Anyone got any idea on what the purpose behind the Night Light was/is?

[MaxStrategy]

Its pretty terribad, a lot of items need to be more useful especially ones made out of non-renewable resources. Honestly there should be another slot for accessories and might as well lump all the non-armor/non-backpack items in that category too so people actually use them. That's just my personal opinion though.

 

Back to the nightlight the only use I can think of is to intentionally lower your sanity so you can collect nightmare fuel or kill beardlings for beard hair to make respawn points.

[Doctor H. Derp]

Its pretty terribad, a lot of items need to be more useful especially ones made out of non-renewable resources. Honestly there should be another slot for accessories and might as well lump all the non-armor/non-backpack items in that category too so people actually use them. That's just my personal opinion though.

 

I completely agree. Ever since they introduced the backpack it's been the item I primarily use in the body slot even through winter. I've never found an instance where a vest's usefulness outweighed the usefulness of a backpack; even puffy/breezy vests during the cold, at least for me. The only time I drop the backpack is because I slip on armor, and then as soon as the fight's over, it's straight back to the backpack.

 

I get it, they want us to make choices, but what's been the result is that the most optimal and objectively useful items are going to see a lot of use and a lot of middling to situational items gather dust in a chest somewhere, especially considering how inventory space is such a limiting factor. In my last world I had 16 chests all in use, all full of stuff, or if not practically full anyway. To be fair like 4 or 5 chests were dedicated to stockpiles of common resources. I can't take all that stuff with me on any given excursion. One-man band, very neat item. When am I going to use it? I could use it just because, or I could just use a bunch of monster meat I have sitting in an icebox anyway. Obviously it's intended to just be a fun item, and it is, but weigh it against a panflute. Heck, weigh it against a common spear. You have to be asking the question, "Why would a player take this item over any other item?" and when the answer is, "They really wouldn't," then why put it in the game? Is it a filler item meant to hinder the player's progress and/or teach them a mechanic of the game a la wet goop or monster lasagna? Is it a fun item not meant to be seriously considered for anything other than messing around? Is it an item on a lesser tier that's destined to largely fall out of use when the player moves on to the next tier like with armors? Or is it just simply a "meh" item?

 

Like a lot of the amulets just aren't that great. Like even if you had an amulet slot, I probably still wouldn't use most of them, but since there is no amulet slot, they rarely get considered ever. I'll use the insanity amulet if I want beardhair from beardlings for example, but that's at my base where I have access to my battalion of chests so inventory is far less of an issue, and there has been a situation or 2 where I swapped in a life-giving amulet when I knew death was an inevitability, but that was long long ago now. The ruins gems I used to craft each of the amulets and then promptly never used them again after playing around with them for a bit. The chilled amulet would be awesome with it's slowing effect on attackers if only it meant you didn't take the full brunt of the damage. They're neat, they're interesting, but that's all they largely are.

Same thing could've been said about the hambat until it got buffed or the miner hat when it came to spelunking and it's buff.

Conversely you could nerf items to make these other items more appealing. I know, for me, the speed debuff on the piggyback is enough to deter it's use for me. Much rather just go faster with a walking cane and a backpack.

 

Back to the nightlight the only use I can think of is to intentionally lower your sanity so you can collect nightmare fuel or kill beardlings for beard hair to make respawn points.

 

That might've been it. When it was first introduced that was the only way to get nightmare fuel so it would stand to reason that it would help keep your sanity low with the trade off of feeding it fuel every now and then.

[The Letter W]

Shame it's kind of useless because I really like the thing. What's there not to like about a sword thing that burns with a black flame? 

And yeah, if the occasional eating of hallucinations actually is intended I would be okay with that. It takes Nightmares to make Nightmares. 

 

You go insane because you can hear them screaming as they're burned alive to make the light. 

But at least it isn't you. 

 

Would it be too OP to make it a bit more like Maxwell's Lights in Adventure Mode in the sense it activates when you're close to it, providing it has ample fuel to do so? Like if you're not near it maybe it'll consume the fuel at half the rate or something. 

[JadedMeiji]

I thought you could also use it's light to stave off Charlie standing just far enough back not to feel the sanity drain... personally I wish there was something torch like but planted like the warrior pigs have just so I could light a chunk of my base all at once giving enough fuel to gather whatever so my nights weren't so useless, I did firepits around but rocks are sometimes hard to come by that, like stone walls, I have moved away from that method to just using a torch and hoping I don't accidentally set a fire while trying to start crockpots or reset traps at night... or that I remembered to make a spare when it's low... but again inventory slots limit so much that 2 torches at all times is frustrating... lol I have random torches all over the map where I needed the slot back so just dropped it opting to just build another if needed

I haven't yet utilized the night light simply because i already have troubles with sanity Maintenance at times so why mess with it