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Krampus.


Ora
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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.

Precisely what I was looking for. Thank you. At that rate I will probably never trigger Krampus which makes me feel better. unless I go hunting Beefalo, which I have done in the past but died shortly after, too Soon to see if I had triggered Krampus.

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Precisely what I was looking for. Thank you. At that rate I will probably never trigger Krampus which makes me feel better. unless I go hunting Beefalo, which I have done in the past but died shortly after, too Soon to see if I had triggered Krampus.
But if you never trigger Krampus, you'll never get his sack, which is a really great item!
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I guess I'm going to play devils advocate here. Most of the comments I've read in this post about Krampus seem to be about his ability to steal player loot. The main complaint is the fact that it is 'punishing' players for a particular playstyle. While I agree that one playstyle should not have negative affects while making another more profitable, it all comes down to the fact that you have to think outside the box.

[Note: I'm sure the farming playstyle will get changes made as well. The game is still in beta.]

Krampus is a non-issue to me. I've spawned him dozens of times now and each time I kill him (sometimes multiples at once) without any issues. I think many people get scared at the word "punished" and automatically start thinking the developers are out to troll or ruin their fun. Yes, the game should be fun but the risk of losing you gear does add to the challenge of things. You shouldn't go out every day slaughtering the wildlife with no consequences whatsoever. If anything, I feel like Krampus is underpowered compared to the wiki entry and comments from the developers on how he is meant to make you fear a certain playstyle (ie. Being Naughty and killing everything).

Want to know what I do? Bee Mines and Baby Birds. Not only will Baby Birds swarm this demon like no other, they take him out within seconds. Same thing with turkeys. I do not chase mobs into corners of maps, I send my pets after them. Want to protect your chest from Krampus? Protect them during the night if you have been hunting all day long. He will not steal from you while you are at your chest. Have a feeling you might not make it back to base in time? Place Bee Mines around your chest. While I have yet to have an incident where he went to my base when I was far away and had to set up camp for the night, the time he did come in when I was at my crops just outside and killed a wandering Pig (Was running for my campfire), the Bee Mines went off and killed the Krampus Demon.

Basically, people need to think strategically before outright condemning an idea in a 'survival' game. I've been streaming the game for multiple days now and I'm currently on Day 162. I don't know if it's my way of thinking outside the box, combined with my gaming experience over the years, but I have a ton of Honey Ham, Honey, Dragon Fruit, Grass, Berries, Twigs, around 15 chest, etc. and Hounds, Trees, Giant Birds, and even Krampus have not hindered me at all.

I hope people don't view this as a jab at anyones gaming skills, I just feel like people need to figure out ways to combat certain aspects of the game before jumping the gun on the complaints. One of the people arguing against Krampus in this thread had never even spawned or ran into him yet. Makes no sense to me to talk down an idea when you never actually experienced it yourself.

Edited by dekkocards
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Perhaps in the winter updates, farming will be unavailable, forcing people to hunt, thus leading to a correlation between Winter and Krampus (much like the 'real' legend).

On topic, I think it's a great addition for balance. If you try to stockpile tons of morsels and pig meats in chests, they get stolen. If you have a balanced diet, or just eat a few morsels daily, Krampus isn't a problem.

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On topic, I think it's a great addition for balance. If you try to stockpile tons of morsels and pig meats in chests, they get stolen. If you have a balanced diet, or just eat a few morsels daily, Krampus isn't a problem.

Krampus is horrid for balance. If you stockpile tons of dragonfruit and honey, none of your stuff is ever in any danger. Hunting is just pointless risk right now.

I find it telling that most retorts to complaints about Krampus refer to speculation about future patches or an assumption of developer intent ("Krampus is part of the bigger picture"). People can tell that this patch's balance is dicked.

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It is interesting that you guys are dividing into factions by playstyle. People talk about 'farmers' and 'hunters', etc, as if everyone who plays picks a particular method for survival and uses it exclusively.

If this is what is actually happening in-game, it is a bit concerning to me. I believe that the game is the most fun when you mix up your strategies. In fact, the whole theory behind the 'pushbacks' that I mentioned earlier is that they will make players vary their behaviour over time. The hope is that this will subtly lead them to discover more of the game's content, and make it so that it takes them longer to get bored.

