Difficulty nerf?

[Omry]

Now guys I don't want to sound like an uber noob here but this really is bothering me, so, me and my friend wanted to start a world and see how far we can go, but every time we did that we got to max day 30, we find out we are always dying by either shadows, sanity, frost, or all at the same time, i mean seriously, the game got insanely hard whenever we tried it, my friend here can't be any more of a pro, he knows all about the game, all the tactics, whatever you want, yet we both always die by the same causes, i've also noticed shadows are more bull then they ever were, 2 shadow hands spawning every 30 seconds, they usually are easy to get rid of, but not while you have frost and shadows, I mean have you tried to fight 2 crawling horros and a terrorbeak at the same time?, it literally is impossible, we seriously did like 7 runs already and the one time we did get further was to day 40 What do you think about this?, think the game did get harder all of a sudden or are we doing something wrong, post your story!, /rant

[Zillvr]

Hey @Omry, from my experience the Terrorbeak has a more unique attack pattern in DST compared to DS(if you played it). They have been like that for quite a long while now, so the game generally didn't get harder. (or I just haven't played DST enough..oh SW). Anyways, to stave off the huge sanity losses, always have tents up and use them when dusk starts if your sanity is almost below 40. Fighting Terrorbeaks is a hassle, so if you get the Crawlers instead always kill them first for that +sanity they give you when you kill them. Prevention is better than having to actually deal with Terrorbeaks.

 

So stock up on silk and regularly kill spiders and have heaps upon heaps of grass for rope. If you have space for grass, always pick them up. Although don't forget to have a steady supply of food with berry bushes for fillers to make meatballs and a birdcage to make bacon and eggs. Also make Drying Racks for Jerky, they will save your life when you can't shake off shadow creatures. Since sanity is a problem, don't spend too much time in doing work in the dark, unless you have a lantern already but even then the less time you spend losing sanity the better.

 

This has been done over multiple times with varying lists depending on the player but this is my checklist before I reach First Winter: Bird Cage, Drying Racks, Ice Box, Beefalo Hat, Transplanted Spider Nest, 2-3 Live Koalefants for Emergency Meat, Tent and a another Prebuilt Tent, Glommer for Sanity and a Thermal Stone. I could be missing other important items at the moment but you get the gist. You could probably throw in 1-2 Bee Boxes to that list if you've got time for it.

 

Can't guarantee that it'll always work out, but you can always try and try again. Also consider playing with complimenting characters, I can't suggest any tandem at the moment but I heard Webber and Wigfrid is a decent match. Webber will automatically have a Spider Egg with him, so that's one thing off the checklist. But there's also Wendy with Abigail that can kill off multiple spiders for you, more silk and monster meat. Anyhow, play around with the different characters that may increase your chances of survival. I hope that helps. So good luck and have fun, cheers. 

[Omry]

snip

Thanks for the reply and tips but it still doesn't make up for the insane difficulty, while i get it when there are 4+ players, it looks like this game wasn't meant for just 2, if it was to set up a difficulty based on their players it would be wonderful, thanks!

[Snowhusky5]

To be honest, playing with one or two players is not that much harder than with 4+. It can even be easier than playing on a huge public server full of noobs dieing and draining your sanity as ghosts, for example. Part of the appeal of this game is similar to that of old roguelikes; you try to get as far as you can, and when you ultimately die, you learn something about how to combat that which you are dieing from. 

 

In your case, you seem to be dieing from cold and sanity loss primarily. Here are some tips.

Cold: Before winter starts, shave some beefalo (use a razor on them as they sleep), and make a winter hat with beefalo fur and silk. Also, make a thermal stone. As long as you have those two things, and sit down next to your fire pit (with the hat off to save durability) most nights, you should never freeze.

