I gotta ask about the 'wet = insane' thing

[hotflungwok]

I remember this being introduced before Shipwrecked, and thinking it could be an interesting mechanic but that it was way overdone.  It wasn't a huge deal so I didn't real think about it much.  But now, fully half of the seasons and half the modes of travel are devoted to getting you soaking wet, and thus, completely insane. 

So, does this make sense?  Does it really make sense that a Hawaiian surfer is going to lose her mind cuz she got wet?  Does anyone here know what percentage of surfing involves staying perfectly dry?  Is everyone who arrives in the world given a brand new case of aquaphobia?  There's flooding that can drive you mad in moments just from walking through it, but wearing a hat, coat, or holding an umbrella can prevent this.  Huh?  It's annoying to be wet, and if you get cold that can be dangerous.  Fine.  But I honestly don't get the huge flying leap from 'wet' to 'mind bending insanity'. 

Does this make the game more fun?  It's certainly more challenging, especially given the dearth of obvious things to dry you off.  Right now if you want to get dry I think the complete list goes: wait, wait in front of a fire.  I can make cloth.  Granted, it's cloth made from bamboo, but it's cloth.  Can't you use cloth for something other than sails or bags?  Maybe some use that (hopefully) all of us use it for on a daily basis?  I've got a fire, I've got a thermal stone, I can make heated towels!  All I need is some coconut oil and I can give massages, to help take the edge off of all the insanity of course.  I think at this point it's more punishing than fun. 

So what do people think about this?  I dont want to get rid of it, I think it works in some aspects, but other aspects seem really weird or overblown.  Trying to use wet tools or firewood is bad, that's fine.  I saw a thread a while ago about being able to make snakeskin shoes or boots.  That would be a good idea.  I think towels would be a good idea, with the heated towel rack (3 sticks, 1 cloth, 1 thermal stone/2 charcoal?) being the pinnacle of technology with respect to wetness. 

[SapphireBullets]

I've written about including a towel on this thread I promote every chance I get. Though a Heated Towel rack seems like it could be redundant if you're okay just to drop your wet towel by a fire or keep it in your inventory.

As to the reasoning behind losing sanity, I think the discomfort is the main aspect. In this game you regain sanity from comforts such as delicious food or dapper clothing. Things that reassure you everything is mostly okay and keep the pervasive creeping madness at bay.

If you've ever been caught out in seriously heavy rain without an umbrella, forced to trudge a mile home as your clothes, bus ticket and hair sog up you'll agree it's pretty awful. Likely it's worse if you're a normally civilized person (as most of the cast are) who know there won't be a brick house and warm bath waiting for them at the end.

In the case of Walani, it's one thing to get wet when you're just wearing a swimsuit and you've got a towel waiting on shore, it's another thing to do it in your work clothes with a bag of soggy grass cuttings weighing you down.

[Sheauwn]

I think there is an easy solution to helping you understand why you would go insane.

Step 1: Don't eat for 8 hours

Step 2: Put on a backpack and a normal hat

Step 3: Douse yourself with a hose, making sure to drench yourself and your backpack+hat

Step 4: Go walk an entire day like that in the rain

Step 5: You will now understand

[hotflungwok]

28 minutes ago, Sheauwn said:

I think there is an easy solution to helping you understand why you would go insane.

Step 1: Don't eat for 8 hours

Step 2: Put on a backpack and a normal hat

Step 3: Douse yourself with a hose, making sure to drench yourself and your backpack+hat

Step 4: Go walk an entire day like that in the rain

Step 5: You will now understand

I was in the Boy Scouts.  I once spent a week at a summer camp where it rained about 167 out of the 168 hours I was there.  That didn't stop any of the activities, including hiking with full pack, swimming, cooking over a fire, and spending a night away from our campsite in shelters we built ourselves.  Despite having to squeeze the water out of my socks so I could put them with the rest of my dirty clothes while changing into oh so briefly dry clothing once a day, neither I nor anyone else in my troop went utterly monkey poop insane minutes after getting wet. 

Like I said, it's annoying, but I think the effects in the game are way too exaggerated. 

[SapphireBullets]

4 minutes ago, hotflungwok said:

I was in the Boy Scouts.  I once spent a week at a summer camp where it rained about 167 out of the 168 hours I was there.  That didn't stop any of the activities, including hiking with full pack, swimming, cooking over a fire, and spending a night away from our campsite in shelters we built ourselves.  Despite having to squeeze the water out of my socks so I could put them with the rest of my dirty clothes while changing into oh so briefly dry clothing once a day, neither I nor anyone else in my troop went utterly monkey poop insane minutes after getting wet. 

