Suggestion: Making sleeping essential

[DreamApart]

Sleeping can help restoring sanity and skipping night time, but it's totally optional.
 
While, now, tents, siesta lean-to and other sleeping tools are just emergency night skipper or alternative sanity booster at a cost of hunger and other stuff.
 
But, eating and dressing will easily fill up the sanity loss, and sleeping is too expensive compared to food.
 
It seems that at first sanity loss was designed as a punishment for not sleeping for long time. But that punishment is too small compared to wearing a good hat.
 
In SW, sleeping is more expensive (because pigs for tents, fertilizer for straw roll), while meals and hats that restore sanity are way cheaper.
 
That doesn't make sense, food can restore hunger points and saves time, while sleeping drains your hunger points, so eating completely beats sleeping.
 
So players tend not to sleep for years and have those boring nights staying awake around fire in order to save resources.
In real life, eating cannot take place of sleeping. And one cannot survive without sleeping for several days.
 
Possible change: 

• Make sleeping tools more durable or cost less resource

Things like Bed Roll  is ridiculously expensive, and cannot be acquired in early game. This makes players get used to skipping sleeping at night.

• Adding a sleepiness (or fatigue) meter (visible or not), and it keeps falling when you are awake. 

Sorry for my POOOOR drawing! (Help appreciated)

• When it is low (about 40%) the character begins to complain. (e.g. I'm so tired) 
• When it is very low (about 20%) the character moves, chops, hacks and attacks slower than usual and complains (e.g. My eyelids are heavy), and sanity slightly drained over time. 
• When it falls to zero, the character is forced to sleep on the ground (like cooking a mandrake). This will restore some sleepiness points but lose a lot of sanity and some hunger.
• Intentional sleeping will restore more sleepiness points and gain sanity instead of loss

The player may still choose to spend a few sleepless night to do some emergency things, but this will give him a reason to sleep rather than saving the time and resources. (One of the reasons is that the game is called Don't Starve, so I'm used to living stingily.)

 
EDIT:
This is just one possible way. The question is should do some change to sleeping?

Just stop here, this discussion is ruined.

[avilmask]

Yeaaaaah, right. Insomnia, Wickerbottom, stuff. I'm still see sleeping only as an emergency act.

[DreamApart]

Yeaaaaah, right. Insomnia, Wickerbottom, stuff. I'm still see sleeping only as an emergency act.

 

If it's not an emergency act, that means you sleep everyday, like real life.

 

But yes, that change would make Wickerbottom OP compared to others, especially when in SW sanity food is too cheap compared to sleeping. (In SW there are a lot of seafood that restore a lot of sanity points and are very easy to get)

 

So that could be another reason we should make sleeping cheaper.

[avilmask]

If it's not an emergency act, that means you sleep everyday, like real life.

You need to drink every day (and actually it was suggested a lot of times), you need to pee every day, way more often than sleep. You actually can to not eat for a couple of days without lethal consequences.

There is already short term meter and long term meter to maintain. No need to make things over-complicated.

[DreamApart]

Yeaaaaah, right. Insomnia, Wickerbottom, stuff. I'm still see sleeping only as an emergency act.

You need to drink every day (and actually it was suggested a lot of times), you need to pee every day, way more often than sleep. You actually can to not eat for a couple of days without lethal consequences.

There is already short term meter and long term meter to maintain. No need to make things over-complicated.

The problem is that sleeping in this game now is not so useful. Food is so powerful while sleeping is not.

I'm trying to find and solve the problem. And what I said was just one possible way.

So if you have an idea, say your idea. And don't judge me.

[rezecib]

@DreamApart, Well, I think a solution that's less likely to introduce other complications would be to simply buff the stats of sleeping, either by making sleeping items easier to craft, or by increasing the gains from it or reducing the hunger gain. If sleeping was actually a way to conserve hunger in seasons where you find it hard to get food, for example, it would have a bit of a niche.

