Rework WX-78 Eating Gears

[GRC]

Historically, the biggest thing players have hated about WX-78 players was their habit of devouring Gears for a quick omni-stat replenish, destroying them in the process and denying the server one more Ice Box or Flingomatic. This became far less of an issue back in WX's character refresh changing stat-increases to Circuits instead of Gears, but the fact remains that WX-78 players can still destroy Gears this way.

Come 2026 and now Gears are, in addition to everything else they were already used for (like WX-78's Super-Acceleration Circuit), a valuable resource towards befriending Clockworks (which are arguably permanent benefits to the server given their eternal loyalty and regening-HP) and creating WX-78's backup bodies (which means Gears will be in especially high-demand across the player-base come WX-78's full skill tree release). Even with all the ways to get Gears now, they still remain an extremely valuable resource.

It's great that WX-78 has access to such a powerful "food" that's plentiful in the Ruins and Moon Quay Island, but given how it's commonly felt like borderline griefing to eat them in any world that isn't already mega-based, it'd be nice if this were the update to finally let go of that relic of WX-78's game design from base Don't Starve to make sure Gears aren't lost so readily.

Either as inherent to the character or as one of the Gamma Circuit effects, I'm hoping WX-78 can eat Gears in a way that still keeps them usable later on.

• Maybe getting to poop them out days later, good as new?
• Maybe just getting to lick them for reduced benefits but infinite reusability on a cooldown like Wanda's watches?
• Maybe a new item recipe for WX-78 altogether that reproduces the effects of eating Gears in exchange for some easier-to-renew resources like Gold, while removing the Gear-devouring aspect of the character outright.
• I wouldn't want to go as far as being able to just craft Gears, unless said recipe was really pricey or notably locked off until post-Ruins, so maybe that but I'd be the least happy with it.

I don't want WX-78 to lose out on such a great utility, and I understand that a selfish-mechanic like that is in-character for WX-78, but I don't want them to just destroy Gears altogether at this point in Don't Starve Together's player experience. Any other ideas folks?

[GimplyGoose]

Personally I don't see the problem of WX's ability to eat gears. In the very early game and before visiting the ruins, it is true that there are not many gears to go around, but with the release of the year of the clockwork knight, gears are more plentiful in the midgame than ever. You can turn 2 rocks (using one cut stone or marble as a catalyst) into 2 gears using the clockworks statues on a full moon. Rocks and marbles grow on trees. You don't even need to fight AFW for this method to receive very renewable gears.

In the early game many resources are depletable besides gears, like pig skin.

Edited March 24 by GimplyGoose
statues consume rocks not cut/stone marble

[Maxil20]

1 hour ago, GimplyGoose said:

but with the release of the year of the clockwork knight, gears are more plentiful in the midgame than ever. You can turn one cut stone or marble into 2 gears using the clockworks statues on a full moon.

It's not even like this is a mid game strat (unless day 31 is considered midgame now...). Since you only need one statue head and it's very realistic to have one spawn close enough to a marble piece to assemble it yourself, you could reasonably get a clockwork sketch by day 11 and prepare for a gear grind by day 31, especially since you've got 3 minutes thanks to winters long nights. 

If anything I wish there were more ways to sink gears into stuff later on. I can't think of a resource that falls off harder in terms of value than gears. There's only so many flingomatics to place and iceboxes you need, and the only way you could use them reasonably is as a character specific food option.

Edited March 24 by Maxil20

[-Nick-]

They tried removing WX-78's ability to eat gears back in their first refresh. It was reverted when people asked for it back. (me being one of them lol)

I see no reason to remove this mechanic when gears are more plentiful than ever and that it give's WX-78 a choice to either save the gears for their crafts or eat it to save them from low stats. The griefing argument isn't really valid when there is far better ways to grief in this game like using a torch. If someone is going to grief, they will do the most optimal and cheap way of griefing. 

Edited March 23 by -Nick-

[Mike23Ua]

If I want gears, I’ll farm them for free out of tumbleweeds in the desert, OR I will buy them from the Wandering Traders Inventory for whatever random resources he’s wanting in exchange.

[GimplyGoose]

1 minute ago, Maxil20 said:

It's not even like this is a mid game strat (unless day 31 is considered midgame now...). Since you only need one statue head and it's very realistic to have one spawn close enough to a marble piece to assemble it yourself, you could reasonably get a clockwork sketch by day 11 and prepare for a gear grind by day 31, especially since you've got 3 minutes thanks to winters long nights. 

