Canaries don't drop feathers?!

[fsp98]

Either I'm extremely unlucky, it's a bug or canaries don't drop the feathers when you kill them in your inventory. I've trapped and killed about 20 of them and no feathers. Help?

sorry for so many posts lately

[Lumina]

I'm not sure i'm reading the code well, but as far as i understand, they have a lower drop rate for feather than classic bird. Something like 1/20 chance if i'm not wrong. I killed 50 canary (debugspawn), and got 46 morsel and 4 feathers (could be very random, my first 20 canaries give me only morsel and i got 3 feather on the last 10 canaries.)

 

Someone in this forum said that poisoned canary could drop a lot of feather on death ?

[fsp98]

I don't even know if poisoned canary is even a thing. Half of people here are joking about it or saying it isn't in the game yet.

[TemporaryMan]

Looks like 1 in 11.  Normally feathers and morsels are both 1/2, but for the canary feathers are 0.1/1.1  ugh, decimals in a fraction just looks so... wrong.

[fsp98]

so, 9%?

[Lumina]

Poisoning exist now i think, it was planned but not here at the release of the update, i guess.

[fsp98]

there's some info about it in the files, but i'm no expert. it should be in game

[fimmatek]

1 hour ago, Lumina said:

Someone in this forum said that poisoned canary could drop a lot of feather on death ?

I heard of the poison too, so I tried it a few days ago. If you take a canary to the caves and put it into a cage, after a few days it gets poisioned. It means it will be lying on the ground of the cage, but still living. If you take it to the surface and release it, it'll soon fly away and leave 5 feathers behind.

[Rellimarual]

3 hours ago, fimmatek said:

I heard of the poison too, so I tried it a few days ago. If you take a canary to the caves and put it into a cage, after a few days it gets poisioned. It means it will be lying on the ground of the cage, but still living. If you take it to the surface and release it, it'll soon fly away and leave 5 feathers behind.

Yep. I easily made a full stack of the darts using a purpose built cage near the stairway in the closest cave entrance to my base.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

Wow, this got changed, right? Considering how tough it is to simply get darts already, I think this was a bad move from Klei. Creative, but bad. Cause unless you have a reed trap and a Wickerbottom to help you farm the reeds for the darts, they're unreliable and useless as all hell. To get a bunch of those darts, it requires you to be a pro, but by the time you become a pro, killing things via melee is already very easy, which is how the whole dart balance gets destroyed. It's kind of like playing a free MMO with micro-transactions, you investing a whole bunch of money into it to a point where playing the game itself has no point to be played as you just bought everything via micro-transactions and you have no goal to achieve within the game.

I think perhaps it would be good if you could simply craft a whole bunch more darts than just one out of the materials you do now, like lets say 8 or so and for the darts to stack up to 40 (that is if the recipe stays the same) and see where it goes from there. You still need all the original ingredients, just less of them to get more "durability" out of darts. Consider that darts have quite a bit longer attack delay when using them, so it could even out with the melee weapons that way. Plus, crafting 8 darts in one craft would mean you would need to spend less time crafting a whole bunch of them too! Yeah, the recipe doesn't really make sense as is, but what does? Crafting 6 giant walls out of just 2 cut stone/6 fist-sized rocks, keeping a whole bunch of them in your pocket/backpack and not being slowed down even by a little, whilst the opposite being for carrying a giant marble piece for a marble-wrapped clockwork on your back?

Anyway, I hope some decent changes are made to darts or if not for darts themselves explicitly, then for feathers and reeds, because the electric darts have become the most unreliable weapon in the game, if you think about it and by a huge margin in comparison to everything else. Crafting a dozen bird cages, just to come down and get some more does not seem any easier/any more reliable than simply summoning a bunch of birds and killing them straight off, with each having 50% chance of dropping a feather for your darts.

[Mday]

I dont think the game need to buff darts. It is not suppose to be a 2D shooting game anyway.

Ranged weapon mostly are used as a tool to draw aggro.

[Rellimarual]

The darts are not that great unless the target is wet, but they come in handy with splumonkeys.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

12 hours ago, Mday said:

I dont think the game need to buff darts. It is not suppose to be a 2D shooting game anyway.

