What was your wiki point?

[jeneah]

Over in the "When *I* was a noob..." thread we've invented the term "wiki point," which is that moment in the game when you've had enough figuring things out on your own and head online to get some answers (from the wiki, forums, youtube, etc.).

 

Some people start the game arming themselves for success with as much info as they can find ahead of time, while others stumble around for a long time before ever getting there.

 

It's hard to remember why I hit my wiki point, but I'm pretty sure it was winter. Cursed, cursed winter! Funny to me now because winter feels like such a non-event. If anything I'm psyched for winter because it represents an opportunity for a tam o'shanter and a walking stick! Nowadays it's cursed, cursed summer that fills me with dread!

 

What was your wiki point?

[absimiliard]

For me it was cooking.  I enjoyed the heck out of stumbling around figuring out the UI, and dying . .. a lot.  While doing this I became aware that there was a LOT more to the game than I'd initially anticipated.  It was around that time period that I became aware of the power of the crockpot, and the complexity of it as well.

 

I've always been a documentation-reader, so it was a bit surprising that I hadn't hunted up the wiki and trolled it thoroughly by then.  But that was an error on my part that I rapidly corrected.  I then proceeded to start putting bits regarding cooking and food into my head, that led to more info, which led to more info, which . .  . well, I think we all know how it goes from there.

 

That said, it hasn't really made me a better player.  Sure, I "know" a bunch of things, but I still get totally impatient and do things, and that constantly gets me killed.  It doesn't help that I'm still not great at kiting things, and that I prefer a nomadic style of play instead of basing heavily.

 

What the wiki HAS done is to help me enjoy the game a lot more.  I still die, to be sure, but now I know WHY I die.  (and, typically, I know I'm gonna die before I do so, which rarely stops me, I'm still all "Okay, this will probably kill me, but I still have to practice kiting tallbirds, so here goes!  . .. . .  *Absimiliard was killed by a Tallbird*")

[Coski]

Wiki destroy the game fun and surprises.

[SmellyBacon]

Wiki ruined my whole game experience.   I wish I never looked up how to get mandrakes. Wiki is like drugs, you try it once you can't stop going on it.

 

Also, what does this have to do with DST?

[MenaAthena]

My wiki point was deciding wether or not to buy the game. I had found it on Steam, but I wanted to look into it before buying it so I didn't waste my money. I saw the Forbidden Knowledge trailer, and after some debating, I ruined Adventure Mode for myself by looking at the ending and the William Carter puzzles.

[Pyromailmann]

My wiki point was my first playthrough of Wendy.

My first encounters of Chester were me saying to myself "Who's that? Get away!" So I would give him the eyebone and leave.

I read the wiki and looked at Chester, that's when I started to figure out that Chester was a follower, not an enemy.

[applebottom]

Some people start the game arming themselves for success with as much info as they can find ahead of time, while others stumble around for a long time before ever getting there.

 

Nicely put. We all have different playing styles.

 

I like to imagine that those who abhor wiki are pros and can usually understand a new game quickly. (That, or they have a lot of time to spend on dying repeatedly in order to discover everything.) It's like how a programmer can easily learn a new language. Games (languages) have a core set of rules, paradigms, etc that do not change. Having experience in plenty of games (languages) allows you to easily adapt to a new one.

 

As for me, I'm a noob, a "casual", and a slow-learner. Left to my own devices, it will probably take me a couple of months to reach Winter in-game.

 

My wiki point was finding out there was a wiki. That didn't come until a couple of months after I had the game, so I still died loads of times before managing to survive my 1st Winter.

 

But as soon as I found the wiki, I was up and reading. I'm probably like @absimiliard, in that I love reading well-written documentation. I will be reading up on Mushrooms and clicking through to Crockpots, then to Pig King, then to Tentacles, and so on... it's fun. Especially for a game like DS where every item has so much use/story/detail. (Except the phlegm. It's just... phlegm. For now.)

 

It's weird that I don't mind spoilers in games when I'm such a bear about it in books. (I fought with my bestfriend when she told me who dies in Order of The Phoenix, 6 hours after the book came out. )

 

I guess it's because book-spoilers spoil the whole thing. Whereas game "spoilers" especially here in Don't Starve don't mean **** because in the end, it's still up to you how to use that knowledge to survive. The wiki can tell you that raw green mushroom subtracts so and so stats, but when you're dying of hunger or when you need a sanity drop, it's your call whether to eat that shroom or not.

