Jump to content

For veteran players looking for a fresh experience


Recommended Posts

I barely post on the forums in general but I decided today to share this with you. I see posts about world settings quite often and I know many people are interested in refreshing their Don't Starve experience. If you have been playing Don't Starve for a while and you feel the game got boring for you, too easy or just plain tedious, this is for you. This is aimed at veteran players wanting a new and challenging experience.

 

(You can skip to the last part if you are interested in the purpose of these changes and my world settings)

 

******

At the start I played without any mods or changes, I avoided reading the wiki and tried to discover the game by myself and find my own strategies to survive until I felt I could survive indefinetly. Also at that point, the game started getting boring and with the lack of an endgame goal I lost interest really fast.

 

I think every new player should try a blind, vanilla experience first, and is at least half of the fun, half of which makes Don't Starve so good. The other half would be the replayability given by the easy modding and almost infinite possibilities to make Don't Starve as fun and challenging as you want it.

 

I avoided modding for a long time because I found it tedious and because mainly I like playing without mods. But I loved DS too much and I knew it has so much potential and I could make it fun again if I put my mind to it. I like alot the game mechanics and how fluent the game is. It's also so simple and yet it has so much depth and you can make it whatever you want it to be.

******

 

This is how I play Don't Starve now...

(You can skip to the last part if you are interested in the purpose of these changes and my world settings)

 

***MODS***

Must have:

RPG HUD Neat - I use it mainly for Backpack and Amulet Slots

Wall Gates - craftable wall gates

Recommended:

Minimap - minimap hud

Architectural Geometry - aesthetics

Relaxed Crafting - Auto-Pause during crafting and placement

Food Values - shows info about food when hovering over or and examining

Smart Crock Pot - shows result before cooking

Diggable Reeds - self-explanatory (requires marsh turf and fertilizer)

Abigail Plus (if playing Wendy) - Abigail AI Improvement and Control HUD Buttons

Included:

Break the Ice - mine the ice that covers ponds during winter (ice respawns 2 times a day)

Map Radius - a bit larger map reveal radius to show the amount that you can see

More Fuel - many items can be used as campfire fuel or burned to decrease clutter (also honey can be used as Miner Hat and Lantern fuel)

Useful Flooring - craftable turfs have different bonuses while standing on them

Boards to Charcoal - you can burn (with a torch) boards to make charcoal instead of ash (self-made)

 

***TWEAKS***

- Damage of all mobs increases by 1% every day (+100% or 2x on day 101, +200% or 3x on day 201 and so on...)

- Increased damage of all weapons for a faster pace of the game (about 2x)

- Increased damage of Abigail and Maxwell's Shadow Puppets (also increased health of Shadow Puppets to 200)

- Maxwell's health is now 100

- WX78 max health, hunger and sanity changed to 250

- Picking of Twigs, Grass, Berries, etc. is now fast (like picking carrots)

- Cutting trees is 3 times faster

- Mining rocks is 2 times faster

- Doubled the hunger rate (need twice the amount of food per day)

- Changed fishing (it takes a random time between 15-45 seconds to catch a fish; fish respawns once per day and it can be a maximum of 2 fish in a pond at a time)

- Gold Nuggets stack to 99

- Made Bee Mines, Minotaur Horns and Tallbird Eggs stackable to 10

- Increased the health of all armor (about 2x - 2.5x)

- Bee Hat absorbs 90% damage from bees

- Darksword now drains 1 sanity per hit

- Doubled the health of hounds

- Increased the health of Wargs to 1000 and damage by 50%

- Increased Krampus health to 500 and doubled his damage

- Added a small regen to beefalos and Maxwell's Puppets

- Also made slight changed to other mobs regen rate

- Increased the health of walls (2x - 3x) and made the repair/upgrade of wall more efficient material wise (e.g. 1 rocks repairs the same amount as 1 stone wall and cutstone repairs the same amount as 3 rocks)

- Can't give meat to Pig King in exchange for gold (more of a reason to explore the caves)

- Full and Medium Stalagmites can drop nitre

- Min spawn time for bosses is 10 days (from 20)

- Some changes to fertilizers

- Adjusted some recipes

- Many more small balance tweaks...

