Bee Boxes

[emerphish]

I am sure that any experienced DS player has built a bee box at some point or another. And many of you have probably experienced the endless stacks of honey. This is broken, as with enough flowers a bee box will produce enough honey to counter your ~70 hunger a day loss.

 

I have about 10 bee boxes surrounding my flowers, which I have a TON of. Combined these make almost a stack of honey per day, if I were to sit there and harvest them all day. Now I have so much honey that stacks are turning into rot, which is great for fuel(when you have more that 140 of it) I know fuel isn't op, but you can make the healing thing that restores 30 health, or you can just eat 10 for the same effect.

 

Sparing the rest of my rant, nothing should be that easy to get if it is game-breakingly good.

[Kellyc764]

I would counter that bee boxes aren't that OP.

 

You could argue that setting up on a savannah with 5-6 rabbit holes in close proximity is OP when putting traps ontop and harvesting regularly - it would produce enough morsels to fully sustain you every day.

^You could counter with the 'rabbit holes close' but as bees hibernate for winter it's on par.

 

I usually only find about 4-5 bee boxes in my world (albeit not fully explored) and after catching 12 bees for my 3 boxes I find that it's an adequate risk paid off within a matter of days.

 

You can make anything in this game OP if you get the world gen balance perfect on the luck of the draw.

 

And as someone playing as Wigfrid now, I'm glad to know I can rot it and burn it when I have more than I'll ever need for all my Honey Hams :3

[NeoDeusMachina]

You could also argue that building 100 farms and planting seeds everyday (they are free afterall, birds gift them to you) is OP too. Off course everything that is built in large quantity can become rather unbalanced. At least bee boxes are not functional during winter, and the bees are killer bees during spring. You thus have to be careful where you build them if you don't want to get invaded by 40 killer bees in your camp.

 

Anyway, I usually only build 2 beeboxes. I dont find it necessary to build any more than that to make honey ham/pumpkin cookies. I rarely (if ever) make honey poultice, but I guess I should =)

[Tumalu]

There's lots of easy food gathering methods in Don't Starve.

 

Admittedly, bee boxes are the easiest after you've already set up the box. You only need a few (and a not-that-huge amount of flowers) to sustain yourself on honey outside of winter.

[Plague Mouse]

I always have more food than I can eat. Always.

I have stacks of Jerky turning to rot in an icebox, do you know how long it takes to Jerky spoil on the ice box? 40 freaking days, and it's still not enough to have time to consume them all.

Jerky replenishes more health, hunger and sanity than all honey recipes.

I could also have a dragonfruit farmplot and have more than I could eat.

I could also dig 100 berry bushes and plant right by my savannah base with a constant supply of manure to fertilize them.

 

If you took the effort to go after lots of hives (my recent worlds has barely any) and the supplies to make so many boxes, then why wouldn't you gather more than you can have?

[JadedMeiji]

I have 108 berry bushes, 16 bee boxes, 12 each lure plants/drying racks/crockpots, and 64 farm plots... Food of any kind easily becomes op if you wanna put in the work to build your base that way... honey is mostly used for my poultice supply, berries become irrelevant after my first winter... With wickerbottom I have pig and bunny arenas vs. Tentacles giving plenty of meat ... All how you play

[emerphish]

To those of you saying that bee boxes don't work in winter, I am talking to you.Long winter is 50 days, and honey takes 40 to spoil, plus ice box, plus the slower spoil rate in winter. 20 says of summer can sustain me for 20 days of winter. Now I say bee boxes in particular because honey is really good for health, useful in the crockpot, and to top it all off, once you set it up you don't need manure or seeds to sustain them.

[Plague Mouse]

This is a random game. I have one hive in my map, a single one. If you got dozens to sustain you, then good for you, but on your next world you may not have them.

[Kellyc764]

To those of you saying that bee boxes don't work in winter, I am talking to you.Long winter is 50 days, and honey takes 40 to spoil, plus ice box, plus the slower spoil rate in winter. 20 says of summer can sustain me for 20 days of winter. Now I say bee boxes in particular because honey is really good for health, useful in the crockpot, and to top it all off, once you set it up you don't need manure or seeds to sustain them.

 

While that is true, Honey on it's own is worth just under 10 Hunger. Meaning you would have to harvest 8 a day as hunger depletes 75 for every in game day.

At stage 3 it is Full and yields 6 Honey. Now how long it takes to get from 0 to full again is beyond me, I'm not going that much into the mechanics of it at this time.