Sanity: There are lots of ways to regain lost sanity. One is sleeping in bedrolls or tents, although I personally never need to. There are also plenty of clothing and food items to help regain sanity; the best are cooked green mushrooms, and cooked cactus (pick while wearing armor). Jerky (from drying racks) is also a great way to regain both sanity and health (not monster jerky obviously); to get full sized meats to turn into jerky, try hunting a koalafant, or feed 4 monster meat to a pigman and then kill him. You can also wear a top hat or dapper vest to regen sanity over time. Finally, if you find the birchtree forest and its glommer statue before day 11, you can go there during a full moon to acquire glommer. Bring him back to base, and if you stand near him (as in REALLY near) you can get a bonus of 6.25 sanity/min, which is enough to gain sanity during the night, when you aren't moving around much.

Also, if only one of you is insane, you can actually both team up on the shadow monsters. Just make sure to let the insane guy get the last hit.

 

Also: characters who have an easier time with cold and/or sanity are, in order of reliability:

Wilson; his beard gives cold resist, so don't shave until winter ends

Wendy: less sanity drain from darkness, but summoning Abigail costs 50

Woody: don't activate his curse, he gains sanity from planting trees

Wigfrid: If you fight spiders/etc all the time, the combat regeneration should have you covered, but you can't eat common sanity food like green shrooms or cactus.

WX-78: Eating gears can replenish all 3 stats by a lot, and increase the max's

[t0panka]

Hi Omry

Are you saying that difficulty is harder compared to DS+ROG? Because those things that you are dying to are IMO same as in DS and some of them maybe even easier than ROG. I think that only SOME monsters have bigger HP in DST compared to DS/ROG

 

Dying to freezing:

- if you don't make winter clothes you will freeze for sure

- thermal stone is supereasy to make and gives you some time before freezing

- make winter hat which is also easy and you can go whole day without fire i think

- maybe in first 20 days kill one koalephant and make that brown vest?

- premade fire and cary grass and wood on you so you can make fire and get warm when you start freezing

 

Low sanity:

- on start make that flower hat from 12 flowers - this will give you at least some sanity

- get 6 silk for top hat which is enough to keep you sane if you wont do crazy stuff in dark/caves/ruins

- when you have science machine just make new recipies even when you dont need them - those will give you lot of sanity

- picking up flowers gives you good amount of sanity

- look at wiki for sanity foods and make those so when you eat you also get some sanity but basically almost all foods from crockpot gives you at least 10 sanity

- play Wigfrid! - she get sanity from fighting so it is REALLY REALLY easy to play with her

- dry meat gives you huge amount of sanity ... i think it is 20 for big meat and 10 for small meat

 

- uhm i and some other players i saw on twitch have problems to farm nightmare fuel from nightmares. I think that they spawn a LOT LESS and a lot later than in DS/ROG. Yesterday i saw one guy standing for 2 minutes with zero sanity and no nightmares O.o

 

I think it is impossible to die with your friend if he knows everything about this game and is "pro". He should know all this stuff and when you do at least HALF of what i write you can't die to sanity or winter

 

EDIT: yeah i forgot about TENT (im not using them) - sleeping in tent gives you full HP and sanity really fast! You just need to eat after. ALSO go to twitch.tv and watch someone else to play DS ... you can learn a lot! 

 

EDIT2: you can also change world settings and turn off features that gives you problems. You can make longer day or make autumn longer so you have more time to prepare. You can turn off all giants or set food and resources to LOT. So there already is "difficulty nerf" in DST

[Codsworth]

Actually I have an passworded world on DST on day 179 (i've played alone all the game) and I ain't any pro, you just need to know how to handle every season, I usually die on spring, I freaking hate that season (f#ck you frogs).

 

Since winter is by far my favorite season I think I can give you some tips:

 

Try making at least one clothing piece for winter (an Beefalo hat would be the best) and an thermal stone, that would let you survive quite long without freezing.

 

Try stocking lots of meats on ice boxes and have some drying racks, Jerkys are life savers.

 

Sanity is manageable, Try getting honey for some sanity recipes (taffy or pumpkin cookies) or coocked green/blue shrooms.

