Incoming Combat Tuning and Improvements

[Ipsquiggle]

Hello everyone! Haven't seen me around here for a while, have you? Well I'm back working on Don't Starve, and right now I'm looking at combat tuning.

 

Goals

 

The whole reason we're changing the combat tuning for DST is because, simply, Don't Starve is a game about dying when you aren't prepared, and where combat is something you must prepare for. In DST, it's very easy to gang up on a creature and stun lock it and pummel down it's health, letting you overcome combat which should have been challenging and require preparation, without being challenged.

 

The initial tuning, which has had much discussion on these forums!, was a broad effort to increase the challenge of combat, especially "fights". It was done in a very crude way in order to quickly push combat in the desired direction. The new tuning I'm doing continues that train of thought but attempts to be more subtle:

 

The first thing is separating the acts of resource gathering from "fighting". Birds and rabbits, and even spiders for the most part, are part of the resource gathering part of Don't Starve and, ideally, will feel similar to the base game. On the other hand, taking on pigs, hounds, or Deerclops is a direct combat challenge, and should be appropriately challenging. Specifically, these fights should take multiple players to win. Don't Starve is a game about maintaining resources and being prepared. Well, you now have one more resource to manage: your buddies.

 

So to be clear, the goals are:

• Make "resource gathering combat" feel like base Don't Starve.

• Tune "big fights" and "bosses" for multiple engaged players; you probably shouldn't do these on your own.

• Keep the emphasis on resources and preparedness.

 

Plans

 

Primarily the plans revolve around putting the baseline tuning closer to normal, then cranking up the behaviour and tuning of the higher-end creatures. There's lots of possible ways to achieve this, here are some of the changes I'm considering (I still need to determine which of these I will actually do and will have the intended effect):

• Increase armor absorption, but decrease durability, so it's effective if you have it but requires resources and friends to maintain that advantage.

• Rebalance base player attack damage and "resource" creature health so that small creatures die in an appropriate number of hits.

• Fix or improve stunlocking so that multiple players can't trivially pin down a target.

• Add area-effect damage to the boss creatures where appropriate.

• Increase health and damage of all "fight" creatures, so that it becomes inadvisable to take them on solo. Balance them against having multiple players in the fight.

• Improve combat target choosing-and-losing behaviour so creatures don't get so "confused" by multiple players.

• Improve combat target sharing so that groups of enemies pose the most possible threat for groups of players.

• Have spider dens send out more reinforcements if more players join their fight.

• Where sensible, give the boss creatures ranged attacks or player-control attacks, such as the Deerclops Freezing Hit from RoG.

• Fix helmet/armor absorption stacking so it's not so powerful.

I'm going to start implementing and testing some of these. Some are much more work than others so those things probably won't happen in this iteration, but are part of the overall picture. I'd love to hear your feedback and concerns.

[Soopakoopa]

   What I'd suggest is adding something like a +20% max health bonus to "fight" creatures for every player on the server or, if a dynamic approach is too difficult, an extra +20% bonus for every player who CAN be on the server at a time (so tentacles might have +80% max health on a server with a max palyer count of four, for example.) This might need to be capped at a certain point though to avoid certain mobs being almost unbeatable to for somebody who decides to set off and do some task on their own, such

as chopping wood.

 

   Alternatively, for swarm mobs like hounds, instead of necessarily being made tougher, it could be made so that there is always at least one or two more hounds per attack than there are players on the server; this would prevent players from ganging up on and stun-locking hounds during invasions. A similar method could be used in deciding how many spiders a spider nest of a certain level can hold; for instance, while a level one spider nest usually only holds 3 spiders in singleplayer, it could hold 6 in a two-player server, 9 in a three-player server, and so on.

 

    For boss mobs or generally "tough" creatures, you could implement a sort of "panic mode" which activates if it takes too many hits in a small amount of time; while panicking, the mob might have a sort of reddish tint, will attack faster, and can not be stunned. This might only last 10 seconds or so, but it would be enough to prevent players from just swarming and mangling Deerclops before he gets a chance to fight back.

 

 

Keep in mind, I haven't actually played DST, so I don't know exactly how the mechanics actually

work at the moment, but I'm just thinking that these might be logical solutions to combat problems.

[imsomony]

Increase armor absorption, but decrease durability, so it's effective if you have it but requires resources and friends to maintain that advantage.

• Rebalance base player attack damage and "resource" creature health so that small creatures die in an appropriate number of hits.

