Nov 29 Hot fix!

[NeedPants]

Hello, reporting back after my previous post. I noticed i use average 40-50 grass a day, no kiddin. That means that with grass regrowing three times b4 i need to manure it, that ill need to collect avg 15-16 manure per day ON TOP of my current manure usage (4 farms). This means im going to ahve to collect 20 manure a day to continue playing the way i am. I am not willing to do that. That is an increase of 400%...........................................................

If manure was needed once every 10 regrowths, i could do with collecting about 8-9 manure a day. STILL twice as much as i used to have to. This nerf was ridiculous. This is the first time that i am actually unwilling to play dont starve coz im not looking forward having to to restock on manure 24/7.

I did manure runs 4 days in a row to see what my average is. I can collect about 25 manure a day from my beefalo. Since the need a day is 20, i get a day of not collecting manure every 4 days. 4 days collecting, 1 day of doing something else. I cannot fathem how someone that claims to want to "remove" grinding as much as possible can make a change like this.

Truth be told in the beginning my grass use is MUCH lower, but now that im on day 100+ what else am i going to do? Do u really want me to stop playing? We all know there is no lategame yet, but does that mean it should be a tedious grind after day 50-60? Think about this grass nerf again, please.

[Little Teemo]

if anything, we should be able to stack manure more too.....it take s a good bit of time to walk around and collect it and for those players with big ass, long bridge maps, going back and forth the pig village and collecting manure from beefalo map is going to be a pain in the bum bum.....not every player are harcore player and some ppl are still getting use to the game (me!)...i mean even in real life when u cut grass, it grew back by itself lol....longer spawn time might be a better idea....gotta remember that every map is different, pig kings maps might be 3 island away for some ppl so going back and forth to get manure is just not worth it

[NeedPants]

I am trying to think of ways change the grass nerf to something that we can live with more easily, but that still requires effort beyond the initial gathering and replanting. Manure is not what i have in mind, but the thing is im not sure if this is even possible to code in this game:

Grass after replanting dies after X times harvested. It respawns on the grassland with the beefalo, which forces the player to every now and then regather the grassplants. Lets say X=5. For me personally, assuming i use 40 grass a day, this means i have to gather 8 new grassplants a day on average. Gathering it, especially if it spawns on one or two places in the game (beefalo areas) allows me to gather 40-50 grassplants if i make my camp on the beefalo plain. This means that once a week, im gonna have to introduce a grass collecting day. Once a week. Not 4 days collecting manure, 1 day of using it to make bedrolls, hats for my pigs, traps, logsuits, football helmets, spears and lighting my fire. Then more manure.

[Nxf7]

Good changes. Although in my opinion grass was only overpowered because it was too easy to relight fires with it (is grass that effective in real life?). If they made it so grass was only as effective as twigs (which are **** if I recall) and nerfed the growth in a less severe way I'm sure everyone will be happier. Everyone can learn to use planks or charcoal for effective fires, and has the added benefit of forcing people to encounter Treeguards more often.

[Little Teemo]

i don't even use them for my fire lol, i only use it for traps and making rope....i hope they fix it Soon

[NeedPants]

Btw was this the patch in which tentacles now respawn? I have kiled all of them in the nearby swamp quite some time ago, but no new ones have appeared of yet.

Also, please remove the space limitation on chests. Since they no longer block, there is no need for chests to be spread out. I prefer them close together but cant do that anymore because all buildings now have a virtual circle around them preventing other buildings from being placed so they dont form a wall.

Edited November 30, 2012 by NeedPants

[gwenevere]

guys i think i have a really good method of fixing the grass problem. So the creator doesn't want us to focus too much on a farming sruvival style and that he doesn't want grass to be too easy to collect right? why not just make it so that grass is like reeds right now? and that they can only grow in those green grass areas and that they cannot be relocated? (just like how reeds cannot be relocated out of the swamp)

[Kevin]

Interesting times! I am certainly not against adjusting the grass nerf, but I don't want to do it blindly. I think the bigger issue that this might be showing us is that you all are having to use waaaay too much grass in a day. Before I change anything with the tufts, I'd like to learn a little more about that.

So, can you guys tell me how much grass you typically use in a day (both early game and mid) and what you use it for? If you are actually regularly using like 50 tufts a day, the most productive thing to do is analyze why, and find a way to reduce the amount that you need. This will probably take the form of some recipe changes.

I'm guessing that if we increase the number of cycles that the tufts (and maybe other things) that need fertilizing can go between poops, and maybe reduce some grass/rope requirements for common items, we can come to a good compromise. I want the systems to feed into each other, but balancing the actual numbers is going to take time. It sounds like It's pretty out-of-whack at the moment.

