Boss Rewards & Progression Concerns in Don’t Starve Series (Looking Ahead to Elsewhere)

[Zatella]

Hello, this is just a general concern regarding boss design in Don’t Starve Together, especially with how future content like Elsewhere might be handled.

Some bosses in DST have become known for being extremely difficult while offering little to no meaningful rewards, and some attacks that makes it impossible to dodge without specific items. I want to clarify this isn’t a rage post, this is meant as constructive feedback and encouragement to improve future gameplay design.

Boss fights should feel rewarding and worthwhile, not something players do just because they feel forced to or because it’s required for progression. A good example of what I’m trying to explain is covered by one of my favorite YouTubers OrangE

In the original Don’t Starve, many bosses felt worth defeating because their drops had clear value and impact on gameplay. That sense of reward made the challenge feel justified.

I hope that moving forward, especially with upcoming content, bosses are designed with stronger incentives, better loot, and a clearer sense of purpose.

SIDE NOTE: i haven't played Don't Starve Together in about 2-3 years straight, so im not sure if any of the bosses got fixed or reworked. making my post Null.

[Zatella]

just clarify the Ancient Hulk was and will always be my favorite Boss in Don't Starve, the Music and Sound Effects are 🔥🔥🔥

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Zatella said:

Some bosses in DST have become known for being extremely difficult while offering little to no meaningful rewards, and some attacks that makes it impossible to dodge without specific items. I want to clarify this isn’t a rage post, this is meant as constructive feedback and encouragement to improve future gameplay design.

Boss fights should feel rewarding and worthwhile, not something players do just because they feel forced to or because it’s required for progression.

This is contradicting. People shouldn't fight bosses because they're forced to because it's required, but also we need to make the bosses that you don't like fighting drop better items so you feel forced to fight them because it's required? 

[Zatella]

I think I didn’t explain my point clearly, so let me rephrase.

What I mean is: if a boss is required for progression or to avoid major penalties, it should always feel rewarding to defeat.

A good example (in my opinion) of what not to do is the Antlion.
You’re basically forced to deal with it to prevent sinkholes, but the process itself is already tedious, fishing in a very specific pond for multiple days, and even then it’s RNG-based. I’ve personally had runs where I went through half of Summer without getting the goggles blueprint.

That kind of gameplay doesn’t feel challenging in a good way, it feels frustrating and inconsistent.

I don’t have an issue with required bosses themselves. For example, the Shadow Pieces being required to reach the Ancient Fuelweaver makes sense progression-wise.

The issue is the reward vs effort.
Those shadow bosses only dropping something like 1 Shadow Sword and 1 Shadow Armor just doesn’t feel worth the time and difficulty.

So my main point is:

• Required bosses are fine
• But they should always provide reliable and meaningful rewards that justify the constant effort

Otherwise, it starts to feel like something players do out of obligation instead of motivation. one of the reason why i actually stopped playing DST felt more like a shores than wanting to do it.

[Cheggf]

I don't kill Antlion because I don't care. You think the reward of stopping the sinkholes is worth all the effort of killing him. You've just got a really negative outlook on everything for some reason so you see rewards of punishments stopping as an annoyance, like the survival game is supposed to never challenge you in any way and is supposed to just exclusively be optional raid fights that you do whenever you want them to happen.

There should be more bosses like Antlion, and they should be more threatening than just the really minor sinkhole thing. 

[-Nick-]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

I don't kill Antlion because I don't care. You think the reward of stopping the sinkholes is worth all the effort of killing him

I will say the lazy deserter as a reward kinda sucks given it's only useful in multiplayer. Kinda bums you out in a way. Though the turf raiser helm addition does help.
Antlion isn't bad at all I think. Sure sinkholes are annoying but I never had any issue with dealing with them. They have a huge tell before they start destroying stuff,

[Evelo]

4 hours ago, Zatella said:

A good example (in my opinion) of what not to do is the Antlion.

This hurts me so much because I think Antlion is one of the few well designed bosses in DST because its annoyance to survival. You can choose to deal with the annoyance or just let it happen. THAT IS SURVIVAL! We need more of those kinds of bosses in a survival game. The game's combat system should never have been the priority because of just how simple it is. If Klei wants to shift Don't Starve more toward combat (like they did with DST) they really would benefit from overhauling the combat system. Given the trailer for Elsewhere shows brief snippets of combat, they look identical to Don't Starve and Together. Which is fine, just focus on the strength of Don't Starve which is atmosphere and survival.

Edited April 13 by Evelo

[Zatella]

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I don't kill Antlion because I don't care. You think the reward of stopping the sinkholes is worth all the effort of killing him. You've just got a really negative outlook on everything for some reason so you see rewards of punishments stopping as an annoyance, like the survival game is supposed to never challenge you in any way and is supposed to just exclusively be optional raid fights that you do whenever you want them to happen.

There should be more bosses like Antlion, and they should be more threatening than just the really minor sinkhole thing. 

