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Krampus.


Ora
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So what's the point of Krampus? I mean, it's a game called "Don't Starve", not a game called "Better To Starve Than Kill Bunnies For Sustenance". Why are you punishing me in a survival game for killing and eating the wildlife to survive? Seems to me it's like the referee penalizing a football team for making a touchdown; that's the name of the game, not a crime against God. So I guess the point of this post is as follows.

Krampus: Why?

I would also like to know if Krampus is permanent, or if he is just something that was added as a Christmas time thing since the whole thing about "Naughty and Nice" kinda ties in with the Christmas holiday that is just around the corner.

Thanks.

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Well Krampus is meant to be an extra challenge. If you dont want him to spawn you will need to keep track of the actions that you do and thus adding another risk. The game tends to get easy at a certain point and Krampus is meant to change that a little bit. With the latest hotpatch you do need to do a fair amount of naughty things for him to show up though, with just killing loads of bunnies it takes atleast 3 days to get him to spawn. Krampus also forgives your naughty things after a while, so it is not all bad.

Krampus is here to stay, he is a permanent addition to the game.

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I don't quite understand the system for when Krampus shows up. I've read about it on the wiki, but I'm not sure if the information there is up-to-date with the hotfix. I haven't had an encounter with him yet, but I have read about him quite a bit. He sounds like a regular old pain in the neck, ESPECIALLY with the current bug of cornering things like gobblers next to the ocean and killing them causing some of the items to fall into the ocean and just sit there forever, mocking you. What if Krampus steals my items one day and I kill him, only to have all my precious items end up in the ocean? But anyway, if anyone could explain the new system for Krampus showing up with a bit of the math involved, I would appreciate it.

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On the wikia page, there are numbers for explaining the "naughty gains". It was also way too easy to get alot of food with traps. 6 traps was all I needed to get packed on food. Allthough the birds also went into the traps then. If you kill about 20 rabbits Krampus will spawn after what I understand. The points also resets after a time according to an old wikia, but I can't confirm this. Berries and farming is a nice sustainable way to feed though. Atleast in my opinion.

Wikia (spoilers for some)

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I think you guys are all reading way too much into the "punishment" angle of Krampus. He's a mob with a trigger, just like any other. Nobody really complains about being punished by the tree gaurdian when they chop down trees, and that guy is straight up trying to kill you! Krampus is relatively easy to kill / distract, and is at worst a minor annoyance.

It is fascinating as a designer to see some of the responses that he has been getting. I think it has to do with the messaging. By saying that he is "punishing you for being naughty" I think we are priming people to take umbrage. If we changed the art to be more of a faun-like monster, and framed him as the "guardian of the woodland creatures" who takes revenge in the name of his people, I don't think he would be as controversial. But the fact that we framed it as "punishment" made people very defensive.

I mean, compare Krampus to the hounds. Every so often, I spawn a bunch of tough mobs for no real reason other than to try to kill you. Later in the game, I send in even tougher ones that burn down your entire base if you don't kill them in the right way. That's potentially catastrophic! And people love it! But the mob that steals a couple of items and then runs away, and is (post patch) only triggered if you go out of your way to summon him? Torches and pitchforks!

Psychology is neat! :)

Edited by Kevin
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The hotfix says they made him come less frequently, so even if the wiki page for him wasn't up to date then it's even more forgiving than I'm about to describe.

Every day is 8 minutes and every 60 seconds of 'not being naughty' increases the invisible naughty metre by one. Otherwise killing a rabbit (for example) reduces it by one. So best case scenario is you kill 8 rabbits in 1 second and you'll get that back in '24 hours'. Worst case scenario is you kill a rabbit every 59 seconds, in which you'll only be able to kill 4 until you have to wait the other half of the day to break even. 4*17 hunger restored from cooked morsels = 68, only slightly less than how much hunger drains in a full day.

In short you can kill about 6 rabbits a day, which is 50% more sustenance than required, and still never see Krampus.

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I've actually been going out of my way to trigger Krampus, and I still don't run into him that often. I'm not sure what people are doing to invoke Krampus' wrath to the point that he becomes more than just a nuisance that can drop a neat bag.