• Fix or improve stunlocking so that multiple players can't trivially pin down a target.

• Add area-effect damage to the boss creatures where appropriate.

• Increase health and damage of all "fight" creatures, so that it becomes inadvisable to take them on solo. Balance them against having multiple players in the fight.

• Improve combat target choosing-and-losing behaviour so creatures don't get so "confused" by multiple players.

• Improve combat target sharing so that groups of enemies pose the most possible threat for groups of players.

• Have spider dens send out more reinforcements if more players join their fight.

• Where sensible, give the boss creatures ranged attacks or player-control attacks, such as the Deerclops Freezing Hit from RoG.

• Fix helmet/armor absorption stacking so it's not so powerful.

 

I really like pretty much every single thing you said here ... while I've certainly been in the danger zone and died to silly things like eyeplants due to lag/bad hosts, all of these make perfect sense to me as ways to encourage people to actually *play together* to combat the harsh world instead of running off on our own and working independently. The one thing I'm not sure about is rebalancing attack vs. damage to small creatures. Are you referring to bringing it back to something like "one hit with a boomerang kills a bird again" or making it more difficult like "it now takes 5 hits with a boomerang to kill a bird since there are 5 map players in the world"?

 

 

 

 

I tend to agree with @Soopakoopa, with dynamic changes to mobs/bosses being based on the number of allowable players in a world. Actually, I pretty much agree with everything said right there... even though he/she hasn't played DST yet, it sounds like the idea is going in the right direction. Additional hounds is DEFINITELY something I agree with, and with some sort of combination of server plus client timeline. As an example, I played the dedicated server (while it was still locked) on server day 900+ ... and received two hounds in my second attack. I should have been running around screaming, waving my arms in the air in all-out panic for beign unprepared. Instead I walked over to the couple of tooth traps on the ground and waited 30 seconds so I could get back to what I was doing.

[rezecib]

I think the major confounding problem of rebalancing combat in Don't Starve is that there were always two major strategies: fight something yourself, or get things to fight for you. The current damage/armor nerfs just greatly shift the balance between these two strategies towards getting things to fight for you, which is one of the reasons why Wickerbottom is currently the most effective character in DST -- tentacles on command are the best things you can have to fight for you.

 

I think that if rebalancing is to be done, it can only be done on things that you can't use to fight other things for you (e.g. giants, koalefants). If it affects players, it should be taking into account how many players are involved in a given instance of combat (this was the approach I used in my damage rebalance).

 

The idea of making more spiders come out is neat, but this is a bit slippery because spiders are also a resource. Silk, spider glands, and monster meat are all extremely important now.

 

I don't think global "per player increases" are the right approach, here. I think Ipsquiggle is right that some "fighting" is really resource collection, but I don't think it's a simple binary. Spiders, for example, can be a threat in certain situations, but most of the time you're fighting them to collect resources, not defend yourself.

 

I think addressing stunlocking is the best way to go. As far as I know, though, it's mostly not possible to keep enemies stunlocked with a few players hitting them. Koalefants always seem to still get off their attacks when multiple players are attacking. The only enemies that really could be stunlocked permanently are the same as the ones that single players could stunlock (spiders, bees).

 

The hounds are definitely not in a good place right now, but they are per-player already. At the moment they're tuned to only ramp up to 1-2 hounds per player, though, which should be changed. The code for it notes that it's placeholder, so I'm guessing there were plans for a more complex system than simply per-player hound waves-- but I think per-player hound waves using higher wave numbers would be fine.

 

Edit: Player control attacks are certainly interesting. I haven't had a chance to have a legitimate, prepared encounter with an Ewecus yet, but it seems like the idea has potential. I like that solution much better than changing damage/health/armor.

[Ipsquiggle]

Thanks for the thoughts!

 

Concerning dynamic scaling: Because Don't Starve has no visible health on enemies, it could get pretty confusing if you don't know exactly how much health or damage a creature has. Many people instinctively "count hits" to determine how close they are to defeating a creature, and having to get the feel for different numbers of hits depending on different numbers of players etc. would produce frustration, I think. We try to keep the world as readable as possible.

 

Hounds definitely do need improvement! There's still some question there of what purpose they serve on long-running servers and towards newly-joined players, though, so I can't give a concrete solution just yet.

 

Fair point about the spider numbers, I was thinking that increased quantities would probably involve mostly warrior spiders (which are in my sights for tuning up). The thinking is: If you attack the nest (player is the aggressor) then the world fights back appropriately hard, but if you are picking off spiders on the fringe that's a fine solo activity.