I think some of the Krampus-hate comes from the perception that we are favouring one playstyle over another. This is not the case - we are going to be 'discouraging' pretty every playstyle that we can identify, to try to cap monotonous survival strategies. Doing the same thing again and again should result in Wilson's death, no matter what it is.

Farming will be impossible during winter, because your crops simply won't be able to grow during that time. We will probably also come up with some kind of mob/event that is triggered by high-density farming - something like locusts or a mega-rabbit, or an infestation of carnivorous plants. We aren't 'punishing' the hunters because we are 'vegan propagandists' - we just haven't added everything that will be in the game yet.

I am seriously considering adding a nutrition component to the hunger meter that would give diminishing returns if you repeatedly eat the same type of food. I also think that certain farmables may be overpowered. I've heard mentions of dragonfruit stockpiles in several threads. Perhaps this is an unavoidable consequence of being able to gather specific seed types.

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I've just read the entire thread and I believe it can be summarized this way:

We all react to aversive stimulus in two basic ways: escape and avoidance. You escape when the aversive stimulus is already presented and you do something so you aren't exposed to it anymore (example: getting out of the rain). And you avoid when the stimulus is yet to be presented and you already do something so that you aren't exposed to it in the future (example: not going out because it will rain). Of course, there's no universal aversive stimulus, meaning that it is subjective. This is just basic behaviorism.

Now, from what I've read in the past days in this forums, and even after the hotfix, it seems that some people are reading things about Krampus, judging it as a aversive stimulus - threatening their early conditioned gameplay (making them not going out of home to make an analogy with the previous example) - and presenting different forms of avoidance behavior, such as coming to the forums to complain about the oh-so-devilish Krampus without even experienced it in-game, or just not experiencing it, not testing the new implemented game mechanic to see if the new stimulus is really aversive or not. Once conditioned, some people tend to resists changes/not be open to changes, because it will make them experience something that will challenge the conditioned behavior they had before. This isn't a video-game's exclusive phenomenon, this is studied as a general rule of behavior in Psychology (I'm a Psychology student), and some kind of therapies focus all their forces on this, so that people live and enjoy life without the anxiety a new experience may cause (take Carl Roger's therapy model and goals as an example, to get out of behaviorism for a while).

It seems to me that some people are focusing themselves so much in the process of escaping and mainly avoiding Krampus that they are forgetting the whole context this new experience is dived in. Those non-adapting, not open to different experiences and experiments shouldn't be playing a game that is in development as they play it, I think. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't criticize and suggest alternatives, but it does mean that we should remember ourselves of what context we are putted in.

From what I read - from the wiki and from forum members (and here I have to thank 501105 for some precious information on the behavior of Krampus) - Krampus is not even easy to spawn (mainly after the hotfix) and it's not hard to be dealt with. I do believe that's there's no reason whatsoever to overreact to a challenge targeted into our previous acquired pattern of behavior in the game.

Please, people, please keep in mind that the game finds itself in a organic state of change and growing. Maintain your heads open and remember that's there's much to come, at least 10 months of development (4 months until launch + the minimum of 6 months the developers promised after launch).

Edit:

I do believe that Kevin's posts in this thread "/threaded" it. Great overall perception of the game coming out of those posts.

The nutrition component sounds like a promising idea, and it could work pretty simply in my opinion. The amount of Hunger and Health gained by some type of food is dictated by how often you eat that kind of food. It could have two categories of food: Meat (provided by hunting and cooking some recipes) and Vegetables/Gather (provided by farming, gathering and cooking other recipes). The math and balance behind that is far beyond my humanistic mind.

Edited by A Bad Feeling
Kevin new post.
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I am seriously considering adding a nutrition component to the hunger meter that would give diminishing returns if you repeatedly eat the same type of food.

This would definitely solve a lot of the problems that you're describing.

From what I've been playing so far, everything seems well balanced. Especially for what comes across to me as an indie game. What you guys are talking about seems to be more or less on a "hardcore" level of this concept. From what I played in other games, there always seems to be something players can do to make it easier for themselves and a typical medium of farming exp, loot, and items in order to keep themselves safe.

I encourage you to keep trying, though. There is nothing stopping you from mediating it to the level that you desire given the circumstances. Again, I am enjoying myself a lot so far.

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It is interesting that you guys are dividing into factions by playstyle. People talk about 'farmers' and 'hunters', etc, as if everyone who plays picks a particular method for survival and uses it exclusively.