Ranged weapon mostly are used as a tool to draw aggro.

But what, was it supposed to be 2D melee-combat game instead? Because that seems to be a huge part of the current game and has been for quite some time. Yes, the game might be better with not having too much shooting, but these things exist. Regardless of how often you use them, they still exist and can be used. And if they exist, it's best if their existence is more prevalent in the game. Wasting your time just to craft a bunch of them is very annoying. Challenge in the game is good, but so far as it flows with the overall game and doesn't hinder grinding and annoyance, which, in all honesty, this game does a lot.

12 hours ago, Rellimarual said:

The darts are not that great unless the target is wet, but they come in handy with splumonkeys.

I honestly do not understand why Dragonfly is the only other thing other than players that can be made wet with water balloons. Everything else can get wet from rain, so why using water balloons on other things doesn't hinder them wet? Would be extremely useful against Gmoose and Toadstool and especially Toadstool due to morning stars.

[Lumina]

2 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Regardless of how often you use them, they still exist and can be used. And if they exist, it's best if their existence is more prevalent in the game.

Why ? If someone exist in a balanced way, why should it be more prevalent ?

2 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

I honestly do not understand why Dragonfly is the only other thing other than players that can be made wet with water balloons. Everything else can get wet from rain, so why using water balloons on other things doesn't hinder them wet? Would be extremely useful against Gmoose and Toadstool and especially Toadstool due to morning stars.

Only Dragonfly can get wetness with water ballons ? I agree it's sad, a strategy against Toadstool using balloon seems cool.

[Mday]

More prevalent darts= 8 times cheaper?

Anyone for some "more prevalent" DF, Toad, winter, summer, DST and etc?

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

6 hours ago, Lumina said:

Why ? If someone exist in a balanced way, why should it be more prevalent ?

Only Dragonfly can get wetness with water ballons ? I agree it's sad, a strategy against Toadstool using balloon seems cool.

I did kind of explain the imbalance that darts have: by the time you can get a whole bunch of them, you would not need to use them for anything (I'm talking about skill here).

6 hours ago, Mday said:

More prevalent darts= 8 times cheaper?

Anyone for some "more prevalent" DF, Toad, winter, summer, DST and etc?

I do not get what your point is here. "more prevalent" DF, Toad, winter, summer and DST... what?

[Lumina]

Just now, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

 I did kind of explain the imbalance that darts have: by the time you can get a whole bunch of them, you would not need to use them for anything (I'm talking about skill here).

Yeah, but why would you need a "whole bunch" of them ? Having some darts is enough if well used, to force a "fleeing" monster to fight you for example, making distance damage when someone else is fighting directly, or any strategy you could imagine.

You don't need to have a whole bunch, just enough for your need.

For example, i find them useful for mactusk fight. I'm sure there are various strategies around them.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

5 hours ago, Lumina said:

Yeah, but why would you need a "whole bunch" of them ? Having some darts is enough if well used, to force a "fleeing" monster to fight you for example, making distance damage when someone else is fighting directly, or any strategy you could imagine.

You don't need to have a whole bunch, just enough for your need.

For example, i find them useful for mactusk fight. I'm sure there are various strategies around them.

Thing is, they aren't reliable or at all necessary to make things easier overall. The trouble you go through to get some and then waste them on something you can simply and usually will anyways fight via melee anyway.

Ranged distraction is something boomerang and to a lesser extent ice/fire staves as well as STS and on rare occasions Pan flutes could be used for. Boomerang in particular outweighs any darts. Fire darts have become the epitome of useless because, and I'm not exaggerating, you need 7 whole of them in order to kill a spider. Sleep darts, I've no idea where you could even use those, blow darts can only be crafted if you get a bunch of those feathers during winter or are very lucky with tumbleweed or catcoon drops and now electric darts have been made even less reliable than any of them, because you need to craft a dozen bird cages down in caves, trap a few birds, come back a few days later to release them on the surface to get... 5 feathers per bird.

