I have a few questions regarding Caves/Teleportato/hounds in DST

[boltthundara]

So, as everyone knows, currently Caves and moving to a new world is not a possibility. I understand the programming difficulties involved in trying to make that happen. I'm wondering if eventually these will be implemented? My main concern stems from the fact that I play a closed server with a few friends who aren't very experienced at Don't Starve. I've got a decent amount of play time under my belt, to the point where a solo game is simply so easy it's not worth the effort.

 

Unfortunately, after around one set of seasons (Fall/Winter/Spring/Autumn), everything always starts to fall apart. The traditional methods of dealing with large hound attacks fail in the face of 4 groups of 8 hounds, arriving every 3 days or so. This many hounds can simply shred a Beefalo herd, tank an entire field of Tooth Traps, tear down any player who tries to stand their ground, and generally completely destroy any sense of progress. The only method we've found of dealing with it is for everyone to instantly log out of the server but me, and then I can handle a single wave of 8 without much trouble by either kiting thru a swamp, kiting thru large spider colonies, or helping my beefalo kill stuff.

 

It's getting to be a real hassle. We generally end up starting over frequently and everyone is pretty frustrated. It seems to me like the simplest solution would be to set up the Teleportato and let groups start a new world with existing supplies, like in vanilla DS. Eventually we could reach the point of group survivability. This is especially annoying since I have to choose between making Blowdarts to deal with giants or making Tooth Traps to deal with sooooo many hounds.

 

Any advice/input would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Haroldman]

Treeguards help. Pigs help. I think you might just need more of these and/or split up more to stop the giant zurg rush. Maybe groups of two max? I think maybe the implementation of an AoE attack would help in the late game for these hounds perhaps. But yh 8 pig houses close together kept alive should be able to help kill them. if you don't all stick together during the hound attacks then they wont all spawn in the same place so multiple smaller tooth trap fields will give each one of you a place to kill their 8. AND THEN you could all group together to clear off the last of them.

[Arcita]

My current dst world is nearing 1,000 days and I've never had a problem with hound attacks. You just don't have enough tooth traps. I even have three separate bases which all contain sufficient tooth traps for any threat. You don't need blowdarts to take out giants; you can use a variety of tactics to handle them, including a tooth trap field. Just because you currently can't survive doesn't mean the game is broken. It means you need to get better and revise your strategies. That's the entire basis of the game: get knocked down > learn > revise > come back stronger. 

[Pyromailmann]

Caves are being worked on in a way for them to work without killing servers.

The Teleportato is also being worked on in a similar fashion.

DS had the same thing with Hounds. The same story is from DS, in DST. Nothing changed. Build a good trap against hounds and kill them.

[Johnny5isAlive]

Everyone else has made good points so I'll just crash my train of thought here. Picture the Hound waves on a Day 1000 world with 16+ players all standing next to each other. Have you got that mental image of pure satanic horror? Good. Now imagine the Hounds are Depth Worms with 1,800 health each. 

 

 

Man I can't wait for caves 0u0.

[PaulEndri]

Not the OP here, but I second his thoughts on the hounds. My friends just can't deal with over 40 hounds attacking and usually die. And teeth traps do nothing. Their damage is actually pretty pitiful. Really pitiful. I have dozens of them and they'll kill, if I"m lucky, one or two hounds and that's all she wrote. It's really frustrating.

[boltthundara]

@Arcita

 

How many people are you hosting on that 1000 day server, though? There's a significant difference between one person and, say, 6 people trying to survive a post day 100 wave. For even 4 people, like I play with, it could take as many as 100 tooth traps to wipe out a wave. 40 hounds x 150 hp = 6000 HP. Bare minimum, under ideal conditions, would be 48 traps per wave. That's assuming the smallest wave size and all the hounds are red/blue. And other defenses are equally impractical against 40+ hounds. That many can wipe out a beefalo herd or spider queen in two waves. Possibly as little as 1, depending on some RNG in the hounds' favor. No standard pig village can handle that size a wave. You'd have to build several clusters of pig houses, and even then they would be inside much of the time in any season except summer.

 

The only thing I've found that works reliably is tentacles, but even that has problems. You either need someone playing Wickerbottom to build a tentacle field, or you have to find the Hundred Reed trap or Maxwell's Merm Shrine set piece. And without something like the Renewable World mod, the Merm Shrine is a temporary solution at best since the merms will eventually clear all the tentacles. Plus it requires you to live fairly close to those set pieces. A 30 second warning before attacks means you don't have much time to travel unless you want to kite hounds across the entire map.

 

My point is that hound attacks should not be the be-all-end-all of endgame for groups. It's unfun. While I can personally survive on my own indefinitely, this is not true for everybody, and keeping a group alive becomes much more difficult. I'm not sure what the best solution to fix this is, because I don't want the game to be easy, but there needs to be some reliable method for dealing with that many hounds late game. Hell, maybe even just increasing Tooth drop rates so that building a ridiculous number of traps is practical.