If anything I wish there were more ways to sink gears into later on. I can't think of a resource that falls off harder in terms of value than gears. There's only so many flingomatics to place and iceboxes you need, and the only way you could use them reasonably is as a character specific food option.

I was debating using the term midgame, but it takes about 4 hours of in real time to reach day 31. If you have focused on doing other early game things, you may not be able to get a good harvest of gears from a natural full moon until day 51.

[-Nick-]

1 minute ago, GimplyGoose said:

I was debating using the term midgame, but it takes about 4 hours of in real time to reach day 31. If you have focused on doing other early game things, you may not be able to get a good harvest of gears from a natural full moon until day 51.

Honestly day 31 is generally a good amount of time to get a good harvest of gears. Down time in winter is considerably high. 

[Mike23Ua]

I’m not 100% sure of what the loot pools are from playing Jimbo’s silly deadly card game of gamble, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you couldn’t win gears from him too.

People are still treating DST like it’s still the hardcore unforgiving game that DS was, (which in itself is a Myth) but… I can’t deny that DST isn’t 100x easier.

Need proof? You only need to go to Charlie’s stage play and perform on stage outside of one of her play book scripts, you will be criticized for going “Off-Script” and THEN you will be Punished??* by having easy to kill Bush Hounds spawn, (seriously most the time they die in 1 hit) Killing these will grant you free Umbrellas & Mining Helmets (amongst other goodies)

So at this point, if gears are NOT part of Jimbo’s card prizes, Klei should heavily consider adding them.

[GimplyGoose]

20 minutes ago, -Nick- said:

Honestly day 31 is generally a good amount of time to get a good harvest of gears. Down time in winter is considerably high. 

I'm not saying you can't get a good harvest by day 31, but you would need to prioritize it over other tasks. Also we may differ on what we consider to be a good harvest. I would consider 100+ gears to be "good", but for that you need 50+ statues which is a bit of time/resources to sink by that day. For me, there are a lot of things I usually take care of in the first winter like:

• lunar staff (specifically on day 31 since I very rarely complete this on day 11)
• fighting klaus
• prepping for/completing pearl tasks
• searching for/neutralizing Moon Quay (best time to visit is winter since all the monkeys hide in their huts)

[-Nick-]

3 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

100+ gears to be "good

lol well what I consider a good harvest is around a stack of gears. Thats good amount for anything at that stage of the game lol.

[Maxil20]

50 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

I was debating using the term midgame, but it takes about 4 hours of in real time to reach day 31. If you have focused on doing other early game things, you may not be able to get a good harvest of gears from a natural full moon until day 51.

That's admittedly fair, yeah.

My "game" definitions are defining "earlygame" as the first year of gameplay, "midgame" being the era before CC/FW, and "lategame" being the post rift arc. I know it's certainly possible to accelerate to the point of comfortably defeating said pre rift bosses by the first year, but for most people it's typically going to be a few years in.

As for statue gear harvesting I mostly imagine that it was a more multiplayer centric strategy, since being able to split the load to accommodate sculpture crafting is significantly easier and you can certainly afford for players to handle setting up a bunch of statues by day 31 in a group. For solo play you can get by pretty comfortably with the gears on the surface alone + ruins in most worlds to get by pretty well, and I've never really had scenarios where I really needed more than a dozen gears until around CC/FW (the latter of course being another way to renew gears as well).

[Mr Giggio]

You can multiply gears like crazy now with the full moon triggering new clockworks, eh

[Radicaljoe]

Let WX eat scrap again because it was funny. This has nothing to do with the post other than the relation of something WX could eat that got removed.

[LavenderLillie]

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m not 100% sure of what the loot pools are from playing Jimbo’s silly deadly card game of gamble, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you couldn’t win gears from him too.

JIMBO's loot pool is 1 twig + 1 grass, 1 cut stone + 1 rope, 2 bananas, 2 banana pops, 2 gold, and 8 gold + 1 red, blue, and purple gem

[Strong Wendy]

Perhaps we could let WX-78 extract eaten Gears from his body by sacrificing some HP, Hunger, and Sanity, similar to how Wormwood can cut off his own hand to lose 20 HP and obtain a Living Log.

The amount sacrificed should be greater than the amount restored when the Gear was eaten.

[Cheggf]

You get so many gears that I don't even grab them. Whenever I go to the ruins I just leave them on the floor. I see no reason to waste several slots of my inventory on carrying 100+ gears when you only need like 5. The gears available on the surface are more than sufficient. When WX isn't eating them, they're garbage. A junk item of little use. 