I bet you the game would be much more fun if ranged weapons were made more durable/were easier to craft/were refuelable and the game would be much more friendly in terms of strategy variation. It's always Dark swords or ham bats and log suits or battle helmets, because a huge amount of everything else is either too much effort to mass-produce and/or isn't worth the trouble. So much potential in the game to have variation and allowance for different game play style, yet because of how the game's been balanced, one way of playing will nearly always exceed other methods. Just imagine if Weather Pain had some more durability and you could repair it via down feathers, darts either weren't so expensive to get in larger amounts.

I can see darts being changed to a point where melee weapons become inferior, flipping the balance up-side down (i.e. melee becoming inferior to ranged weapons). I am not entirely sure what results my suggestion would provide the game, it was just a thought on how darts could be balanced out so that ranged and melee weapons could both be used much more equally. But what I do know is that ranged weapons as they stand really are not worth the trouble pretty much all of the time, which is kind of a bummer, since there's a lot of content in the game, yet much of it isn't being used nearly at all by players because of balance reasons.

Perhaps, look at it this way; you could "beat" the game if you only used melee weapons to fight in the game, whether it be tools like axe or pickaxe or weapons like spears, ham bats or dark swords, or simply punching things with your fists. Now, you couldn't do the same with ranged weapons, could you? killing a bird with any dart, unless you're starving is a complete waste and a stupid move, which I honestly think really sucks.

[Lumina]

7 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

now electric darts have been made even less reliable than any of them, because you need to craft a dozen bird cages down in caves, trap a few birds, come back a few days later to release them on the surface to get... 5 feathers per bird.

Sorry, i don't understand. You mean that obtaining 5 feather for EACH bird is bad and make this dart less reliable than the others ?
So maybe the solution is not to make that you obtain more dart for the same recipe but double the amount of feather requested by each recipe, since this way, it will be more reliable.

Being sure to obtain feather and obtaining an high amount of them (rather than the 1 feather for 2 bird for the old birds) is pretty reliable and a good way to ensure that you will obtain enough material to craft 5 dart.

If this is less reliable for you, i don't see any change that could be enough...

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

3 minutes ago, Lumina said:

Sorry, i don't understand. You mean that obtaining 5 feather for EACH bird is bad and make this dart less reliable than the others ?
So maybe the solution is not to make that you obtain more dart for the same recipe but double the amount of feather requested by each recipe, since this way, it will be more reliable.

Being sure to obtain feather and obtaining an high amount of them (rather than the 1 feather for 2 bird for the old birds) is pretty reliable and a good way to ensure that you will obtain enough material to craft 5 dart.

If this is less reliable for you, i don't see any change that could be enough...

What? This will just make them even less reliable!

Look, melee weapons, like spear and dark sword have plethora of durability and require small amount of resources. Spear: 1 flint + 1 rope + 2 sticks = 34 damage per hit TIMES 150! Blow dart: 2 reeds + 1 hound's tooth + 1 azure feather = 100 damager per hit... times 1... wat? And all because it's a ranged weapon? It doesn't even have that large of a distance, like your character won't always fire a dart at an enemy from the spot you are at as you need to be a specific close distance to fire one.

[Lumina]

2 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

What? This will just make them even less reliable!

You are saying that obtaining 5 feather, 10 time the usual amount of feather per bird, is less reliable, so i wonder what will be reliable if MORE feather is LESS reliable.

2 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Look, melee weapons, like spear and dark sword have plethora of durability and require small amount of resources. Spear: 1 flint + 1 rope + 2 sticks = 34 damage per hit TIMES 150! Blow dart: 2 reeds + 1 hound's tooth + 1 azure feather = 100 damager per hit... times 1... wat? And all because it's a ranged weapon? It doesn't even have that large of a distance, like your character won't always fire a dart at an enemy from the spot you are at as you need to be a specific close distance to fire one.

I'm not saying that dart couldn't be improved a little. I think they are balanced because you don't need ton of them, you can just use one time to time for specific use, like you could use firestaff time to time for specific use or gunpowder time to time for specific use, but they aren't needed.

Not anything need to be used as much as everything. Yeah, for normal fight, you will use spear because it doesn't cost much, resource are easy to obtain and it work well. For special cases you could use darts. Also, some feather will be obtained without a lot of efforts (bird trapped by lureplant, tumbleweed, bird falling asleep near the camp at night (it happen), bird trap... I usually end with some unused feather in my chest, meaning "free" dart for me because i didn't make any effort to obtain theses feathers.)