I think you’re misunderstanding my point a bit.

I’m not saying the game shouldn’t be challenging, and I’m not against required bosses. Survival games should have pressure and threats, that’s part of what makes them fun.

What I’m saying is that when a boss is tied to preventing a recurring punishment, the reward should feel meaningful beyond just “stopping the punishment.”

With Antlion, the issue isn’t the fight itself, it’s the loop around it. You’re dealing with:

• RNG just to access the fight (blueprint drops)
• A time-consuming setup (fishing in a specific spot)
• And then the “reward” is basically just avoiding sinkholes

And those sinkholes aren’t exactly "minor" they can take up to 22 in-game days to fully fix, block building, and disrupt movement, that’s a longterm nuisance.

So it ends up feeling less like:
“Defeat this boss for a reward”

And more like:
“Do this chore repeatedly or deal with ongoing penalties”

That’s the difference I’m trying to point out.

A good example of this done right would be Deerclops. It’s also a required seasonal boss, but the payoff is actually meaningful, you get the eye, which lets you craft the Eyebrella, making Spring significantly easier. That feels like a real reward on top of dealing with the threat.

I’m completely fine with bosses being required and even being more threatening, but the effort should come with a satisfying payoff, not just temporary relief from a mechanic that keeps coming back.

Sinkholes takes up to 22 Days to be fully repaired

2 hours ago, Evelo said:

This hurts me so much because I think Antlion is one of the few well designed bosses in DST because its annoyance to survival. You can choose to deal with the annoyance or just let it happen. THAT IS SURVIVAL! We need more of those kinds of bosses in a survival game. The game's combat system should never have been the priority because of just how simple it is. If Klei wants to shift Don't Starve more toward combat (like they did with DST) they really would benefit from overhauling the combat system. Given the trailer for Elsewhere shows brief snippets of combat, they look identical to Don't Starve and Together. Which is fine, just focus on the strength of Don't Starve which is atmosphere and survival.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Antlion itself is a fun fight. The problem is everything around the fight feels like a nuisance

       First time:

• The setup is tedious (fishing in a specific spot for multiple days)
• Access is RNG-dependent (blueprint drops)
  
  Onwords:
• the lazy deserter reward drop and doesn’t feel meaningful beyond stopping the mechanic temporarily

So instead of feeling like a survival-driven challenge, it starts to feel like a chore loop.

[Antynomity]

2 hours ago, Evelo said:

This hurts me so much because I think Antlion is one of the few well designed bosses in DST because its annoyance to survival. You can choose to deal with the annoyance or just let it happen. THAT IS SURVIVAL! We need more of those kinds of bosses in a survival game. The game's combat system should never have been the priority because of just how simple it is. If Klei wants to shift Don't Starve more toward combat (like they did with DST) they really would benefit from overhauling the combat system. Given the trailer for Elsewhere shows brief snippets of combat, they look identical to Don't Starve and Together. Which is fine, just focus on the strength of Don't Starve which is atmosphere and survival.

That big ass lureplant jellyfish better harass me with eyeplants at all times

[Capybara007]

"If a boss has over 20k health, is it really necessary?"

If devs question that themselves bosses will already be above DST bosses

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, Zatella said:

Sinkholes takes up to 22 Days to be fully repaired

And then again with the contradicting yourself. You act like 22 days is a super long time so you need to stop Antlion because the sinkholes are such a longstanding issue, and then in the very next breath you say

4 hours ago, Zatella said:

the lazy deserter reward drop and doesn’t feel meaningful beyond stopping the mechanic temporarily

To try to act like the 22 days is just a brief thing that doesn't really matter. It's only 22 days, it's just temporary, it's not an infinitely usable piece of armor like this armor you got from going out of your way to do the longest and most timegated questline in the game to kill what used to be the final boss. This seasonal guy that's acting against you and trying to hinder your survival doesn't give the same reward as this final boss you choose to fight, so apparently that's bad game design. Surviving in a survival game is bad design. The good design is when a survival game has no survival elements and it's just a singleplayer story driven RPG. 

You're killing the Antlion. You think the reward of stopping the sinkholes temporarily is so meaningful and important that it's worth all of the effort of going over to Antlion and killing him. But for some reason you've decided to come onto the forums and pretend like you don't think that so you can complain about the boss for no reason. 

[Mysterious box]

12 hours ago, Zatella said:

What I mean is: if a boss is required for progression or to avoid major penalties, it should always feel rewarding to defeat.

If this applied to every boss you run into a powercreep problem the ds series at it's base is a survival game so every fight you do shouldn't bless you to the moon with the most amazing loot just for surviving against the seasonal boss or a low totem progression boss. Optional bosses and bosses at the end of a chain of progression or a major turning point in progression should be the ones who give the higher end rewards specifically because you took the risk or made a major accomplishment.

[Evelo]

6 hours ago, Zatella said:

So instead of feeling like a survival-driven challenge, it starts to feel like a chore loop.