Like I said, it's annoying, but I think the effects in the game are way too exaggerated. 

Sounds like you got:

• Cooked food
• Sleep
• Clean Clothes
• Company of other semi-sentient beings

And that's how you stay sane in Don't Starve too, oddly enough.

[Mueck]

I like the idea of an item that helps you dry off more quickly.

Whatever it might be in the end, however it might work and be obtained, it would certainly be more useful then recently added items such as the Dripple Pipes.

And it would also have a completely new function, as we have a lot of stuff that prevents getting wet, but not really anything to help getting dry once wet. That would be really original instead of reskinning all the items from Vanilla / RoG, for example Eyebrella, Top Hat or Luxury Fan.

 

[dthorn88]

I like Walani, and actually think she's a very strong SW character (will post screecaps and story of a pretty awesome and lengthy playthrough),  but I think as a surfer she either needs to lose little or no sanity from wetness or she needs a faster walk speed, which would fit because she's an athlete. 

[NeoDeusMachina]

To me, as everything else in this game, it's all a matter of preparation. When a mechanic can be 100% countered by carrying around 1 or 2 items, I tend to think that if I die / go insane because of that mechanic, then it's because I was not well prepared. For the sake of example, in SW, you can very easily get a snakeskin hat + vest which will give you 100% rain protection, and that's only one of the many possible combinations. If one is not prepared enough to counter said ''wetness'' mechanic with 100% rain protection, then there's always a way to counter the consequence, i.e. insanity. As was the case in RoG, there are countless ways to restore sanity efficiently in SW. I'm not going to write an exhaustive list here, it would serve no purpose.

When I play a game such as Don't Starve, with lots of imaginary creatures / magic stuff / etc., I try to put logic aside when it comes to certain things. I'm not saying there should not be any logic, but if wetness causes insanity, then I'll focus all my efforts on trying to deal with it in game, rather than trying to change the game mechanics I hate to deal with outside of the game. Some things are hard in this game, others easy but really annoying. All of them together are what make the game what it is. Note that there are many different ways to deal with a single problem. If one solution is terribly bad or just not fun, I try to find a way around it. Anyway, I hope that explains my vision of the current ''wetness'' mechanic.

[CameoAppearance]

Walani shouldn't lose as much sanity from wetness as the other characters. Being totally immune to sanity loss from walking around soaked would be too much, because it's one of the main challenges of Spring in RoG and Hurricane Season in Shipwrecked, but it would be more meaningful than drying off a little faster and losing sanity in general 10% slower and gaining less sanity from surfing a wave than from eating virtually any crockpot dish. She has perks to conserve sanity, but they're so understated that they only make a tiny difference even when combined.

As for the Wetness mechanic in general, you don't go instantly insane from being caught in a rainstorm; if your point is that the effects are too extreme, don't exaggerate them just to make a point. You go dangerously insane, from full sanity, from 1) continuing to walk around wearing a full set of soaked equipment and holding wet tools for a while without drying off and 2) not doing much of anything to compensate for that miserable experience, whether by sleeping or eating candy or picking flowers or whatever. If you unequip all the wet items the sanity drain becomes mild enough that I'm not even sure if there is one, since the last time I can remember it being a noticeable threat -- as in, there was still a sanity drain after I took off my wet backpack and unequipped my slippery weapon -- was while caving in RoG.

On the other hand, I usually play as Wilson or another character with a max sanity of 200. Being soggy might push your sanity dangerously low a lot faster if you prefer Willow, Wigfrid, Woodlegs or Webber, and if you play as WX then hurricane season is basically hell just in general and your sanity cap is really low until you can upgrade. Still, though, there's a lot more you can generally do about it than you seem to believe.

[Quoth143]

4 hours ago, SapphireBullets said:

I've written about including a towel on this thread I promote every chance I get. Though a Heated Towel rack seems like it could be redundant if you're okay just to drop your wet towel by a fire or keep it in your inventory.

As to the reasoning behind losing sanity, I think the discomfort is the main aspect. In this game you regain sanity from comforts such as delicious food or dapper clothing. Things that reassure you everything is mostly okay and keep the pervasive creeping madness at bay.

