So i heard u like opinions

[NeedPants]

Hello everyone, i registered today to share with u my views on Don't Starve, and to read urs. Forgive my internet spelling, its a habit, not a desease.

I first saw this game on a Twitchtv stream, being played by a very hilarious person called unshockable, great guy. After 10 mins i knew enough, called my friend, made him watch the stream and we bought the game together, paying 50% each. I have to say, for a little over 5 bucks, this game is TOTALLY AWESOMESAUCE. *cough cough* excuse my french.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game in the 3 days i own it now. In my first playthrough i died at day 7 alas, but pt2 went alot better. Day 77, the marshes, tentacle madness, need i say more? My meat effigy did the trick, but me and my stubborn brain decided to go back there and pick up my stuff. Last mistake i ever made, in that life. Oh cruel world.

Now in pt3 i reached 89 days and have come to the point where im a little lost. Explored every island. Nearly mined everything, except for 1 island. Got tons of excess resources, safely stored in 8 little chests. Oh and ofc i have researched everything and still have science points to spare, but i already found a thread saying this system will change, so im awaiting anxiously.

Now the thing thats most present in my mind, is the lack of endgame presented by don't starve. Sadly this is also the part where im simply going to have to wait, since its an alpha and not nearly finished or balanced yet

However i do have some useful contributions in mind. On the way to day 89 i have encountered a few things that could use a tweak, balance or rework, u name it.

1) Boards or planks. My god man, these things are EXPENSIVE. I really had to do quite some work to set up pigfarms. I used replanted berry bushes as my only foodsource thru pt2 entirely, but i got bored having to pluck em at night so i dont have to chase gobblers across half the map till i can corner them. Also the need of running around picking up fertilizer got kinda tedious. Farms were not an option either due to (again) fertilizer and seeds that have to be collected in the same way. Soooo, piggies eh. Yeah, 8 boards and 7 rock. Honestly the rock is np, i have 2 full chests of rock, but the boards. My intial goal was to set up 20 pighouses so i could farm up a full stack of meat in 1 day. Currently i have 14. 14x8 boards = 112 boards. This is 672 wood, or 168 of the biggest trees, including the stump. Took me a lifetime Imo these things could use a tiny cost reduction. Why not 4 wood? makes sense that 1 big tree would give u a terrific plank to work with, doesnt it The max stack of 20 wood also feels quite low and unsatisfactory with the current cost.

2) Pigs and bees. U can make ur own! But sadly they are just as wild as the actual "wild" ones. Now bees arent exactly the biggest deal since u can outrun them, but piggies! I eventually decided to place pighouses in 2's and place the next 2 at least an entire screen away. This however makes farming them for food alot more difficult than neccessary. Placing them closer causes a hoard of angry piglings to charge at u whenever u strike down the first one, which makes berries suddenly look way more attractive. A reduced aggro range would easy the space consumption. Another option is to introduce something i read in another thread: fences. Small wooden fences to seperate the pigs would offer good protection, since pig ai doesnt run around objects (such as their own houses) and get stuck behind them.

3) Tree choppin. This is a thing related to point 2. I noticed that chopping wood takes quite a bit longer than digging up graves or mining rocks. I am not quite sure why chopping trees is so time-consuming, especially when compared to rockmining. A slight reduction in cuttime would be a change welcomed by me =)

4) Spears and tools. Tools come in golden versions to reduce the hassle of reproducing them constantly and to reduce the strain on flint (the most "finite" resource in my experience so far). But why no golden spear? I have killed 7 tentacles but havent succeeded in getting anything but monster meat from them. The fabled weapon, the tentacle spike, that could drop from these according to what ive read is as of yet not in my possession Also i havent found tentacle spots to make my feather hat either. Just monster meat.

I have more things i would like to touch on, but most (if not all) can be directly linked to the current lack of endgame, hence i didnt feel like they deserved to be seperate points:

Cut stone has very limited uses considering the huge excess of rock i have, regardless of the ton of pighouses i placed. Speedy farmplots do not consume more rock either. If the amount of rockdrops remain the same, i hope we will Soon see more use for rock and specifically cut stone. There is no need to make more than 1 alchemy machine, and crockpots are entirely optional (imo more for the fun of experimenting), but in any case u will never produce alot of these either.

Tentacles in the swamp are quite the challenge and take up alot of my logsuits This brings me to both the lack of tech in the weapons and armor department, aswell as to: can we fight the tentacle monster after for example killing X amount of tentacles? Should we defeat it, it should have a hefty respawn timer imo, 5-10 ingame days. This so that we can farm the reeds without getting knocked off our feet. This doesnt make it much easier since we have to defeat tentacles AND the monster itself, but at least i dont get killed while doing the "collect" animation by 2 tentacles while collecting reeds. Now only to add something that would make us want to farm them

I initially also wanted to include my regret having to die for xp, but the thread about the removal of research points also mentioned xp gain will be changed. I would love to play another char, but id have to die first. NO WAY ur gonna make me commit suicide. Wilson is king survival nr1!

Sorry for the long read, i hope i didnt bore anyone. I had to get my enthusiasm out in one big post. AWESOME game.

Regards,

NeedPants

[Nickdy]

I agree that there should be a golden spear, but i don't think the time for chopping down a tree should be reduced, it does not actually take very long and seasons will be added Soon so berry farms will not produce during the winter and will be a pain to maintain during the summer. You know because of droughts and such.

