Bow and Arrow [Examples]

[Zgini]

Hi, I know... many persons added similar ideas.

These are my examples of crafting and pictures:

[The Pig Whisperer]

Your arrow has no fletching and cannot possibly fly true. Perhaps you need to add some feathers to the arrow recipe? Also, for the fun, how about 1x twigs + 1x flint + 1x redbird feather + 1x blackbird feather > 1x Arrow (100%). Arrows would have durability, but of course, you'd have to go track it down to use it again. Arrows would stack, and combine durability like food freshness as described by Kevin, but instead of having a stack that lives forever by adding a new arrow to a bunch of almost-gone ones, when you shoot an arrow, its actual durability is determined randomly based on the total arrows in the stack and total durability... So if you have a stack of 10 arrows with 50% avg. durability, there's a chance that the arrow you shoot will break, being assigned the minimum durability, resulting in a stack of 9 arrows with a higher durability.

[Snob]

This suggestion is making this game look extremely unoriginal; considering you MINE the flint, and the CRAFT the arrows with the remaining sticks.

I really don't think we need bows/arrows,

we have our own long-range weapons in "Don't Starve";

effective sleeping darts, and chaotic fire darts.

[mobius187]

The bow and arrow have been suggested several times before, as players are keen to see it in the game. Of the various crafting recipes the most common was:

Silk + Sticks = Bow

Flint + Stick + Feather = Arrow

It should be noted that my alteration to the bow's crafting formula involves another suggestion I made for the refinement of Silk, namely to turn Silk into String (i.e. similar to Grass being refined into Rope). In which case it would be: String + Sticks.

Arrows would have durability, but of course, you'd have to go track it down to use it again. Arrows would stack, and combine durability like food freshness as described by Kevin, but instead of having a stack that lives forever by adding a new arrow to a bunch of almost-gone ones, when you shoot an arrow, its actual durability is determined randomly based on the total arrows in the stack and total durability... So if you have a stack of 10 arrows with 50% avg. durability, there's a chance that the arrow you shoot will break, being assigned the minimum durability, resulting in a stack of 9 arrows with a higher durability.

I don't believe anyone has suggested durability for arrows, mostly due to the issue with stacking. Whether it's better to track durability or not would come down to balance, arrow surplus versus finite flint. So long as flint stays finite, then this is a valid argument and something we would need to consider.

So, based on your suggestion, is the durability more a % chance of breaking? And with each successful strike the % lowers until eventually the arrow breaks? What happens when an arrow successfully strikes a target? Does it become a part of its "inventory" until it dies? What about the other arrows in the stack? What percentage would they have on a strike or miss?

Lastly, does the % need to be visible? Or can it be hidden from the player? Is there any benefit to see the % for the player?

This suggestion is making this game look extremely unoriginal; considering you MINE the flint, and the CRAFT the arrows with the remaining sticks.

Good thing we're only using axes, shovels, and pick axes to harvest resources/food and then use said resources to craft items.

I really don't think we need bows/arrows, we have our own long-range weapons in "Don't Starve"; effective sleeping darts, and chaotic fire darts.

True. I think we would need enemies with ranged attacks before there was a real need for additional ranged weapons.

[BarovSoap]

If there ever are arrows they shouldn't have a durability but a 50/50 chance of the arrow breaking upon retrieval. It makes them more realistic and more challenging opposed to shooting the same arrows 10 times. How much damage will they do, distance weapons can really be taken advantage of when they' re easy to make.

[The Pig Whisperer]

The bow and arrow have been suggested several times before, as players are keen to see it in the game. Of the various crafting recipes the most common was:

Silk + Sticks = Bow

Flint + Stick + Feather = Arrow

It should be noted that my alteration to the bow's crafting formula involves another suggestion I made for the refinement of Silk, namely to turn Silk into String (i.e. similar to Grass being refined into Rope). In which case it would be: String + Sticks.

I don't believe anyone has suggested durability for arrows, mostly due to the issue with stacking. Whether it's better to track durability or not would come down to balance, arrow surplus versus finite flint. So long as flint stays finite, then this is a valid argument and something we would need to consider.

So, based on your suggestion, is the durability more a % chance of breaking? And with each successful strike the % lowers until eventually the arrow breaks? What happens when an arrow successfully strikes a target? Does it become a part of its "inventory" until it dies? What about the other arrows in the stack? What percentage would they have on a strike or miss?

So, let's say you have 10 hits per arrow (which would be very nasty expensive, given the limited supply of flint, but makes examples easy) and 10 arrows per stack (which would be rather limiting as well, but again... Makes the examples easier... So don't imagine these are my suggestions for the actual values.) If you have a full stack of new arrows, and shoot one arrow, there's only one type of arrow which could be in that stack (new, 100%, 10/10, whatever.) So the arrow you shoot is a new arrow. But now it's shot (I like it ending up in the mob's inventory if it hits. I'd favor that!) and you recover the arrow, and re-add it to the stack. Now you have a total of 99 hits and 10 arrows, so the next time you fire an arrow, you have a 90% chance of drawing a new arrow and a 10% chance of drawing a 9/10 arrow. Where my idea gets complicated is when you have a 98-hits-remaining stack of 10 arrows. I don't think the stack should actually track individual arrows, but also I don't like the idea of all the arrows necessarily degrading in unison... So I thought it would be fun (and I think it can be done with relative ease, but some difficult math has to be done first to determine how to do this... And I haven't approached the math, yet) if, when you fired an arrow from the stack, the stack randomly determined the condition of the arrow based on the possibility space given the overall factors (number, total remaining hits) Thus, even if you shoot two new arrows and return them to the stack, resulting in a 10, 98 stack (10 arrows, 98 shots remaining) there's a (quite small, maybe 1%?) chance that when you draw a new arrow, the stack will decide that since you could have shot the same arrow twice to get the same results, it will fire an arrow with only 8 hits remaining, leaving you with a 9, 90 stack. This could be abused (If the same randomness was involved when a stack was split, you could manipulate stacks to get whatever you desire, and with enough work, turn two 10, 55 stacks into one 10, 100 and one 10,10 stack. Then with 10 more shots you'd have a free slot. Would this be unbalancing? Probably not) and it could be less manageable from a code perspective than I am imagining... Also, it's not clear that randomness is a favorite thing for the Don't Starve Devs. It seems like most actions in the game are actually deterministic. It might just not fit the style.