[Jakepeng99]

13 hours ago, GRC said:

Historically, the biggest thing players have hated about WX-78 players was their habit of devouring Gears for a quick omni-stat replenish, destroying them in the process and denying the server one more Ice Box or Flingomatic. This became far less of an issue back in WX's character refresh changing stat-increases to Circuits instead of Gears, but the fact remains that WX-78 players can still destroy Gears this way.

Come 2026 and now Gears are, in addition to everything else they were already used for (like WX-78's Super-Acceleration Circuit), a valuable resource towards befriending Clockworks (which are arguably permanent benefits to the server given their eternal loyalty and regening-HP) and creating WX-78's backup bodies (which means Gears will be in especially high-demand across the player-base come WX-78's full skill tree release). Even with all the ways to get Gears now, they still remain an extremely valuable resource.

It's great that WX-78 has access to such a powerful "food" that's plentiful in the Ruins and Moon Quay Island, but given how it's commonly felt like borderline griefing to eat them in any world that isn't already mega-based, it'd be nice if this were the update to finally let go of that relic of WX-78's game design from base Don't Starve to make sure Gears aren't lost so readily.

Either as inherent to the character or as one of the Gamma Circuit effects, I'm hoping WX-78 can eat Gears in a way that still keeps them usable later on.

• Maybe getting to poop them out days later, good as new?
• Maybe just getting to lick them for reduced benefits but infinite reusability on a cooldown like Wanda's watches?
• Maybe a new item recipe for WX-78 altogether that reproduces the effects of eating Gears in exchange for some easier-to-renew resources like Gold, while removing the Gear-devouring aspect of the character outright.
• I wouldn't want to go as far as being able to just craft Gears, unless said recipe was really pricey or notably locked off until post-Ruins, so maybe that but I'd be the least happy with it.

I don't want WX-78 to lose out on such a great utility, and I understand that a selfish-mechanic like that is in-character for WX-78, but I don't want them to just destroy Gears altogether at this point in Don't Starve Together's player experience. Any other ideas folks?

Next your gonna say to make mandrakes inedible.

Also he drops gears on death.

[GRC]

5 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Next your gonna say to make mandrakes inedible.

Also he drops gears on death.

Unless there are significant mechanical changes to them, I don't think either one of us are expecting a surge in Mandrake consumption at any point in DST's lifetime to come, let alone when WX's skill-tree goes live. I think that's apples to oranges in regards to how I expect WX's changes will affect the perceived value and availability of Gears much more directly.

The only scenario I'd want to see Gears drop on death is if an expensive Gamma-slot circuit specialized in that effect, but that's not the subject I'm trying to discuss regardless.

[Jakepeng99]

15 minutes ago, GRC said:

The only scenario I'd want to see Gears drop on death is if an expensive Gamma-slot circuit specialized in that effect, but that's not the subject I'm trying to discuss regardless.

He already drops gears on death. He drops 33% or 50% of his gears.

 

If he only ate one, he always drops one.

[GRC]

22 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

Personally I don't see the problem of WX's ability to eat gears. In the very early game and before visiting the ruins, it is true that there are not many gears to go around, but with the release of the year of the clockwork knight, gears are more plentiful in the midgame than ever. You can turn 2 rocks (using one cut stone or marble as a catalyst) into 2 gears using the clockworks statues on a full moon. Rocks and marbles grow on trees. You don't even need to fight AFW for this method to receive very renewable gears.

In the early game many resources are depletable besides gears, like pig skin.

I was initially concerned with the long-term implications of what early-game Gear economy would look like in later years when Year of the Clockwork Knight isn't active, but by that point well past WX's skill tree's fresh release flooding the servers, that probably wouldn't actually look any worse than how things have been up to this point for WX. Fair enough in that regard.

I think the issue I still take here stems from how WX-78's ability to eat Gears primarily exists as a relic of their past game design when Gears were how you upgraded in Don't Starve and that this takes up a whole new light in Don't Starve Together. It's an incentive that doesn't benefit an early-game server in any way, relative to what can be gained in its place--permanent fire protection, more item storage that slows spoilage, so forth. Even a newly formed Chassis at the same cost for said Gear has more potential benefits thanks to backup-bodies being a semi-permanent added option to a player rather than a temporary replenishment of their stats--effects achievable by Crock Pot dishes and sleeping with far easier to renew resources in the early-game. Eating a Gear means it's effectively destroyed without any kind of tangible proof it even existed--an Ice Flingomatic in someone else's base does more for the world I'm in, however little that may be, than seeing them throw Gears into a Scaled Furnace before eating Surf 'n' Turf (for all the good that equally amounts to).