[Asparagus]

@boltthundara,

How efficiently are you using your teeth traps? While utilizing teeth traps are helpful, you should also kite them so they don't go over traps and help with damaging them. Do you just put them on the ground as most people say "Teeth Trap Fields"? You can maximize their effectiveness by using the terrain and other methods such as funneling the waves of hounds:

[Disclaimer: this was taken from an earlier version of DST but it is still DST none the less]

Note the number of days survived.

 

Also, hosts are capable of not lagging like the the clients so they can react faster and on time. if you hear a hound coming, rush it and dispatch it quickly before others come and accumulate making it harder for them to be kited.

 

[Arcita]

@Arcita

 

How many people are you hosting on that 1000 day server, though? There's a significant difference between one person and, say, 6 people trying to survive a post day 100 wave. For even 4 people, like I play with, it could take as many as 100 tooth traps to wipe out a wave. 40 hounds x 150 hp = 6000 HP. Bare minimum, under ideal conditions, would be 48 traps per wave. That's assuming the smallest wave size and all the hounds are red/blue. And other defenses are equally impractical against 40+ hounds. That many can wipe out a beefalo herd or spider queen in two waves. Possibly as little as 1, depending on some RNG in the hounds' favor. No standard pig village can handle that size a wave. You'd have to build several clusters of pig houses, and even then they would be inside much of the time in any season except summer.

 

The only thing I've found that works reliably is tentacles, but even that has problems. You either need someone playing Wickerbottom to build a tentacle field, or you have to find the Hundred Reed trap or Maxwell's Merm Shrine set piece. And without something like the Renewable World mod, the Merm Shrine is a temporary solution at best since the merms will eventually clear all the tentacles. Plus it requires you to live fairly close to those set pieces. A 30 second warning before attacks means you don't have much time to travel unless you want to kite hounds across the entire map.

 

My point is that hound attacks should not be the be-all-end-all of endgame for groups. It's unfun. While I can personally survive on my own indefinitely, this is not true for everybody, and keeping a group alive becomes much more difficult. I'm not sure what the best solution to fix this is, because I don't want the game to be easy, but there needs to be some reliable method for dealing with that many hounds late game. Hell, maybe even just increasing Tooth drop rates so that building a ridiculous number of traps is practical.

Currently 4, same as you. I'm curious, why do you insist on saying something is impossible when everyone else in the thread is telling you that you're wrong? 

 

There are two possibilities:

 

1. The game is broken to the point of being unsurvivable. If this is the case then your situation should be universal.

 

2. Other people can quite easily handle hound waves. The problem is on your end. 

 

 

Increase tooth drop rates? Please no. I have 4 chests of teeth by now, and stacks upon stacks are just piling up at my teeth trap fields. I don't even bother picking up teeth anymore. Know why you're having problems getting ahead on teeth? Maybe it's because 3 of your members drop out of the game whenever hounds come......... 

[applebottom]

Maybe it's because 3 of your members drop out of the game whenever hounds come

 

I'm thinking this is the problem too. They've reached late game but his friends haven't learned a lot, since said friends take the easy way out (ie log out and wait for hound wave to be over). The hounds count increase under the assumption that if you reach N days, you should have learned enough about the world to be able to deal with X hounds. If your friends skipped the learning-by-experience part, then you're out of luck since you have to deal with 4x more hounds by yourself.

 

Hounds don't all spawn at the same time. With some teamwork, you can all gang up on the first couple of hounds that spawn. Those who are aggroed can run around or to the tooth traps. Those who are free can work on resetting traps or helping whack the other hounds.

 

Maybe start a separate server, set it to all Day, talk to your team and spawn in hounds and traps and stuff. Walk them through the basics and establish some sort of plan and drill them on it? Once you're ready go back to your main world and hopefully they'll be able to help you with the hound attacks.

[Dipps]

An advice: Make a tooth trap field per player. Hound waves have a maximum of 10 hounds, meaning 25 tooth traps per field works just fine. The fields should be in a easily reachable spot, without any subsequent barriers that would that give you a hard time entering the spot. So don't make it near the coast, and don't build walls, unless you want to direct the hounds into a deathtrap (which is already tricky considering hound's destructive AI in which is just as likely to bite your wall off as it is to go through an open tunnel). You may also consider to tell your friends to actually be active and productive during hound waves (killing them off) and collect up teeths, for new traps in case the ones you have already (and their grandchildren and grandsons) are not enough;

Another recommended practice: live near a wormhole, and have the toothfield on the other side, so you can cover solid distance within the short warning without the anxiety that all those red hounds may come through your base. 

[TuffDwarf]

What about turning down the hounds in the WorldGen? Doesn't that lengthen the hound-free period of time as well as make the waves smaller?

[Asparagus]

What about turning down the hounds in the WorldGen? Doesn't that lengthen the hound-free period of time as well as make the waves smaller?

Yes. 

[enragedcamel]

What about turning down the hounds in the WorldGen? Doesn't that lengthen the hound-free period of time as well as make the waves smaller?

 

Yes.

 

But a group that can survive all four seasons should be turning hounds UP, not down.

 

Something doesn't add up here.