 

For clarity, yes, I mean that you will once again be able to boomerang a bird in one shot, etc. That's what I mean by "similar to the base game" for resource gathering.

[Soopakoopa]

 

Thanks for the thoughts!

 

Concerning dynamic scaling: Because Don't Starve has no visible health on enemies, it could get pretty confusing if you don't know exactly how much health or damage a creature has. Many people instinctively "count hits" to determine how close they are to defeating a creature, and having to get the feel for different numbers of hits depending on different numbers of players etc. would produce frustration, I think. We try to keep the world as readable as possible.

 

Hounds definitely do need improvement! There's still some question there of what purpose they serve on long-running servers and towards newly-joined players, though, so I can't give a concrete solution just yet.

 

Fair point about the spider numbers, I was thinking that increased quantities would probably involve mostly warrior spiders (which are in my sights for tuning up). The thinking is: If you attack the nest (player is the aggressor) then the world fights back appropriately hard, but if you are picking off spiders on the fringe that's a fine solo activity.

 

For clarity, yes, I mean that you will once again be able to boomerang a bird in one shot, etc. That's what I mean by "similar to the base game" for resource gathering.

 

 

   That part about the world "fighting back appropriately hard" is actually a very interesting

concept to bring up. If dynamic mob stat scaling would be confusing, what might work better

is scaling the extent to which "bad" mobs spawn; more players could possibly mean more frequent

treeguard appearances, more tentacles, and a higher ratio of killer bees to normal bees per hive.

It might also be wise to scale up the amount of certain resources spawned based on the server's

max player count; while trees are pretty much fine, stone and glaciers already seem to get used

up fast enough in singleplayer; I can hardly imagine how quickly nonrenewables would run dry

in a server hosting 6 people or so.

 

    On a semi-related note, what buffs or nerfs would be applied to neutral mobs like

pigs and tallbirds? While they're mobs who people often fight, they're just as often used

to combat other, more aggressive creatures. if you nerf tallbirds, they suddenly become

easy and renewable meat, but if you buff them, you can just lure hounds to their nest and

watch as most or all of the hounds who are now supposed to be a bigger threat are mercilessly

slaughtered without a single swing from you; you can then, of course, just approach the nest

and take all of the drops for yourself the moment the tallbird walks off somewhere else.

 

[RalphKastro]

 

• Fix helmet/armor absorption stacking so it's not so powerful.

Not even a DST player yet, but I can already see why...

[Ridley]

Sounds like we need a Krampus Hoard. 

[TheKingofSquirrels]

[J192]

HOO-FREAKIN'-RAY, FINALLY.

 

@Ipsquiggle, you should check out threads like this to see people responding with their thoughts.

[Ridley]

Fair point about the spider numbers, I was thinking that increased quantities would probably involve mostly warrior spiders (which are in my sights for tuning up). The thinking is: If you attack the nest (player is the aggressor) then the world fights back appropriately hard, but if you are picking off spiders on the fringe that's a fine solo activity.

 

All it takes is a handful of rabbit traps and one bush hat to empty a spider den. Smack the nest once and the traps could scoop all the spiders up. 

 

If you put spider dens with in a self protecting range of each, but not fire hazardous, it always makes the spiders tougher to effectively trap up. Lureplants have little effect at this point too.

 

Another possible idea is to make spider dens shaveable for silk, while turning down the spider silk loot drop rate. This is a more reliable income of silk that comes in steadier amount, and takes away the overwhelming benefit of tossing traps all over the place. Trying to catch every spider in the den with traps becomes too expensive for the little gain, but I can use teamwork to distract the spiders while someone else shaves the den. I am also conserving my grass resources this way, but I am risking my health.

 

It would be a shame to be harvesting silk and have a spider queen pop out in front of me, or discover that night is setting and the spiders are still chasing me. 

[XirmiX]

I still don't like the nerfed system, but this is better than the old one. And I agree, Spiders particularly are the ones that should be killed like in Vanilla because they hold very valuable resources to loot and yet they're too hard to kill if they're in groups. As long as I get the same amount of armour in DST as in Single player DS I'm fine with it. More people means easy-to-make-log-suits.