If we assume WX would still have a similar method/frequency of gaining 75/60/50 stats off a single action, no blatant removal as was once attempted and a completely removed factor from the question to follow: what improves the early-game DST experience for players by having a delete-Gears function pre-Dragon Fly? Ignoring the incentive and benefit associated with the aftermath of the function, I don't think the function itself of consuming Gears is an irreplaceable aspect to what people want from WX's unique advantage with having Gears.

Across the rest of the folks posting in this thread, I'm struggling to hear why it shouldn't be beyond a rigid mindset of "that's just how it always was and we can't be bothered to imagine a new solution" (or otherwise going on about how easy Gears are to acquire when that's a different subject altogether). I would sooner hope we could brainstorm the root of why any amount of change is an issue and if there indeed isn't a new solution that could address that.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 hour ago, GRC said:

I was initially concerned with the long-term implications of what early-game Gear economy would look like in later years when Year of the Clockwork Knight isn't active, but by that point well past WX's skill tree's fresh release flooding the servers, that probably wouldn't actually look any worse than how things have been up to this point for WX. Fair enough in that regard.

I think the issue I still take here stems from how WX-78's ability to eat Gears primarily exists as a relic of their past game design when Gears were how you upgraded in Don't Starve and that this takes up a whole new light in Don't Starve Together. It's an incentive that doesn't benefit an early-game server in any way, relative to what can be gained in its place--permanent fire protection, more item storage that slows spoilage, so forth. Even a newly formed Chassis at the same cost for said Gear has more potential benefits thanks to backup-bodies being a semi-permanent added option to a player rather than a temporary replenishment of their stats--effects achievable by Crock Pot dishes and sleeping with far easier to renew resources in the early-game. Eating a Gear means it's effectively destroyed without any kind of tangible proof it even existed--an Ice Flingomatic in someone else's base does more for the world I'm in, however little that may be, than seeing them throw Gears into a Scaled Furnace before eating Surf 'n' Turf (for all the good that equally amounts to).

If we assume WX would still have a similar method/frequency of gaining 75/60/50 stats off a single action, no blatant removal as was once attempted and a completely removed factor from the question to follow: what improves the early-game DST experience for players by having a delete-Gears function pre-Dragon Fly? Ignoring the incentive and benefit associated with the aftermath of the function, I don't think the function itself of consuming Gears is an irreplaceable aspect to what people want from WX's unique advantage with having Gears.

Across the rest of the folks posting in this thread, I'm struggling to hear why it shouldn't be beyond a rigid mindset of "that's just how it always was and we can't be bothered to imagine a new solution" (or otherwise going on about how easy Gears are to acquire when that's a different subject altogether). I would sooner hope we could brainstorm the root of why any amount of change is an issue and if there indeed isn't a new solution that could address that.

It's because it sounds like you want it to change for the sake of change, not because it needs to be. You simply cannot balance characters around the public server experience and the rogue actions of individuals, nor does it fit into a topic of balance just on account of the unpredictable and short-term nature of strangers. Realistically gears have extremely few use cases, and even fewer that requires them needing to be constantly used up. Even prior to the recent Clockwork Knight update, they are also easily renewable. Gears are just plentiful enough that WX can take good advantage of them, but just valuable enough that it isn't free to do, and understanding that cost benefit plays into their character to some extent even if the need for gears is no longer as critical to their gameplay.

Edited March 25 by YouKnowWho142

[Pruinae]

1 hour ago, GRC said:

I was initially concerned with the long-term implications of what early-game Gear economy would look like in later years when Year of the Clockwork Knight isn't active, but by that point well past WX's skill tree's fresh release flooding the servers, that probably wouldn't actually look any worse than how things have been up to this point for WX. Fair enough in that regard.

Bishop/Rook/Knights statues turning into the real deal on full moon isn't event exclusive, if that is what you believe.

1 hour ago, GRC said:

If we assume WX would still have a similar method/frequency of gaining 75/60/50 stats off a single action, no blatant removal as was once attempted and a completely removed factor from the question to follow: what improves the early-game DST experience for players by having a delete-Gears function pre-Dragon Fly? Ignoring the incentive and benefit associated with the aftermath of the function, I don't think the function itself of consuming Gears is an irreplaceable aspect to what people want from WX's unique advantage with having Gears.

