Snakes Are Not Monsters!

[GuyPerfect]

I have a beef with Snakes dropping Monster Meat. They're not monsters. Tallbirds are more horrifying, yet they don't drop Monster Meat. So why should Snakes? Snakes ought to drop Morsels.

 

Let's take a look at the things that are considered monsters: Hounds, Spiders, Beardlings and Beardlords, Tentacles, Treeguards, Krampus, Depths Worms and the Glommer. A common trend here is that things that drop Monster Meat are either bloodthirsty or surreal. Sometimes both. But then shouldn't Tallbird qualify? According to Maxwell, the Tallbirds are in fact a failed experiment, so perhaps they're not monsters because they're not made from monster parts...

 

There are many other critters in the game, and they always drop safe meat (Beardlings notwithstanding): Rabbits, Frogs, Fish, Eels, Buzzards and Gobblers all drop what amounts to Morsel, while Beefalo, giants, Pigs, Catcoons, Koalefants, Bunnymen, MacTusk and Volt Goats drop regular Meat. They're ordinary critters, many of them passive, and therefore give ordinary meat.

 

Enter Shipwrecked, where some new animals can be found. Most of the new fauna is considered a type of fish, including Crabs that can ultimately give you Bone Shards despite having no bones... The things that are considered monsters here still fit the general theme from before: Flups, Stink Rays and Sea Hounds. Still surreal and/or unscrupulously aggressive.

 

And that brings us to Snakes. Yeah, they're aggressive, but they have to hunt to survive, so that's to be expected. Generally speaking, they're less territorial than Tallbirds or Warrior Pigs. They're not made of black fuzzy dark stuff and don't have glowing eyes or anything. They don't fit the description for a monster.

 

Snakes really ought to drop Morsels instead of Monster Meat. That makes the most sense.

[PhelsarusBeel]

I think an idea we could make is let them drop a new type of food basicly the monster meat equivalent to morsel.

 

Because here is the thing snakes are OVER abundant in the jungleareas and if they would drop morsels there would be NO reason to actually collect most other food sources because of the shear amount of them.

 

The reason they drop monstermeat isn't because of the type of enemy but because of balancing reasons because just as Spiders snakes come in huge swarms are easy to kite and kill (even easier because there is no Snakeequivalent to the SPiderwarrior) and if they would drop morsel you could just call it a day once you find an island with a big jungle and a good chunck of Snakedens.

 

A good example here is a recent night i had as Webber. Dusk comes and out of 3 vinebushes pop snakes i kill them 2 drop meat 1 drops skin. Then more snakes spawn i whack them again and again 2 meat 1 skin. This happend 3 more times leaving me with around 9 Monstermeat and 6 Snakeskin.

 

Now immagine if Snakes would drop Morsel again next to no risk for a good reward and they would be the best food source.

 

So if we would consider adjusting the drops then snakes should drop something akin to Monster Morsel so their foodvalue is lower and you don't end up with 20 monstermeat by the end of day 4. Because a mob like this should not drop a very decend fooditem or an foodtype with no drawbacks.

[SirBuizelton]

Two things:

1: snakes are super common, getting that many morsels would be majorly op.

2: tall birds are fairly innocent and only seek you out if you enter their territory or take their young. They may look bad but they really aren't so bad.

[Kror]

2: tall birds are fairly innocent and only seek you out if you enter their territory or take their young. They may look bad but they really aren't so bad.

 

Tallbirds are even innocent creatures and add naughtyness. They indeed just protect their nest. They are "hard" to kill comparing to spiders, so they drop meat.

Balancing wise: That tentacles drop monstermeat is merely due to the fact, that it would be plainly weird if they dropped anything else imo.

 

You could say that everything that runs around in masses, is easy to kill, attacks on it's own and respawns fast will drop monstermeat. Mostly due to balancing.

[Lady Tyrantess]

Common or not, but I kind of agree

Snakes from my experience and what I've seen only pop out if the bushes are rustled and once in a while at night for what I assume as nocturnal frolicking (I have not been in any jungles, talk about bad luck or unable to locate them yet). Perhaps a small chance for them to drop a regular morsel? Not too OP and they can still spit monster meats for a semi balance. I don't know, only a suggestion to try and help.

[SirBuizelton]

Plus I feel like whether something is monster meat or not is reliant on whether or not what you're eating is conventional, tasty/nutritional food. Idk that was always my logic regarding this topic, lol.

[Kror]

Plus I feel like whether something is monster meat or not is reliant on whether or not what you're eating is conventional, tasty/nutritional food. Idk that was always my logic regarding this topic, lol.

Must be why eating raw jellyfish does not cost sanity or raw unprepared fish with eyes, scales etc. But a sliced piece of meat does.

 

Your logic usualy hits, but there are some exceptions which point at popculture etc. (e.g. sushi)

[PhelsarusBeel]

Plus I feel like whether something is monster meat or not is reliant on whether or not what you're eating is conventional, tasty/nutritional food. Idk that was always my logic regarding this topic, lol.

