A Brave new World, for the 'not so brave'... How to set it up...(?)

[Mebbel]

Morning (where I am) Lovely Folks,

 

I have been lurking this forum for quite a while, and was already talking about multiplayer in this game before it was even announced that this would be a thing. You can imagine my excitement when it got announced, my dissapointment when I did not receive beta keys after signup, and my relief that my friend got 2 keys and passed one onto me.

 

THANKS KLEI! LOVE YOU LONG TIME!

 

I do not claim to be the biggest fan, although am eternally grateful I get to play and enjoy the game even at these early stages. I love everything about it thus far, and cannot fault the game even at these early stages.

 

The one difficulty I have been having is that the world and its settings seem to be still very much scaled to single player, now I make this observation never having made it to winter in single player. So this should tell you how well educated by observation is.

 

I was just wondering what people have been doing to make the multiplayer a bit easier to get through, without really killing off the core essence of the game.

 

We made it to day 27 yesterday, where it was a combination of insanity and darkness that engulfed us.

 

We have most difficulty sourcing food income, getting this setup, is tough to say the least.

 

Some of the challenges we have been facing:

 

• Forced to eat seeds early on to top off health
• Unable to find beefalo within the first 5 days
• Unable to build a reliable food source within the first 5 days

All of those, although initially they dont seem like a big deal, force us to scavenge rather that prep which results in death, revival, loss of health and not enough time spent on regaining sanity.

 

I was wondering if other people had experienced the same, and what settings you have changed to make the game slightly more forgiving in the beginning without killing the core of the game.

 

I hope you lovely peeps have some ideas on how to improve the gameplay for us (2player).

 

Thanks in advance for reading!

 

[rezecib]

Well, for the early game, you want to really focus hard on splitting up and exploring. Then you can choose a good place to settle and move on to the next phase. While you're exploring, you should be aggressively opportunistic about food sources: pick up all seeds, all berries, carrots, etc.

 

Once you've settled on a base location, you need to delegate tasks and each focus on them. Unlike in single-player, it tends to work best if your base is using as many different food strategies as possible (although farms are pretty weak until second summer). Things I'd recommend doing:

• Get charcoal for drying racks and crockpots
• Get stone and gold for crockpots, fire pit, alch engine
• Relocate saplings and grass tufts (and berry bushes if you want them)
• Get lots and lots and lots of grass for drying racks and traps
• Set up traps at spider dens and on rabbit holes

You want to get at least one crockpot up early on in the base so that you can make meatballs. After that, try to get things done in batches, and don't return to base until you have enough for a batch.

 

If you manage to divide tasks well, your base can go up really, really, fast, much faster than in single player. If you don't split up tasks and communicate well, then it's a lot harder than single player because of resource starvation.

[Mebbel]

Well, for the early game, you want to really focus hard on splitting up and exploring. Then you can choose a good place to settle and move on to the next phase. While you're exploring, you should be aggressively opportunistic about food sources: pick up all seeds, all berries, carrots, etc.

 

Once you've settled on a base location, you need to delegate tasks and each focus on them. Unlike in single-player, it tends to work best if your base is using as many different food strategies as possible (although farms are pretty weak until second summer). Things I'd recommend doing:

• Get charcoal for drying racks and crockpots
• Get stone and gold for crockpots, fire pit, alch engine
• Relocate saplings and grass tufts (and berry bushes if you want them)
• Get lots and lots and lots of grass for drying racks and traps
• Set up traps at spider dens and on rabbit holes

You want to get at least one crockpot up early on in the base so that you can make meatballs. After that, try to get things done in batches, and don't return to base until you have enough for a batch.

 

If you manage to divide tasks well, your base can go up really, really, fast, much faster than in single player. If you don't split up tasks and communicate well, then it's a lot harder than single player because of resource starvation.

 

Firstly, thank you for your prompt response!

 

I'll be honest and say, my friend and I have a tendency to drift off in this game, and probably dont work together as well as we should (or rather split tasks) and generally hang around eachother to try and get things done, when we split it usually ends in death.

 

I agree though that it is critical to establish WHERE to establish base very early in game.

 

So far we have put in our efforts to find the paved road, which generally leads to pig villages. We tend to want to set up base here for defensive purposes.