Lastly, does the % need to be visible? Or can it be hidden from the player? Is there any benefit to see the % for the player?

Some sense of durability would be important, but it need not be very specific... 'New', 'Good', 'Worn', 'About to break' would be fine with me.

True. I think we would need enemies with ranged attacks before there was a real need for additional ranged weapons.

I'm not at all sure we need either enemies with ranged attacks (wilderness survival, as a human being, is not a game of balance, it's a game of pitting very unique advantages as a human being, such as technology, including ranged weapons, against unique needs, such as protection from even your 'native' climate, i.e. clothes and social/psychological needs) or more ranged attacks (The two we have strike a great balance.)

I think maybe a coup de grace mechanic would be useful, but not if it is completely unbalancing. The effect as it exists with small groups of spiders, for example, is more or less fine... They take a while to wake and they are stun-vulnerable, so you can take out up to 3, maybe 4 sleeping spiders without much risk of harm, even if 1 is a warrior spider. 2 depending on factors like locations and such.

Where it gets tricky is with large groups of spiders... If I can walk right up to a sleeping spider, and stand there for... quite a while... Without waking it up, why can't I find a way to kill it quietly so its compatriots don't wake up? Also... I probably shouldn't need to use a lot of flint wear to kill something sleeping. I'd say (for balance, rather than realism) that the ability to do bonus damage and to not wake monsters which are killed with a single strike would be better than an outright instant kill...

Uhm, I think I've strayed off topic. Sorry.

[osadat]

I did a thread on this, the arrow needs to have a feather in the recipe...

[Pelagius]

I say yes but not yet. We don't have any ranged threats yet so a bow would be to powerful at this point. I wouldn't mind having one later though when we start to get ranged enemies that try to kite you.

[beachjustice]

I did a thread on this, the arrow needs to have a feather in the recipe...

Feathers make sense but then you have to make them retrievable or deal pretty high damage because I definitely don't want to farm birds endlessly to get a good set of arrows to use up in a couple fights. Plus, I don't think this game should get overly focused on combat but I do like the fact that it's there. It would be cool to have some nice armor and big boss-like monsters to fight for very late game but things like this could easily make the game feel like 2.5D Skyrim. Being too combat effective dulls the sense of vulnerability and uncertainty which are both great things about this game and something I look forward to when the difficulty ramps up.

[mobius187]

So, let's say you have 10 hits per arrow (which would be very nasty expensive, given the limited supply of flint, but makes examples easy)

True, flint is finite, however it's hardly rare. I'm sure similar discussion took place for the spear, with the averaging factors being that the spear has good durability and players can also acquire the spikey stick. A solution I would prefer is a means by which flint would no longer be finite, like in past suggestions I've made for adding a volcanic/lava biome with eruptions causing new boulders to be spawned.

Another factor to consider is how powerful would an arrow be? If 1 or 2 arrows can kill a hound, that would make it more powerful than a spear/spikey stick. However, if players need to draw and release each arrow, taking longer to attack with the bow than the spear, then you need to factor in DPS since the spear would strike more often (2-3 times maybe) in comparison to the bow's single attack.

...and 10 arrows per stack (which would be rather limiting as well, but again... Makes the examples easier... So don't imagine these are my suggestions for the actual values.)

Fair enough. For the actual suggestion I support 20 arrows per stack, but 10 arrows works fine for your example discussion.

If you have a full stack of new arrows, and shoot one arrow, there's only one type of arrow which could be in that stack (new, 100%, 10/10, whatever.) So the arrow you shoot is a new arrow. But now it's shot (I like it ending up in the mob's inventory if it hits. I'd favor that!) and you recover the arrow, and re-add it to the stack. Now you have a total of 99 hits and 10 arrows, so the next time you fire an arrow, you have a 90% chance of drawing a new arrow and a 10% chance of drawing a 9/10 arrow. Where my idea gets complicated is when you have a 98-hits-remaining stack of 10 arrows. I don't think the stack should actually track individual arrows, but also I don't like the idea of all the arrows necessarily degrading in unison...

Reading this reminds me of the "food rot" thread... and not in a good way.

So I thought it would be fun (and I think it can be done with relative ease, but some difficult math has to be done first to determine how to do this... And I haven't approached the math, yet) if, when you fired an arrow from the stack, the stack randomly determined the condition of the arrow based on the possibility space given the overall factors (number, total remaining hits) Thus, even if you shoot two new arrows and return them to the stack, resulting in a 10, 98 stack (10 arrows, 98 shots remaining) there's a (quite small, maybe 1%?) chance that when you draw a new arrow, the stack will decide that since you could have shot the same arrow twice to get the same results, it will fire an arrow with only 8 hits remaining, leaving you with a 9, 90 stack. This could be abused (If the same randomness was involved when a stack was split, you could manipulate stacks to get whatever you desire, and with enough work, turn two 10, 55 stacks into one 10, 100 and one 10,10 stack. Then with 10 more shots you'd have a free slot. Would this be unbalancing? Probably not) and it could be less manageable from a code perspective than I am imagining... Also, it's not clear that randomness is a favorite thing for the Don't Starve Devs. It seems like most actions in the game are actually deterministic. It might just not fit the style.

Well I can't speak for the Devs, but I personally think we should take a simpler route. Rather than tracking each arrow individually or in unison, why not simply have it that whenever an arrow is fired, and hits, that there is a % chance it will break? That way it would be a simple matter to tweak the % higher or lower based on player feedback.