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The problem with Krampus is not that it's hard to deal with. When someone complains about Krampus, people mistakenly assume it's always due to difficulty. It's not hard to deal with Krampus. Just make sure your hunting grounds are not near your base/stored stuff. Thus, when he shows up he's got nothing to swipe. You can then chase him down and kill him.

No, the problem with Krampus is the concept behind it. The devs idea that actions need punishment or "pushback" as they call it is flawed. They wind up simply punishing players who are just trying to enjoy the game. A good game is not filled with punishments or pushbacks. A good game has nice obstacles to overcome.

Plus, plinky4's comment holds merit. The devs are actually just griefing those customers who like to hunt in their game, while doing a lot of handholding with the farmer crowd. Farming holds no consequence or "pushback" as they've called it. Plus, I don't know if anyone's noticed, but manure acts like Minecraft's bonemeal now. I'm not sure if it's intentional.

Basically, the whole thing makes for a very lopsided game. That's the problem. Not the difficulty.

I think the devs just need to decide if they want to make a game about vegan bible stories or a game about survival. The two concepts don't always work together very well.

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I think you guys are all reading way too much into the "punishment" angle of Krampus. He's a mob with a trigger, just like any other. Nobody really complains about being punished by the tree gaurdian when they chop down trees, and that guy is straight up trying to kill you! Krampus is relatively easy to kill / distract, and is at worst a minor annoyance.

It is fascinating as a designer to see some of the responses that he has been getting. I think it has to do with the messaging. By saying that he is "punishing you for being naughty" I think we are priming people to take umbrage. If we changed the art to be more of a faun-like monster, and framed him as the "guardian of the woodland creatures" who takes revenge in the name of his people, I don't think he would be as controversial. But the fact that we framed it as "punishment" made people very defensive.

I mean, compare Krampus to the hounds. Every so often, I spawn a bunch of tough mobs for no real reason other than to try to kill you. Later in the game, I send in even tougher ones that burn down your entire base if you don't kill them in the right way. That's potentially catastrophic! And people love it! But the mob that steals a couple of items and then runs away, and is (post patch) only triggered if you go out of your way to summon him? Torches and pitchforks!

Psychology is neat! :)

this.

/thread.

and at least krumpus gives you some charcoal.

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It is fascinating as a designer to see some of the responses that he has been getting. I think it has to do with the messaging. By saying that he is "punishing you for being naughty" I think we are priming people to take umbrage. If we changed the art to be more of a faun-like monster, and framed him as the "guardian of the woodland creatures" who takes revenge in the name of his people, I don't think he would be as controversial. But the fact that we framed it as "punishment" made people very defensive.

I doubt you can avoid the whole "punishment" thing by just pretending that the word doesn't exist. After all, don't game mechanics break down into reward and punishment for the player's input? In one patch, hunting was "nerfed" - rabbit traps now require 7 clicks to collect meat and reset the trap instead of 3 pre-patch; respawn time of pigs was tripled; and now, we also have this jerk showing up every few days to nick traps and crack open chests. On the other hand, farming got a way to refine as many high-level seeds as you want. Whereas I had 3 dragonfruit in my old 50-day save, I now have 120 at day 28. In one patch, the gathering incentives changed radically. Was this intended?

I mean, compare Krampus to the hounds. Every so often, I spawn a bunch of tough mobs for no real reason other than to try to kill you. Later in the game, I send in even tougher ones that burn down your entire base if you don't kill them in the right way. That's potentially catastrophic! And people love it! But the mob that steals a couple of items and then runs away, and is (post patch) only triggered if you go out of your way to summon him? Torches and pitchforks!
Hounds and tree guardians will follow the player faithfully, and have the mercifully long startup animation on their attacks which allows the player to kill them without taking a scratch. As for the hellhound, I suspect if you made the hellhound ignore the player and run around with the express intent to torch structures, you would get a VERY different reception. Frankly, I didn't even know the hellhound did anything special because I can so easily kite them away from the base. Krampus, on the other hand, uses the infuriating gobbler AI. Don't underestimate how harrowing it is for a player to encounter a mob that they cannot reliably wrangle without measures like cornering them into a map edge. Even if Krampus is weak on paper, he's by far the toughest mob to deal with, especially when he brings 2-3 friends.
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If we changed the art to be more of a faun-like monster, and framed him as the "guardian of the woodland creatures" who takes revenge in the name of his people, I don't think he would be as controversial. But the fact that we framed it as "punishment" made people very defensive.