 

 

OH and not to mention food is rarelly an issue on winter since you can get lots of ice, so 1 meat = 1 meatball on crockpot xD

[Mday]

Hey OP. The game isn't that hard. You just need to learn some more about it. Try play with other players who can do better than 30 days. Learn the tricks from them. 

 

You are suppose to spend the first 20 days to get whatever you need before winter arrives. It sounds like you and your friend aren't preparing well enough for winter.

 

One thing I notice is that, some players tend to just ran away from crawling horror/terrorbeak, others may try to help fighting the shadows. Here is my advance:

1) deal with sanity early if you aren't good at fighting those things.

2) If you know your sanity is getting low and there aren't much you can do about it, get ready for a fight. That means get armor/ weapon/ health.

3) Now that you are insane and a crawling horror is coming at you:

Don't turn your back and run away. Instead kill it asap. If you don't know how to dodge, all character at full health can tank and melee a crawling horror with a logsuit and spear. You only get to recover sanity if you make the kill yourself. The sooner you finish it the better, cause that crawling horror can make nearby players insane which cause more crawling horror to spawn. (However it is best if you know how to kite/dodge it.)

4) You are at low health and no item and a crawling horror is coming at you:

Ask your friend to fight the crawling horror for you, which should buy you some time. Do whatever you can in the mean time, be it get armor/weapon/health/sleep.

[nosajkeram]

Game gets less difficult the more people you have playing. Everyone should be focusing on separate tasks. One resource gatherer and one food gatherer if two people. More people, less tasks per person = more supply. When it comes to fighting nightmares, just learn the attack patterns. The only issues generally are the Giants, you really need a pan flute, ice staff and gunpowder to handle them. Other than that, maybe make sure you learn how to live without a backpack. If you always have a helmet and at least a log suit, you should be able to just stand and tank anything but the giants.

 

Also, its a good idea to just resource gather for the first few days, no need to set up a base until the first hound attack. Try to find an ideal spot for your base that is as centrally located as possible, I like to position mine near wormholes. Worst case you can jump through the wormhole to escape death. If sanity is an issue, cooked green caps or bedrolls are easy enough to make.

 

Hope that helps. Game definitely does not need a difficulty nerf, if you're really struggling, customize your world gen to make it easier. 

 

 

[VeryDead]

The only real difficulty increase that together brings besides lag making it harder to fight mobs is how mobs have double HP. (Ex: Deerclops has 2000 in the stock game, in DST, he has 4000.) This was so a group of players could fight without destroying all challenge of the stock game.

 

It seems your main issues however, are sanity and freezing. Although it's not much that has yet to be said, I can offer advice of my own.

 

For sanity, there's a number of ways to easily restore it.

 

As mentioned above, Jerky is amazing for your sanity, health, and hunger. Just slap one meat on a drying rack, and when it's dried, instead of the usual 25 Hunger, 3 HP and 0 sanity from normal cooked meat, you get a wonderful 25 Hunger, 20 HP and 15 Sanity from Jerky. However, since most games start in Autumn, you may want to save your grass. In which case, there are other ways of regaining sanity, but Jerky is amazing. Also, if you or a friend are playing Wickerbottom, drying racks are a MUST HAVE. Jerky is one of the few ways to keep Wicker's sanity in check besides the somewhat rare tam.

 

The other best way I can tell you is to simply sleep. Using a Straw Roll, Fur Roll, or Tent is an excellent and sure fire way to regain lost sanity and HP (besides poor Wickerbottom, see above.) Straw Rolls are pretty cheap, requiring only 6 grass and 1 rope, or effectively, 9 grass. Fur Rolls work a lot like Straw Rolls, but with the bonuses of being multi use and offering HP regen and the ability to gain heat, making them a useful way to stay warm in winter as well, although the materials are impossible to get on a non caves server, and even then can be fairly tricky. However, the best sleeping gear (for camps, at least, not on the road.) is the tent. It costs a few twigs, 6 silk and 3 rope (9 grass), lasts 6 usages, and restores a lot of HP and Sanity quite quickly, also offering heat in the process. As for the hunger penalties, you can easily make Bacon and Eggs or Meatballs during winter.

