General Balance tweaking for RoG

[Dekoth]

OK first post here, but been playing this for a while now. I first got introduced to Don't Starve when the free version hit PS4 for PSN+ users. I played it, found it shockingly addictive and have several games on it with 1000+ days. I decided recently that I had enjoyed the game quite a bit and wanted to support the developer so I bought a couple copies for PC as my wife plays too and for the RoG expansion. Needless to say I love it, though I do confess to using 1 mod (action Queue) because after the experience on PS4 when it comes to harvesting and such only needing to hold down X, having to do every grass harvest individually was rather dumb.

 

Anyhow, on to my point. In general I enjoy the challenge of RoG and right now already have 200+ days on that particular one. However I do have a couple bones to pick with some of the "challenges" and I'll explain why. 

 

1) Heat being excessive. Now before I get a bunch of posts of l2p noob, let me state "At no Point have I Died to heat". However lets be honest, during the second summer it is just really more of an annoyance than anything because there is no possible way you will have enough blue gems to make snow chester. Sure you could build lots of endothermic fires, but realistically most are going to just hover near their camp doing the bare minimum necessary. The thing is after this point, heat becomes no more difficult to deal with than winter. Honestly I haven't built any summer gear outside a thermal stone once I got snow chester. I rotate those and go wherever I want, it really just eliminates an inventory slot nothing more. So am I just complaining? no I would like to propose the following changes to heat;

• Let the day have Phases, early morning, afternoon, evening and of course night.
• Early morning can be hot, but no chance of overheat. 
• Afternoon obviously is where overheating and fires can occur.
• Evening things cool back down a bit, no risk of overheating.
• Night, continues that trend obviously.
• Caves are neutral weather - "But players will hide there all summer" I honestly doubt that and anyhow living underground has its own challenges. It isn't like it is some magical safe zone. While I do know this is a game, having caves freeze and heat just doesn't make sense.
• More random "Wild fires" during the most intense part of summer to balance out the toning down in other areas. Something that doesn't necessarily need to be you on screen either. Entirely possible to lose an entire forest and you run across a whole forest of charcoal and pinecones and need to do some Work to grow it again.

But Dek, all you did was make it easier. Well in a sense yes, however I did specifically state it wasn't hard as is, just annoying. It becomes more of an issue in the event of an unfortunate death to something else when you have to try and run to your base from  your respawn point and at no point is the heat non excessive. The above just gives players in that situation a window of opportunity. I would far rather spend my time enjoying the world and figuring out how to fight things like dragonfly, than playing the juggle thermal stones game.

 

2) Spring Rain or rather just Rain - First I would like to thank Deerclops for his Generous donation of his eye. It was right nice of him to run into my camp in the middle of the blasted night. Unfortunately for him I was long prepared and had a nice little trap waiting and he managed to just donate some meat and an eye with minimal damage. So why am I complaining about rain when I was obviously prepared for it? Well again we come to the annoyance factor. This again mostly revolving around Caves. Now in this particular map  I've spent quite a bit of time underground. Not hiding from the great outdoors, but trying to find Bloody Bunny bums because apparently I got Screwed and 3 caves 100% explored so far and nothing but slurtles, mushroom forests, bats, spiders  and fissures...oh and 1 giant tentacle..yea thats right..only 1. Actually I should say slurtle mounds as I have yet to see an actual slurtle. Anyhow the excessive rain in caves is just a huge irritation. I have an eyebrella, a miners hat and even a lantern. So it isn't like it is anymore than a swapout, though I have to put my walking cane away when moisture gets too high. So what am I suggesting? No rain down there..the moisture and steady increase of wetness is fine. Having it rain in the cave is just stupid. I don't mind the extra equipment in this case, I just would like to be forced to swap it a little less often. So can we tone it down to a steady drip instead of the torrential downpour at times? There are enough things in caves to deal with. Once again, not hard and not really a complaint. This is all more quality of life changes of things that just do not add anything to the game.

 

3) Spiders eating everything - Would be nice if they didn't eat all meat or at least pig skins instantly. I mean, honestly huge fight, something attacking them and they are going to stop to instant vacuum every piece of meat/skin? Speaking of spider insanity, I have 5 queens and about a dozen rock lobsters locked in a permanent epic battle on one part of my map. It is quite entertaining really. I show up every once in a great while and rake in a ton of silk. I decided to test Bigfoot out there as well, that resulted in a corpse run. Anyhow point being in normal silk/meat farms spiders just clean up a tad too quick. Perhaps slightly faster than pigs, but not quite as quickly as now.

 

Really that is about it for now. All in all I am hugely impressed and really enjoying RoG. Just a couple tweaks that I think would result in a more enjoyable experience.

[Sasuga]

I agree with this poster on the heat and caves.

 

I don't agree with the spiders eating everything part... I hate that spiders eat everything! It so annoying! - And I love that they do it in the game...

 

 ...

 

I've started wars with spiders over pieces of meat and pig hides... Some I've won, some I've lost... I say wars, because there have often been what felt like many rounds of battle over pieces of meat or pigs hides.  I'd slap a spider so he doesn't eat it, he and his friends run up to attack me, I run in circles trying to gather up the items, another spider goes to eat the meat and I smack him, while still being chased by a mob of spiders... I kill several spiders, spiders lose interest in me, I run for the meat and have to smack another spider... I've cleared out an entire nest before in the middle of the night trying to pick up a piece of meat... I've also died to swarms of spiders doing the same.

 

I think the spiders eating everything as fast as they do is just fine as a mechanic.