[Catweaselcrow]

why not just use the siesta lean-to to avoid the majority of volcanic eruptions?

 

far cheaper to stock up on jerky and lean-tos than the clean-up cost of a couple of meteors to the base.

[DreamApart]

But there is another problem.

if you don't need to sleep, you don't need a place to sleep.

If you don't need a place to sleep, you don't need a home.

If people don't need a home, you can't build something and call it a home, because there is no such thing as a home.

So needing to sleep gives you a reason to build a home.

So my opinion is to make the tent or something hard to build but easy to maintain, like a fire pit.

@DreamApartby making sleeping items easier to craft

Then it matters a lot how easy it can be.

For now, making a "straw roll" requires a science machine. That means you most probably can not and need not sleep on the first several days. So this means braving the darkness is a must.

And after you settle down, you are so used to the darkness and don't want to sleep at all because you almost forgot there is a "sleep" in this world.

So the sleeping items must be cheap enough so it can bait the player into choosing to sleep rather than to brave the night.

Well, I think a solution that's less likely to introduce other complications

About complications, I think if sleepiness or fatigue is introducing complication, then making a campfire is just another way to introduce complication.

[CameoAppearance]

This would be a huge game mechanics change. It'd make an OK mod, but there's no reason why it should specifically be in Shipwrecked. It would actually be a lot weirder to introduce it now in this expansion than in the vanilla game or even Reign of Giants, because so much of Shipwrecked revolves around the new location and having mandatory sleep happen only on the tropical islands would be baffling.

 

I think you're in the wrong forum, if nothing else. But mostly I think the time to bring up this suggestion would have been when the main game was still in Early Access.

 

Also you don't need pigs for tents, or anything other than grass and rope for straw rolls, so that part deeply confuses me. I don't really understand why you think sleeping items are harder to get in Shipwrecked than the main game. Except for the Fur Roll, but that's just because it hasn't been linked up with caves yet and bunnymen don't live on the surface.

 

Personally, I found my tent quite useful to bring my sanity back up a few times after getting constantly rained on in hurricane season, and occasionally sleeping was a less resource-consuming choice than the massive pile of firewood I'd need to keep a fire going all night. I think sleeping is balanced as is, allowing for the fact that Don't Starve has never been designed to require the player to sleep frequently.

[Ryla]

With over 1200 hours played, I don't think I have ever slept after the first day I purchased don't starve. Night time is when I prototype stuff, work on my base, cook, eat, gather some resources on the edge of my farm that I can see by firelight, plan for the next day's travels, feed spoiling meat to my caged bird, etc etc. If I had to sleep at night when would I do all that stuff? I'm happy with how it is currently.

[Kingjjwpenguin]

I really don't see a use in this. It just seems unnecessary.

[TMJJack]

I think this could be a neat, character-specific thing such as the character becoming more vulnerable to insanity auras the long he or she fails to sleep, but I can't see this being a mechanic with things the way they are. Full moons, Wickerbottom, and caves would all make this way to difficult to implement.

[DreamApart]

With over 1200 hours played, I don't think I have ever slept after the first day I purchased don't starve. Night time is when I prototype stuff, work on my base, cook, eat, gather some resources on the edge of my farm that I can see by firelight, plan for the next day's travels, feed spoiling meat to my caged bird, etc etc. If I had to sleep at night when would I do all that stuff? I'm happy with how it is currently.

So that's the problem, sleeping is not necessary. And it is also expensive for the time spent.

If you don't need to sleep, why the sleeping items?

[DreamApart]

I don't really understand why you think sleeping items are harder to get in Shipwrecked than the main game.

It is harder to get things like silk and pig skin at the same time. But that's not the key point. It was that sleeping is too expensive compared to food and dressing.

 

But mostly I think the time to bring up this suggestion would have been when the main game was still in Early Access.

I don't think I was wrong bringing up this discussion at this time.

Seafoods restoring sanity and health are OP, and Pirate Hat restoring sanity is very cheap. And those are introduced in SW.