Note, I suggest that arrows should only really miss is a player "misfires" by releasing the RMB before the bow is fully drawn and this causes the arrow to fall short or drop to the ground (whichever works best/easiest). This prevents arrow spamming and players can always retrieve fallen arrows.

Some sense of durability would be important, but it need not be very specific... 'New', 'Good', 'Worn', 'About to break' would be fine with me.

Are you suggesting the word appear on the arrow(s) or when the arrow(s) are examined? This reminds me of a similar discussion we had about tracking freshness % for foods in the rot thread. The end result is the same, in that we would need to sacrifice the basic description to include one about freshness/durability.

I'm not at all sure we need either enemies with ranged attacks (wilderness survival, as a human being, is not a game of balance, it's a game of pitting very unique advantages as a human being, such as technology, including ranged weapons, against unique needs, such as protection from even your 'native' climate, i.e. clothes and social/psychological needs) or more ranged attacks (The two we have strike a great balance.)

Balance aside, I certainly wouldn't mind it for uniqueness and variety. After all it would certainly be another means of adding variances in the established enemy types, which are so far mainly varied only by durabilty and damage dealt. Only the spider queen, of course, having the unqiue ability to spawn more spiders sets her apart (the flame/red hound really isn't all that unique to me).

I think maybe a coup de grace mechanic would be useful, but not if it is completely unbalancing. The effect as it exists with small groups of spiders, for example, is more or less fine... They take a while to wake and they are stun-vulnerable, so you can take out up to 3, maybe 4 sleeping spiders without much risk of harm, even if 1 is a warrior spider. 2 depending on factors like locations and such.

Wouldn't this mechanic lead to abuse with sleep darts and/or the pan flute? God knows I abused this same mechanic in Fallout 3 (Sandman perk) killing people in their sleep. Evil people... of course...

Where it gets tricky is with large groups of spiders... If I can walk right up to a sleeping spider, and stand there for... quite a while... Without waking it up, why can't I find a way to kill it quietly so its compatriots don't wake up?

I'm playing Far Cry 3, so killing people silently is something I think about a fair bit (in the game, of course). The question here is what was the real reason for the "sleep" condition? Was it to help us kill enemies or escape them? If it was kill, then we have to consider abuse of the mechanic if a one-hit kill were introduced. The next question is, do we really need it? The only enemies that attack us in groups are spiders and hounds after all. Would this nerf their effectiveness?

Also... I probably shouldn't need to use a lot of flint wear to kill something sleeping. I'd say (for balance, rather than realism) that the ability to do bonus damage and to not wake monsters which are killed with a single strike would be better than an outright instant kill...

If ther were one-hit kills I would think that would be benefit enough, as rather than requiring several strikes, and using up the appropriate spear durability, you are instead only using one strike, and the durability associated with a single attack with the weapon. I think that would be a fair trade as far as durability is concerned.

Uhm, I think I've strayed off topic. Sorry.

Maybe we have...

[The Pig Whisperer]

True, flint is finite, however it's hardly rare. I'm sure similar discussion took place for the spear, with the averaging factors being that the spear has good durability and players can also acquire the spikey stick. A solution I would prefer is a means by which flint would no longer be finite, like in past suggestions I've made for adding a volcanic/lava biome with eruptions causing new boulders to be spawned.

Two points here: Once tentacles start respawning, and the Pig King is a dependable part of worldgen, I won't worry so much about the finite supply of flint. You only need enough flint to get you to the point where you are sustainable on tentacle spikes and gold. Of course, I don't use Bee Mines, in part because I am obsessed with the finite supply of flint.

I'd love to see a dangerous volcanic biome where you have to be ready to run at a moment's notice from a deadly pyroclastic flow, and there are always boulders, no matter how many you mine, but... Well, it's a 2.5D game. I'm not sure it would fit well.

More interesting might be a creature with a life cycle... It spawns commonly as something like a yappy dog: tiny, highly aggressive, and fragile (with maybe enough bite to make him a bother for early-game Wilson). It probably wouldn't *look* like a yappy dog. Maybe it would look like a little rock-monkey thing. Then it matures into a mid-life phase of needing lots of food of some sort. Perhaps a rock-chimp with a taste for green veggies (it needs iron, you see.) The adult phase might be a highly destructive troll form (looking like a large stone gorilla) or something... Not so delicate... Still agressive? And then, if it survives long enough, it matures into a boulder.

The idea being, without lots of intervention, it will never mature to troll form, and if you get it to that form, you then have to deal with it trying to kill you, and if you kill it to stop it from killing you (or wrecking your camp) it doesn't become a boulder. The concept being built-in pushback/tradeoffs. Do you build a troll-safe camp away from your main camp, raise a bunch of trolls, and when they start maturing to adult form, you dump all the troll food you have left on the ground and flee, hoping the remaining troll-chimps don't starve, and come back after a certain amount of time with a pick? Do you raise one at a time so the feeding will be more manageable, and keep them at your main camp, and try to kite the adult troll a safe distance away, then lose it so it doesn't smash your camp? Is another 3-4 stone, 1-2 flint and possibly a gold chunk worth all the expense and risk?

Just Spitballin'.

Another factor to consider is how powerful would an arrow be? If 1 or 2 arrows can kill a hound, that would make it more powerful than a spear/spikey stick. However, if players need to draw and release each arrow, taking longer to attack with the bow than the spear, then you need to factor in DPS since the spear would strike more often (2-3 times maybe) in comparison to the bow's single attack.

Still really just spitballin':

I personally would suggest the damage be small, but the range high, only to make it something more than just another way of dealing damage. Also nice would be if you could run and draw the bow at the same time, so it's possible with 'normal' mobs to maintain range. Better would be if this slowed you down enough that you'd have to spend time making distance, then more time drawing and shooting, making it a very time/effort expensive way to attack. An annoying, expensive, but genuinely different way of dealing damage to mobs.

