Time Traveling through a world

[absimiliard]

So I run a Wilderness dedicated server, it freezes when no one is one it, but it gets enough play that it goes a few hundred days in the course of a week.  At the end-stages worlds tend to go a bit spidery and devoid of goodness (like tentacles, trees, bushes, pigs, rocks, etc.), in the early stages everything's kittens and bowls of milk, and in the middle it's livable but unpredictable.

 

I don't play as often as I'd like, a few times a week for an hour or so typically.  Usually this results in me seeing several different stages of server for a brief time, so in a sense I time-travel into the future of my server in vast jumps.  I'm usually around for the first few days, during which I will map as much of the world as I can and set up a few things like crockpots or research stations as I go.  Mid-world my games tend to have me nomading around as whatever structures I've set up earlier are usually gone;  either to griefers, or deerclops, etc.  End-world is, as I noted, spidery and often empty, though still survivable (if boring) since spiders are excellent for a host of things.

 

Since I play only a few times, often at very different world-stages, and rarely with anything surviving one play to another I've learned to use a fairly nomadic style of play.   I try to make sure that I've got the inventory to build things, or have things pre-built.  I've also learned that I need to work on survival things like heat-rocks and endo-thermic fires (and flingo-matics) starting from Day 1, because the next time I play could be in any season and will probably not have any useful base-structures left around for me.

 

My current biggest time traveling dilemma is inventory.  I need twigs/grass/flint/rocks/gold/nitre/logs of course.  I also need silk, pig-skins, gold, reeds, and charcoal for the things I need to build or replace regularly.  I require a heat-rock, a winter hat of some sort, and an umbrella or a random season-change could kill me, and I really try to keep gears in my inventory as well.  But by then I've run into balancing issues, I want to carry food, but I also need tools, and those gears, a torch would be nice . . .. . . .

 

I can't be alone in this play-style, there must be other people who time-travel through dedicated servers seeing all the stages and nomading around as best they can, since basing isn't really possible if you time-travel very far at all.  So I'm curious, do any of the rest of us time-travel like I do or is this an odd-ball little corner-case of a play-style no one else does?  

 

And if you do are there any useful tips, like how you handle inventory, to pass along for me or others?

[Zinglon]

Greetings. You may remember me as k9~ something.

 

I like to kept playing DST without leaving my room from the first autumn to next autumn season comes when I have no will to do with my own real-life work, like in the weekends(because it takes about 10 hrs, it's quite a madness to people who have works and family lol). So I could unlock most of recipes by getting through all seasons, and setup a cozy camp with many facilities.

 

Sometimes I backed to the game after a day or two days in real-life, two different consequences happens - one is some players had lived in my camp without damaging, and the other is yeah griefing. If the damage is tremendous, I just logoff and joined to another server. If not, repair some of the damage and kept living on.

 

But when I chose to continue that ruined server, I could do that with some preparations before my first logoff, so I write them down a bit on here.

 

0. Unlock as much recipes as possible.

 

1. Make important facilities and keep it. Don't deploying them into ground. These facilities can be used in future for either repairing your camp or set up a new camp away from other player's touch, and these undeployed facilities also could narrow down your choice about which ingredients to kept in your inventory. In example, reeds are not an ingredient to keep if you've already save a birdcage (Very malicious grifers can burn out all reeds in the server, but I had seen it just once in my ~1000 hours of playing time).

 

2. Also save every type of fireplace deployments to react server's season when you joined again.

 

3. Get some jerkies and bacon and eggs for food source, as they require 20 days to rot completely.

 

4. Get some essential clothing set like Tam'o Shanter + Eyebrella + walking cane. With these you can survive all the seasons.

 

So let's think about what to keep and what to throw away from your inventory. I'll get some lists for them from my experiences....

 

Twig (40), Grass (40), Gold (20), Stone (40), Flints (~10), Log (20), Pig skin (~5?), Nitre (~40), Melee weapon and spare one (can be omitted), Ranged weapon (omittable), Football helm, Eyebrella, Tam, Hibearnation suit (Only if you're Wolfgang), walking cane, Bacons and eggs (~10), Jerkies (~10, omittable), Hound tooth (12-20), Silks (~40), Gears (~3).

 

Now, you have very essential ingredients. If possible, add some luxury tools and Ropes (20). Torch is one-time used light source, hence I recommend Morning star or Miner hat as light source to save. A bunch of seed would be good for further farming or birdcatching.