Tomorrow's Friday, so please get your grass reports to me Soon or you'll be stuck with the nerf as-is all weekend.

Oh, and you are all going to be in BIG TROUBLE when winter comes, if you're still so dependent upon plants regrowing.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Kevin

[LadyD]

Good Day Kevin.

Grass report as follow

Average grass use per day

40-60

Use of grass.

6*4 - 24 grass into rope= Armor requirement

6-12 grass used for fillers in the crock pot

average 16 grass per day for traps (i make them in batches 4 ever two days or so)

Fodder into fire 10-20 when logs not in supply.

[Little Teemo]

whoa whoa whoa...winter? sooo where can i go to hibernate >.,<

[Little Teemo]

Good Day Kevin.

Grass report as follow

Average grass use per day

40-60

Use of grass.

6*4 - 24 grass into rope= Armor requirement

6-12 grass used for fillers in the crock pot

average 16 grass per day for traps (i make them in batches 4 ever two days or so)

Fodder into fire 10-20 when logs not in supply.

that is pretty accurate....some ppl make 4 traps per 2 days....and yes,ropes are the big use too...

[Dijad]

I'd say my grass usage to be about the same as LadyD. I would HIGHLY recommend the grass nerf applying only to relocated grass. It doesn't make sense that a plant out in the wild would need fertilization from a human source. If that was the case, there shouldn't be ANY plants in the game, as they would have died long before Wilson got there. The need for fertilization makes sense if you've replanted it in a place you frequent as birds and the like that would naturally fertilize plants wouldnt be going as near where a human commonly lives in the open. I'm probably gonna hold off playing till this whole grass thing is resolved, I'd just be getting frustrated having to fertilize plants out in the wild. While I do set up a base camp, I don't relocate ANYTHING. I prefer to do my gathering in the wild. This nerf actually encourages a turtle play style as it would be much easier to fertilize plants all in one spot than having to travel around fertilizing plants all over the place.

[Little Teemo]

i would love to hear ur thought about the character unlock too if u have any comments on that, as of right now i know i can unlock 3 character but i can't do that without dying, im not sure if u guys mentioned if it was to be fix later on or ealier, i would love to have the character unlock and play them

p.s. if i missed a note on that then i apologized

[Little Teemo]

I'd say my grass usage to be about the same as LadyD. I would HIGHLY recommend the grass applying only to relocated grass. It doesn't make sense that a plant out in the wild would need fertilization from a human source. If that was the case, there shouldn't be ANY plants in the game, as they would have died long before Wilson got there. The need for fertilization makes sense if you've replanted it in a place you frequent as birds and the like that would naturally fertilize plants wouldnt be going as near where a human commonly lives in the open. I'm probably gonna hold off playing till this whole grass thing is resolved, I'd just be getting frustrated having to fertilize plants out in the wild. While I do set up a base camp, I don't relocate ANYTHING. I prefer to do my gathering in the wild. This nerf actually encourages a turtle play style as it would be much easier to fertilize plants all in one spot than having to travel around fertilizing plants all over the place.

that is another good idea too, Since the grass nerf, i play less for sure cuz i get frustrated about the fertilize random grass thing

[501105]

I use 10-15 pieces of grass or so, purely for keeping my fire on. I have leanred to live mostly without ropes and the reason I use grass for fires is because they are a better solution than wood.

Edited November 30, 2012 by 501105

[Syd]

I believe most of my grass/rope use was in my earliest days, when most of the wood I collected went into crafting, so aside from the grass that was used for making ropes or other such things, it was also often my only truly affordable fuel source for fires.

I'm currently in late game (over 100 days, considering letting Wilson get a friendly hug from the nightbeast so I can start fresh again) so I've been mostly living off of hoarded resources I had collected before this patch went live, but the issue I can see at this point is that you need grass to make ropes, and ropes are used to make some very important things that a player could potentially go through quickly depending on how they spend their day.

The core of my issue with the change to grass is this: the berry nerfs were fine since there's other sources of food, but there's no alternatives to grass for crafting, and like I said in my previous post, this change also further promotes turlting.

[cptCalavera]

I usually gather a crapt on of grass in the first few days. And make a few stacks of rope. Just so I wont have to worry about rope for a while. So early game maybe 40-100 grass/day, late game not so much grass, but instead I use the ropes I have in storage. Mainly for logsuit and tools.