Low-IQ mobs shouldn't aggro on being hit by an arrow or dart, but rather move into a state of higher awareness/aggressiveness. They don't know who shot them, they don't even know they got shot. They just know there was a pain and now there's this thing sticking out of them that causes more pain... (or they are on fire, or asleep.) If you shoot a Beefalo, and don't wait for it to calm down before approaching it, it might aggro on you out of pure pain/frustration/irritability. Could possibly even be used to get low-IQ mobs to aggro on other nearby mobs? Although most of the low-IQ mobs are pretty aggressive to begin with...

This would give a real bonus for higher-IQ mobs (I'm guessing Tree Guard, Hound, Pig, Werepig, Small/Teen/Tallbird, and Krampus could guess where an arrow was coming from. Most other mobs that come to mind would not.) So sniping could be an effective way of dealing with warrior spiders, but not worth the trouble for regular spiders, and basically useless on the Queen (because she'd nest before you could nibble her to death with arrow damage, assuming you had enough arrows to keep sinking them into her for that long...)

The realism factor is low with this variation, but I don't think anyone wants to deal with a 'miss' mechanism for arrows, or all the other things which would go into a balanced, realistic, low-probability of high damage interpretation.

Fair enough. For the actual suggestion I support 20 arrows per stack, but 10 arrows works fine for your example discussion.

Reading this reminds me of the "food rot" thread... and not in a good way.

Well I can't speak for the Devs, but I personally think we should take a simpler route. Rather than tracking each arrow individually or in unison, why not simply have it that whenever an arrow is fired, and hits, that there is a % chance it will break? That way it would be a simple matter to tweak the % higher or lower based on player feedback.

That would be even less deterministic than my version, in real terms. Let me propose that we go back to the OP's idea of simply having each arrow be good for one use, and letting them stack higher, get multiple arrows from less flint? Not sure. There's a lot of balance issues here to consider.

Note, I suggest that arrows should only really miss is a player "misfires" by releasing the RMB before the bow is fully drawn and this causes the arrow to fall short or drop to the ground (whichever works best/easiest). This prevents arrow spamming and players can always retrieve fallen arrows.

I like this, and it does go well with my low-damage, safe distance version (which is not an accident. I read your whole post before I replied. This might have planted part of the seed in my head and I was definitely thinking about this when I was typing that part.)

Are you suggesting the word appear on the arrow(s) or when the arrow(s) are examined? This reminds me of a similar discussion we had about tracking freshness % for foods in the rot thread. The end result is the same, in that we would need to sacrifice the basic description to include one about freshness/durability.

In my head I had considered a strictly graphical representation... The arrow appears pristine and untouched; has some visible damage to the fletching; has splinters sticking out and one of the fletches (is that a word) is only attached at one end; is slightly bent in the middle, missing some of the fletching completely, and there's grass wrapped around the bent part, like that's all that's holding it together.

Balance aside, I certainly wouldn't mind it for uniqueness and variety. After all it would certainly be another means of adding variances in the established enemy types, which are so far mainly varied only by durabilty and damage dealt. Only the spider queen, of course, having the unqiue ability to spawn more spiders sets her apart (the flame/red hound really isn't all that unique to me).

Mobs also vary in the ability to dodge, the ability to flee, and the ability to lock them down with stunning effects, as well as what sorts of traps they trigger and how agressive they are toward the player and other mobs.

But absolutely. I wouldn't mind a mob where the head-on approach, even with tentacle spike, helmet, log suit, and Mohammed Ali footwork, doesn't work, so long as there are still multiple ways to deal with or ignore it. I get the impression I'm in the minority on this. And I certainly can see where it could easily go wrong if it wasn't *very* carefully worked out.

low-IQ less agressive mobs which don't provide good rewards for killing but might have some pest-like behaviors... Only worth attacking to get rid of them, but maybe you can manipulate them into a fight and get more of a win-win situation?

The bow as a tool for manipulating aggro seems interesting to me. Maybe some creatures are mid-IQ, they aggro when they are hit, but they don't notice when their mates get hit, so the bow can be used to kite them. Especially interesting if it's a mob that can't be timed or easily fled, so you can't just kite it the old fashioned way? So many possibilities.

Wouldn't this mechanic lead to abuse with sleep darts and/or the pan flute? God knows I abused this same mechanic in Fallout 3 (Sandman perk) killing people in their sleep. Evil people... of course...

I'm playing Far Cry 3, so killing people silently is something I think about a fair bit (in the game, of course). The question here is what was the real reason for the "sleep" condition? Was it to help us kill enemies or escape them? If it was kill, then we have to consider abuse of the mechanic if a one-hit kill were introduced. The next question is, do we really need it? The only enemies that attack us in groups are spiders and hounds after all. Would this nerf their effectiveness?

The reason I suggested it was because I've found some groups of monsters overwhelming. Hounds can be if you forget to reset your traps after starting the game (which I do when I move from camp A to camp B a lot... Oops.) If you remember, but too late to fix it, you can lay out meat, but if you think your traps are in good shape, and you're wrong... Ouch.

And 3 spider queens with large warrior spider armies... To your point, I dealt with these situations, and although I'm still likely to use up a few effigies in the process, I've even survived both of these ugly situations. So this would be more of an alternative path... And would need to be balanced against existing solutions to these problems.

I don't know what the point of sleep darts is, honestly. Only time I've been able to use the pan flute effectively was to get past a pair of incensed spider queens stuck on a bridge, and to flee a group of hounds who caught me away from camp without enough meat. In neither of these situations would the sleep darts have helped me. Not to say they couldn't be helpful, but I haven't figured out how to use them yet.

If ther were one-hit kills I would think that would be benefit enough, as rather than requiring several strikes, and using up the appropriate spear durability, you are instead only using one strike, and the durability associated with a single attack with the weapon. That would be a fair trade as far as durability is concerned.