If you've ever been caught out in seriously heavy rain without an umbrella, forced to trudge a mile home as your clothes, bus ticket and hair sog up you'll agree it's pretty awful. Likely it's worse if you're a normally civilized person (as most of the cast are) who know there won't be a brick house and warm bath waiting for them at the end.

In the case of Walani, it's one thing to get wet when you're just wearing a swimsuit and you've got a towel waiting on shore, it's another thing to do it in your work clothes with a bag of soggy grass cuttings weighing you down.

Not to mention you get cold. 

[NoQuitting]

I'm really disappointed you can't get cold.

[CameoAppearance]

2 hours ago, NoQuitting said:

I'm really disappointed you can't get cold.

You can... in Reign of Giants. Shipwrecked is in a warmer climate, apparently warm enough that even in hurricane season (the coldest time of year, presumably) getting too cold from being soaking wet isn't a concern. It might happen if you were also sitting next to a blazing endothermic fire, but at that point you basically have to be trying to freeze.

[stl1234]

3 hours ago, NoQuitting said:

I'm really disappointed you can't get cold.

During hurricane season, if you are almost completely soaked, and not near a fire, you can freeze in after dusk (see the freezing screen effect). I suspect it may even be possible start losing health if you do this at the middle of the night time in mid hurricane season with strong winds present. It would be quite an achievement to freeze to death in SW without using cooling items.

[SapphireBullets]

6 hours ago, dthorn88 said:

I like Walani, and actually think she's a very strong SW character (will post screecaps and story of a pretty awesome and lengthy playthrough),  but I think as a surfer she either needs to lose little or no sanity from wetness or she needs a faster walk speed, which would fit because she's an athlete. 

The idea she's an athlete is contradicted by her lazy quotes when she examines most work tools,

(Also examining the floating gunpowder barrels indicates she was some kind of sailor who wasn't too good at her job.)

[hotflungwok]

11 hours ago, SapphireBullets said:

Sounds like you got:

• Cooked food
• Sleep
• Clean Clothes
• Company of other semi-sentient beings

And that's how you stay sane in Don't Starve too, oddly enough.

But I never lost enough sanity to need these things to counter it.  In the game you can go insane from being wet in minutes.  I spent many hours soaking wet and never lost enough sanity to matter.  Being wet is generally just annoying, very few people react to getting wet with hysterics and hallucinations.

[AnonymousKoala]

Just now, hotflungwok said:

But I never lost enough sanity to need these things to counter it.  In the game you can go insane from being wet in minutes.  I spent many hours soaking wet and never lost enough sanity to matter.  Being wet is generally just annoying, very few people react to getting wet with hysterics and hallucinations.

^^^This.

I am always just annoyed by it irl. 

[hotflungwok]

9 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

To me, as everything else in this game, it's all a matter of preparation. When a mechanic can be 100% countered by carrying around 1 or 2 items, I tend to think that if I die / go insane because of that mechanic, then it's because I was not well prepared. For the sake of example, in SW, you can very easily get a snakeskin hat + vest which will give you 100% rain protection, and that's only one of the many possible combinations. If one is not prepared enough to counter said ''wetness'' mechanic with 100% rain protection, then there's always a way to counter the consequence, i.e. insanity. As was the case in RoG, there are countless ways to restore sanity efficiently in SW. I'm not going to write an exhaustive list here, it would serve no purpose.

When I play a game such as Don't Starve, with lots of imaginary creatures / magic stuff / etc., I try to put logic aside when it comes to certain things. I'm not saying there should not be any logic, but if wetness causes insanity, then I'll focus all my efforts on trying to deal with it in game, rather than trying to change the game mechanics I hate to deal with outside of the game. Some things are hard in this game, others easy but really annoying. All of them together are what make the game what it is. Note that there are many different ways to deal with a single problem. If one solution is terribly bad or just not fun, I try to find a way around it. Anyway, I hope that explains my vision of the current ''wetness'' mechanic.

I get this, it's pretty much my view too.  My real objection is just the exaggeration and weirdness present in the mechanic, not the mechanic itself.  Putting on a coat and hat does protect you from rain, but it also protects you walking through a puddle.  And if you're carrying a backpack like I usually do, then switching to a coat is non-trivial, especially on water, because in this world your character is incapable of wearing both. This makes it feel logically inconsistent to me.