Across the rest of the folks posting in this thread, I'm struggling to hear why it shouldn't be beyond a rigid mindset of "that's just how it always was and we can't be bothered to imagine a new solution" (or otherwise going on about how easy Gears are to acquire when that's a different subject altogether). I would sooner hope we could brainstorm the root of why any amount of change is an issue and if there indeed isn't a new solution that could address that.

It is not irreplaceable, but why replace it when it works just fine? Leave our precious shiny relic of game design alone 😠 (Are they bothering you m'liege?)

Yeah, you went into a public server and the rando WX ate your gears (they had 50 sanity it was getting really scary) and now you don't have enough to make your obligatory 2 ice boxes by day 6 (the setup just looks bad if there isn't 2 ice boxes, trust me we need to regenerate world), that is just one of the many charms of playing on public servers. They could instead have stolen something else you need from the chests/floor and logged off cause their mom said it's bed time...

The part of how easy they are to acquire is a relevant point against your idea to rework them, because by spawning them through statues you can have so many that, by the first winter, even if you have 6 WXs eating them instead of anything else you can still have a surplus of them (provided they helped farm them as well lol, if you went the extra mile to get your gears, you are not obligated to share them with randoms that didn't help).

Basically there isn't a scenario where you reasonably could be like "I need gears for this craft, but there isn't any, and I can't get any more". Sure, the non-moon-gated ones might be gone, but you still have options.

I don't really understand, you seem to view gears as this rare resource that needs to be protected, but they really aren't. Worst case scenario WX annoyed you, best case scenario WX knows that they need to leave a few gears for people to build stuff at the base, and can still get plenty for their own purposes themselves.

Playing without an ice box and flingos during the first autumn and first winter is fine.

Edited March 25 by Pruinae

[WendyHater9000]

Imagine unable to do ruin in first autumn as wx💀 

[shaurun]

I can't agree with OP post.

It's same as with Willow and lighter, being afraid of a thing which any character can do. 

Basically any character can join your game, take your gears and simply disconnect or leave them on a boat in some nowhere location. 

Also this resource is not that rare. Current horse event provides tons of it, I have chests literally filled with gears, and ruins itself are a great source if gears. You also have trash pile and tumbleweeds. 

You'll definetely create a fridge and definetely ban a player who starts destroying your base on purpose. As for clockworks taming, you can still farm gears by building chess pieces. 

Maybe WX-78 will become the guys who actually create gears farms not only for taming huge armies, but simply for healing and feeding themselves.

Edited March 25 by shaurun

[GRC]

14 hours ago, Pruinae said:

Bishop/Rook/Knights statues turning into the real deal on full moon isn't event exclusive, if that is what you believe.

It isn't. That whole starting section was saying that GimplyGoose made a good point that I was conceding, "fair enough" and all.

14 hours ago, Pruinae said:

It is not irreplaceable, but why replace it when it works just fine? Leave our precious shiny relic of game design alone 😠 (Are they bothering you m'liege?)

Yeah, you went into a public server and the rando WX ate your gears (they had 50 sanity it was getting really scary) and now you don't have enough to make your obligatory 2 ice boxes by day 6 (the setup just looks bad if there isn't 2 ice boxes, trust me we need to regenerate world), that is just one of the many charms of playing on public servers. 

The part of how easy they are to acquire is a relevant point against your idea to rework them, because by spawning them through statues you can have so many that, by the first winter, even if you have 6 WXs eating them instead of anything else you can still have a surplus of them (provided they helped farm them as well lol, if you went the extra mile to get your gears, you are not obligated to share them with randoms that didn't help).

Basically there isn't a scenario where you reasonably could be like "I need gears for this craft, but there isn't any, and I can't get any more". Sure, the non-moon-gated ones might be gone, but you still have options.

I don't really understand, you seem to view gears as this rare resource that needs to be protected, but they really aren't. Worst case scenario WX annoyed you, best case scenario WX knows that they need to leave a few gears for people to build stuff at the base, and can still get plenty for their own purposes themselves.

Playing without an ice box and flingos during the first autumn and first winter is fine.

A lot of folks in this forum don't seem to do a lot of base management and might be taking those who do for granted based on these kinds of responses. Either that, or you all are the players who go out of their way to grab Gears for a base that doesn't have any and I have the misfortune of not bumping into kind souls like you as much as I wish I could.