So you'd propose that striking a sleeping creature deals extra damage, but it still wakes any allied creatures nearby? This would still do more than just save on flint, given that it takes critters time to wake up. If it's currently possible to take out (say) 3 spiders before they wake up, and maybe 2 warriors, now you could take out 5 spiders or 3 warriors. I'd say that's powerful enough. Wander in, drop some traps, take out 3 warriors, lead 3 spiders into your traps, and then take out the rest the old-fashioned way... Suggests you could take on a group of maybe 4 warriors and 5 spiders without having to put them back to sleep (or run until they deaggro and fall asleep if it's day.) I'm better at kiting spiders than I used to be. Maybe I could do that now.

Maybe we have...

If we hadn't before...

[CaptKnuckles]

A bow and arrow should already be in the game, those are basically the only 2 things that i can actually make if i were stuck in the wild, they are fairly easy to make, and work well (however they break fairly easily, and you cant shoot that far with them). Have any of you tried to make a shovel/pickaxe/axe/etc out of sticks and rocks? it's not that easy, and if you do make them, they break within seconds, before you can get a chance to use them

[Pyrolisk]

What about those new spiders that are resistant to kiting. namely the yellow spiders. at this point in time you either have to use a lot of fire darts, a sleep dart or take a fair amount of damage just to kill them. Im not suggesting a ranged weapon and now that i think of it spike traps can also do the job but maybe something else? idk. even then maybe you should keep them as an enemy that is harder than most to kill. that being said in groups they are extremely hard to take down (i assume this is intentional). another thing is that as Soon as they 'lock on' to your player and start to perform their jump, you cannot dodge it. (seems to me to be that way) they always track you until they hit. once again these are only speculations and suggestions so take them as you wish.

[mobius187]

Two points here: Once tentacles start respawning, and the Pig King is a dependable part of worldgen, I won't worry so much about the finite supply of flint.

Well those are solid bets, since Kevin wrote about respawning tentacles a while back, however there has been no word as to the details, and there's no reason not to spawn the pig king. Or at least none that I've ever read.

You only need enough flint to get you to the point where you are sustainable on tentacle spikes and gold. Of course, I don't use Bee Mines, in part because I am obsessed with the finite supply of flint.

I'm not obsessed, but while playing as Wendy I found bee mines not as useful, since Abigail trips them. Not sure how she does it, what with having no feet...

I'd love to see a dangerous volcanic biome where you have to be ready to run at a moment's notice from a deadly pyroclastic flow, and there are always boulders, no matter how many you mine, but... Well, it's a 2.5D game. I'm not sure it would fit well.

Well in the original suggestions we didn't try to include an actual volcano, rather lava pools, steam vents, rivers of lava (from pool to pool), and earthquakes that caused eruptions which spewed boulders out from lava pools and dropped them randomly around the immediate area. For obvious reason plays should avoid standing where a boulder was about to land, but a shadow was suggested to indicate those spots. However anything in that spot would be destroyed/killed once the boulder landed.

The general idea was that, yes, the lava biome would provide infinite boulders (flint/gold/stone), but that players who stayed there were faced with random scalding hot steam escaping from cracks in the ground, earthquakes that damage/destroyed placeables (i.e. pig house, science machine), and lava which could either cut off a player from a chosen route (river of lava) or send burning embers into the air. Mind you these are all suggestions that were made and collected.

Another player suggested that lava pools could even be a source for lava hounds, like how ponds spawn frogs each day. But as we're talking about bows/arrows, I will include a resource that was suggested, namely obsidian. The player suggested that it could litter the area around the lava biome, just like flint, and be used to craft sharp objects... like a more deadly arrow.

The idea being, without lots of intervention, it will never mature to troll form, and if you get it to that form, you then have to deal with it trying to kill you, and if you kill it to stop it from killing you (or wrecking your camp) it doesn't become a boulder. The concept being built-in pushback/tradeoffs. Do you build a troll-safe camp away from your main camp, raise a bunch of trolls, and when they start maturing to adult form, you dump all the troll food you have left on the ground and flee, hoping the remaining troll-chimps don't starve, and come back after a certain amount of time with a pick? Do you raise one at a time so the feeding will be more manageable, and keep them at your main camp, and try to kite the adult troll a safe distance away, then lose it so it doesn't smash your camp? Is another 3-4 stone, 1-2 flint and possibly a gold chunk worth all the expense and risk?

A few other players came up with ideas along these lines, one suggested a giant roack crab while another suggested a stone turtle. The idea being that to the players they would appear as boulders, until the player tried to mine them, and then they would spring to life and attack. When you killed them you earned "boulder" resources. However to create an infinite source we would have to have baby versions that would spawn, grow up, and so on.

I personally would suggest the damage be small, but the range high, only to make it something more than just another way of dealing damage. Also nice would be if you could run and draw the bow at the same time, so it's possible with 'normal' mobs to maintain range. Better would be if this slowed you down enough that you'd have to spend time making distance, then more time drawing and shooting, making it a very time/effort expensive way to attack. An annoying, expensive, but genuinely different way of dealing damage to mobs.

Well, anything is possible. I still like the idea of selecting a target and holding the RMB so you character draws back the bowstring, then when it's pulled all the way back, releasing it to shoot.

Low-IQ mobs shouldn't aggro on being hit by an arrow or dart, but rather move into a state of higher awareness/aggressiveness. They don't know who shot them, they don't even know they got shot. They just know there was a pain and now there's this thing sticking out of them that causes more pain... (or they are on fire, or asleep.)

That makes me think of the sniper rifle in Far Cry 3...

If you shoot a Beefalo, and don't wait for it to calm down before approaching it, it might aggro on you out of pure pain/frustration/irritability. Could possibly even be used to get low-IQ mobs to aggro on other nearby mobs? Although most of the low-IQ mobs are pretty aggressive to begin with...

Sure, why not? You would have to be more careful then, to make sure you didn't aggro the beefalo. What about the other beefalo, would you suggest they react in any way?