No, you'd still have the same problem. Hunting players deal with consequences while farmers simply stand around hoarding pumpkins and the like. Maybe if Mr. Happy Poo gets tired of you using his brothers to feed your crops and comes along every once in a while to set fire to your stuff? :)

I mean, compare Krampus to the hounds. Every so often, I spawn a bunch of tough mobs for no real reason other than to try to kill you. Later in the game, I send in even tougher ones that burn down your entire base if you don't kill them in the right way. That's potentially catastrophic! And people love it! But the mob that steals a couple of items and then runs away, and is (post patch) only triggered if you go out of your way to summon him? Torches and pitchforks!

Hounds are flat-out demonic monsters with no purpose but to destroy. Most video games are about violence, so it's accepted as the norm. Krampus, on the other hand, has a rhyme and a reason to it's appearance. There's a big difference.

Guardian also might not a great comparison, either. It also mostly just acts like a monster. For a while, I actually had no idea it was because of my tree chopping. At first, I thought it was just a big horror nasty that shows up every now and then, like the hounds.

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@ Kevin.

It's because it goes for the player's loot.

And players HATE when their precious loot is stolen, damaged or otherwise messed with.

It's something I learned in Dungeons and Dragons! I don't know if you're familiar with the game but there's this monster called Rust Monster. It's a low level monster, not really tough and in fact it's pretty easy to kill and does basically no damage, so it's not going to kill the characters. But he has this terribile ability to instantly destroy any armor, weapon or object made of metal. Which means that he can leave a warrior in his underpants at the end of the battle and let's not even mention the fact that gold is, well... a metal. So even money isn't safe.

One time I threw one of these monsters in an encounter togheter with a couple of other, more traditionally threatening monsters while the players were trying to defend a village. What happened was they ONLY focused on the poor Rust Monster because they wanted to be extra-sure that their items wouldn't get destroyed by it, while the other monsters went around killing civilians.

You can also notice this if you make a thief steal something from the players, they WILL go on a quest for revenge ignoring everything else.

Basically, when a monster tries to kill you it's all fine and good, you expect it in a videogame, but when the monster goes for your loot then it instantly becomes griefing and this will make a lot of players angry. To go back to your statements about hellhouds, yes they are potentially more dangerous since when things get burned down they are gone and that's it. But you get a huge amount of time to prepare, so you can choose the battle ground and be sure that the flames form its death don't burn anything of value.

Personally I don't really have a problem with the Krampus, I think he's a pretty neat addition to the game, at least now that I know that his "naughty meter" resets itself so if I'm careful I'm not going to get swarmed by them. But I do understand why some people may find him annoying.

If anything I'd like to see more monsters that are triggered by specific behaviour from the player, maybe something tied to vegetable consumption, because it's true that at the moment farming is the more reliable and safe way to get food and this does detract a bit from the survival part of the game.

Maybe a mob that destroys your farm? Like a swarm of locusts or something similar?

Just throwing ideas around...

Edited by Kalmageddon
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Every so often, I spawn a bunch of tough mobs for no real reason other than to try to kill you. Later in the game, I send in even tougher ones that burn down your entire base if you don't kill them in the right way. That's potentially catastrophic!

Woah, wait... There's a RIGHT WAY to kill the red hound so it doesnt actually burn down ur whole base??? :o OMGGGG!!! HOW???????? Please tell me. i am protecting my wall of trees!! (which itself blocks out the hounds quite efficiently!!)

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I've been living as a vegetarian in my current run due to not wanting to encounter Krampus (At least he's not as bad as The Binding of Isaac Krampus?), but it relieves me to know that it would take a fair bit of time before I would be interrupted by him if I were to go and hunt animals again.

