Low sanity needs to be a bigger threat

[enragedcamel]

It is no secret that low sanity stops being a challenge after a while. Considering how easy it is to kite and kill shadow monsters (even terrorbeak), most experienced players can stay insane for long periods of time and manage the inconvenience of getting attacked every now and then. All they need is a log suit and a spear.

 

I propose that insanity is made more challenging. One way this can be accomplished is by introducing a randomness factor where characters who are insane actually do insane things. Some examples:

 

• Combat starts. The player's character yells "I don't need any armor to defeat the likes of you!", drops their armor on the ground and refuses to put any on. Lasts until end of combat.
• The player's character goes to sleep in a tent or sleeping bag. Shortly after, they wake up screaming "Bugs! BUGS! They are EVERYWHERE!" and set the sleeping bag or tent on fire.
• The player's character randomly vomits food they eat as wet goop, saying "I've had too many calories today, gotta stay in shape for tomorrow's photo shoot!". Negates the effects of the food.
• As their sanity gets low, the player's character starts talking to and arguing with themselves. Once they go insane, a shadow copy can spawn (i.e. multiple personality disorder) and attack them. The shadow copy has the same stats and equipment as the player character.
• The player's character randomly hurts themselves, yelling "NO PAIN, NO GAIN!"

 

Anyway, these are just some ideas. The bottom line is that low sanity should be more of a threat and people shouldn't be able to follow a set formula to manage it easily and get out of it. Rather, the game should encourage them to avoid it as much as possible.

[RalphKastro]

Well, I'm not sure if insanity of a non-issue in DST, but most of my problems are due to lag, so maybe you're right.(still laughable in DS, though)

I'm not sure how I feel with switching the "insanity" effect from just mental fatigue and derangement, added to some supernatural stuff, to actual mental disorders. I'd be all up for some heavy hallucinating, though.

[1v0]

True sanity is dangerous but only in certain situations, normally it's just used to farm shadow fuel . So yea i'm agree with you maybe buff the shadows or add a stronger shadow for 0 sanity (shadow Wilson) and the randomness factor you proposed can be really interesting to see ingame .

[PandaWaffles]

Maybe only after a characters has killed a certain number of shadow creatures? I've seen enough newbies get slaughtered by their first couple crawling horrors, and I just think it'd be even worse if insanity became an even bigger threat than it currently is.

 

Especially when you're the only one that knows what they're doing on a public server and one person dies, then the sanity drain causes the others to drop like flies and suddenly you're the only one still alive and they beg to restart the server.

[XopherPM]

I like the idea of making insanity more of a threat, but taking control from the player is at best not fun, and at worst frustrating. Rather I'd like to see more hallucinations that would lead the player to make irrational decisions.

E.g. all your food could start to look like poison, or you'd actually see bugs crawling all over your tent.

[Derpime]

Wow,the bug part was like:

-First,we will use fire

-Next,we will nuke that crap just to make sure.

And yeah,you can only deal with 1 or 2 of them.If they come in 5 or more.YOU ARE DED

But i they need to buff nightmare creatures a little bit

[GuyNamedChris]

*idea*

(doesn't negate, it's just funny as hell)

The player can randomly does Wes' moves when examining items, it just seems kinda insane to me 

[WhyNotWhy]

Very interesting. If each character had their own reaction to insanity, that would be interesting as well.

[ImDaMisterL]

These are great ideas, and @WhyNotWhy 's idea is great too!

I'm gonma TRY and make a mod 'boit this!

TRY!

[UnionGaming]

These are great ideas, and @WhyNotWhy 's idea is great too!

I'm gonma TRY and make a mod 'boit this!

TRY!

MisterL to the rescue as always!

[GiddyGuy]

The player's character randomly vomits food they eat as wet goop, saying "I've had too many calories today, gotta stay in shape for tomorrow's photo shoot!". Negates the effects of the food.

Does that mean we can have cameras in the game so that line makes sense.  

[jbeetle]

For me it's been inconsistent. Sometimes shadows never spawn at low/no sanity, and other times I can't stop fighting them.

[Johnny5isAlive]

characters who are insane actually do insane things

Brilliant! Klei needs to seriously think about this! This would be a great addition in TTA to make things a little harder. The hardest part about being insane in DS was if a lot of nightmares grouped up on you now in DST that's a non-issue because other players can draw their attention making the fight trivial. 

 

I'm gonma TRY and make a mod 'boit this!

I'm usually against mods but in this case I would gladly make an exception. 

[Ridley]

For me it's been inconsistent. Sometimes shadows never spawn at low/no sanity, and other times I can't stop fighting them.

 

Last time I dealt with the Shadow Creatures, their buggy AI and lag would give them lots of cheap hits and practically no escape.

 

And I think the insanity stuff is annoying enough as it is, without random things happening on top of it. The color drain becomes painful to look at after awhile, especially in winter, and the background sounds loop endlessly. Maybe insanity could use a few new tricks, but personally I think it is more annoying than most people here are giving it credit for.

 

Stupid Terrorbeaks spawning in groups when I need to keep the campfire lit...

[Sindex]

There was one mod (as far as I can remember) that enhanced the insanity factor for Don't Starve. It is called Hallucinations and it was created by Desblat.

 

You can still find it here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=255213910

 

Also here is a mod spotlight video done by JaR Dev:

 

Edit: As a side note the video is old, and the mod has been updated a bit since then. Furthermore the “living skeleton” part has been removed and put into it's separate own mod. Since people asked for those two factor to be separated out. I would say the first two minutes represents the mod more then the last couple of minutes.

 

It was a great mod because it added more to the sanity factor beyond the shadow creatures. The unfortunate part is when Desblat tried to port it over to DS:T, but there were so many issues that could not be resolved for the DS:T port. So the project was abandon for now.

[Stakhanov]

While there's lots of potential for insanity mods , I don't think insanity should be changed in vanilla DST. It had to lose the monster rabbits in the multiplayer port , but the addition of lag and multiple sources of shadow creatures dramatically increased the challenge.

 

I don't think insanity was intended to kill the player outright , but mostly to add more trouble to a dangerous situation. Do tell me how insanity is no big deal when you're fighting deerclops !

 

Ideally , if you wanted to make insanity impactful in DST , you could have creatures spawn shadow clones of themselves with custom AI to cause more trouble. Imagine a shadow turkey following you at a distance , waiting to find your field of berries and devouring them in seconds ! Or a shadow frog dropping multiple items when hitting you. So many possibilities for mischief.

[ImDaMisterL]

This thread is a pot of gold ideas and I love it.

[ThaumicParrot]

I'd really like it if insane characters had frizzled hair, foaming mouths, and tattered clothes. But by means of things that actually affect you, I think insane characters should break tools faster through accident jittery-ness, and maybe they can rip out their hair from time to time doing small amounts of damage.

[Mario384]

Shadow Wilson was an abandoned thing from long ago.  Would be amazing if that idea would be brought back.