[Flare2V]

 Any chance we'll see client side combat in DST? Instead of calculating whether or not someone's been hit on the server side and sending that info to the client, why not check the attack ranges and damages on the client's side? That way what you're seeing is what's happening, and you won't have to deal with movement or combat prediction. The only flaw would be that it wouldn't work with combat interactions involving one player hitting another (which would most likely have to remain server side).

[TheKingofSquirrels]

Hello everyone! Haven't seen me around here for a while, have you? Well I'm back working on Don't Starve, and right now I'm looking at combat tuning.

 

Goals

 

The whole reason we're changing the combat tuning for DST is because, simply, Don't Starve is a game about dying when you aren't prepared, and where combat is something you must prepare for. In DST, it's very easy to gang up on a creature and stun lock it and pummel down it's health, letting you overcome combat which should have been challenging and require preparation, without being challenged.

 

The initial tuning, which has had much discussion on these forums!, was a broad effort to increase the challenge of combat, especially "fights". It was done in a very crude way in order to quickly push combat in the desired direction. The new tuning I'm doing continues that train of thought but attempts to be more subtle:

 

The first thing is separating the acts of resource gathering from "fighting". Birds and rabbits, and even spiders for the most part, are part of the resource gathering part of Don't Starve and, ideally, will feel similar to the base game. On the other hand, taking on pigs, hounds, or Deerclops is a direct combat challenge, and should be appropriately challenging. Specifically, these fights should take multiple players to win. Don't Starve is a game about maintaining resources and being prepared. Well, you now have one more resource to manage: your buddies.

 

So to be clear, the goals are:

• Make "resource gathering combat" feel like base Don't Starve.

• Tune "big fights" and "bosses" for multiple engaged players; you probably shouldn't do these on your own.

• Keep the emphasis on resources and preparedness.

 

Plans

 

Primarily the plans revolve around putting the baseline tuning closer to normal, then cranking up the behaviour and tuning of the higher-end creatures. There's lots of possible ways to achieve this, here are some of the changes I'm considering (I still need to determine which of these I will actually do and will have the intended effect):

• Increase armor absorption, but decrease durability, so it's effective if you have it but requires resources and friends to maintain that advantage.

• Rebalance base player attack damage and "resource" creature health so that small creatures die in an appropriate number of hits.

• Fix or improve stunlocking so that multiple players can't trivially pin down a target.

• Add area-effect damage to the boss creatures where appropriate.

• Increase health and damage of all "fight" creatures, so that it becomes inadvisable to take them on solo. Balance them against having multiple players in the fight.

• Improve combat target choosing-and-losing behaviour so creatures don't get so "confused" by multiple players.

• Improve combat target sharing so that groups of enemies pose the most possible threat for groups of players.

• Have spider dens send out more reinforcements if more players join their fight.

• Where sensible, give the boss creatures ranged attacks or player-control attacks, such as the Deerclops Freezing Hit from RoG.

• Fix helmet/armor absorption stacking so it's not so powerful.

I'm going to start implementing and testing some of these. Some are much more work than others so those things probably won't happen in this iteration, but are part of the overall picture. I'd love to hear your feedback and concerns.

This is very very bad. I am very disappointed.

 

Essentially, you are handicapping players and forcing them to play together...This is an awful idea! I don´t want to have to depend on others to fight! This is ridiculous. My plans for playing Don´t Starve Together were to go off and do my own thing, and then meet with other players every now and then, and make trades and what not. But now, I can´t take a pig-man on by myself! What if I want to play when there are no people online?! What if the server is PVP and most players are hostile?

 

A good multi-player is something like Minecraft. You can play with people or you can go off and do your own thing. And before you say: "just play single-player then". You don´t get it. I like having a dynamic world where I can see presence of other players. Imagine finding abandoned bases and structures. I also like the risk that other players bring.

 

This is awful. I hope you realize that this is a mistake. 

[Pyromailmann]

I actually think nerfing durability rather than damage is a bit more of a nerf than nerfing damage. With damage, it'd take more than one person to take out anything which was annoying but was still possible. I had to play alone in DST and the damage nerd was easy to combat. I got a key for a friend and we didn't really do anything, we just did a bit of messing around and the damage nerf was easier to deal with. A durability nerf would be worse. It means that most armors that can take days to get to can now take a blow and then disappear like ashes. It can be for people like me, a trouble to combat. Granted the damage nerf wasn't good either but nerving durability can be worse. I and keep in mind getting help from friends is easier than solitaire.

I would think a damage nerf or durability nerf is more viable for PvP, not survival.

Then again, it's my opinion.