Things should have a balance, but it's also important to keep in mind that some things will come without direct cost, or you will gain benefit for actions that have another purpose (for example, the feathers i obtain from lureplant : my purpose is to kill lureplant, feather is a bonus). So you can't always compare direct cost, you should also compare opportunities, and dart are something you could perfectly avoid most of the time and make only with the bonus resource opportunity gave you. (For example, having a canary in cave for seeds and transforming monster meat, and using the poisoning as opportunity to obtain a lot of feather)

Also, comparing a situation when you fight in melee and distance is not really a good thing, since melee require two things : weapon and either kite or protection (armor/shield), often both, and that distance offers more opportunities to flee (and not being attacked), and also, because you could do BOTH. You could perfectly start with a dart (either classic/electric, this way the monster stop running and attacks you, or sleeping and you have time to approch safely to attack with a melee weapon).

So, yeah, attacking ONLY with distance weapon is probably not reliable and hard to do or will require a lot of work, but mixed attacks could be a lot more effective than just classic attacks. Or course, it should be use for fight that worth it : using dart on spider isn't really a proof of anything since you have better ways to kill spider, and not anything should be useful against anything. The real important part is : are some fights easiers with some darts (not ton of them, but let say 2 or 3) ? It is easier to force some monsters to fight you with dart than classics options ?

If the answers are yes, there is no need to make darts equals to melee, they have a purpose and they are useful. You could improve them but you don't need to make them 10 times as powerful in a short term vision of balance that sees only numbers and not behaviours.

[Mday]

I don't even know where to start:C.

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To get a bunch of those darts, it requires you to be a pro

Why do you need to be a pro to get "a bunch of" darts? I can hardly understand this.

Reeds, tooths and feather, these aren't hard to get. It is more like a matter of how much time and resource you want to spare getting these darts. It doesn't matter if you are pro or not, it takes the same amount of effort to get these resources. By comparison, solo kill DF by kiting is something that actually takes a pro to do.

Quote

but by the time you become a pro, killing things via melee is already very easy

Which is why DST is a 2D melee game. What you are saying is like asking CS to buff the knife because players are scoring kills with guns, and that knife should have be more prevalent since it is already in the game. 

I guess what I am trying to say is, players enjoy the melee part of the game, just like players in CS enjoy their guns. It doesn't stops you from doing a "darts only" run, just as sometimes players in CS will do knifes only map.

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Spear: 1 flint + 1 rope + 2 sticks = 34 damage per hit TIMES 150! Blow dart: 2 reeds + 1 hound's tooth + 1 azure feather = 100 damager per hit... times 1... wat?

You can't really compare ranged weapons and melee weapons like this since the game is suppose to be 2D melee based. Like I've said earlier, ranged weapons are mainly for aggroing mobs. So it is only fair to compare it with other ranged weapon. When you actually compare it with boomerang, ice staff and such, you should be able to notice some advantage from it.

Usually in a world that pass 100 days I will start crafting some darts. The reason being that tooth and silks starts to pile up and I need a way to get rid of those. Sure I can kite the deerclops, however it is more convenient and quicker to just spam some darts at the deerclops and be done with it. In that sense darts are actually rather OP.

How about early game you may ask? Early game I am too busy building my base and I hardy have to aggro passive mobs. A boomerang is all I need for saving noobs form shadows creatures, and killing birds/ rabbit for a quick morsel. 

[Rellimarual]

I'll repeat that it's impossible to use melee weapons on monkeys unless they're shadow monkeys, so darts are invaluable when cleaning out the ruins.

[Mday]

44 minutes ago, Rellimarual said:

I'll repeat that it's impossible to use melee weapons on monkeys unless they're shadow monkeys, so darts are invaluable when cleaning out the ruins.

It is not entirely impossible to use melee weapon on monkeys.

If you have darksword/ fresh hambat, you can drop something on the floor as bait, then melee the monkey as they come to you to pick up the item.

Sometime the cave has some very narrow bridge area that you can use to corner groups of monkey at once.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

23 hours ago, Lumina said:

You are saying that obtaining 5 feather, 10 time the usual amount of feather per bird, is less reliable, so i wonder what will be reliable if MORE feather is LESS reliable.

