I really hope game will focus on roge-lite survival aspects less on sandbox

[PonyOfApocalips]

Since DST already have focus on sandbox element i hope DSE will be more hard-core survival expirence, not scared of to rewind player progress, also dev would have more time doing exploring staff if they would not "port" buildings items from dst.  

[IanKSB91]

Honestly yes, I have been missing the natural and super natural seasons and new worlds would throw at you and with the new elements such as height, rivers, local climates and everything else I hope they do something interesting with that, just to stay more aware of what is happening around you.

[xhyom]

Hmm, I don't know, I think it depends a lot on the amount of content and how much they plan to expand it. I think it's difficult for this permanent death, starting over from scratch multiple times, roguelite thing to work in a way that's enjoyable and feels good if the game is very long. I think it works with things like Hamlet and Shipwrecked, which are relatively short and don't have many requirements to "complete" the game. But when it starts to get too complex, losing all progress in a game like that isn't really interesting.

However, I am totally in favor of emphasizing the "survival" aspect as much as possible, making it a real challenge to explore and survive the days and seasons, making sure to remind us that the world is not our ally. But having to start over just because of one death, I think that's too much tbh

[Mike23Ua]

I always felt like the Dont Starve Franchise was capable of satisfying different types of gameplay with different games. I NEVER got to try the gorge or forge but from what little information I can obtain on them one was a battle arena (that ended up being the early beta for RotWood?) and the other was a cooking mini-game (Overcooked 2?)

Meanwhile single player don’t starve was for traveling multiple different worlds in a Roguelike adventure to beat Maxwell & dethrone him, a game where dying meant instant world deletion and starting over on world 1 again.

DST flips the rules makes dying non-important, heavily focused on staying in the same world you build up and establish for long periods over time (meaning a character like Wurt would be HORRIBLE to try to play as in Solo DS Campaign Mode because of how freaking long it takes to build her structures & kingdom up) This game focuses on Raid Bosses, and lengthy Quests (see fully upgrading Crabby Granny Home + Lunar Questline)

DSE can be an actual more randomly generated experience (aka terrain changes and directly challenges the player, “the fog” can even mutate the world around and give creatures randomized behaviors or attack patterns) Flooding, Turfs that can Collapse beneath your feet a few seconds after stepping onto them, platform hopping.. the sort of stuff that simply can never exist in DS or DST.

[Zeklo]

The looming threat of difficulties you're forced to overcome is something I have long since missed. 

Very much hope it serves a focus here.

[Szczuku]

I hope so. DST has been severely lacking when it comes to survival aspects.

I will say that the Elsewhere trailer seems to focus more on the exploration, resource gathering and danger, rather than base-building, unlike dst trailers. But then again, this is a trailer for a whole new game, rather than a small, in comparison, update

[Maxil20]

As a megabaser, I hope Elsewhere leans heavily on the survival aspects. It's a game where it can effectively base its difficulty on whatever it desires and not need to worry about things already present in the game. They should go wild with it and be less restricted on what can and can't be included!

The only thing I would like is if there are world options that can be adjusted for players who prefer the more basing experience, but these should be pretty straightforward to add (I mean, every DLC/DST experience has them!) and players who want to base should be content with tweaking options, not opposed to them.

[Ellilea]

I think it can easily have the best of both worlds. I'm really looking to a fresh experience, with difficult survival, new traps and things to discover. But it's all given taste for me when it leads to my progressing my base, taming the world etc. I don't want it to be easy and predictable, but I want to be able to have that goal and slowly but surely get to work towards something cool.

But as long as there are options in the game, the whole permadeath issue is a non-issue, imo. They can just give an option that toggles either something like meat effigies (you need to work for your respawns) or just a respawn point/rollback for folks that don't like that.

But yeah, I'm also someone who'd love to see more survival than boss fights. It's always bee way more fun to me. I have like 600 hours in DST and I killed Ancient Guardian once, just to see what's up. Never cared to fight Toadstool, or the new bosses etc. Too busy with everything else.

[PonyOfApocalips]

2 hours ago, Ellilea said:

I think it can easily have the best of both worlds. I'm really looking to a fresh experience, with difficult survival, new traps and things to discover. But it's all given taste for me when it leads to my progressing my base, taming the world etc. I don't want it to be easy and predictable, but I want to be able to have that goal and slowly but surely get to work towards something cool.

But as long as there are options in the game, the whole permadeath issue is a non-issue, imo. They can just give an option that toggles either something like meat effigies (you need to work for your respawns) or just a respawn point/rollback for folks that don't like that.

But yeah, I'm also someone who'd love to see more survival than boss fights. It's always bee way more fun to me. I have like 600 hours in DST and I killed Ancient Guardian once, just to see what's up. Never cared to fight Toadstool, or the new bosses etc. Too busy with everything else.