I think sleeping is not working as how it was tried to be designed.

And that suggestion was just one possible way.

[DreamApart]

I think you're in the wrong forum, if nothing else. But mostly I think the time to bring up this suggestion would have been when the main game was still in Early Access.

And usually people need discussion before it is clear what to discuss.

So the question now might be "should we redesign sleeping?"

But sadly I the title cannot be edited.

[CameoAppearance]

You don't need pig skin to make tents. I don't know what pig skin has to do with sleeping. The most important crafting recipes involving pig skin are the Football Helmet and Ham Bat (combat items), Pig House (for making more pigs), and Umbrella (for wetness protection), and the One-Man Band actively decreases your sanity. Why do you keep bringing up pigs?

 

If your problem is that restoring sanity is too easy with the new Shipwrecked crockpot recipes and the Pirate Hat's combination of usefulness and ease of crafting, why not just say that instead of offering no change to the things you think make it too easy to restore sanity and instead proposing an extensive rework of the basic game mechanics which has no reason to be confined to the Shipwrecked map? Sleeping is not the root cause of the problem, the new Shipwrecked items and their crafting recipes are the cause of the problem. If there was an inherent major flaw in the way sleeping worked it would have been noticeable in the vanilla game or Reign of Giants.

 

Now that I've seen the recipe I agree, the Pirate Hat is way too easy to craft considering that it's just as good as the Tam O'Shanter and the Tam can only be obtained by looting the body of a tough enemy who only has a 25% chance of dropping it in the first place. But your suggestion wasn't "Make the Pirate Hat harder to get", it was "Completely redesign how sleeping works."

 

Sleeping works fine, at least in vanilla and RoG. It lets you skip the dangers of nighttime, which was in fact its original purpose. (The tent was originally used to change characters, then changed to work like a Straw Roll Plus.) Its health restoration can be very useful if all you have at your disposal is a crockpot, a tent, and a pile of monster meat and berries (or some other filler), which can easily happen in Adventure Mode. Its sanity restoration is very helpful in a crisis; sources of sanity are more important in Adventure Mode, RoG spring with its constant rain, or Shipwrecked hurricane season than the vanilla basegame, where it's only a problem if you get careless or greedy or have a string of bad luck. Whether you're fleeing to your base, plunking down a pre-built tent, or dropping a straw roll wherever you happen to be standing, sprinting away from shadow monsters until they're far enough off your trail for it to be safe enough to sleep makes it a very valuable tactic (the closest Wickerbottom can get is eating a mandrake). It's far from useless, but you can get along okay without it. That seems like solid game design to me.

 

If it's too easy to get sanity back without ever sleeping in Shipwrecked, the solution is to tone down the sanity restoration from new sources. The solution is not to shrug and say "Well, I guess sleeping doesn't work anymore," and toss a well-established and useful game mechanic out the window.

[DreamApart]

You don't need pig skin to make tents. I don't know what pig skin has to do with sleeping. The most important crafting recipes involving pig skin are the Football Helmet and Ham Bat (combat items), Pig House (for making more pigs), and Umbrella (for wetness protection), and the One-Man Band actively decreases your sanity. Why do you keep bringing up pigs?

 

Maybe I had the wrong memory, my bad. I think I have mixed it with the umbrella.

It is silk that is harder to get in SW.

 

Sleeping is not the root cause of the problem

I can't completely agree.

 

If it's too easy to get sanity back without ever sleeping in Shipwrecked, the solution is to tone down the sanity restoration from new sources. The solution is not to shrug and say "Well, I guess sleeping doesn't work anymore," and toss a well-established and useful game mechanic out the window.

Fine, just forget it. This is getting off topic. If you insist thinking on whether this thread is a troll, or trying to lecture me, then there is no point to continue the discussion.

So let's stop here to prevent the potential flame.