Personally, I think that altering availability and ease of access (making trapping more tedious; lengthening respawn times) is a good method to gently alter players' decision-making process. For example, I doubt players would lean so heavily on morsels if there weren't rabbit fields with 30-40 holes clustered together. The new 3-day respawn on pigs effectively nixxed pig farming as a dominant strategy, without implementing a new mob specifically to go STOP KILLING SO MANY PIGS. In the same vein, I don't think it's necessary to have a mega-rabbit that says STOP PLANTING SO MANY CROPS - instead, alter how easy it is to get seeds/manure, growing time, and the nutrition value of the output.

Farming will be impossible during winter, because your crops simply won't be able to grow during that time.

I think this is a great direction. If there is one thing I'd love to see from Don't Starve, it's events that add pressures to the player. Things like floods, or rain, or an eclipse, pollution (a la Tokyo Jungle) or an outbreak of disease could add incentive for the player to diversify their food strategy and adapt their overall gameplan. Of course, I'm sitting here with no idea how difficult something like this would be to implement, but I still think it's a really good idea.

I've noticed that most of my posts have been exceedingly negative, so I want you to know that I'm making a thumbs up sign at you right now.

Edited by plinky4
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Honestly , Maxwell will be happy to see my farming strategy doesn't work , meaning i'll just farm my butt off until winter , and saving it all to crock-pot and cook up later. It'll be funny to see how the developers can stop me from using my crock pot , hehehe , Maxwell will not be happy when I ruin his plan.

Ratatouille anyone?

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I am seriously considering adding a nutrition component to the hunger meter that would give diminishing returns if you repeatedly eat the same type of food. I also think that certain farmables may be overpowered. I've heard mentions of dragonfruit stockpiles in several threads. Perhaps this is an unavoidable consequence of being able to gather specific seed types.

I'm not sure how well a nutrition bar would do, but I've heard it discussed once or twice on the forums. I'd give a try on it.

Also seeds defiantly need to be reduced on how often they dropped. I started a new game, and in a matter of days I had a big stockpile of seeds because birds were dropping them left and right.

And if being able to gather specific seeds is too much, allow it so an imprisoned bird will only give 1 or two seeds a day for a specific fruit.

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Kevin,

I've suggested the nutrition bit before and am glad it's getting consideration, people should have to find ways to get different types of food or else need to get a lot more of whatever they favor. That makes things a challenge and it promotes mixing things up.

Unfortunately I find it very disturbing that you your talking as if you favor the hunter/gatherer playstyle above all others. It's my preferred playstyle too. I don't like wasting resources on pigs, or being stuck in one spot farming next to a beefolo herd. So I wander from berry bush to berry bush, I kill the gobblers whenever I can. I pick up carrots. Then I go and kill pigs. I go and kill rabbits. I go fishing. I go and kill frogs. Then I go after spiders. I hunt down the hounds and collect their teeth as trophies. I try to build my own pig village for fun, I collect spider eggs and plant them in spots where they may be killed. I'm currently trying to farm gobblers in the swamp. I die a lot.

Now trying for that diversity, and avoiding actually farming pushes me closer to a "hunter" than to a gatherer. That's because there really isn't that much to gather. You can gather berries, you can gather carrots, or you can farm. Since I don't find the farming mechanic fun that makes me avoid it. I think most players are the same way, they like to mix it up, but they don't want to be forced to do things that aren't fun. We aren't being paid to play the game after all.

So one big thing you can do is to add in more things for me to gather in the game world, and different places where those things spawn. Right now both berries and carrots tend to spawn mostly in the same area, this is also where the easy to kill rabbits are, and the best spot to find bees and butterflies.

If I wanted to be bored this is the strategy I'd use right now to avoid dying . . . I'd generate a map with a berry rich prairie near a rabbit farm, then I'd set chests in a circle around it's perimeter and gather grass and twigs to make torches instead of camp fires as I continually wander between chests gathering things. To make things easier I'd plant trees around each of my chests so I can chop them for wood, and I'd plant spider nests between the new "forest" areas so that I can hunt them with torches at night. Then I'd simply live without building anything new or changing my pattern . . . likely forever.