[Full Metal Kirby]

Interesting times! I am certainly not against adjusting the grass nerf, but I don't want to do it blindly. I think the bigger issue that this might be showing us is that you all are having to use waaaay too much grass in a day. Before I change anything with the tufts, I'd like to learn a little more about that.

So, can you guys tell me how much grass you typically use in a day (both early game and mid) and what you use it for? If you are actually regularly using like 50 tufts a day, the most productive thing to do is analyze why, and find a way to reduce the amount that you need. This will probably take the form of some recipe changes.

I'm guessing that if we increase the number of cycles that the tufts (and maybe other things) that need fertilizing can go between poops, and maybe reduce some grass/rope requirements for common items, we can come to a good compromise. I want the systems to feed into each other, but balancing the actual numbers is going to take time. It sounds like It's pretty out-of-whack at the moment.

Tomorrow's Friday, so please get your grass reports to me Soon or you'll be stuck with the nerf as-is all weekend.

Oh, and you are all going to be in BIG TROUBLE when winter comes, if you're still so dependent upon plants regrowing.

I do hope the means we can also expect thunder storms, tornados/hurricanes, and eclipses being added as well at some point.

[Kevin]

Keep that grass feedback coming, guys - it's great stuff! I had no idea that everyone was using so much of the stuff.

I imagine that we'll have a quick meeting in the morning to discuss the results, and then I'll implement a quick rebalancing fix for you to try out.

[NeedPants]

I do it a little differently than ladyd. I do things as i feel like doing them. As for hounds, i generally just stand my ground and press space while having a logsuit and a football helmet on, that is one use for grass. I use a logsuit per 3-4 packs of hounds.

I also light my fire with it, since it used to be much easier to gather and much faster than wood. Generally i like to have the biggest fire possible so i can do stuff at night. 10-20 grass depending on what im doing. The building spacing nerf doesnt help with this as i need more space to build now so i have to keep my fire bigger to reach stuff at night.

I planted about 80-100 grass tufts next to my campfire so i have something to do during the night if i dont sleep in a bedroll. I use a bedroll once every 2 days on average. The grass used for that seems to be pretty even to keeping a fire going throughout the night.

When i decide to go birdcatching and rabbithunting, i like to use traps mostly. I place them over the rabbit hole entrances and then proceed to kill 1 rabbit with an axe. The others run to their hole and get trapped. I hunt crows on bridges and use seeds as bait. Generally im working with 10-12 traps per time, but not as often as ladyd does. I reckon we average about the same in terms of traps used per day. This is a major spender.

As for the building space nerf i touched upon earlier. Since chests no longer block pathing, i would like to see the nerf removed from chests, as i like to place em close around my campfire, and im a hoarder pur sang, trying to have one full stack of everything in my chests:

-There are 8 veggies/fruits in the game, add honey to this, thats 1 chest.

-2nd chest for all the meats and seeds. Have some space left over here, but dont be fooled! Normal meat, monster meat, morsels, frog leggs, tallbird eggs and seeds is already 6 spots.

-3rd chest for manure, i just build this after the grass nerf (lol)

-4th chest for gold, gems, a stack of twigs and some rock that couldnt fit in my other chest.

-5th one is for flint, got a ton of it since i dont use it often, but i prefer mining for gold, currently 1 space left

-6th chest is for rock, entirely full atm, again goldmining and i havent constructed my pigvillage yet coz of the fact that i cant make treewalls anymore. i used to leave one small gap and attack a pig. Only a few chase thru the gap so i can take em out ez, the others get stuck behind the trees and i deal with them later, in small groups. I like having 20 pighouses so i get a full stack of meat instantly. Used to be my main trade with the pigking untill i switched to morsels.

-7th chest: beard hairs, bees, crow feathers, cut reeds, fireflies, hound tooth, pigskin, redbird feather, silk. 9 spots right there

-chest number 8: spider eggs, stingers, tentacles spots and excess teeth for now.. got a ton of those, researching them takes forever since u can only research one at a time. They dont give alot of points and i already have a dapper vest.

-9th chest (does this ever end?) fishing rod, amulet, sleeping darts, beekeepet hat, razor and 4 tentacle spikes (i like to have a few so i dont have to go marshraiding every time my tentacle spike is about to run out)

(guess it did end, for now)

After the spacing nerf, its very hard to put all my chests close enough to the fire in a manner that i dont misclick on them all the time. Remember, within fire range there is also my farms, my twigfarm, my grasstufts, my crockpot and my alchemy machine. So i can do stuff at night

As for the nerf to golden tools, i have no problems with the nerfs to axes and shovels. But pickaxes is a whole different story. I feel like im FORCED to use the pigking for gold now, because mining with a golden pick axe gives me about 9 gold average. Deduct 4 gold to rebuild the pickaxe. Thats a profit of 5 gold. 5 gold and an inventory full of rock and flint, mining gold is useless now imo.