 

The struggle really happens when we are looking for fertilizer, which is almost always (so far) miles away from where we have set up base.

 

Some Questions

 

• Drying Racks

We started building these last night, but seem to have difficulties finding an actual use of this. Is this not limited by use of pigmeat? and what would you generally farm to start stacking on supplies for this?

 

• Traps - Spiders

What is the added benefit of trapping spiders?

 

• Change settings (from vanilla)

Have you experienced the need to make changes from default to 'more' or 'plenty'? If so, what changes would you recommend for a 2-player playthrough?

 

Thanks again for responding, really appreciate it and just want to make sure we are kicking the game off right, rather than kicking it in the game.

[RobbingZombie]

I agree with rezecib on this. My gf and I have been testing out dst and our camp went up really quick when we determined what we needed to get and split the tasks. 

 

For drying racks we have been getting a lot of meat when we have found koalaphants and catching frogs and fish. The jerky is really helpful to store especially for first winter. We have about 6 currently set up in our camp made for only 2. 

 

I find in dst trapping the spiders is much more efficient then killing them especially if you have more than one den in close proximity. You don't have to worry about hitting them 5 times. 

 

We have been running on standard settings and the most part there hasn't really been a resource issue. 

[Fyrjefe]

Firstly, thank you for your prompt response!

 

I'll be honest and say, my friend and I have a tendency to drift off in this game, and probably dont work together as well as we should (or rather split tasks) and generally hang around eachother to try and get things done, when we split it usually ends in death.

 

I agree though that it is critical to establish WHERE to establish base very early in game.

 

So far we have put in our efforts to find the paved road, which generally leads to pig villages. We tend to want to set up base here for defensive purposes.

 

The struggle really happens when we are looking for fertilizer, which is almost always (so far) miles away from where we have set up base.

 

Some Questions

 

• Drying Racks

We started building these last night, but seem to have difficulties finding an actual use of this. Is this not limited by use of pigmeat? and what would you generally farm to start stacking on supplies for this?

 

• Traps - Spiders

What is the added benefit of trapping spiders?

 

• Change settings (from vanilla)

Have you experienced the need to make changes from default to 'more' or 'plenty'? If so, what changes would you recommend for a 2-player playthrough?

 

Thanks again for responding, really appreciate it and just want to make sure we are kicking the game off right, rather than kicking it in the game.

I think first of all your base choice is not the best. The problem with pig villages is that they are usually near the edge of the maps. Take a few days, living on the run. Having two torches can get you through the night quite easily. Don't feel pressured to make a decision until maybe day 3. It may feel "safe" to spend the first night in front of a campfire, but its just an illusion. There's no looming danger on the first day, and your stats should be more-or-less full where it counts (sanity and HP). Take that time to scout. I find that building toward the centre of your forage/gathering routes really helps. If it's near a wormhole it's even better, because it can act as an escape hatch when things get messy. Also, pigs have a sort of... curse. They're not always safe (so far, I'm trying to to be spoiler-tastic in the way I expose map formation and game mechanics. Sorry if I seem vague). 

 

Drying racks can be used to dry ANY meat. Small bits get you small jerky, "hams" get you big, and monster meat gets monster jerky, which further reduces penalties, better than cooking.

 

Traps are able to catch any small creature. For hostile creatures, it's an auto-kill that doesn't agro its fellow species. "Pied Piper"ing spiders and frogs into a line of traps are very useful.

 

I personally think you can get by learning on normal mode. It's tough at first for sure. The biggest troubles I've had were with swamps when I started. I didn't understand the mechanic of the tentacles, so they ripped me apart. They were a little more difficult to see how they worked. As for everything else, you will see that they have habits, strengths and weaknesses. Just approach beasts cautiously, and be aggressive in your gathering. The WORST thing you can do is just stand around. If you've gone 27 days and you're barely scraping by, then one or both of you aren't doing your jobs.

[LadyMeda]

Trapping spiders is a very useful way to gather silk, spider sacks and monster meat without risking your neck.

Drying racks are not limited to use with pig meat (unless it is different in DST). You can put all types of meat on them, even monster meat and fish.

I can't comment about needing to change the settings because I don't have a beta key. But with standard DS, I feel like setting anything to more or plenty seems to make other things more scarce. I could be completely wrong though and just have bad luck.