This would give a real bonus for higher-IQ mobs (I'm guessing Tree Guard, Hound, Pig, Werepig, Small/Teen/Tallbird, and Krampus could guess where an arrow was coming from. Most other mobs that come to mind would not.) So sniping could be an effective way of dealing with warrior spiders, but not worth the trouble for regular spiders, and basically useless on the Queen (because she'd nest before you could nibble her to death with arrow damage, assuming you had enough arrows to keep sinking them into her for that long...)

And I would hope not... arrows should be great to have, but I don't think they should be so plentiful as to have players stockpiling them. That gives me Minecraft flashbacks (which isn't that much of a "flashback" as I played it only an hour ago...).

That would be even less deterministic than my version, in real terms. Let me propose that we go back to the OP's idea of simply having each arrow be good for one use, and letting them stack higher, get multiple arrows from less flint? Not sure. There's a lot of balance issues here to consider.

I would agree with higher stacks, but not multiple arrows. I still think we can work out a better solution to acquire more flint to make its current finite nature a non-issue moving forward.

low-IQ less agressive mobs which don't provide good rewards for killing but might have some pest-like behaviors... Only worth attacking to get rid of them, but maybe you can manipulate them into a fight and get more of a win-win situation?

As in manipulate them to fight other creatures for you?

The reason I suggested it was because I've found some groups of monsters overwhelming. Hounds can be if you forget to reset your traps after starting the game (which I do when I move from camp A to camp B a lot... Oops.) If you remember, but too late to fix it, you can lay out meat, but if you think your traps are in good shape, and you're wrong... Ouch.

Well, hounds are lethal. So far I've just been taking advantage of the inability to pathfind on stone bridges and the affinity for meat.

I don't know what the point of sleep darts is, honestly. Only time I've been able to use the pan flute effectively was to get past a pair of incensed spider queens stuck on a bridge, and to flee a group of hounds who caught me away from camp without enough meat. In neither of these situations would the sleep darts have helped me. Not to say they couldn't be helpful, but I haven't figured out how to use them yet.

I admit I'm not entirely sure either, as I prefer the pan flute in any situation where I've needed to put enemies to sleep. Maybe it has to do with differentiating between you pig men allies and enemies, which the pan flute doesn't.

[The Pig Whisperer]

Well those are solid bets, since Kevin wrote about respawning tentacles a while back, however there has been no word as to the details, and there's no reason not to spawn the pig king. Or at least none that I've ever read.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, regarding the Pig King. I think he's either not spawning at all, or having a habit of spawning on unreachable islands.

Well in the original suggestions we didn't try to include an actual volcano, rather lava pools, steam vents, rivers of lava (from pool to pool), and earthquakes that caused eruptions which spewed boulders out from lava pools and dropped them randomly around the immediate area. For obvious reason plays should avoid standing where a boulder was about to land, but a shadow was suggested to indicate those spots. However anything in that spot would be destroyed/killed once the boulder landed.

The general idea was that, yes, the lava biome would provide infinite boulders (flint/gold/stone), but that players who stayed there were faced with random scalding hot steam escaping from cracks in the ground, earthquakes that damage/destroyed placeables (i.e. pig house, science machine), and lava which could either cut off a player from a chosen route (river of lava) or send burning embers into the air. Mind you these are all suggestions that were made and collected.

Another player suggested that lava pools could even be a source for lava hounds, like how ponds spawn frogs each day. But as we're talking about bows/arrows, I will include a resource that was suggested, namely obsidian. The player suggested that it could litter the area around the lava biome, just like flint, and be used to craft sharp objects... like a more deadly arrow.

Seeing Kevin comment in the hotfix thread that he doesn't want this to be a combat game really made me feel better about the endless suggestions about new enemies. I assume that Lava Hounds are Red Hounds by another name? What you describe seems workable. A very dangerous biome which spawns boulders.

A few other players came up with ideas along these lines, one suggested a giant roack crab while another suggested a stone turtle. The idea being that to the players they would appear as boulders, until the player tried to mine them, and then they would spring to life and attack. When you killed them you earned "boulder" resources. However to create an infinite source we would have to have baby versions that would spawn, grow up, and so on.

I did see the beautiful art someone came up with for the boulder-mimicking rock crabs. I must admit, the art was awesome, but the idea did not appeal to me. Usually it is not the tree you are trying to chop down that turns into a Tree Guard. I am not into the whole game randomly kills you thing... And I find mimics fall into one of two categories: Either they are too weak to be a threat unless you are completely unprepared, or they are game randomly kills you when you are desperate for a resource and they are pretending to be that resource.

I'm not aware, off the top of my head, of any situation where you need more than 3 logs to survive immediately, so if the Tree Guard spawns, you grab what you got spawning him, and run, if you aren't prepared to kill or pacify him. At the same time, he is challenging enough that I won't take him on if I'm completely beat up or if I don't have armor. If the Rock Crab worked like the Tree Guard, I suppose that would be okay? I guess the issue is that trees are an infinite resource, and boulders are not. If boulders are renewable in the way that trees are, then the crab seems fine... But if it takes a lot of doing to renew the boulders, I would hate to be down to the last boulder in the area, desperate for flint/gold, and suddenly it comes alive! My proposal was oriented toward keeping the value of flint high, by making boulders renewable, but not easily renewable.

Well, anything is possible. I still like the idea of selecting a target and holding the RMB so you character draws back the bowstring, then when it's pulled all the way back, releasing it to shoot.

I was sorta assuming that when I was describing my ideas. I liked your take and didn't say so (the post went over the limit and I had to cut it back... Even without that!)

That makes me think of the sniper rifle in Far Cry 3...

Sorry. Don't know a thing about it.

Sure, why not? You would have to be more careful then, to make sure you didn't aggro the beefalo. What about the other beefalo, would you suggest they react in any way?