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I mean, compare Krampus to the hounds. Every so often, I spawn a bunch of tough mobs for no real reason other than to try to kill you. Later in the game, I send in even tougher ones that burn down your entire base if you don't kill them in the right way. That's potentially catastrophic! And people love it! But the mob that steals a couple of items and then runs away, and is (post patch) only triggered if you go out of your way to summon him? Torches and pitchforks!

Psychology is neat! :)

I think I can take that one up. The hounds are fun, I listen for their barks and track them down. I kill them with my spear and armor, and I gather their teeth as trophies. They also make sense in a hostile world, they fit in. I'm trying to survive in the wilderness and wandering carnivores are a danger I expect and accept. At the moment I actually think I see to few of this sort of thing. Also when I kill the hounds I get monster meat which I can put in my crock pot. That isn't the best reward but it's something.

So when I hear the hounds barking in the distance I start tracking them. I also tend to think that if I don't take care of these hounds they might form larger packs over time and really become a problem for me, or for the beefolo and other animals that are their natural prey.

Obviously I don't think "Kevin is sending this hard mob at me for no reason", I fit it into the game world and it makes sense. It's also not something I think of as a hard mob. The tree guardian is similar. I spawned one tonight and it was absolutely cool to see. He fits in with a harsh natural world in which I am the outsider, and I tend to think he's there even when he doesn't "spawn" hidden amongst the other pines.

He's also slow moving, and can be appeased by planting a few pine cones in front of him. I may be wrong but internally I figure he is a natural part of this world and that perhaps some of these pines are actually his young.

Thus these parts of the game aren't "kevin is out to get me" they are me trying to survive in a hostile world, which at the moment doesn't change and respond to my actions quite fast enough. Krampus is different. He doesn't fit, he isn't part of the hostile ecology.

I'd have no problem if there was a camp of krampii appearing on day 20 or so and Wandering around randomly stealing my stuff and taking it back to their base. I'd track them down and get my stuff back, I'd build a base to withstand the Krampii with mines and anti-krampus chests full of junk on the perimeter, and I'd raid his "base", at high risk to get extra goodies, especially if he dropped monster meat and other goodies on death.

I actually put in a post earlier suggesting something like here: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?2991-Suggestion-Balance-Turtling . Below is the exact quote:

Over time new creatures should appear. The islands shouldn't simply be static places you explore once and then just go about your business on. New creatures also need new AI so that they have different emergent behavior and are interesting and fun encounters all on their own.

Lets take a creature called an "Anted" as an example. These are gigantic armored ants that live in burrows that look like giant termite mounds with a hexagon formation of chests around the outside. Every day the anted colony sends out guards to watch their treasure store, and other anted workers to gather carrots, garden vegetables, monster meat you left laying on the ground, berries from bushes, pretty much anything.

These workers travel through tunnels beneath the ground and come up at random locations on the map as a horde you wouldn't want to attack. From there they travel over the map harvesting, before taking a random path back to the tunnels. If you attack them early these armored pests don't drop anything but chitin, used to make better armor. So hitting them as they come out of their holes is a lot of danger for slim rewards.

Later on each one only drops whatever they have gathered that day. This could be your crops, carrots, berries, shiny tools you left on the ground, or whatever. Your basically fighting them to get "your" resources back rather than going out to gather things yourself. Plus you now always have the chance of dying. You also get the ability to risk it all by attacking the larger, more powerful guards and trying to take the Anted's stores for yourself.

This new creature might appear around day thirty, at which point a camping player is probably up and running with a decent farm in place. Yet now suddenly this new creature is nesting in a "rock city" biome and is defending it's territory aggressively.

It's exploring the map looking for stable food sources all night, it's storing food for "winter" and it's going to be tempted by your berry patch, your gardens, etc . . . so it's time to start building some walls that will eventually be broken down, pig guards are a help but if the ants kill them they'll just take the meat, mark it down as a resource and come back with more anteds later.

Other "push back" also fits better than krampus. The gobblers for example are a natural creature who is competing with me for berries. I actually have an experiment going right now to see if I can farm them. What I did is was plant all the berry bushes on my map around a bunch of tentacles. So far it's netted me one gobbler, and I'm not sure if it will work but . . . It's fun to try.

