Please Klei fix these two problems of this last patch!!

[Milordo]

There are two problems in the latest patch. One major, one minor. *NEW* and one little little minor problem.

Major problem = Befriending (active) Clockworks with gears.

I know this one was probably made out of fun (or consistency in your mind Klei), without anyone double thinking or checking for game balance but this new feature breaks objectively everything. I'm not in the slightlest exaggerating. It breaks enemy design --> because you can befriend clockworks in any moment, during aggro/battle or outside of it, and with how easy it is, now with the, new stupendous faboulus clockworks reworks btw, you can create easily an army that stunlock and stomp almost everything, like Bee Queen, Ancient Guardian, depths worms, ecc... (I say almost because I didn't test it throughly with all entities). It breaks level design, gameplay and game design --> because what danger in the Ruins? Gears literally rain on your head in the Ruins, and you can collect them preemptively on the first level through graves, tumbleweeds and others clockworks. So you rob entirely the existence of the level danger and difficulty AND clockworks purpose to be the "important tough teased enemy of the level". And lastly, the most impactful, it breaks the unique better balanced broken clockworks mechanic of recruiting clockworks for three gears. Why should I ever recruit, through broken clockworks, if now I can do anything with 1 gear? Why should I ever interact it to begin with, if it's even easier and far more powerful to block an enemy entire existence?   

This is super problematic and should be resolved asap in these weeks.

There are five easy fixes, for now, that comes to my mind.

• A) Just remove this new feature. I'm serious. The important stuff about clockwork friendship is already done in this patch (bug fixing, ecc...). So again, why introduce this mechanic? To obscure and replace the same better balanced one? Why? It make no sense at all.   
• B) Increasing the cost *NEW* or RNG cost. It's something but again.....the underlying problem still remains --> If the cost is the same, befriending active clockworks still is unbalanced because I can stop them anytime with one click. If the cost is higher, well.... why should I ever befriend them? I can recruit them with less through broken clockworks.
• C) As JakePeng said in his other post. I can see work it, through electricity. You're paying with 1 gear AND another costly item (morning stars and electric darts) AND skill because you need to "hack" them through the stunned state. 
• D) New Rifts end-game item. This mechanic is now introduced through a new end-game Rifts item and at that point, it's all cool. You have finished the game and nothing stops you anymore, so why not have fun? And it doesn't breaks anything in balance or what not.
• E) Event-only. If it's locked behind the lunar event, well.....no problems there. Easy fix.

Option C) is a somewhat good solution at the moment, but I'm still on the fence that this mechanic should be just removed, *NEW* unless option D) or E) are chosed, then it's all good.

Option C) has been chosen!

 

Minor problem = Clockwork horse hitboxes. 

After studying and testing it a lot, I've come to the conclusion that clockwork horses are still the same in general, thus creating problems during fights. I tested throughly everything. Me vs 1 rook, me vs 2 rooks and 1 bishop, me vs 3 bishops, me vs 1 horse 1 bishop 1 rook, ecc.....And each time I noticed that the clockwork horse hitboxes don't line up very well with the new stupendous bishops and rooks attacks patterns. If horses will not have a new attack and stay the same, atleast it could be grateful to have their round big hitbox to be fixed. That's all.

 

One little little minor problem = Clockworks electricity stun resistance.

Maybe. Just Maybe. Clockworks should have just a little more resistance after being strucked by electricty, for a period of time, before gettin stunned again. Just a little bit.

 

Please Klei fix these three problems, especially the heavily unbalanced one of befriending active clockworks with gears, and this patch is a 10/10 masterpiece. No joking! Very well done job of those in the team that worked on Rook, Bishop and Knight reworks. They are marvelous and dare I say! ..... Balanced! Bravi!

Edited February 14 by Milordo

[Mike23Ua]

Calm down, it’s more likely that befriending clockworks is only available during the Year of Event, and outside of it- They become hostile again and can’t be easily tamed (same as year of the Varg)

[Auth]

9 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Calm down, it’s more likely that befriending clockworks is only available during the Year of Event, and outside of it- They become hostile again and can’t be easily tamed (same as year of the Varg)

It's available even with the event disabled.