[bdiz4shiz]

I play Wickerbottom exclusively, which means I cannot sleep. I build a base not because I need a place to sleep, but because I need a place to reliably gather food and basic resources to survive. The need for making a base is not simply out of need to have a place to sleep.

 

But there is another problem.
if you don't need to sleep, you don't need a place to sleep.
If you don't need a place to sleep, you don't need a home.
If people don't need a home, you can't build something and call it a home, because there is no such thing as a home.

So needing to sleep gives you a reason to build a home.

 

ooops i just read the last post... about ending the covo... mb

[NotStarvnMarvn]

Honestly I hate the idea.

[DreamApart]

Honestly I hate the idea.

Wasn't the first reply in this thread you won't say it.

This discussion is ruined, so plz just stop trolling.

You are not commanded to like this.

[Annymosa]

@DreamApart

Sorry, I know you didn't want more comments, but I'll say it anyway:

 

Love the idea! This would be a fantastic idea for a mod! The sleep mechanic would add a whole new challenge to the game, just like wetness and sanity did when they were introduced. However, I think a lot of people would be opposed to making it a permanent mechanic for many of the reasons stated above. However, as a mod it would add so much to the game for veteran players and those seeking extra immersion! Also, best thing about mods is that they are an optional addition so people who wouldn't like it don't have to.

 

I hope someone can make this. Check in with the modders in the forums and see if people are interested. If nothing else, perhaps it could be an idea for an expansion in the future. Imagine a dream-themed DLC, travelling to dream-like worlds, kind of like adventure mode. Good dreams, bad dreams, new nightmare creatures, perhaps an added story element, like finding "relics" from a character's life... one can always dream. (Excuse the pun!)

 

Love the illustrations you made by the way! 

[OrderedChaos]

Eh I mean... yeah it's not realistic but incentivising sleeping would encourage your players to essentially skip through the game. Where's the fun in that?

 

Sleeping is already a good mechanic. It's more of a last resort type of thing that will bring you back from the brink of insanity when you really need it. I see no reason gameplay-wise to have it play a more important role.

 

If you're new to Don't Starve in general, I wouldn't worry about this mechanic, you'll get used to it. Besides if realism is something that concerns you, you're probably playing the wrong game.

 

 

• Giant tentacles
• walking chest creatures with functional but completely detached eyes
• inability to wear both a jacket and a backpack simultaneously
• no need to stay hydrated
• no need to pee or poop
• Anthropomorphic talking pigs who live in houses
• Ambiguously constructed but somehow useful 'science machines'
• Endothermic fires
• Actual magic

 

Obviously I could go on

[daduhweewah]

I have not slept since like my first two runs and prob 1500 days or so of playing, and I have zero, absolutely zero interest in sleeping. There is too much I want to do when I am playing to waste any days of a season sleeping.

Also, if you are standing around a fire every night, you are wasting time you could be doing things. Given in this game during flood season, you kind of have to stand near a fire.

[DreamApart]

... and I have zero, absolutely zero interest in sleeping. There is too much I want to do when I am playing to waste any days of a season sleeping.

Yes. If you don't need to sleep, sleeping is a waste of time.

That why I say sleeping is not working as expected.

[DreamApart]

Eh I mean... yeah it's not realistic but incentivising sleeping would encourage your players to essentially skip through the game. Where's the fun in that?

If this is the topic you think I was on, I doubt you have actually read the post or comments.

... you're probably playing the wrong game.

If it is such a bulls**t, then it won't be implemented in the game.

So why the judgement and complaint?

What about I say that you are in the wrong thread?

• Giant tentacles
• walking chest creatures with functional but completely detached eyes
• inability to wear both a jacket and a backpack simultaneously
• no need to stay hydrated
• no need to pee or poop
• Anthropomorphic talking pigs who live in houses
• Ambiguously constructed but somehow useful 'science machines'
• Endothermic fires
• Actual magic

Obviously I could go on

Wow, amazing, I didn't know that people have to pee, thank you for the good lecture.