Well, if we are considering beefalo to be low aggro but social/herd animals (and certainly I'd take the latter as a given) then the beefalo you snipe would become aggressive, but not aggro on you if you didn't get close, and I guess the rest of the beefalo would get jittery? Basically, aggressive would work like most of the hostile mobs in the game... Only they'd calm down to jittery after a bit. And Jittery would be the same as aggressive but with a smaller detection range, and a jittery mob would calm down to normal after a bit. So if you snipe a passive mob (e.g. beefalo or pacified Tree Guard) you get a temporarily hostile mob.

And I would hope not... arrows should be great to have, but I don't think they should be so plentiful as to have players stockpiling them. That gives me Minecraft flashbacks (which isn't that much of a "flashback" as I played it only an hour ago...).

Agreed. And we're discussing arrow recipes which require either Flint or Obsidian and feathers... So there are a lot of angles to limit. Feathers are not actually hard to acquire (two techniques produce them in fairly high volumes) and currently flint is plentiful until it runs out. I guess I'd rather see less flint in the world at start, but have it renewable... So the cost doesn't increase exponentially over time...

I would agree with higher stacks, but not multiple arrows. I still think we can work out a better solution to acquire more flint to make its current finite nature a non-issue moving forward.

There are more issues here than just the limits on flint... If an arrow does less damage than one hit with a spear, and takes as much flint as 100 hits with a spear, no reasonable person is going to make many arrows unless flint becomes effectively free (which would probably mean free-standing flint spawning throughout play, not just renewable boulders) If an arrow does, say, as much damage as 20 hits with a spear, then even if you only get one shot with an arrow (or, say, an average of 1.5 shots with a random chance of the arrow breaking each time) then if flint is reasonably renewable, I'm going to look at using arrows, a lot... And definitely use them against spider queens!

As in manipulate them to fight other creatures for you?

Yes.

Well, hounds are lethal. So far I've just been taking advantage of the inability to pathfind on stone bridges and the affinity for meat.

Tooth traps do it for me. I make a giant plaza of tooth traps with a hole in the middle big enough to drop a monster meat, and when the barking starts, I bait the plaza, and stand anywhere nearby. I like this solution but I want A> an easier way to reset the tooth traps, and B> a more portable solution so that I don't have to time all my expeditions just to avoid hound attacks when I'm away from home. The meat-chain solution seems to work only partly, past day 200 or so. Fortunately, I just suicided to try out the new update, and I'm under 100 again.

I admit I'm not entirely sure either, as I prefer the pan flute in any situation where I've needed to put enemies to sleep. Maybe it has to do with differentiating between you pig men allies and enemies, which the pan flute doesn't.

So the Sleep Darts may just not be useful at present. Maybe we should check if everyone else feels the same way.

[mobius187]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, regarding the Pig King. I think he's either not spawning at all, or having a habit of spawning on unreachable islands.

What I was saying was that I see no reason why, in the final version, the pig king shouldn't spawn for every map. Obviously if he's not spawning now due to a glitch or randomness... well, what can we do? I just don't see that as being the case down the road, but that's just my opinion.

Seeing Kevin comment in the hotfix thread that he doesn't want this to be a combat game really made me feel better about the endless suggestions about new enemies. I assume that Lava Hounds are Red Hounds by another name? What you describe seems workable. A very dangerous biome which spawns boulders.

Lava hounds... ah... I guess I did call them that. I must have been tired. Yes, I was referring to the existing red hounds, not anything new. As for the lava biome, I'm hopeful that we'll have something along these lines at some stage.

I did see the beautiful art someone came up with for the boulder-mimicking rock crabs. I must admit, the art was awesome, but the idea did not appeal to me. Usually it is not the tree you are trying to chop down that turns into a Tree Guard. I am not into the whole game randomly kills you thing... And I find mimics fall into one of two categories: Either they are too weak to be a threat unless you are completely unprepared, or they are game randomly kills you when you are desperate for a resource and they are pretending to be that resource.

While I didn't care too much for the "every resource has a pop-up guardian", I do like the idea of slow/lumbering high-health creatures that spawn once disturbed and then relentlessly chase after you... I recall the first time I encountered a treeguard and it followed me back to my camp and I ended up spending the entire night running circles around my camp fire with it chasing me.

Of course we could do with more "original" concepts for new monsters rather than reskinning the treeguard.

Well, if we are considering beefalo to be low aggro but social/herd animals (and certainly I'd take the latter as a given) then the beefalo you snipe would become aggressive, but not aggro on you if you didn't get close, and I guess the rest of the beefalo would get jittery? Basically, aggressive would work like most of the hostile mobs in the game... Only they'd calm down to jittery after a bit. And Jittery would be the same as aggressive but with a smaller detection range, and a jittery mob would calm down to normal after a bit. So if you snipe a passive mob (e.g. beefalo or pacified Tree Guard) you get a temporarily hostile mob.

I was thinking that maybe you could use the bow/arrow to anger a beefalo and then trick it into attacking another enemy/creature passing near to it at that moment. Then I realized my idea sounded a lot like the Enrage plasmid from Bioshock. You hit an enemy with it and they attack the nearest creature. Of course in this case a beefalo wouldn't attack another beefalo.

I guess I'd rather see less flint in the world at start, but have it renewable... So the cost doesn't increase exponentially over time...

True, I'm sure this is all because the Devs know how important flint is to starting players who need it to craft the tools they'll need to survive. If flint became a renewable resource then they would probably reduce its numbers.

There are more issues here than just the limits on flint... If an arrow does less damage than one hit with a spear, and takes as much flint as 100 hits with a spear, no reasonable person is going to make many arrows unless flint becomes effectively free (which would probably mean free-standing flint spawning throughout play, not just renewable boulders) If an arrow does, say, as much damage as 20 hits with a spear, then even if you only get one shot with an arrow (or, say, an average of 1.5 shots with a random chance of the arrow breaking each time) then if flint is reasonably renewable, I'm going to look at using arrows, a lot... And definitely use them against spider queens!