[Milordo]

35 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Calm down, it’s more likely that befriending clockworks is only available during the Year of Event, and outside of it- They become hostile again and can’t be easily tamed (same as year of the Varg)

I assure you Mike, I'm calm. Probably very excited, for how awesome the update is, but I don't understand why we should belittle criticism of passionate people, like myself, especially if I take care each time on writing all these long exsausting paragraphs, where I bring legitimately good points. I don't understand. I would have understood if you had some other things to bring on the table or some clarification on something I've missed or some counterpoint but this seems not to be the case.

Also yeah. Auth already explained to you. The problem is important and big but I have faith Klei will understand and fix it soon.

Edited February 13 by Milordo

[Milordo]

New options added.

[Well-met]

disallow nightmare clocks to be hireable completely and make regulars hireable only if they're sleeping

[adminaaassh]

I also have a question: has the bug where hired Clockwork Bishops or other clockwork creatures attack friendly creatures been fixed? (For example, Hutch. Sorry—I’ve been really busy lately and haven’t had time to test it.)

Edited February 14 by adminaaassh

[Green latter A]

They could limit the number of befriended clockworks a player can have at a time

[adminaaassh]

After reading several posts and thinking it over, I’ve changed my mind. In fact, I now think that the game mechanic of hiring mechanical creatures is actually acceptable and does not break game balance.

 

I believe the reason many people feel this mechanic is too overpowered is because those boss-kill videos make it look far too easy. However, if you think about it carefully, using the character Wurt should be able to achieve similar results much faster. As for gears: honestly, although there are many underground, in a short-term save it’s very unlikely that you can collect all of them. Under normal circumstances, you only gather a few gears to craft some items or structures, then finish making some equipment in the Ancient Ruins and return to the surface to fight bosses.

 

Therefore, mass-hiring mechanical creatures is actually not something that can be done extremely quickly in the early game. You would need a much longer and more complex process to collect a large number of gears. Compared to Wurt, this process is actually very slow. In addition, the idea that these creatures can quickly defeat bosses in reality requires long-term development to hire a large number of mechanical units.

 

Moreover, in multiplayer games, I think there is another issue that needs to be addressed: if the player who hired these mechanical creatures leaves the game, will those creatures immediately become hostile toward the remaining players and attack them? That would be a fairly serious drawback.

 

In summary, I personally think that people believe the mechanic of hiring clockwork creatures is too balance-breaking mainly because the boss-fight videos look unrealistically fast and easy. But in reality, hiring a large number of mechanical creatures is a very slow process—arguably even less efficient than using Wurt. Therefore, I now believe that hiring mechanical creatures does not break the game balance.

 

For example, you can aggressively farm the King of the Merms to quickly build up your army, then explore the Lunar Island to obtain kelp and glass shards. After that, you can build some houses underground and use rapid respawning to establish your underground army in the caves. Compared to hiring large numbers of clockwork creatures, this method is faster and more effective.

Of course, I feel you might argue that these creatures could undermine the sense of adventure in the game. I think that really depends on personal choice. Some players don’t enjoy endlessly killing bosses or creatures to obtain items; they prefer factories, small automated setups, or simply don’t want to clear out the monsters in the ruins at all. That’s exactly the charm of sandbox games—they can accommodate many different playstyles.

 

For me personally, in long-term saves, repeatedly farming ruin creatures for loot feels tedious and uninteresting, so I usually choose to build factories instead. Therefore, I think you might feel that hiring gear-based creatures could damage the sense of adventure and danger in the ruins. But honestly, if you use the T.I.N.G.L.E. Node, the ruins area already becomes very safe. And producing a large number of T.I.N.G.L.E. Nodes doesn’t actually take very long.

Edited February 14 by adminaaassh

[Milordo]

3 hours ago, Green latter A said:

They could limit the number of befriended clockworks a player can have at a time

They could

4 hours ago, adminaaassh said:

I also have a question: has the bug where hired Clockwork Bishops or other clockwork creatures attack friendly creatures been fixed? (For example, Hutch. Sorry—I’ve been really busy lately and haven’t had time to test it.)