That's literally survival. Tedium once you master it. You still need to eat, you still need to sleep, you still need to stay sane. Those are mundane chores that are part of survival. It's about juggling everything needed to stay alive. If that isn't fun for you, I don't think you want a survival game.

[Antynomity]

5 hours ago, Capybara007 said:

"If a boss has over 20k health, is it really necessary?"

If devs question that themselves bosses will already be above DST bosses

They really gotta do health scaling this time I swear, some of the bosses in DST are so unbearably boring and then they have 27-100k health. Like damn just give me challenging attacks and a short fight instead of a drawn out unengaging fight

[Szczuku]

14 hours ago, Zatella said:

if a boss is required for progression or to avoid major penalties, it should always feel rewarding to defeat.

It doesn't matter how rewarding a boss is, if you defeat it for 100th time, you'll feel nothing. That's just how life works.

And we cannot have "rewarding bosses" in the form of them dropping an item/ingredient that's very powerful, or else we run into the problem that dst had - the first seasonal boss drops a solution to rain, the first raid boss drops a solution to cold, etc. etc. At some point you run out of things to reward players with

For the most part of survival games, lack of penalty is the reward

Edited April 13 by Szczuku

[Maxil20]

I'm confused on this even in the context of DST, because most of the bosses do drop pretty good rewards. What might not be valuable to one person could be extremely important to another. I feel the best example of this is toadstool's mushlights/glowcaps. In a "casual" setting most players might not use these and see them as underwhelming, but in megabasing scenarios it's the best way to emit consistent (and even colored!) light sources in builds. Even the deserter in solo still has the niche of obliterating your sanity, which is good for nightmare farming or doing moonstorms before getting the brightshade helm. I think the only one I don't consider good is scrappy werepig, and even then it has some merit at being the best way to mass produce scrap if you are actively pursuing to farm it.

I think DST is a pretty good inspiration for how to give bosses drops, with the only exception of limiting "seasonal" drops so things like the eyebrella don't invalidate every spring option and 85% of the summer ones.

[-Nick-]

4 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel the best example of this is toadstool's mushlights/glowcaps. In a "casual" setting most players might not use these and see them as underwhelming, but in megabasing scenarios it's the best way to emit consistent (and even colored!) light sources in builds.

I still think Toadstool being a massive health wall makes the reward still feel a bit saddening despite how nice mushlights are.

Though misery toadstool.. why even bother. 100k health for a worse panflute. 

[Hungry French]

18 hours ago, Zatella said:

Просто уточню, что Древний Халк был и всегда будет моим любимым боссом в Don't Starve. Музыка и звуковые эффекты — это 🔥🔥🔥

This is also my favorite boss.
Great design. A variety of attacks.  Music.
And 3000 hp. 
He has problems, of course...

1 hour ago, -Nick- said:

I still think Toadstool being a massive health wall makes the reward still feel a bit saddening despite how nice mushlights are.

Though misery toadstool.. why even bother. 100k health for a worse panflute.

You should be fighting in 6 players, ideally... That's the point of High Raid boss... Her true solo hp it's 9999 actually 

Edited April 13 by Hungry French

[Capybara007]

2 minutes ago, Hungry French said:

You should be fighting in 6 men, ideally... That's the point of High Raid boss...

but if i want to play alone

Edited April 13 by Capybara007

[Hungry French]

2 minutes ago, Capybara007 said:

but if i want to play alone

There is a DS for this. Is there unique content in DST?
Sorry, but Klei didn't keep their promise that the content in DS and DST would be the same...

DST is too repulsive... And it's not just about hp...

[Maxil20]

2 hours ago, -Nick- said:

I still think Toadstool being a massive health wall makes the reward still feel a bit saddening despite how nice mushlights are.

Though misery toadstool.. why even bother. 100k health for a worse panflute. 

Toadstool admittedly is a pretty oddball case , because it's the only boss you genuinely don't need to kill again once you kill the misery version. I kinda like how in turn it's by far the most demanding endurance fight in the game, even with post rift gear. I think it was a pretty insane order when it launched and fights took ~35-40 minutes to beat, but it's much more reasonable with stuff like moon axes + reaper with cowl + bin helping to speed through the sluggish fight and keeping your restoration items on you without fear of them mass spoiling.

It definitely is the boss where you really don't need to fight it if you are not planning on base building long term, which is good because it's possible to completely ignore as it doesn't gate any progression steps. 

[Mike23Ua]

You guys are forgetting the Cult of the Lamb crossover update aren’t you? The one where you can now just give a funny looking sandcastle to the Antlion to receive EVERY Reward you would have gotten from fighting her & soothe her sinkholes.

To me, one of the biggest challenges in the game is still Deerclops, and even though it’s easy to kite it away and ignore it… the fact that it’s one of few entities in the game that targets and destroys your base structures still makes it more terrifying then any optional obscure boss you go fight for Optional OP rewards.