SOrry for the really long post, had to get this off my chest

Pantsyboi

PS: do tentacles respawn now and if so, how long does it take, none of mine have respawned in over 20 days.

Edited November 30, 2012 by NeedPants

[Nightsakura]

Here is the grass daily quota (at 50+ day) :

32 +- 8

8 average for armor *

10 for fire **

6 for torches ***

8 for traps (none if i can use bird traps instead)

-

*Think about it like 1 armor for 2 days. Tentacles strong! among with spiders, pigs and other things.

**I'm trying to avoid cutting trees for fire - saving my flint for another tools, less risk of meeting Treeguard,

Also burning forests for charcoal!

***I dont like using bedrolls for lonely nights - prefer mobility of torches\mining hat, or basic fire pit (dont need grass), if i need to stay.

For a new world its quite more!(1-20 days):

In total * : 168 +- 30

32 armor

15+ torches

16 for farms

40 for traps**

25 for hats (cant live without them)

40+ for fire

-

* I mean all grass needed for setting good camp, surviving long enough to get materials, supplies, food etc.

** Can be 0 if you cant find rabbits, or you can find enough silk for bird traps.

P.S.

I think its all about play style: Treelover or Nomad or Farmer or Hunter or Best Pig Friend or Firestarter.

Each needs different amount of grass.

P.P.S

I like the idea of grass withering after some time after replanting or usage, So you need to find more!

Edited November 30, 2012 by Nightsakura

[Dijad]

Keep that grass feedback coming, guys - it's great stuff! I had no idea that everyone was using so much of the stuff.

I imagine that we'll have a quick meeting in the morning to discuss the results, and then I'll implement a quick rebalancing fix for you to try out.

*chuckles* I can imagine how that meeting is going to start. "Wow. Well, guys, about that grass......"

[daiwai]

Im like half asleep and have work in 5 hours so i hope i make sense

I use mid game roughly 30 grass a day, traps and log suits because i need to explore and see whats going on, but tbh id say one of the biggest grass usages is simply the traps. Perhaps reduce the grass requirement on traps? Remember, since u nerfed the running from behind the hole killing jackalope thing (which was a needed fix) we need to actually use the traps if we want to be jackalope hunters, so nerfing these things and including hounds which make early survival a little more difficult all togethor makes the game more difficult. Perhaps make it so we can do other things other than simply manure to fertilize? O, say for example, we can make "Grass mulch" out of fertilizer, so its not actually 100's of pieces of manure just to fertilize everything?

Also, i will admit, people have become too dependent imo on grass. I dont think you ever need to feed the fires with grass after very early game, since u can even use the pinecones from the trees lol. Or charcoal is easy to get. I think a combination of everything u included at once to make survival more difficult, however is one of the biggest issues. The other issue is that lets say that i want to somehow be self sufficient on my own, what if i dont want to have to rely on the pigs, and the pigs/beefalos are hideously far, and i want to survive without there intervention other than what i build? well for one its not possible now, and two im not incenticized to at all. Biggest thing i see here as i said in the other thread, why would i NOT want to build near the piggies? You should do something to discourage that from simply being the awnser. Sorry if it seems like im ranting lol.

Btw, first game that hooked me for a long time. i work 40 hrs and am taking 13 units atm, so for me to spend my minimal time here is

Also, if your other games follow this attention to detail and outside the box thinking, u have a permanent customer. And ill drag my fiance in as well. Just wanted to let u guys know you have done an AWESOME job overall.

[Little Teemo]

i never once use grass for fire cuz it just doesn;t make any sense to me lol most of my grass went to ropes and trap and occationally torch...but u gotta remember that ppl move their base all the time, and sometime their biom does have grass or beefalo...so it can be frustrating carrying those in ur back pack or walk back to coleect more....

[NeedPants]

i never once use grass for fire cuz it just doesn;t make any sense to me lol most of my grass went to ropes and trap and occationally torch...but u gotta remember that ppl move their base all the time, and sometime their biom does have grass or beefalo...so it can be frustrating carrying those in ur back pack or walk back to coleect more....

I actually just collect stuff and dont make a base untill i find beefalo. And this was prenerf. Now its like the only thing u can do apart from perhaps living next to the pig king. Im still waiting for a map where the beefalo and the pig king are neighbours.