[dra6o0n]

For the pigs, at least you have your handy 'wall of trees' to help you out.

Place them in a manner so the walls will divide the pig houses into 4 sections, since mobs aren't smart enough to navigate around things.

Having spiders nearby helps you actually, as it leads to killing them for monster meats, which turns into food that is poison to you, but nets a follower of pigs easily to herd and kill separately.

Try this... Feed a pig, and order it to kill itself. It's a bug but apparently a funny one.

Ctrl + LMB is your friend to do that.

After it gets hit 5 times it dies and drop a meat.

So you convert a monster meat into a meat.

Also if you fed it flower/berries/carrots beforehand and killed it, it's refunded to you!

Edited November 21, 2012 by dra6o0n

[501105]

Some good suggestions there. I especially agree with the boards, you need a lot of them to make a decent camp, an absurd amount even compared to the other resources. I get that there are a lot of trees and that wood is basically infinite, but that should not mean that we need so much of it. The tree chopping itself I dont really mind that much, it does not feel like it takes ages to chop down a tree.

Bees are already fairly agressive when you take their honey or honeycombs, so I dont see a problem there. Pigmen are fairly intelligent and are not mindless boars, so I dont really expect them to go all wild on you unless provoked (like killing their brethen for their meat).

Onto a gold spear, I like the idea but it would require either enemies that can take more damage, or nerfing the regular spear to make it weaker. If you introduce a more durable and stronger golden spear now, you would turn into a god and kill of all challenge in the game combat wise. The tentacle spike and tentacle spots drop random btw. Especially the spots have a fairly low change of dropping, so you have to kill a lot of tentacles to get enough for your hat.

On the rest, give it some time, the game currently only has the start phase of the game. Once the midi and end game appear it will probably get a lot trickier.

[NeedPants]

For the pigs, at least you have your handy 'wall of trees' to help you out.

Place them in a manner so the walls will divide the pig houses into 4 sections, since mobs aren't smart enough to navigate around things.

Having spiders nearby helps you actually, as it leads to killing them for monster meats, which turns into food that is poison to you, but nets a follower of pigs easily to herd and kill separately.

Try this... Feed a pig, and order it to kill itself. It's a bug but apparently a funny one.

Ctrl + LMB is your friend to do that.

After it gets hit 5 times it dies and drop a meat.

So you convert a monster meat into a meat.

Also if you fed it flower/berries/carrots beforehand and killed it, it's refunded to you!

I was actually the one that found this suicide pig bug

Go read the thread and see for urself

[NeedPants]

Btw i have killed all the tentacles in a small piece of swamp on one of the islands (pigmen army hoo), but this particular map seems to have no other places with a swamp. Do these tentacles respawn? Its been 9 ingame days so far and nothing yet. I do have some tentacle spikes now, but no spots yet. Huhuhuuuu will I ever get my feather hat?

[Kevin]

Tentacles don't respawn yet. They probably will in the future.

[NeedPants]

Tentacles don't respawn yet. They probably will in the future.

Okiedokie, tnx for the info. This does mean the end of my dream to wear a feather hat. How cruel are the whims of fate

[501105]

Check all areas though, some areas have small bits of swamp in them and thus sometimes a tentacle.

[mobius187]

Tentacles don't respawn yet. They probably will in the future.

I assume then there will be no way to ever make the tentacles extinct. So will the plan be to have them respawn daily, or to delay their respawn by a short period, similar to how spider nests can be emptied?

[Excess]

1) Boards or planks. My god man, these things are EXPENSIVE. I really had to do quite some work to set up pigfarms.

But, but... but... you are doing it the wrong way!

You first find a pigmen village, "hire" a couple of them and THEN you chop wood. And if you don't have a village nearby, then only the first pigmen house is expensive, the rest are exponentially cheaper as you get more and more pigmen to help you chop each time you build a new house.

Pigmen have to pay RENT for those lovely houses you made them

[501105]

Or just demolish the pighouses with your hammer to get boards.

[mobius187]

Or just demolish the pighouses with your hammer to get boards.

The moment Kevin explained how the hammer worked, this was my very first idea... *sniff*

Time to relocate all those pig men!

[NeedPants]

But but ur solutions are all so violent! Im a peaceful person myself. And any of u, or any monster in the game that thinks otherwise, can argue their stance with my spear.

Tyvm

The thought of farming wild pig houses for boards just never crossed my mind That is a nice idea!

Pig workforce is less of an idea imo. I only cut the biggest trees, so if they randomly start cutting smaller ones imma be mad! I use the extra pinecones for fuel, but im also building a tree maze! However this is a work in progress and i shouldnt have said anything omg now i spoiled it, and here i was thinking i could make a thread with my maze and everyone would be like AW MY GAAAWD thats amaaaazing. Way to spoil it pants, way to go bro. Stop talking to urself now, oke? Oke Pants.

[Excess]

How come tearing down their own houses (which they built by themselves with their own hoofs) is less violent than paying them with food for a little exercise? You are worse than the big bad wolf my grandma used to tell me about. Poor little piggies.

Look at his face... LOOK AT IT!

[mobius187]

Look at his face... LOOK AT IT!

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I hear what you're saying. We need to save them all... for later...