Strategically this plan adds up, and it's just as "effective" and boring as planting myself beside the beefolo and picking manure all day long. Like farming, of course, my proposed super strategy requires a lot of landscaping, especially if you don't get a perfect map. If you lack a nearby rabbit prairie then you may need to start farming spiders early. But I figure I can set this up in about ten days providing that I'm willing to work at it. Yet as has been stated in the past you only need about 15 berry bushes to survive, and if you leave them spread out the gobbler is just extra meat.

Edited by winddbourne
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So, I made my account to just post this. As I think it might be good to get some insight from what I think, the silent majority feels.

First, I only picked Don't Starve up maybe a couple of weeks ago and have logged only so many hours on it. My initial reaction was amazement. I enjoyed my first few experiences, having not read anything about the game or any of the wiki's (going in "blind" as some may say) encountering new monsters and getting my face..... well it just wasn't pretty. However, I got better. I got a few farming plots, I learned how to capture and kill the rabbits, and where a good "central" base would be. I still get killed to a few things, like the tentacles and such but I am learning how to deal with each and every hostile thing thrown at me.

I'm going to now make two assumptions. Assumption one is everyone knows what a "roguelike" is, but a quick explanation would be that when you die, you are dead. A game that ends when you die. Wiki it if you want further details (it is a bit more complex then that) and two, that the intent of this game is to make it hard to survive to the "planned end".

When I first heard of krampus, knowing his mythological side previous to playing the game, I thought that this was a great addition to the game. I had a few times become a little two content in my little base. A few of the other changes such as the hounds and the ability to no longer wall myself in added an extra element of difficulty to the game. I find the hounds fun because its almost like a timer. I have only so long before their next attack to prepare, along with all of the other actions going on. More importantly though, krampus adds this for me too.

I do find myself trying to avoid killing rabbits, but it has forced me to do something else. It has forced me to scavenge for food. Yeah great I can farm all I want, but farming won't make my beef stew and I still have to cross the swamp (on the map I am currently playing) to be able to get to pigs or beefalo. Yes I do agree that right now with how krampus is, and without the season of winter to stop "farming" of just crops some could be able to monopolize on this. However I think for most of us enjoying this game, its not just about hitting day "x" its about doing it, and acquiring all we can. Sure, I don't want it to be difficult and I could just sit there and farm crops, but that won't get me anywhere. Eventually winter will be added, and I'll be forced to look for meat.

When you look at having winter and krampus, you have this beautiful orchestra of what you can, and can not rely on. I think this is the true vision of the game (please correct me Kevin if I am wrong). Yes I will have some plots of land, yes I will try and grow just dragon fruit. And that will be great to stock up on for when winter comes. But, I'll also need to farm meat, for if I decide to adventure out and need to heal to much of my health I may run out and starve. Or if those nasty hounds end up burning down my stock piles, or eating my pies. So what will I do? I'll kill spiders for meat and cook it in the crock pot. If spiders become to scarce, I can try my luck with killing pigs or beefalo. But this could summon krampus and he could steal my stuff. But joyous me has planted bee bombs around my stuff and me and my trusty spear are ready for him!

The point is to not see this as "farming" or "hunting", it its a game, and eventually it will all be a means to and end. Like it has been stated, it is also a game that is still in development. If you want to sit there and "feel punished because your way of making the game way to easy has been taking away" and you don't like the "other way to make the game way to easy" then shove off. Eventually, and in a perfect world, nothing will make the game easy (obviously there will still be certain actions that always carry the easiest route to the finish but hey, that's life)

Don't think of it as "krampus will steal all this hard stuff I worked for oh no!", think of it as "oh no, I kill helpless animals and krampus is going to take back all the stuff I STOLE FROM THE ISLAND". Because in all honest, if you want to say that it's your hard earned stuff, maybe playing a survival game isn't for you? Survival is hard, be ready for things to change (both in your current world, DAMN YOU FIRE HOUNDS) and in development. Yes, its lopsided right now to using veggies or meat, but it won't be forever.

TL;DR: Enjoy hunting poo. Im'a go kill me some spiders! LET'S GO WILSON!

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It is interesting that you guys are dividing into factions by playstyle. People talk about 'farmers' and 'hunters', etc, as if everyone who plays picks a particular method for survival and uses it exclusively.

Personally, i travel around, if i see rabbits i kill some, if im walking past my berry bushes ill pick some up. Ill cook up some Honey Ham while night is in effect and grab a few veg from my farm plots before i head out for the day. Im both, and it has no real problems. Sitting at camp all day is boring lol.