[Flare2V]

This is very very bad. I am very disappointed.

 

Essentially, you are handicapping players and forcing them to play together...This is an awful idea! I don´t want to have to depend on others to fight! This is ridiculous. My plans for playing Don´t Starve Together were to go off and do my own thing, and then meet with other players every now and then, and make trades and what not. But now, I can´t take a pig-man on by myself! What if I want to play when there are no people online?! What if the server is PVP and most players are hostile?

 

A good multi-player is something like Minecraft. You can play with people or you can go off and do your own thing. And before you say: "just play single-player then". You don´t get it. I like having a dynamic world where I can see presence of other players. Imagine finding abandoned bases and structures. I also like the risk that other players bring.

 

This is awful. I hope you realize that this is a mistake. 

This is very very bad. I am very disappointed.

 

Essentially, you are handicapping players and forcing them to play together...This is an awful idea! I don´t want to have to depend on others to fight! This is ridiculous. My plans for playing Don´t Starve Together were to go off and do my own thing, and then meet with other players every now and then, and make trades and what not. But now, I can´t take a pig-man on by myself! What if I want to play when there are no people online?! What if the server is PVP and most players are hostile?

 

A good multi-player is something like Minecraft. You can play with people or you can go off and do your own thing. And before you say: "just play single-player then". You don´t get it. I like having a dynamic world where I can see presence of other players. Imagine finding abandoned bases and structures. I also like the risk that other players bring.

 

This is awful. I hope you realize that this is a mistake. 

If you could kill enemies before without getting hit, you can still kill them without getting hit after these changes. Unless combat remains entirely server side, of course.

[Ipsquiggle]

It's important to realize that in DST the rules have changed, fundamentally, and when balancing we have to account for new factors. While someone says "forcing people to play together", we are trying to look at it more like other players as a new resource. You could also say we "force you to have weapons and armor" but really those are just resources which enable you to win fights. Having other players in the world is like having a bunch of ready-made weapons lying around the world; yes, you may choose not to use them to fight creatures, but they are there and we have to balance the game like they are there. Many things will still be possible solo, and I'm fairly certain there's nothing you can't do with enough beemines.

There's all these players running around the map now, and so we're developing the game to suit. One of the main purposes of this current rebalance, as I stated in the OP, is to make sure that much of the solo gameplay remains viable, but to also add and alter the game so that working with other players is interesting and challenging.

 

As far as client-side combat: While we're focusing on PvE right now, the danger is that any kind of PvP becomes inviable, or a tech nightmare. The network guys are continuing to improve the performance and prediction, but ultimately we want to stay with a server-authorative system for practical reasons.

[Zeklo]

This sounds great compared to what we have now. I'm really enjoying it so far anyway and am looking forward to it being even better!

[Midnight Tea]

All I have to say is that I'm impressed how many plates you're keeping spinning considering the magnitude of the project and team/resource constraints you have to work from. Finding time to keep all those in the air while also keeping an eye on the larger design philosophy is a feat.

[Slynx]

1 thing worries me.

if you count players as a "resource" - fine. do it. but you must understand that there are at least 3 scenarios of a game with others:

1) you play with friends and\or you have an established communication (talk, text, voice over ip and ect). in this case this people are a resouce indeed.

2)you join a server with unknown people or host one and some randoms join you. in this case people can't be counted as a resource. you may start in a different sides of the world, they may ignore you and and ect.

3)pvp. you know that it's a rare case when you can rely on a help of the other player you don't know, right?

[TheKingofSquirrels]

This: 

1 thing worries me.

if you count players as a "resource" - fine. do it. but you must understand that there are at least 3 scenarios of a game with others:

1) you play with friends and\or you have an established communication (talk, text, voice over ip and ect). in this case this people are a resouce indeed.

2)you join a server with unknown people or host one and some randoms join you. in this case people can't be counted as a resource. you may start in a different sides of the world, they may ignore you and and ect.

3)pvp. you know that it's a rare case when you can rely on a help of the other player you don't know, right?

 

 

It's important to realize that in DST the rules have changed, fundamentally, and when balancing we have to account for new factors. While someone says "forcing people to play together", we are trying to look at it more like other players as a new resource. You could also say we "force you to have weapons and armor" but really those are just resources which enable you to win fights. Having other players in the world is like having a bunch of ready-made weapons lying around the world; yes, you may choose not to use them to fight creatures, but they are there and we have to balance the game like they are there. Many things will still be possible solo, and I'm fairly certain there's nothing you can't do with enough beemines.

