressed myself well on this. It's very important. I repeat and add. If they add a way to farm gloomer's goop down in the Caves, hostile flare is good 👍 If they fix first the spawning problem without hostile flares, and then add also hostile flares, this is good too! Because hostile flares became only an option, not the solution 👍   

[SOS-Ouroboros-K]

4 hours ago, Milordo said:

No, again. Out of the options. You can't have Glommer in the caves.

What I mean is to bring the Hostile Flare (or Glommer's Goop) that the player has made on the ground into the cave, not the Glommer itself.

Moreover, this is a supplementary mechanism (because Hostile Flare is usually too useless) rather than the only summoning method. Of course, the same effect can be achieved by creating items similar to Worm Food (terraria).

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/167446-has-anyone-actually-found-a-use-for-stuffed-night-cap/#comment-1833149

4 hours ago, Dingle said:

Shouldn't pan flutes not work in the caves, by that logic?

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I think it’s fair that you should need to return to the surface to get ingredients to craft hostile flare, same as how I have to dip down into caves to get more slurtle kaboom ooze.

Light Bulb: Has the World Forgotten Me?

[Milordo]

2 minutes ago, SOS-Ouroboros-K said:

What I mean is to bring the Hostile Flare (or Glommer's Goop) that the player has made on the ground into the cave, not the Glommer itself.

Moreover, this is a supplementary mechanism (because Hostile Flare is usually too useless) rather than the only summoning method. Of course, the same effect can be achieved by creating items similar to Worm Food (terraria).

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/167446-has-anyone-actually-found-a-use-for-stuffed-night-cap/#comment-1833149

👍

[Waywarbler]

3 hours ago, Milordo said:

Hmnnn, not really. Wrong.

-snip-

Seems kinda arbitrary, honestly. It's not like each shard is supposed to be self-contained. Also, Fuelweaver isn't caves? He's in the caves isn't he? 

Another example: You can't activate the archives in a caves only world (outside of Wilson transmutes). You need the moon stone for the iridescent gem, which is only on the surface.

4 hours ago, Milordo said:

I'm not stating that items shouldn't be shared, but if an option must be chose to fix GDW spawning, it shouldn't be something unstable like hostile flares because they can't be craft in Caves and you need everytime to go up, wait for the full moon, pick gloomer, waiting again for him pooping....

You only need to pick the flower once and then you've recruited Glommer as a steady source of goop. I don't see how that's unstable.

Also, how is the Great Depths Worm a "basic first danger" like freezing and raining??

[Schneid_101]

Make feeding stuffed night cap to a (planted?) depths worm have a 60% chance to summon the gdw. 

[Dingle]

20 minutes ago, SOS-Ouroboros-K said:

Light Bulb: Has the World Forgotten Me?

I was originally going to make a joke that Pierogi shouldn't work in the caves, because you can't get eggs without visiting the surface once.

[Mike23Ua]

13 minutes ago, Schneid_101 said:

Make feeding stuffed night cap to a (planted?) depths worm have a 60% chance to summon the gdw. 

What is that newer fruit the one that Wolfgang eats in an animated short and starts drooling and Hallucinating? I think needing to go get that and use it as bait would tie in with it nicely.

29 minutes ago, SOS-Ouroboros-K said:Light Bulb: Has the World Forgotten Me?

Klei made them drop from killing Skittersquid, I mean yeah it’s not as fast or effective as just dipping into caves to get, but you no longer exclusively have to go to caves to get them either.

https://dontstarve.wiki.gg/wiki/Skittersquid
 

[Milordo]

43 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

Seems kinda arbitrary, honestly. It's not like each shard is supposed to be self-contained. Also, Fuelweaver isn't caves? He's in the caves isn't he? 

How it's arbitrary. Each shard is supposed to be self-contained when you first explored them, put a base and try to survive before you become self-sustained. If the level doesn't offer you some base/solutions to contrast its basic dangers you will get an ocean = bad.

43 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

Also, Fuelweaver isn't caves? He's in the caves isn't he?

Another example: You can't activate the archives in a caves only world (outside of Wilson transmutes). You need the moon stone for the iridescent gem, which is only on the surface.

Not reading I see. --->

4 hours ago, Milordo said:

It's the end of the game. As well as lunar quest. Of course those requires everything from the game. The very design of the two quests is to have a grand finale "quest" combining all levels of the game and their resources. Therefore is a special case. The same as Misery Toadstool. Misery is a secret special optional challenge, of a base version, still optional, but manageable on the Caves itself. They don't need items from the same level because they're already on another "plane" of the game.

I even wrote about lunar quest. You know you're only giving me right with this example? Plus it's not even if I'm right or wrong, we're discussin about an objective design of the game.

44 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

You only need to pick the flower once and then you've recruited Glommer as a steady source of goop. I don't see how that's unstable.

Going back and up, with costant loading screens, and run in a point of the map for only glommer (the distance depends heavily on rng) and waiting days for a lot of poop (since we all agree it's chance based for GDW) is unstable. It's not the end of the world but fixing GDW only this way is terrible and unstable because you're interrupting your cave experience to fix a cave experience. A cave experience of which is just a basic danger of the level and created to be an obstacle (failing, which is the problem) and not something optional requiring other items from the world and the game, for obvious reasons. Do you see the problem? Just imagining it, it reminds me of the ocean and giving me nausea. 

55 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

Also, how is the Great Depths Worm a "basic first danger" like freezing and raining??

Would you consider Deerclops as a basic danger of winter? Yes or no?