 

I always interpreteted as the Meat being tainted by the sheer evilness of the Creature. Like everything that is out to directly kill you on sight is just so corrupted with evil that it sticks even into the meat of it.

[SirBuizelton]

I always interpreteted as the Meat being tainted by the sheer evilness of the Creature. Like everything that is out to directly kill you on sight is just so corrupted with evil that it sticks even into the meat of it.

heavy. o-o

[Chamsey]

Only yellow snakes should drop monster meat.

[Codsworth]

I think there should be an "snake meat", wouldn't give as much hunger as the monster meat and wouldn't intantly damage you, but if you ate 2 or 3 of them it would start to cause damage, just as monster meat does, or it should just be like an morsel that have an sanity penalty.

 

anyway, snakes are TOO common, if you wait until dusk and hit a snake you will see the army that comes out of the jungle, every game I fill up an ice box with monster meat just from snakesource, if they dropped morsels, the game you change from "don't starve" to "don't get too fat with all that meat"

 

- oh and the "snake meat" should have an monster meat value equal to the monster meat for the crock pot -

[TheKingofSquirrels]

I have a beef with Snakes dropping Monster Meat. They're not monsters. Tallbirds are more horrifying, yet they don't drop Monster Meat. So why should Snakes? Snakes ought to drop Morsels.

 

Let's take a look at the things that are considered monsters: Hounds, Spiders, Beardlings and Beardlords, Tentacles, Treeguards, Krampus, Depths Worms and the Glommer. A common trend here is that things that drop Monster Meat are either bloodthirsty or surreal. Sometimes both. But then shouldn't Tallbird qualify? According to Maxwell, the Tallbirds are in fact a failed experiment, so perhaps they're not monsters because they're not made from monster parts...

 

There are many other critters in the game, and they always drop safe meat (Beardlings notwithstanding): Rabbits, Frogs, Fish, Eels, Buzzards and Gobblers all drop what amounts to Morsel, while Beefalo, giants, Pigs, Catcoons, Koalefants, Bunnymen, MacTusk and Volt Goats drop regular Meat. They're ordinary critters, many of them passive, and therefore give ordinary meat.

 

Enter Shipwrecked, where some new animals can be found. Most of the new fauna is considered a type of fish, including Crabs that can ultimately give you Bone Shards despite having no bones... The things that are considered monsters here still fit the general theme from before: Flups, Stink Rays and Sea Hounds. Still surreal and/or unscrupulously aggressive.

 

And that brings us to Snakes. Yeah, they're aggressive, but they have to hunt to survive, so that's to be expected. Generally speaking, they're less territorial than Tallbirds or Warrior Pigs. They're not made of black fuzzy dark stuff and don't have glowing eyes or anything. They don't fit the description for a monster.

 

Snakes really ought to drop Morsels instead of Monster Meat. That makes the most sense.

 

I have the same issue, especially because now everything seems to drop monster meat. Snakes, Spiders, Hounds Fish Hounds, Stink Rays...Monster Meat overload.

[Mildcream]

If snakes dropped morsels, you'd get even more food, which is already stupidly easy to get in SW. It should stay the same, just to not completely break the balance of the game.

 

Gameplay mechanics/balance > Game logic

[ThaumicParrot]

spiders- yeah, eating a spider wouldn't be too calming.

hound- I guess, wolf meat isn't too tasty.

snake- I think they should drop morsels. People eat snake in real life. Maybe just the poison ones should drop monster meat.

[CameoAppearance]

I wouldn't be too opposed to snakes being more like frogs than spiders drops-wise and having a unique type of meat, since snakes and frogs share the characteristic of being pretty okay animals in real life and bloodthirsty pests in the game.

 

The thing is, though, I don't know if that would be mechanically justified because snakes seem like they're calibrated to be a common enemy but a poor food source, the way spiders and hounds are in the main game, and making them drop Monster Meat is the simplest way to achieve that. Frogs, by contrast, are reasonably common in grassy biomes and will show up in large numbers during frog rains but aren't so much of a constant presence and are somewhat harder to fight head-on. Monster Meat has a sanity penalty even when cooked and you can't put too much of it in a crockpot; to similarly discourage players from surviving on nothing but snake meat, it'd have to have similar penalties. It's doable, since except for crockpot recipes Drumsticks and Frog Legs are identical to Morsels, but it might be more fiddly detail than the developers want to deal with.

 

The foods that damage your health often seem like they're intended to be either mildly toxic or physically painful to eat (uncooked cactus flesh being an example of the latter, since several characters comment that it's still got some of the spines on). I don't think it should be taken as a judgment of how weird it is to eat them, and I doubt it's because the animal was evil since several neutral or friendly animals drop Monster Meat. Especially Glommer, since you get a huge Naughtiness hit for killing him and that's as close to a "CERTIFIED NOT EVIL" sticker as you can get.

