Is "hacking" a thing in this game ? I've had a few things happen on Klei's Official servers.

[Lvl Xav]

I played on public servers (mostly Klei's) more than half of my game time, probably 400 hours or something. A few days ago, I met a group of people who were acting odd on one of Klei's Europe servers.

A guy was killing people using Bramble Husks and Punching Bags, which was really original to see.
Someone with a weird name kept joining and leaving the server using a mod, which was flooding the chat with blank chat messages.
One of them was sliding around the map, emitting light from nowhere, claiming they were using "bugs".
And finally, someone spawned in The Twins of Terror multiple times in one night, the chat was full of "this is going to be a terrible night".

And today, I've met them again on another Klei Europe server. They did weird stuff again. Someone straight up started placing infinite Scaled Furnaces. Dragonfly wasn't even killed, it's just like he had c_freecrafting() enabled. After a few ingame days, the server started lagging, as if it was getting ddos'ed.

I know griefing and ddos'ing is a thing, but I'm curious to know how they could just place structures like this out of nowhere. Are there really cheats in this game now ? I've never seen this kind of stuff before, and I've been playing since 2021. Is this game gonna need its own anti-cheat xd ?

Playing on Klei servers is how I spend most of my time in this game, it would suck if people just started cheating and ruining the servers.

[JohnnyTwoShirts]

Unfortunately, 'Hacking' is becoming much more common on the Klei Public Servers. The logging in and out is usually a sign of player using some exploit to duplicate items. As you can imagine, in a game thats core gameplay loop is around resource gathering and aquiring, duplicating items diminishes the gameplay for the entire server. This has become such a big issue and so common that players doing it will openly admit to 'duping' and some will see it as a 'service' to the server - allowing everyone to have the boss drop items rather than only one or two players.

 

I am a similiar sort of player as you; my time on DST is primarily with Public Klei Servers. Griefing / DDOs has been an issue that I wish had some sort of moderation to control, but I have managed to not let those instances ruin my experience with Public Servers -- Those instances can just flat out end the play experience and kill the server (reluctantly go to a new one, start again -- which is how Public Server gameplay loop is anyways; its not expected to be permanent or very long). This new popularity and 'normalization' of using exploits - without any repercussions - has made it common to see a Public Server game instantly turn into a 'creative mode' where the exploiters suddenly have assigned themselves as an Admin. It is quite frustrating. 

 

These players certainly are ruining the servers. There seem to be these sorts of 'waves' of players that come and go doing these things to ruin Public Servers. When those griefing waves come through, I usually just host my own server for sit down plays -- hit or miss if people join -- I am doing the same now due to these exploiters.

 

Griefers / DDOs - They decide when the server will end

Exploiters - They decide how the game will be played

 

I had a game today on a US Klei Public Server - went for 45 days - In that time, we had 3 Exploiters : Duplicating Items / Flying as Travel (Fast / and Floating over terrain), and the server ended with 2 Griefers : Woodie and Willow, Beaver Skill Tree destroyed all structures, Willow burned it all to the ground. What feels bad is you have to put up with all that, and there is no way to report or flag these players to avoid... just gotta move on; which is why these people repeatably do this - they can without anything to stop them.

Edited April 14 by JohnnyTwoShirts