Thoughts/Suggestions after 30 hours and getting Wolfgang


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So I just "finished" Dont Starve and unlocked Wolfgang, and have been experimenting with every item and craftable that I can and figured Id put my thoughts out here for discussion with a few ideas I have.

Characters:

Ignoring the use of the Tent characters seem fairly well balanced right now, but Wilson seems one of the best and default choice due to his beard. I personally dont like how the Tent works right now, as the only use seems to be to swap back between your chosen character to Wilson so you can get your beard. Yes it costs a lot of resources, but it does seem to undermine all the other characters. Also quite simply, Wolfgang is overpowered. I get that right now hes mostly a placeholder for an experience final reward, but hes too powerful right now and he needs a significant negative to balance.

An idea I had would be to introduce Intense/Upgraded versions of each of the characters by maybe an achievement associated with that character. The upgraded versions would have their main feature amplified, maybe ofsetted by a negative. An example could be "Old Man Wilson", maybe after you get an achievement by growing Wilson beard for say 40 days without shaving you could unlock this upgraded version. "Old Man Wilson" could have his beard grow say twice as fast as normal Wilson, but have less health. This could also extend to every other character as well. Burning down a ton of trees with Willow could unlock Crazed Willow who makes much larger fires and randomly creates them during the day as a negative risk etc etc.

Map Generation:

The current "test" map generation is possibly my favorite, and I never use the original one any more. One big change I would like is to not have a single bridge off the main island, as right now it seems like all the islands are in one big chain, instead of being more freeroaming which would suit the game better I think(unless of course the final island has plans to have a boss/objective etc)

Farming/Hunting:

As everyone knows, berry farming is way way too powerful right now. My current strategy for the game is to spend 2 days picking up every berry bush on the starting island, gather basic resources then run until I find beefalos, plant them all then make my base there. It works far far too well. Because of that its a bit difficult to comment on the effectiveness of other methods like hunting as they seem quite underpowered in comparison. Once berry farming has been made a lot harder I will be able to comment on it better.

The traps are a cool idea and nice to use, the fishing rod I slightly disagree with. I would prefer that it could be used on the ocean, but have a chance to fail.

I believe the farm plots ahve been discussed about not being so effective, but Ill quickly mention my thought. I have never used the Speedy Farm Plot, and maybe...once used the basic Farm Plot when I was learning to play. It simply isnt worth the resources to make the lower Farm Plots are they grow fairly slowly.

Crockpot/Cooking:

Overall my problem with cooking/crockpot recipes right now are that they mostly seem for their own sake, or seem more decadent than practical. In 90% of the recipes, the individual ingredients provide more hunger than the final product. This coupled with the fact that none of the Crockpot recipes can be stacked, this at least to me totally udnermines the purpose of a crockpot. The craftable foods granted are useful for restoring health, but that generally doesnt seem very practical right now, when you can just use something like honey that stacks to 40. In terms of hunger restoration they are fairly ineffective.

I guess once combat becomes a bit more common/neccessary, with the addition of more enemies etc, then the crockpot will be more useful I think.

Craftables:

Overall I like these a lot so far. Tools are balanced right now, same with fires/torches and hunting tools. More weapon variety would be nice, maybe with the addition of a bow or some ranged weapon other than the darts.

Once again I have a similar problem with some craftables like I do with the Crockpot recipes, in that they seem for their own sake. The sleeping darts, bee mine and the amulet and a few others have generally pretty restricted uses, and seem too much trouble to make when there are other alternatives that are easier to make(Pan flute, tooth trap and meat effigy are all much easier to make with the same results)

Science:

Im aware this is being revamped, so no comment neccessary.

Overall I love this game and really am looking forward to seeing it grow. The game has amazing potential to grow, and I would really enjoy talking with others about their thoughts.

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An example could be "Old Man Wilson", maybe after you get an achievement by growing Wilson beard for say 40 days without shaving you could unlock this upgraded version. "Old Man Wilson" could have his beard grow say twice as fast as normal Wilson, but have less health.

250 days in....... It got worse :D,

maybe this could simply be normal character progression as time goes on?

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