I'm in the camp that an arrow would do more damage per hit than a spear, or even a spikey stick, but that its slower than either of those aforementioned weapons. As to how much more damage...? That's open to debate. It should be worthwhile, while at the same time not auto-killing everything with a single hit. Still, I wouldn't be against it killing hounds in a single hit... maybe two.

Tooth traps do it for me. I make a giant plaza of tooth traps with a hole in the middle big enough to drop a monster meat, and when the barking starts, I bait the plaza, and stand anywhere nearby. I like this solution but I want A> an easier way to reset the tooth traps, and B> a more portable solution so that I don't have to time all my expeditions just to avoid hound attacks when I'm away from home. The meat-chain solution seems to work only partly, past day 200 or so. Fortunately, I just suicided to try out the new update, and I'm under 100 again.

Hmmm. You know what would be interesting? If there was a second tier for the tooth trap. The crafting formula could include the original (crafted) tooth trap and add in extra resources to make a self-resetting trap. Something with cogs and springs? That way you could sit back and watch the trap trigger and then slowly reset... and if the enemy is still there or a new one comes along, it would snap shut all over again... then reset, ect.

[The Pig Whisperer]

What I was saying was that I see no reason why, in the final version, the pig king shouldn't spawn for every map. Obviously if he's not spawning now due to a glitch or randomness... well, what can we do? I just don't see that as being the case down the road, but that's just my opinion.

Ah. Then I am of the same opinion.

While I didn't care too much for the "every resource has a pop-up guardian", I do like the idea of slow/lumbering high-health creatures that spawn once disturbed and then relentlessly chase after you... I recall the first time I encountered a treeguard and it followed me back to my camp and I ended up spending the entire night running circles around my camp fire with it chasing me.

Of course we could do with more "original" concepts for new monsters rather than reskinning the treeguard.

Slow/lumbering high-health creatures which are relentless once angered don't have to be the Treeguard reskinned. They don't have to be pop-ups. They can be completely visible passive mobs who only aggro if you attack them or do something specific within their detection range. They don't have to be infinitely timeable. Instead of having a slow walk and a long wind-up animation making, they might walk slowly, but attack very quickly (with low damage, and no stun, or less stun, if that means anything) so that you can't get free hits in once they are aggro'd. Then you can either trade hits (with lots of healing and spare tentacle spikes & armor you might win the fight...) or get clever (attack with spiders, teenbirds, pigs, et c.; stay out of range and fight with fire darts; use a pacify-and-strike tactic, with sleep darts, getting in maybe a handful of hits while the mob is waking up, and then running away to repeat or with some other resource that doesn't mimic planting trees to pacify it...)

I was thinking that maybe you could use the bow/arrow to anger a beefalo and then trick it into attacking another enemy/creature passing near to it at that moment. Then I realized my idea sounded a lot like the Enrage plasmid from Bioshock. You hit an enemy with it and they attack the nearest creature. Of course in this case a beefalo wouldn't attack another beefalo.

That was my thought. I'm not familiar with Bioshock. Or Far Cry. Or any of the big title games of recent years... Maybe a Beefalo wouldn't attack another beefalo... But a spider might attack another spider...

True, I'm sure this is all because the Devs know how important flint is to starting players who need it to craft the tools they'll need to survive. If flint became a renewable resource then they would probably reduce its numbers.

Yeah. The problem with rebalancing flint is that it has to be readily available at the beginning of the game... On my latest map, I actually came close to running out before I found a second meadow island... And I still haven't made it to a rocky biome island. I've been rather aggressively completist in my mapping efforts and in wiping every last spider nest off the map as I go. That will get a lot harder when I find a rocky island if it's heavily infested and has tallbirds, too, or the next forest island I find, now that the nests are all tier 3 and ready to drop queens.

I'm in the camp that an arrow would do more damage per hit than a spear, or even a spikey stick, but that its slower than either of those aforementioned weapons. As to how much more damage...? That's open to debate. It should be worthwhile, while at the same time not auto-killing everything with a single hit. Still, I wouldn't be against it killing hounds in a single hit... maybe two.

I'm just trying to figure out how to balance a breakable (1.5 hit durability) weapon with a cost of 1 flint & feather(s) (plus twigs) against a durable (100 hits) weapon with a cost of 1 flint (plus twigs & rope.) Either it does so much damage it's absurd, or it doesn't do enough to justify the waste of flint. This is why I thought multiple arrows from a single flint would be a good idea. Anyway, presumably it's a big piece of flint to start with. Why not break it up to make many arrows? Then there can be some balance that doesn't have to depend entirely on all the components being renewable. Maybe 1x flint + 20x twigs + 1x redbird tailfeather + 1x crow tailfeather -> 20 arrows? Then, if the arrows do 2x spear strike damage (except for Wolfgang, since the limiting factor is the bow, not the strength of the archer, he'd get no bonus to arrow damage, and thus only 1x spear strike damage), they would do a total of 40% of the damage of a spear. If it's 3x, 60% and so on.

Hmmm. You know what would be interesting? If there was a second tier for the tooth trap. The crafting formula could include the original (crafted) tooth trap and add in extra resources to make a self-resetting trap. Something with cogs and springs? That way you could sit back and watch the trap trigger and then slowly reset... and if the enemy is still there or a new one comes along, it would snap shut all over again... then reset, ect.

We don't have any item upgrades in the game, and the only items which come in tiers are A> those which don't have to be unlocked at their lower tier, e.g. tools, and B> The Science Machine and Alchemy Engine, which are kinda a special case. The Icebox is sort of a higher-tier of the chest, but conceptually, it's more of a specialty version. I think this simplicity and "flatness" is intentional. The Devs don't want the worse version and the better version, they want different items which, if they serve similar purposes, have different tradeoffs. Anyway, one of my suggestions which has been largely ignored was to make the tooth trap easier to reset. This wouldn't be self-resetting, but it would greatly decrease the annoyance/grind factor in tooth trap strategies.