 

Tallbirds are a bit odd, since most of the animals that drop normal Meat are neutral (or variants of neutral creatures in the Guardian Pig's case) except for the giants, but I guess there's good eatin' on them.

[DuckBoy]

Snakes are not the monster.  YOU ARE!

 

You destroy their homes!  You eat their unborn young!  

 

 

 

But then again, I murder all the monkeys in the night, then I forcibly relocate them.  Then I don my pirate hat and run through their tiny walled city daily, slaughtering them all and collecting their delicious morsels.  Sometimes I feed their bananas to wild pigs.  

[OrderedChaos]

Snakes would be a ridiculously OP food source if they dropped morsels.

They already are as it is considering how useful monster meat can be and how much harder it is you get from other creatures.

[TMJJack]

I think snakes dropping a morsel variation of monster meat would be great.

[GuyPerfect]

Seems a lot of people are under the impression that Snakes dropping Morsels would be an excessive amount of food. I beg to differ. In fact, the most "overpowered" source of food I've ever encountered has been in the game for a long time, and I've never seen anyone complain about it: just find two or three ponds right next to each other and fish your heart out. All the joy of morsels with none of the risk to one's tender hide. Plus, drop one in a Crock Pot with some Twigs and two--count them--two Monster Meats, and you get something even better.

[PhelsarusBeel]

Seems a lot of people are under the impression that Snakes dropping Morsels would be an excessive amount of food. I beg to differ. In fact, the most "overpowered" source of food I've ever encountered has been in the game for a long time, and I've never seen anyone complain about it: just find two or three ponds right next to each other and fish your heart out. All the joy of morsels with none of the risk to one's tender hide. Plus, drop one in a Crock Pot with some Twigs and two--count them--two Monster Meats, and you get something even better.

 

The difference with ponds is that you need a fishing pole before that and for that you need Silk (what only drop from Spiders and their Nests so there is combat involved) and a Sciencemachine to prototype them.

 

Also Frogs have a chance to spawn near Ponds to and while their are a minor annoyance at best they still can be annoying while fishing.

 

And ponds freeze over in Winter so you can't acces them 24/7 like you can with Snakes,

 

Lastly fishing is also far more timeconsuming then whacking a few snakes in the dusk. Recently i spend an entire day only fishing and at the end got maybe 12 fish out of it but that was an entire day spend fishing (from Dawn until almost Night). In the meantime i like to go back to my Webber comparison where i got 9 monstermeat from snakes in the Duskparts in the earlygame (so when the dusk isn't so long) and that netted me 9 so far less time to collect a lot more ressources. Also iirc FIsh spoils much faster then Meat does so that's also a thing.

 

[HeilerderWelten]

Seems a lot of people are under the impression that Snakes dropping Morsels would be an excessive amount of food. I beg to differ. In fact, the most "overpowered" source of food I've ever encountered has been in the game for a long time, and I've never seen anyone complain about it: just find two or three ponds right next to each other and fish your heart out. All the joy of morsels with none of the risk to one's tender hide. Plus, drop one in a Crock Pot with some Twigs and two--count them--two Monster Meats, and you get something even better.

 

I love ponds too, but frogs are more annoying to kill than snakes

and fish requires a fishing rod and the spoilage time of fish is also shorter than of morsel.

[Talavaj]

There will always be OP sources of food.

I personally wouldn't mind if they dropped morsels, simply make them a 10% drop or something.

 

Or make poison snakes much more common to deter people from farming them.

[DreamApart]

Snakes are not the monster.  YOU ARE!

 

You destroy their homes!  You eat their unborn young!  

 

 

 

But then again, I murder all the monkeys in the night, then I forcibly relocate them.  Then I don my pirate hat and run through their tiny walled city daily, slaughtering them all and collecting their delicious morsels.  Sometimes I feed their bananas to wild pigs.  

No, that's not called a monster. That'll just be called a predator.

[trippill]

Maybe the meat itself could have a small chance of poisoning? It would deter people from eating it unless they have no other choice. Then again, that is pretty much what monster meat is...

 

[DreamApart]

The reason they drop monstermeat isn't because of the type of enemy but because of balancing reasons because just as Spiders snakes come in huge swarms are easy to kite and kill (even easier because there is no Snakeequivalent to the SPiderwarrior) and if they would drop morsel you could just call it a day once you find an island with a big jungle and a good chunck of Snakedens.

 

 

snakes are super common, getting that many morsels would be majorly op.

 

 

Snakes would be a ridiculously OP food source if they dropped morsels.

I think we knew that they make snake meat monster meat because otherwise it'd be OP as a food source, but that's like a workaround rather than a solution.

Snakes are common, yes, rabbits are more common, and even easier to find.

But if the game is all about balance and none about realism, then the theme and the atmosphere called Don't Starve will be gone.