*All tweaks can be changed to your liking in modmain.lua or theprefabs lua (they can also be easily disabled by adding "--" in front of the line; don't be afraid to fiddle with the settings)

 

THE GOAL:

All of these changes are made with the purpose of making the game harder and increasing the difficulty over time, providing more challenge in the late and very-late game. The 1% damage increase each day will eventually make you consider using the teleportato if you want to survive, since the damage of monsters will become too much to handle over time. At the same time many tweaks are made to make the game faster and more fluent by decreasing or removing some of the tedious factors.

 

Together with the world settings, these changes give more of an incentive to explore the caves and ruins for gold, thulecite, the Ancient Guardian's Horn and also an end-game goal to either survive for as many days as possible or jumping worlds to accumulate these precious and limited resources.

 

My recommended world settings:

Preset: Default Plus

Flint - Less

Boulder - None

Glacier - Less

Footprint - Lots

Warg - Lots

Spiders - Lots

Tree Guardians - More or Lots

Poisoned Birchnut Trees - More or Lots

Krampus - More or Lots

All 4 Giant Bosses - More or Lots

 

Eliminating Rock/Gold boulders makes spelunking (caves) an integral part of the game since you won't be able to progress without the much needed flint, gold, nitre.

I also recommend to only set 1 aggressive mob to more or lots (I chose spiders), otherwise the game will actually become easier with the monsters fighting each other and so providing you with large amounts of food and resources without any effort.

 

Thank you for reading.

I would also like to know what you guys do to spice up your DS experience.

If you are interested in this mod let me know and I will upload it...

 


Link to comment
Share on other sites

> RPG HUD

> minus 70% of difficulty

I also think that everyone can just change some world settings. Usually I turn off carrots and berries and set every single resource and neutral mobs to less. I don't like more or lots settings coz it's just annoying and make world looking bad. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

     I'm using the barebones version of RPG Hud (no extra inventory slots). Like I said, I like the Amulet and Backpack slots. Swapping items all the time doesn't bring any extra difficulty imo. It's just annoying and tedious for me.

 

     Considering the game is easily customizable anybody can adjust and make their own rules. I'm not saying these settings will make the game the hardest or that you have to use the same mods that I do, I'm only providing a template and a concept. People can take some ideas from this and build their own DS experience in a way that is fun for them. I think that's what the game should be about, and it's the only way you can get virtually unlimited replayability from it when you master the default settings and the game gets dull.

 

     I'm trying to make the game harder by other means (like 1% extra damage per day for monsters) while trying to eliminate some of the annoying factors and also trying to speed up the game a little bit. I looked at my last games and I saw one of the main reasons I tend to die is getting one-shotted after 100+ days because I didn't have any armor on (either because of full winter clothes, or miner hat + raincoat or something similar in caves). Another thing that I like alot is making gold/flint/nitre limited and scarce on the surface so I have to make caves/ruins a part of my game strategy, because I like spelunking alot, but with normal settings it feels like it's a waste of time going there.

 

     Right now I'm playing a slower game where I reverted back to normal damage for player character, default pick action for grass/twigs/berries/etc. and default speed for cutting trees and mining rocks. Everything went really bad for me last game, I opened the trapped chest that made instant Winter, then I tried to hunt for the Winter Koalefant so I could make a puffy vest but instead got the Warg (which in my settings is buffed). I decided to run away, because I didn't have my Dark Sword/ Night Armor with me. But I couldn't shake the Warg off my back and then I died of cold because there were too many hounds and I couldn't make a fire. Resurrected and went back to get my stuff (bad decision) and when I got there I saw the Warg and hounds were attacking my only 3 beefalos in the map and wanted to save them since I had my DarkSword and NightArmor on me (another bad decision). Managed to clear the hounds and the warg but only after they killed the beefalo. I had 1hp left and I died seconds later from cold because in the heat of the battle I didn't see my screen turning icy  :jaded: . It was a fun game overall  :joyous: .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...