 

Also, what does this have to do with DST?

 

Maybe OP got lost. It could be moved to Don't Starve => General Discussion instead?

[ryouryou]

OP probably just lives in the DST section like I do. I have probably never posted outside of it. ;-;

I was having trouble figuring out numbers of things, like I'd see that sometimes I got 12, sometimes I got 13 hunger from morsels (or I'd appear to get 11 because it ticked down 1 before I could check) and I wanted to figure out what was actually the best thing to eat. I wanted to figure out the actual spawn mechanics for Deerclops, because I wasn't sure if it was spawning AT me or spawning somewhere else and legitimately walking towards me.

I wanted to figure out what mechanics governed the respawning of Mushrooms, because they did not seem to respawn with a set number of days like other things. I don't think any amount of trial-and-error would have led me to "exactly 20 ingame hours of rain" as a conclusion.

I wanted to figure out, numerically, how hits from different weapons relate, what actual HP compared to myself was, how insulation works, etc, just.. you know, in-depth stuff that was beyond the scope of "what spider do? oh, he bad. I hit, he dead now, yum meat, OW, bad meat, NO, crock pot? suspicious meatballs... mm, ok, no hurt, good." I had plenty of that though, too. 

I found that I had to learn more about enemies in order to be less combat-avoidant. It took me a long time to kill my first non-Treeguard boss. I would just decide not to fight things because maintaining all the stuff I worked for feels good to me, I have a very conservative playstyle mostly.. I am unlikely to be the person who dies on day 2 by doing something daring, in DST.

I also tend to read about games if I'm stuck out somewhere and bored and can't actually play a game. I was the kid that just enjoyed reading strategy guides as part of keeping the experience going while I was at school or in the car or something and could not be playing the game I really wanted to play. I still get bored and wander around the forum/wiki when I'm on the bus or something, on my phone. 

It's hard to say what the exact "point" was for me, but I suppose it was where the game's novelty started to decline, and my curiosity about underlying mechanisms began to grow. We also wouldn't have modders and stuff if we didn't have people interested in learning about and documenting the game mechanics, so you know, we have a lot to thank them for. Any game that allows as much innovation as this one is going to have some people just play in the sandbox happily, and other people figure out what the sandbox is made out of and add a second tier and a water slide to it. Plus, you know, the majority of everyone in between the two.

[RalphKastro]

Wiki is like drugs, you try it once you can't stop going on it.

At least it's legal... 

[jeneah]

Also, what does this have to do with DST?

 

If the mods think it belongs better in the DS-only forum then I hope they will move it, but I guess I see DST as a superset of the two. But now that I say that, I am curious about the overlap: how many players are only playing one vs. the other vs. both?

 

Anyway, I think it would be interesting to compare the wiki points of the various groups. Is there social pressure for new players starting out in DST rather than DS to perform at a higher level, and therefore they reach a wiki point sooner? Or do new players learn more by osmosis and by asking questions, effectively using experienced players as their wiki? Or indeed is their growth stunted by having experienced players paving the way for a more comfortable existence and they never feel pressure to learn on their own? (That hits a little close to home; certainly in the real world I would be useless if someone plopped me in the middle of the wilderness!)

[ryouryou]

I think that in DST it is often easier to just ask the players who are with you than it would be to stop playing, tab out, and go read the wiki, so I wouldn't be surprised if generally fewer people are using it.

[rezecib]

@jeneah, I play a fair bit of both now. Going back and playing single-player, things feel a lot more crisp, and the game works a bit better as a whole (because it was, well, designed around being single-player). Don't get me wrong, DST is plenty of fun, but there's a tightness to its design for single-player that doesn't exist in multiplayer.