 

But lets say it takes a day to get full again, and you have 10 boxes, thats a whopping 60 Honey you'd harvest a day.

 

Granted, it's a high yield, and at 20 wooden boards (80 logs) and 40 bees - Not to mention the Honeycomb, which as I've said, I've rarely found more than 4 on a single map....

 

I don't know, I'm torn, I can see how it can become your staple food source forever, but a lot of effort needs to go into it to set it up.

I think the ratio of spawning plays a large factor in it, and just because you've got the luck of the draw I think it would be improper to say it's OP.

 

Fair point though on the manure and seeds - Same can be said for rebuilding traps over rabbit holes. Resource wise nothing else in the game matches up.

 

But, I still think you've just got a lucky break with 10 hives in your world >.<

 

-Had to edit, for some reason I was thinking it took 4 boards per hive xD Corrected to 2

[Zalyn]

If you're willing to go through the trouble to set up 10 bee boxes, you deserve to feel OP. 

 

I get bored after making 2; I'd rather spend the silk and time on other things (need at least 2 nets: 8 bees + >6 butterflies)  Plus, I feel bad that I'm wiping out wild bees... I miss killer bee fields (haven't had any in a long time) because I don't feel as guilty knocking those down.

[Tumalu]

I often run into a  biome where the "bridge" to cross onto the continent is full of beehives and killer bees. Amusingly, it's usually a single otherwise isolated landmass and has the teleportato base on it. I wonder if this is favored in the random gen? But anyway, if you get that killer bee biome anywhere, you'll have lots of beehives on your map just from that area.

 

Otherwise you'd probably only have a few.

[Zalyn]

Yeah, I had that on a couple pre-DLC world gens when I was a newbie.  But I haven't gotten them lately, so I'm beginning to wonder if they're less favored (or diluted) in the world gens now. 

 

On the last world where I had a killer bee field, it was great to use to take out spider queens and the chess pieces at the teleportato.

[JadedMeiji]

Lure plants for killer bees plant them come back in a few days, store up bees lure plant eats them all, kill hive, kill lure plant and replant

Also you can make more wild bees, bees from hive once captured re spawn in 3 days so you can make your own wild bees to pollinate flowers and you aren't wiping them out just relocating just like berries or grass

[Hugo M.]

Cool kids kill bees when they want some honey.

[MaxStrategy]

Bee boxes are a bit tougher in RoG. Will catch fire during summer, get wrecked by the giants, and all bees become killer bees during springtime. Not the best example for good gameplay but irl honey won't ever spoil and you would get a lot more from a single hive.

[JadedMeiji]

I think I will hate this dlc

[emerphish]

While that is true, Honey on it's own is worth just under 10 Hunger. Meaning you would have to harvest 8 a day as hunger depletes 75 for every in game day.

At stage 3 it is Full and yields 6 Honey. Now how long it takes to get from 0 to full again is beyond me, I'm not going that much into the mechanics of it at this time.

 

But lets say it takes a day to get full again, and you have 10 boxes, thats a whopping 60 Honey you'd harvest a day.

 

Granted, it's a high yield, and at 20 wooden boards (80 logs) and 40 bees - Not to mention the Honeycomb, which as I've said, I've rarely found more than 4 on a single map....

 

I don't know, I'm torn, I can see how it can become your staple food source forever, but a lot of effort needs to go into it to set it up.

I think the ratio of spawning plays a large factor in it, and just because you've got the luck of the draw I think it would be improper to say it's OP.

 

Fair point though on the manure and seeds - Same can be said for rebuilding traps over rabbit holes. Resource wise nothing else in the game matches up.

 

But, I still think you've just got a lucky break with 10 hives in your world >.<

 

-Had to edit, for some reason I was thinking it took 4 boards per hive xD Corrected to 2

Each box produces 12-14ish a day. so yeah that's alot...

 

I have never found under 10 on a map.

 

Not much effort. Make a net, fight/catch bees, chop trees. Then with a box, you get more bees. Butterflies only get more common as you plant them, and nets are easy and renewable.

[vimrich]

At some point, the idea is to not spend ALL your time on food, so you can do other things in the game (explore caves and such). After 3 or 4 bee boxes, why keep building them if you have enough food already?

 

Also, I always have at least two bases, so I need 3 or 4 at each location.

 

I'm not using the DLC yet. Not sure I want the game to be even harder just yet.