Edited by Xuhybrid
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I find it telling that most retorts to complaints about Krampus refer to speculation about future patches or an assumption of developer intent ("Krampus is part of the bigger picture"). People can tell that this patch's balance is dicked.

It's not SUPPOSED to be balanced. It's not a "patch" to a full game, it's 2/3 of a game. That's what you people seem to not understand.

Yes, right now it's too easy to just make dragonpies and stuffed eggplant repeatedly. That's not Krampus's fault, that's the fault of the game not being done yet. The only relevant complaints are ones that are specific, narrowly focused on a single element. Because overall, game-wide balance doesn't exist yet, it's not supposed to.

It is interesting that you guys are dividing into factions by playstyle. People talk about 'farmers' and 'hunters', etc, as if everyone who plays picks a particular method for survival and uses it exclusively.

If this is what is actually happening in-game, it is a bit concerning to me.

It's not, people just talk that way because it's a useful framework for a complaint. Everyone I've seen play, including myself, tend to do a mix of everything, because that's more interesting.

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To put my two cents in, I've literally gone Genghis Khan (kill everything that moves!) on a field of bunnies and a pigman village just a minute north of it, and Krampus still hasn't come out. You really need to go out of your way to trigger him, so I don't see why everyone is pissed about him. Even if he is summoned, it's not like he wrecks an entire base while you are gone, he just robs chests (which you should only have basic/easily-obtained materials in anyway) and destroys them when he's done. He's just a slight annoyance that is easily dealt with (bee mines around your camp or sleep darts/pan flutes when you hear him coming). Also, like others have pointed out, the game is not complete yet and when it is, Krampus will be the least of your worries. If people hate Krampus this much, I can only imagine what the spider queen (or any other big bad guy they add next) will make them do.

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Hmm... It seems like the issue has already been settled, but if I may share just a little tidbit of my opinion?

Personally, I don't mind Krampus, and I think it's because I've come to terms that this is a game in which dying is normal, expected, and in some cases, encouraged. Quite a bit different from most other games.

I received the game 3 or 4 days before the Dogs, Birds, and other creatures that want to kill you update. It was long enough to get situated with how easy things were. I could basically make a base by a field full of rabbit holes, and never go hungry. Later on, I discovered it was even easier to base by some TallBirds and steal their eggs, which gave me more filled hunger then I knew what to do with, as well as a ton of research points.

Things got much more difficult after the update, with the hostility of the birds, appearances of hounds, and the log armor reducing damage instead of negating it. It was more difficult to use those places to farm, and overall, more difficult to survive. It became immediately apparent that this wasn't intended to be a kind survival game. Really fun, yes, but certainly not 'lets make a base and just live out day by day picking new activities' easy.

I keep myself pretty distanced from the game updates because I don't want to spoil anything, (See? Now I know winter is coming and it won't be a surprise. ;<) so when I first saw Krampus, I didn't know what to expect. Going in game, I heard a chilling growl when I killed a bird that was unfortunately glitching out on my screen, and somehow, likely because of it registering as a 'naughty' thing to do, I knew it had to do with Krampus. I was afraid when he came, he'd be more vicious then the hounds, and all sorts of horrible, nasty things he'd do to me ravaged my mind as I farmed for food. After he appeared the first time, and I had my freakout, I was relieved, practically ecstatic to find out he didn't hurt you. All he wanted was my stuff. I guess in a roundabout way, that is killing me also, but it's not direct damage and I can reacquire most of the things. Plus if I drop an item on the ground, then wait for him to move toward it, I can take him out without the need for the game's boundaries.

I don't find him annoying or scary. He's just sort of... there. I think it's a neat idea. Even if he gets 'nerfed' to just be around holidays, like an evil (or nice?) Santa, I vote for keeping him in the game. :3

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I feel like this mob is not really that difficult, but it's just annoying to get your loot stolen. The thing that I don't like about Krampus is that he has a really weird logic with an invisible naughty meter and it's not really obvious to most players. eg: You can discover that tree guards come only if you chop down trees, but Krampus has a much more complicated thing going on. I feel that if you really wanted to steal stuff from player chest you could of made the pigs steal meat from your chest so when the players see it they are like "oh I need to keep my meat chests away from the pigs". Krampus on the other hand doesn't make any sense with the naughty meter. I think that it would be beter if he came occasionally, like the hound. But that's just my opinion.

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