 

I've been playing with the Writhe character mod and Up and Away. It's really hard and a lot of fun! DST has made me way less afraid of death, and it's really a problem xD

 

As for my wiki point... if I remember correctly, I went in pretty cold. Like many others, I died the first night not knowing about Charlie. I looked a few things up but mostly played by experimentation. My wiki use gradually grew, I know that by the time I was getting to the Ruins and Adventure mode I was using it pretty heavily. I think I managed to hit most of the unexpected deaths the devs had planned, though

 

By the time RoG came around, obviously the wiki wasn't up to date, so I helped update it. There was a pretty bad bug in the beta where coming up from caves could get you stuck in permanent night, so I started reading the code to fix it (and eventually found a fix). Since then... I've mainly read the code and used that to add stuff to the wiki, rather than the wiki informing me. Code-reading gradually scaled up, too, and now I have the scripts folder under version control and read all the diffs when a patch comes out... o_o

[RationalLemming]

It was DST and also cooking for me. The others in my group like to read up on things while I like to stumble around (that's why I like roguelike games) so eventually I started reading up on things too alongside them.

[jeneah]

@jeneah, I play a fair bit of both now. Going back and playing single-player, things feel a lot more crisp, and the game works a bit better as a whole (because it was, well, designed around being single-player). Don't get me wrong, DST is plenty of fun, but there's a tightness to its design for single-player that doesn't exist in multiplayer.

 

Not yet, that is true. I wasn't around for when DS was in beta but I know it went through a lot of tweaking, so I am very confident that multiplayer will get there, too.

 

I've been playing with the Writhe character mod and Up and Away. It's really hard and a lot of fun! DST has made me way less afraid of death, and it's really a problem xD

 

Interesting! For me it's the opposite; I seem to be more attached to my character and the world I am building with the help of other people, so if anything I'm more conservative on DST. Which is strange because I like to play Wilderness, so the penalty for death is lower than I'm used to, really. It's starting to become a problem--I actually care if someone comes and destroys everything I've built on my dedicated server, and I would probably be better off if I didn't care.

 

By the time RoG came around, obviously the wiki wasn't up to date, so I helped update it. There was a pretty bad bug in the beta where coming up from caves could get you stuck in permanent night, so I started reading the code to fix it (and eventually found a fix). Since then... I've mainly read the code and used that to add stuff to the wiki, rather than the wiki informing me. Code-reading gradually scaled up, too, and now I have the scripts folder under version control and read all the diffs when a patch comes out... o_o

 

I... I think you just said you can see the Matrix. The Don't Starve Matrix...

[Asparagus]

For me it was after I discovered the experience-unlocking-of-characters-mechanic... I died on the 3rd day of winter as Wilson... I was so, so annoyed and sad... depressed?

 

Me: What? do I have to die a million deaths just to get them all? Isn't there any other way?! *cue thunder and lightning*

...

Wait... THE INTERNET!!

 

Googled: Don't Starve - unlock characters

Found: Teleportato, Adventure Mode, Things

 

Me: Ohh...

 

After that, I was off the stuff...

 

But then I had a Wiki-drawal (Wiki-Withdrawal)

...

It ruined the Ruins for me O__O

[Dougles]

When I entered caves for the first time, and got completely destroyed.

[Coski]

At least it's legal... 

or maybe not.

[The Letter W]

When I had to look up references for the Deerclops to draw this monstrosity, I think. Curiosity got the better of me after that. Though just because I'd read about it didn't mean I knew how to counter it.

Don't go into art, kids. You'll end up looking up a reference and come out knowing way more than you should.

[Valinth]

I guess for me it was around the time I tried doing Adventure Mode. Just didn't want to spend ages figuring out how to move those obelisks.

[imsomony]

Mine was crockpot recipes (vanilla DS)... I knew there had to be more things I could make besides meatballs, but I just kept making them or wet goop.

 

After that, it was the Ruins. I went in blind to everything else in the game, but I wasn't gonna do that with the Ruins. Turns out it's nowhere near as intimidating as I built it up to in my mind.

[Coski]

mine was when a treeguard killed me.

[ShnarfBird]

I only use the wiki for numbers or crafting-related things, such as "How much health does the Deerclops have?" or "What can I use all these Blue Gems for?"

[Myrkana]

When I started playing DST I used the wiki a lot, I'd previously never made ti to winter cause i got bored playing alone but with DST me and bf made it past our first winter :3 with liberal use of food recipes and stuff from the wiki.