 

Finally, for the issue of heat, there's a fair amount of winter gear you can obtain before winter to prep yourself for winter. The best items you'd want to aim for is by far the Beefalo hat, or if Beefalo are quite scarce or near extinction in your world, the winter hat. In both cases, just shave beefalo at night and either get a horn from killing one or 4 silk, and you got yourself a solid 240/120 additional seconds out in the cold. Playing as Wilson and keeping your beard is also quite useful. Finally, there's also the breezy/puffy vests, which also offer additional warmth at the cost of your backpack. If that's not your type, you have the simple options of building campfires if you get cold and are away from camp. 2 Logs and 3 grass are both pretty easy to obtain and should be items you have in your inventory constantly. However, if you lack both, you can use a torch and light certain items aflame for a temporary heat boost, and in VERY desperate scenarios, you can ctrl drop a single grass/twig/log from your inventory and light that aflame.

 

Anywho, that's all I can really tell you that hasn't been said in detail beforehand. Best of luck surviving!

[lionking102]

Hey Omry,

There is already so much stuff postet here that will help you:

 

The balancing:

Personally I would hate to see the game any more easy, because for a lot of players it´t already really easy. It´s the concept of the game that you have to die to get better. And with time you will be able to get to the point were you will not die at day 30, i promise!

Why I know this? Because you did the right step and asked here in the forums! There is so much advice and so much to lern and when you are persistend, curiouse  and willing go learn you will get better and better, so good that surviving is really easy for you. 

 

The game is easy for good players and really hard for new players and i think thats the perfect balance for a hardcore survival game! I would love to see it more difficult, but i understand that not everyone thinks like that

 

The sanity problem:

And as of the sanity problem: It is posted here already, just dont wait until terrorbeaks spawn! It´s not about fighting them but about keeping your sanity up! Pick green shrooms and cook them and even better: Do a tour to the desert, use a log suit and just pick ony day cactus. It´s only ONE day and you will have enough to get the sanity up for both players to max again. So a really good method and the other player can do something else in this time. (just cook them over the campfire and eat them)

And on the way just pick flowers! They respawn anyways in spring!

Because of the 2 or 4 players. My experience is that it´s much more difficult with 4 players than with 2, because you have to do good agreements and you need so much more material, food and clothing. 

 

So grats to you for asking here, if you read the advice here and remember it you will survive next time, good luck!

[jbeetle]

Another tip is to not follow each other around everywhere, at least to begin with.

[TemporaryMan]

Please DO NOT pick flowers.  Flowers provide an abundant source of butterflies that restore 8 health each, 20 if cooked in a butter muffin.  And they're so abundant you can go from starving to death to full hunger in one day just hunting at a single flower.  Do NOT pick the flowers.  If you need sanity and there's nothing around but grass and flowers, make a sleep roll.  Sleep to restore ~40 sanity.  The sleep roll doesn't restore health like a tent would and you'll lose a lot of hunger from sleeping, but guess what?  There's still butterflies!  Spend a day hunting those.  All the grass will grow back in a couple days.  Flowers won't.  Even when a few new flowers grow in Spring, two newbies can rip them all out in two days fresh out the gate with full sanity and I know those garlands just sit abandoned on the ground at camp the moment they turn stale, so that's what, +32 sanity for two newbies who ragequit after only 5 days on the server?  Such a waste.  A dozen flowers restore 60 sanity.  A garland worn from the moment of creation until it rots and falls off a player's head is another +64.  That's +124 sanity over six days, with a permanent loss of 29 sources of abundant healing food (because have you ever known a newbie to stop picking flowers once they have enough to make a garland?).  If you can find 1&1/3 green mushrooms per day (it's easy) you can get 8 green mushrooms in 6 days, which is also worth +120 sanity.  If you somehow can't find 8 cacti in the desert in 6 days, obviously a griefer must have run through and burned them all; you should be able to find 40-60 in 2 days.  That's 600-900 sanity in a third the time.  Picking cacti hurts, it's true.  Guess what?  Butterflies!  Seriously, don't pick the flowers.