[voyager156]

15 hours ago, hotflungwok said:

There's flooding that can drive you mad in moments just from walking through it, but wearing a hat, coat, or holding an umbrella can prevent this.

When you walking on wet ground it should be handled differently than raining in game mechanics for sure.

15 hours ago, hotflungwok said:

I think at this point it's more punishing than fun. 

Personally I don't have much of a problem with wetness as It is now.

15 hours ago, hotflungwok said:

I think towels would be a good idea,

This should be implemented the faster the better.

11 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

When a mechanic can be 100% countered by carrying around 1 or 2 items, I tend to think that if I die / go insane because of that mechanic, then it's because I was not well prepared. For the sake of example, in SW, you can very easily get a snakeskin hat + vest which will give you 100% rain protection, and that's only one of the many possible combinations. If one is not prepared enough to counter said ''wetness'' mechanic with 100% rain protection, then there's always a way to counter the consequence, i.e. insanity.

Exactly

6 hours ago, CameoAppearance said:

Shipwrecked is in a warmer climate, apparently warm enough that even in hurricane season (the coldest time of year, presumably) getting too cold from being soaking wet isn't a concern. It might happen if you were also sitting next to a blazing endothermic fire, but at that point you basically have to be trying to freeze.

I always thought it is a bug that you don't freeze in SW. I once got my character purposely to 100% wetness and he didn't freeze :-/

[CameoAppearance]

Even in Reign of Giants you don't automatically freeze when you get too wet. What happens is that it reduces the player's temperature by a substantial amount, and that amount is enough to push you over the limit in early to mid-spring but won't freeze you in late spring or summer.

[voyager156]

Thanks for clarification

[Machine Reaper]

lets just say that getting wet in SW is tooo easy. I mean just standing in puddles makes you go full wet in minutes..I'm sorry but why am I starting to see creepy crawlies by standing in a puddle of water?...
I mean we can just make it like you slip and fall on the water and THAT makes you wet and makes you play the animation when your getting up the first time in the world...

[Serph]

4 hours ago, hotflungwok said:

But I never lost enough sanity to need these things to counter it.  In the game you can go insane from being wet in minutes.  I spent many hours soaking wet and never lost enough sanity to matter.  Being wet is generally just annoying, very few people react to getting wet with hysterics and hallucinations.

You're exaggerating, sanity loss from wetness itself is fairly slow, it's only significant if you wear soaked chothes + hats. And you know that Don't Starve is a videogame right? What looks like 10 minutes to you is over 24 hours for the characters.

[Quoth143]

13 hours ago, CameoAppearance said:

You can... in Reign of Giants. Shipwrecked is in a warmer climate, apparently warm enough that even in hurricane season (the coldest time of year, presumably) getting too cold from being soaking wet isn't a concern. It might happen if you were also sitting next to a blazing endothermic fire, but at that point you basically have to be trying to freeze.

Which means that except for Dry Season, you may as well not bother making a thermal stone. 

[hotflungwok]

9 hours ago, Serph said:

You're exaggerating, sanity loss from wetness itself is fairly slow, it's only significant if you wear soaked chothes + hats. And you know that Don't Starve is a videogame right? What looks like 10 minutes to you is over 24 hours for the characters.

Um, nope, 10 minutes is still 'minutes'. For some characters it doesn't even take that long.  And neither of those time ranges make sense, how do you go completely insane standing in a puddle in 1 day?  The san loss from being wet is a bad as standing next to some monsters. 

[LadyD]

In real life the average human being will start to hallucinate after only 3 days of sleep deprivation. If you soak them in water, take away their food and comfort that time gets shorter and shorter. 

Human mind is a surprisingly frail thing, some of us tolerate being wet better than others. Which the game reflects, the game also reflects the different 'sanity' of people. 

I think the wet=insane thing is pretty logical game mechanic. No one really enjoys plodding around whilst soaking wet with no chance to dry off in sight. Struggling with wet fuel for a fire, wet backpack, wet bed roll, wet food and even your shelter dripping water on your (trees etc). It can really be the final straw! I can almost imagine some of the characters throwing a mini tantrum- 'On top of everything else its raining! I am ship wrecked, lost, alone, starving and Now WET!' 
Have to admit you are having one hell of a bad time if you wake up in a world like this game creates- where there is something in the dark that puts out fires and tries to kill you, then there is the wildlife (most of which is also trying to kill you or ruin your day).