For better frame of reference of where I'm coming from, I play in a lot of rando servers where I end up taking on the role of base nanny regardless of what character I play (usually with that character's strengths to pivot and inform what I can do in that session that I couldn't in others). Basic structures, setting up and organizing chests, tending to farms if someone else isn't more committed in my place, picking up after other people leaving their 2% tools and armor wherever they feel like, so forth. I'm aware that Gears are not this impossible to renew resource. My gripe comes from how, if Gears do need to be replaced, that it becomes something that can't be done without going very out of the way. Plenty of other resources are easily amassed early-game even before base setup comes into play, food isn't hard to come by to the point where feeding new players isn't even a burden, Health and Sanity gets other players back out there sooner than later (and isn't a huge change in commitment whether I have to focus more on Sanity foods for a Wickerbottom, silk production for characters that rely on sleep, drying racks for Wigfrid, so forth). Any other character who might need a resource specific to them is generally much better equipped to go out and grab it when they have a base to walk up to, replenish their stats and gear, and get going to Ruins or Lunar or Dragonfly or whatever they feel like going towards next.

Now picture all of that, but whether or not it was done with malicious intent, a WX eats Gears. Okay, they got their stats back. That's fine. Let me just replace it by, instead of spending that time managing the base, now leaving it to--

• Roll RNG on graves, junk pile and tumbleweeds for 3/3/1% odds respectively, assuming base is even close enough to regularly do so in world-gen
• Rush Ruins (which...you aren't trying to do if you're focused on setting up a public base)
• Rush Moon Quay (which you likewise aren't doing without already being committed to that from the start)
• Farm Clockwork statues (which is moon-phase specific and requires sketches you might not even have if someone else gets them first)
• Fight The Twins (yes, the mandated mid-game boss fight in early-game because someone didn't want to make Pierogi)

Notice how every one of those options mean that instead of continuing base work, I'm now going out to replace something that no other character has incentive to steal when said resource would've been beneficial to them anyway if they did their own work going out instead of destroying Gears because they didn't want to kite Terrorbeaks or something. Any other character in the game mechanically recognizes that Gears are a far better long-term investment in the early-game to set up base. "It works just fine" goes both ways if it's supposed to work for one of them in the first place--why make it the base's problem that you can't take care of your own stats otherwise? Do your own exploring/fighting, or maybe contribute towards that kind of base sustainability so you could get that stat-help in other ways in the first place. But the pathos here isn't about how WX-78's should lose out on that kind of option though (even if not being the one committed to maintaining base should make that easier for them), it's about how that option's downside isn't the actual incentive of the ability and thus the downside can be reworked into something less tedious to others beyond the Gear consumer.

Every one of the ways to replenish Gears above is either RNG reliant, day-specific or far too much travel to remain situated around base. To someone focused on basing without the fortune of other players actually giving back to the base, the main resource being lost isn't Gears, it's the time not spent on base to replace them that is. Time that would be much more productively spent improving the state of the base rather than getting back a resource lost via an outdated incentive tied to a different game altogether. If someone else handles that for me while I can keep chipping away at setting up Pig House farms or whatever I'm trying to focus on, I can wait for a delayed fridge just fine. If only that courtesy were more common in practice.

Again, Year of the Clockwork Knight event stuff is actually a great Gears replenishment option during WX Skill Tree player-period. Neither of us are pretending we don't have a golden solution in the short-term. My issues reside in the long-term once the event is over. Over the course of many repeated first-year playthroughs of DST in a public servers, no other negligent-yet-not-intentionally-griefing characters have been as consistently caused as much bending-backwards to accommodate. Fridge-hogging Wortoxes, Webbers with spider nest just within range of causing nightly fights, Woodies burning through items for Idols--new players who make a mistake but mean well are never time-wastingly worse than the WX that wants to get Health/Sanity back from Gears.

16 hours ago, Pruinae said:

They could instead have stolen something else you need from the chests/floor and logged off cause their mom said it's bed time...

Anything else there's incentive for specific characters to steal is usually either going to be sustained by them by sheer byproduct of wanting more, gets easily replaced at the base once set up or wouldn't affect base management in the first place (i.e. any Papyrus after the initial amount used for the Bird Cage). Shadow Manipulator stuff is the worst it ever seems to end up being, and even then, the people who are going to miss a Shadow Manipulator the most are the same people taking its ingredients in as far as it's lower priority in sustainability than other base structures are in early-game. In as far as a player having reason to steal something that hinders base effort just as much as Gears, motivated by character perks and not a desire to grief, do you have any examples?