I mean the roge-LIGHT kinda imply we gonna have some ways to improve or expirence between "runs". 

[Ellilea]

Yeah, but it's still "runs" dying. If someone spends upwards of 10 hours in a run, losing that to get some points in a skill tree won't do for many players  Options are always a good thing, IMO. Then everyone has the experience they like.

[PonyOfApocalips]

24 minutes ago, Ellilea said:

Yeah, but it's still "runs" dying. If someone spends upwards of 10 hours in a run, losing that to get some points in a skill tree won't do for many players  Options are always a good thing, IMO. Then everyone has the experience they like.

i guess its still can be done like board-game it's actually have good idea to middle games progression

[Evelo]

You can have sandbox and survival simultaneously. I am mostly hoping for the bosses of the game to be predatory rather than entirely optional. Plus more survival stuff we have to work around. Survival doesn't need to involve combat, but if it does, non-optional is best, else it isn't survival at all, it is an opt in challenge.

[PonyOfApocalips]

6 minutes ago, Evelo said:

You can have sandbox and survival simultaneously. I am mostly hoping for the bosses of the game to be predatory rather than entirely optional. Plus more survival stuff we have to work around. Survival doesn't need to involve combat, but if it does, non-optional is best, else it isn't survival at all, it is an opt in challenge.

yeah you can have- and it's called dont starve together 

[Mike23Ua]

24 minutes ago, Evelo said:

You can have sandbox and survival simultaneously. I am mostly hoping for the bosses of the game to be predatory rather than entirely optional. Plus more survival stuff we have to work around. Survival doesn't need to involve combat, but if it does, non-optional is best, else it isn't survival at all, it is an opt in challenge.

Be very careful here…. There are some particular existing bosses in DST that I intentionally never bother to EVER attempt to fight because I know I’m going to waste food, healing weapons & armor and I’m still going to either Die or be forced to Retreat.

DST by all means is NOT an easy game, and it is extremely frustrating to spend 20 minutes or more trying to down a raid boss only for that boss to regenerate back to full health like you never even hit it.

If Bosses are no longer optional, then that comes with the obvious heavy nerfing they’ll need to not require heavy prep for.

[Evelo]

24 minutes ago, PonyOfApocalips said:

yeah you can have- and it's called dont starve together 

But DST doesn't have the any extra survival elements since don't starve: Reign of Giants... so... no?

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

If Bosses are no longer optional, then that comes with the obvious heavy nerfing they’ll need to not require heavy prep for.

Well, yeah, obviously. But they can be conditional as well. "Don't like this global effect? deal with it, or work around it" There are ways to make a boss' presence known and a survival aspect to encourage taking on to a fight but not require it outright.

Edited April 10 by Evelo

[Wormboi]

22 hours ago, Ellilea said:

I think it can easily have the best of both worlds. I'm really looking to a fresh experience, with difficult survival, new traps and things to discover. But it's all given taste for me when it leads to my progressing my base, taming the world etc. I don't want it to be easy and predictable, but I want to be able to have that goal and slowly but surely get to work towards something cool.

But as long as there are options in the game, the whole permadeath issue is a non-issue, imo. They can just give an option that toggles either something like meat effigies (you need to work for your respawns) or just a respawn point/rollback for folks that don't like that.

But yeah, I'm also someone who'd love to see more survival than boss fights. It's always bee way more fun to me. I have like 600 hours in DST and I killed Ancient Guardian once, just to see what's up. Never cared to fight Toadstool, or the new bosses etc. Too busy with everything else.

Also one of my problems with dst becoming more combat focused is that I dont think the combat is good in dst. so maybe it will better in elsewhere?

Edited April 11 by Wormboi

[Glass-Of-Water]

9 hours ago, Wormboi said:

Also one of my problems with dst becoming more combat focused is that I dont think the combat is good in dst. so maybe it will better is elsewhere?

It's nice to see the same concerns I have expressed on the forums - I really enjoy Don't Starve (and Don't Starve Together) for its survival mechanics, but I've never had much interest in the raid bosses - Seasonal bosses, such as those found in Reign of Giants were quite alright, as they serve their purpose of throwing you off and potentially harming your base, but the largest issue is the combat mechanics for Don't Starve never felt fully built for it, which makes sense for a survival-focused game, with characters who are non-combatants, but not so when the emphasis of the core progression is on combat.

The skill trees in Don't Starve Together add variety to the combat mechanics in some ways, but not enough for it to feel satisfying for me. Terraria works a lot better with a boss-based progression as you're not only able to build around different combat styles, but the core gameplay loops present were built with combat in mind and allow you with the option of changing the combat mid-game (if you so wished to) with its class of weapons. Since Don't Starve Together carried over its core gameplay from the original game, the Terraria-style progression felt like a slog to get through for me.