Nope. All bugs or tecnical problems relegated to clockworks followers have been fixed in this update. 

23 minutes ago, adminaaassh said:

--snip--

 Maybe you should read the post again carefully and notice, you know, ALL the others giant problems and points, not only boss fight videos. Same for GrapeVruit.

 

 

 

Anyway.

Well, well, well. It seems an option has been chosen. 

Option C) it is. @Jakepeng99 you won. 

[adminaaassh]

11 minutes ago, Milordo said:

They could

Nope. All bugs or tecnical problems relegated to clockworks followers have been fixed in this update. 

 Maybe you should read the post again carefully and notice, you know, ALL the others giant problems and points, not only boss fight videos. Same for GrapeVruit.

 

 

 

Anyway.

Well, well, well. It seems an option has been chosen. 

Option C) it is. @Jakepeng99 you won. 

I’ve reread your points carefully several times. Your main criticism of the clockwork creatures seems to be that their damage is too high, that they disrupt established combat strategies, and that they undermine the sense of adventure for players. However, I’ve already addressed all of these concerns in my earlier replies.

 

In addition, there is another point you raised: that no one bothers to repair Broken Clockworks because repairing the clockwork ruins requires three gears. But in reality, if you’ve actually tried repairing clockwork creatures, you’ll find that repairing them can yield more loot rather than just serving as a simple way to hire them. When you have a sufficient supply of gears, repairing Broken Clockworks can actually provide greater overall rewards.

 

[Milordo]

2 minutes ago, adminaaassh said:

 

In addition, there is another point you raised: that no one bothers to repair Broken Clockworks because repairing the clockwork ruins requires three gears. But in reality, if you’ve actually tried repairing clockwork creatures, you’ll find that repairing them can yield more loot rather than just serving as a simple way to hire them. When you have a sufficient supply of gears, repairing Broken Clockworks can actually provide greater overall rewards.

 

This is true and I've forgotten about it. I was ready to take fault but, If I'm not mistaken, I heard they changed this now in this update. Now the rewards are the same as when you smash with a hammer. I was going to test it but the latest patch makes you crash when repairing a broken clockwork, lol.

[adminaaassh]

In addition, whether there are large numbers of mechanical creatures or gears in the caves actually depends a lot on luck during world generation—on how much relevant terrain and how many creatures spawn. If you’re unlucky, the process can become extremely difficult. On top of that, there are shadow creatures in the caves, as well as the newly added Lurking Nightmare (which hired mechanical creatures cannot attack). As a result, before you obtain the Bone Helm, you are not truly safe.

 

Moreover, mechanical creatures on the surface and those underground cannot cross between the two worlds, which makes hiring a large number of mechanical creatures even more difficult. This is another reason why I believe this mechanic does not break game balance.

 

[adminaaassh]

Additionally, let me share a funny video 

https://b23.tv/bsnb2f6

[Jakepeng99]

6 hours ago, Milordo said:

They could

Nope. All bugs or tecnical problems relegated to clockworks followers have been fixed in this update. 

 Maybe you should read the post again carefully and notice, you know, ALL the others giant problems and points, not only boss fight videos. Same for GrapeVruit.

 

 

 

Anyway.

Well, well, well. It seems an option has been chosen. 

Option C) it is. @Jakepeng99 you won. 

Nice!

I still think some small balancing could be done, like changing how easy it is to stun them. I havent looked into how stunning works much though.

This at least makes there an entry gap so you cant speedrun early game so easy and you need a goat horn. Though, bishops can stun.

[Kacpert25]

On 2/13/2026 at 3:56 AM, Milordo said:

Maybe. Just Maybe. Clockworks should have just a little more resistance after being strucked by electricty, for a period of time, before gettin stunned again. Just a little bit.

Yeah, they definitely need to have much more resistance from getting shocked after being stunned.

Or even have a cooldown on getting stunned. So, for example, once stunned, they can't be stunned again for 10 seconds.