There's all these players running around the map now, and so we're developing the game to suit. One of the main purposes of this current rebalance, as I stated in the OP, is to make sure that much of the solo gameplay remains viable, but to also add and alter the game so that working with other players is interesting and challenging.

 

As far as client-side combat: While we're focusing on PvE right now, the danger is that any kind of PvP becomes inviable, or a tech nightmare. The network guys are continuing to improve the performance and prediction, but ultimately we want to stay with a server-authorative system for practical reasons.

 

[Midnight Tea]

I think what the devs are getting at here is that they want the game to be more than playable even if everyone is off doing their own thing, but also be fun even if you have a perfectly coordinated team. That's the main reason I find that an impressive goal because that sweet spot may take some intensive tuning to achieve. It's unfun if you're absolutely forced to rely on other players to accomplish even basic tasks that would be simple if you were playing solo. It's also unfun if the addition of other players completely removes the teeth of some of the game's most intimidating threats such as Deerclops, hence the necessity of giving them AoE attacks.

 

My suggestion is perhaps give spiders an "alert" mode. Alerted spiders are much more aggressive and alerted nests will send out spiders to investigate much sooner. They may also react to trapped spiders as viciously as they would an attacked one, or even send out warriors to investigate instead of waiting to be attacked. Destruction of a nearby nest would trigger alert mode to all other nests in the vicinity, making systematic removal of large clumps of nests require much more coordinating between players.

[NeoDeusMachina]

Concerning dynamic scaling: Because Don't Starve has no visible health on enemies, it could get pretty confusing if you don't know exactly how much health or damage a creature has. Many people instinctively "count hits" to determine how close they are to defeating a creature, and having to get the feel for different numbers of hits depending on different numbers of players etc. would produce frustration, I think. We try to keep the world as readable as possible.

 

I don't know how feasible it is on the ''dynamic side of things'', but I think it would be better if mobs/bosses scaled with number of players in a certain range (let's call it fighting range). Otherwise, we would have to mobilize everyone on the server to kill a single pig or it would be incredibly hard to do if only half the players were there. Imagine if its a 10 player server and you are 3 hunting a koalephant! Perhaps some bosses SHOULD scale with number of players connected, such as giants other bosses (treeguards, spider queens, ancient guardian, etc.).

 

Granted, the purpose is to make it so that you can't kill everything on your own, so there could be a minimum strength of mobs. For example, let's say certain mobs always consider there are minimum 2 players in fighting range. They get stronger when more people join the fight. This minimum number could be higher for certain mobs and smaller for others.

 

Overall, I like most of the ideas in the OP, but I do believe it will require a good combination of these in order to achieve a proper balance! Keep up the good work folks!

 

 

[XirmiX]

Hei, here's a suggestion: what about if the damage each player deals depends on the amount of people in the world? One player means full damage. 2 or more means half the damage (for bosses, koalefants, pigs, hounds etc. and not spiders, birds, bees etc.). Or something like that. Just an idea, so don't judge!

[Ipsquiggle]

Sorry, I think I wasn't clear concerning dynamic tuning. I realize I didn't actually write what I meant in my last post! The bottom line is: we'd rather not have dynamic scaling if at all possible, because it hurts the readability so much. This applies to both global and local scaling.

 

Midnight Tea has it right; we are really trying to strike a balance. Again, the first concern is for PvE (and the name of the game is Don't Starve Together) so we're making sure that a bunch of friends or allied players in a server can't easily defeat the world. If it's a typical server with a mix of people, then you might just have to figure out how to recruit some of the others if you want to take down a boss!

 

Soloing the basic resources remains possible in all situations. And when it comes to PvP, the other players, rather than deerclops, will probably be your biggest threat. (Is deerclops your biggest ally...?)

 

In the end, there is going to be different kinds of content in the game, and you get to pick what you engage with and how you engage with it. As with all the content in Don't Starve, we always want there to be multiple possibilities for dealing with a creature or acquiring a resource. Some things will be tuned especially so it's compelling to work together (such as the Ewecus) but you still have the option of how to engage that challenge or whether to engage it at all!

 

Of course, we still want to be sensitive to places where things have a no-risk easy solution (such as 3 players perma-stunlocking a deerclops), or no obvious way out at all, let me know anywhere we're not achieving these goals.

 

In the News

 

The first wave of changes, most of the major ones, should be in the next hotfix, so get ready to pick them apart!