I really enjoyed Adventure Mode, Shipwrecked and Hamlet and I'm hoping Elsewhere will scratch a similar itch for me, but either way I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

[Cuernito.]

To be honest this is a big NO for me if the game is too long, rogue lite works with 1 or 2 hours completion games like TBOI or Enter the gungeon but dont starve is a survival sandbox game, why would i want to start over and over and over to complete a game that takes maybe 1 day to complete? i better give up cause i dont have all the time in the world.

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Cuernito. said:

To be honest this is a big NO for me if the game is too long, rogue lite works with 1 or 2 hours completion games like TBOI or Enter the gungeon but dont starve is a survival sandbox game, why would i want to start over and over and over to complete a game that takes maybe 1 day to complete? i better give up cause i dont have all the time in the world.

Your thinking of DST which is more of a Grindy RPG with lengthy quests, Chatty NPCs & a game where the only way you progress in it at all is by devoting all your time to a single game world and progress within that game world (the laundry list of crap you gotta do in DST is overly exhausting…) 

But Solo DS was not designed in this way, atleast not the actual Roguelike campaign that was Adventures Mode, you weren’t intended to live in a single world building it up forever.. your goal was to find all the contraption parts and exit the level eventually making it to Maxwell himself.

I do not know what type of Gameplay Klei aims for with DSE but what I can tell you is what the actual differences between a Roguelike and a RogueLite are (yes they’re seperate things) a Roguelike is punishing, it’s intended to be brutal, when you die you lose all progress and you start over on stage 1 with no carried over items or anything (what DS Adventures Mode Was) a LITE starts out difficult, but overtime becomes easier as you play it by granting the player new abilities, power ups, helpful boons, that sort of thing so that when you do die… your not starting over again from scratch.

Now then rather you prefer Roguelikes or RogueLites the game genre is in general defined by “Random Unpredictable Chaos”

No this doesn’t mean drop silly boulders on a players base with a caves update, it means that level layouts, what types of enemies you’ll encounter, WHERE you will encounter them, the loot you might find, the helpful blessings or the not so helpful curses you might end up receiving along the way all guarantee that every time you play the game it’s never the same each time.

A lot of people dislike the rogue gaming genre because they maybe had a bad experience with one particularly very difficult game (take myself for example: if I was judging what rogues were based on Rogue Legacy I would NEVER try the Genre ever again because that game is too demanding of precisely timed platform jumping) There are easier more forgiving games in the Genre, such as: Outbreak Endless Nightmares, Trinity Fusion, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Splintered Fate, BlazBlue Entropy Effect X Etc…

While we have only seen ONE trailer for DSE the fog warping the world around you is already a nice starting point, but hopefully to be a true rogue genre game the effects of the fog aren’t always exactly the same each time (meaning maybe a frog morphs a different way) maybe bosses have more than one type of scenario (like Tmnt splintered fate how sometimes it’s just Leatherhead, sometimes it’s Leatherhead with rats, sometimes it’s Leatherhead with Punk Frogs, Sometimes he does more ground slam attacks than normal, sometimes he doesn’t do ground slams and instead spams the map with more rushing water, etc etc…)

But if we can’t get a true rogue genre experience then at the very least I’d love for world Gen to be significantly more randomized in DSE then it has been in DST. 🥺🫶🏻

Edited April 11 by Mike23Ua

[xhyom]

On 4/10/2026 at 4:26 PM, Evelo said:

You can have sandbox and survival simultaneously. I am mostly hoping for the bosses of the game to be predatory rather than entirely optional. Plus more survival stuff we have to work around. Survival doesn't need to involve combat, but if it does, non-optional is best, else it isn't survival at all, it is an opt in challenge.

On 4/10/2026 at 4:54 PM, Evelo said:

Well, yeah, obviously. But they can be conditional as well. "Don't like this global effect? deal with it, or work around it" There are ways to make a boss' presence known and a survival aspect to encourage taking on to a fight but not require it outright.

I would really like the bosses in this game to be like that, but with fewer of them, with more presence and overall impact, but still few. For me, what really hurt Together and made it go in a very boring direction was the insistence on bosses; everything became a boss rush or about bosses, every update revolved around a boss; and there's a limit to the impact and what they can do when there are so many. In the end, it became a game full of optional bosses and characters extremely focused on combat, since the whole gameplay focus was entirely on killing bosses with 50,000 HP, and the characters who didn't do that well were always at a disadvantage, without much to show beyond that, since doing something that didn't help deal with bosses isn't that relevant in that context. 

Regional bosses in this style would also be welcome and so cool, since apparently the biomes are much more distinct this time, with their own climates.