 

With these, you can craft almost every tools and facilities(except birdcage) for another mini-camp or station, and can repair your crucial clothing, set up traps for empowered hound rushing, deal with hostile mobs and seasonal problems. Hence pig king can generate infinite number of gold, using gold as a toolmaker for mid-game is recommended.

 

Well, when I was get downed of my will to continue playing in ruined server, these preparations are useless, but when I resolved to play more, these saved facilities and inventory items helped a lot. Hope you get some tips from my poor writings. The Key is unlocking many recipes, saving facilities and ingredients, and preparing foods and clothing, weapons.

 

Ah, and at last, place your mini camp in somewhere very far corner of the map -like behind hound mound in desert biome- would be good for preventing noob griefers to find out yours.

[absimiliard]

Hi K9!  Nice to see you here.

 

I definitely do try to pre-build as much as I can.  I've found that's incredibly useful on saving inventory slots for making other things.  I'm also reasonably good at not making one huge base in an obviously griefable spot, usually I scatter smaller working camps around.  I've only once tried to actively hide my camp though, I should do it more often it worked out well.

 

I'd totally forgotten the walking cane and tam-o-shanter, I don't usually walrus-hunt like I ought to, and I seem to have some sort of a mental block on the miner's hat that I really need to overcome.  I think we can both admit you're a more advanced player than I am as well (since we've both played together), and that shows in the eyebrella and the hounds-teeth which I either don't get or tend to forget about.  For some reason I keep thinking of hounds as bad, when I changed how I thought of spiders my game improved so I'm guessing I should do that here as well.

 

I always end up devoting a slot to picking up green 'shrooms as I go, to help w. sanity, or cactus fruit if I'm in the desert.  Do you not bother because you already have the tam-o-shanter?  Before you get it do you bother?

[Zinglon]

Hi K9!  Nice to see you here.

 

I definitely do try to pre-build as much as I can.  I've found that's incredibly useful on saving inventory slots for making other things.  I'm also reasonably good at not making one huge base in an obviously griefable spot, usually I scatter smaller working camps around.  I've only once tried to actively hide my camp though, I should do it more often it worked out well.

 

I'd totally forgotten the walking cane and tam-o-shanter, I don't usually walrus-hunt like I ought to, and I seem to have some sort of a mental block on the miner's hat that I really need to overcome.  I think we can both admit you're a more advanced player than I am as well (since we've both played together), and that shows in the eyebrella and the hounds-teeth which I either don't get or tend to forget about.  For some reason I keep thinking of hounds as bad, when I changed how I thought of spiders my game improved so I'm guessing I should do that here as well.

 

I always end up devoting a slot to picking up green 'shrooms as I go, to help w. sanity, or cactus fruit if I'm in the desert.  Do you not bother because you already have the tam-o-shanter?  Before you get it do you bother?

 

In sanity issue, I also rely on cooked green mushrooms at the beginning, but when I worked off a camp I prefer tent-sleeping for recharging both health and sanity since food supply is not a matter in that time. And yes, Tam really helps a lot for keeping sanity almost full in every season except the Summer. Hence I really recommend to find out Mactusk's igloo before the Winter. Walking cane also helps your mental-in-reality by speeding up movement of your character.

 

Well, tooth traps for hounds are essential in late-game when they begin to outnumber of your dealing ability. And in most case, even griefers don't touch much on my traps because amount of them (I generally place more than 20 traps on my main camp) outnumbers their inventory pool lol... You can stack much teeth with skulls of hound in desert or Mactusk igloo raid throughout the Winter. When there's more than 3 igloo spots in the map... Extravaganza! That's why I always set up the first camp near igloo(s).

 

In the eyebrella case... If you're not dare enough to face the Deerclops man to man or there's another players who are competing with others about Deerclops' rewarding, an umbrella would be a good alternative. Combination of umbrella + straw hat has same cooling effects as Eyebrella, but you lose a hand slot. So killing Deerclops is much recommended. Unless Wolfgang's full boosting, other character takes at least 3 armours with 80% damage reduction (log suit, football helm) and much sanity drops (>15 jerkies for healing sanity and health would be fine I guess). But it is significantly worth to pull out his eye, to get a cozy game through Spring and Summer.

[absimiliard]

Hrmmm, tents.  Yes, perhaps I should explore those more.  I've never really been a fan of sleeping, but for those times when I have a big surplus of food and a lack of sanity/health maybe I should reconsider that.