I simply take it as a natural part of the world, and since I'm normally a hunter/gatherer rather than a farmer I also look at it as an extra resource, killing a gobbler nets me a morsel and a drumstick, killing a rabbit only nets me a morsel. So I'd rather kill gobblers, and it helps that I can find them while I'm gathering berries. It's a challenge, and it's a resource, but most of all it fits into the idea of survival in a hostile wilderness where I don't really belong.

I want a game world that makes sense. I want it to change over time and spawn new things to interest me and keep me thinking of new ways to fit them into my survival strategy (new toys to play with). I want to be challenged. But it's important that each challenge have both a risk and a reward, and that everything fits together as I learn about the world and it's ecology.

It's also important that I feel this world may be harsh but isn't actually out to get me. It's out to get everyone. The fire dogs for example don't specifically target my base, and normally I track them down and kill them before they ever see it. They'll burn down anything near them when they die, including bushes, trees, and grass. It's awesome.

Krampus on the other hand spawns and specifically attacks me and my stuff. He isn't wandering around taking anything he can or otherwise interacting with the rest of the world, and when he's done if I haven't killed him he vanishes back to whatever dimension of annoyance spawned him.

Anyway long post but I hope it's helpful as you continue working on Don't Starve.

Edited by winddbourne
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Wait, so people are mostly complaining because Hunting was made harder and Farming was made easier, right?

THE GAME ISN'T DONE. They added Krampus this time, but they're already panning LOTS of things to make farming harder too. Y'know, like winter.

Calm down with balance complaints. Nothing is balanced at all, because there's no endgame content and only a little bit of midgame content so far. If they'd added Winter before adding Krampus, then farming would be made difficult before hunting is.

Edited by Ditocoaf
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The problem with Krampus is not that it's hard to deal with. When someone complains about Krampus, people mistakenly assume it's always due to difficulty. It's not hard to deal with Krampus. Just make sure your hunting grounds are not near your base/stored stuff. Thus, when he shows up he's got nothing to swipe. You can then chase him down and kill him.

No, the problem with Krampus is the concept behind it. The devs idea that actions need punishment or "pushback" as they call it is flawed. They wind up simply punishing players who are just trying to enjoy the game. A good game is not filled with punishments or pushbacks. A good game has nice obstacles to overcome.

Plus, plinky4's comment holds merit. The devs are actually just griefing those customers who like to hunt in their game, while doing a lot of handholding with the farmer crowd. Farming holds no consequence or "pushback" as they've called it.

I can understand where you are coming from with the idea that players should not be punished for playing the way THEY want but in regards to this game I simply cannot understand why you would criticise the devs for tweaking it in the way they did. To be honest I am really surprised someone would not want more challenge in this game.

Once you have built a relatively decend "base", meaning that you have everything you need around a campfire (twigs, grass, berries, bunny traps, pig, spiders nearby, bee box, wood) there'd literally be NOTHING to do. How long do you want to spend at your camping place just building more and more.... well, whatever it is you want to "make a living on".

I think it is very easy to avoid Krampus and even if he spawns it is just a matter of chasing him into a corner and killing him (yes loot drop into the water is annoying, though). What is it you want to do after about the approx. 20 days you need to have a really great base? New concept for the game: Avoid being bored to death... ?

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My 2 cents: We know they are adding winter in which we can't grow crops at all. The game has like, what, 4 months till it's supposed to be complete? Personally I love the game. I was upset a little bit when they made TONS of spiders come out of nests... but now I'm over it and have figured out how to handle them. You learn, you get over it, you have fun. :p (It's like the f-ing creepers in minecraft. They are considered the icon of the game... but they suck sooooo much when they destroy your stuff.)

@Kevin: You will never please everybody. But I'm sure most of us think the game is just awesome and can't wait for all the new features!

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So when I hear the hounds barking in the distance I start tracking them.

The hounds comes to you where ever you are after 2mins of barking I think. I also think Krampus spawns right outside your field of you. Depending on where you are, he can be countered. I do however agree that there should be something similar to Krampus for the farming.

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