[Mday]

Please DO NOT pick flowers.

Sometimes people pick a stack of flowers from the beginning of the game just so that they can have rot/poop by day 10. For me that is fine.

Otherwise, save the flowers for later. That 5~20 sanity boost just by picking a few flowers in a row can be a life saver.

Berries/cactus/mushroom make great poop too. Which makes the desert/pig village overall the better base location.

 

Garlands provide 1.33 sanity /min and rot in 6 days. A day is 8 mins long.

So does that means the total sanity gain from garlands is 1.33*6*8= 63.84 at most?

[Mday]

However, if you lack both, you can use a torch and light certain items aflame for a temporary heat boost, and in VERY desperate scenarios, you can ctrl drop a single grass/twig/log from your inventory and light that aflame.

Light a tree aflame and stay as close as possible. Wait until the tree is done burning or you start getting overheat (only when you have thermal stone in the inventory). This is the most effective way to warm yourself in the wild, much better than a camp fire/ fire pit. If the burnt tree drop a pine cone I will plant one at the same spot so that I can do it again later. I will also plant a few trees separately per-winter on road and frequently visiting places when I have a few random pine cone in my inventory. These trees later comes in handy.

[TemporaryMan]

If you need rot/manure early in the game (transplanting berries I assume), if you have caves there's always an abundance of lightbulbs.

 

And if you don't have caves... can you guess what I'm going to suggest that's fast to rot, renewable, better than destroying flowers and can be fed to pigs for manure?  

It's butterflies.

[Mday]

If you need rot/manure early in the game (transplanting berries I assume), if you have caves there's always an abundance of lightbulbs.

 

And if you don't have caves... can you guess what I'm going to suggest that's fast to rot, renewable, better than destroying flowers and can be fed to pigs for manure?  

It's butterflies.

It is also an issue of work flow.

The way I play, 4 pig heads from touch stone make 2 pig house. Build 2 asap and feed 8 monsters meat and get 2 skin from there. Normally I get poop as well at this point. I pick all berry/caps/cactus I found and feed to werepig. If I'm lacking in berries I may use some flowers here.

 

The game is still in beta and have huge lag spike. I don't think butterflies is that reliable. You spent whole day for say 10~20 butterflies. That aren't very productive. I world rather go poop picking by the beefalos.

I will consider the cave lightbulbs idea thou. It is however hard to maintain sanity early game and I don't like fighting shadow with a spear. So cave is not the place I go per winter.

 

Also do you know if there is any tricks getting butterflies to spawn?

I notice the game sometime spawn butterflies a lot more, other time it spawn like 1 over 40 secs. The number of flowers on screen seems to have nothing to do with spawn rate.

[TemporaryMan]

It seems to spawn a new one whenever an old one dies.

[Mday]

It seems to spawn a new one whenever an old one dies.

Um. That may be it.

I am thinking, if you pick all the flowers from the world but leave 1 at base, may be that flower can then spawn butterfly like crazy?

[TemporaryMan]

No, just one at a time, although you can get a bunch if you plant some flowers near a catcoon.  Also it's useful to have flowers all over the place.  Butterflies are good for picking up extra food while away from camp.  If you're playing as Wendy Abigail can kill them while you do other things.  I wish she was as hostile to them as she is to moleworms.

 

Regarding OP's comment about 2 crawling horrors and terrorbeak, if it's that many and nobody else at camp is helping you fight them, try moving away from camp.  You're only seeing that many because other teammates' terrors are joining the fight; on your own, there will only be 1-2.