I'm not saying that dart couldn't be improved a little. I think they are balanced because you don't need ton of them, you can just use one time to time for specific use, like you could use firestaff time to time for specific use or gunpowder time to time for specific use, but they aren't needed.

Not anything need to be used as much as everything. Yeah, for normal fight, you will use spear because it doesn't cost much, resource are easy to obtain and it work well. For special cases you could use darts. Also, some feather will be obtained without a lot of efforts (bird trapped by lureplant, tumbleweed, bird falling asleep near the camp at night (it happen), bird trap... I usually end with some unused feather in my chest, meaning "free" dart for me because i didn't make any effort to obtain theses feathers.)

Things should have a balance, but it's also important to keep in mind that some things will come without direct cost, or you will gain benefit for actions that have another purpose (for example, the feathers i obtain from lureplant : my purpose is to kill lureplant, feather is a bonus). So you can't always compare direct cost, you should also compare opportunities, and dart are something you could perfectly avoid most of the time and make only with the bonus resource opportunity gave you. (For example, having a canary in cave for seeds and transforming monster meat, and using the poisoning as opportunity to obtain a lot of feather)

Also, comparing a situation when you fight in melee and distance is not really a good thing, since melee require two things : weapon and either kite or protection (armor/shield), often both, and that distance offers more opportunities to flee (and not being attacked), and also, because you could do BOTH. You could perfectly start with a dart (either classic/electric, this way the monster stop running and attacks you, or sleeping and you have time to approch safely to attack with a melee weapon).

So, yeah, attacking ONLY with distance weapon is probably not reliable and hard to do or will require a lot of work, but mixed attacks could be a lot more effective than just classic attacks. Or course, it should be use for fight that worth it : using dart on spider isn't really a proof of anything since you have better ways to kill spider, and not anything should be useful against anything. The real important part is : are some fights easiers with some darts (not ton of them, but let say 2 or 3) ? It is easier to force some monsters to fight you with dart than classics options ?

If the answers are yes, there is no need to make darts equals to melee, they have a purpose and they are useful. You could improve them but you don't need to make them 10 times as powerful in a short term vision of balance that sees only numbers and not behaviours.

1) Yes, how are you not getting this? The poison takes DAYS to get to the bird, so it would take DAYS to get 5 feathers unless you make more cages and place more birds in caves. Unlike other feathers, which you can obtain 1 with a 50% chance in a few SECONDS, even if you just have some ingredients for a few boomerangs and a feather hat. So, idk why but you weren't taking into account DAYS and SECONDS in this comparison. Why, I do not know, I thought it would be obvious.

2) They're outmatched by some other weapons if you need/want their purposes "time to time". I'll address them at the end of this post.

3) I refer to what I said in point 2.

4) You can't rely on bonuses if you get little of them whilst you need lots of them. If you want a little of them, other things do it more efficiently, my friend, as I mentioned before, erasing nearly every need for darts (in extreme cases or in very specific cases, like somebody mentione dwith the splu monkeys, you could do better with electric darts than a morning star, but problem is, you can only deal that 150 damage if they're wet, which cannot be done via water balloons because god (or rather devs) knows what reason).

5) The BOTH scenario is possible, but it requires a specific character, requires double the luck (reed trap + lots of bee hives)

6) "but mixed attacks could be a lot more effective than just classic attacks" More effective in/during combat? Probably, a bit. Efficient and worth it? Not at all. It's a time-waste to get all of this ready. Imagine spending all of your winter getting feathers, having base near the reed trap itself, with a Krampus farming place nearby, a Warg pen nearby as well as bee boxes nearby... That's pretty much the only way to do it. The game asks too much for you to do this and I know from trying to attempt this once. I wasted a stack of blow darts on a queen and some spiders and then regretted it, because I was playing Wigfrtid and I'd need someone as Wickerbottom to constantly keep farming more reeds and feathers.

As far as I'm aware, the answer is no, because as I said earlier, many items, in particular boomerang can do the job much more efficiently. It has 10 uses, but it requires 1 charcoal, 1 silk and a board, all of which you can get a huge amount of in mere seconds mid-game, as opposed to darts, which for 10 or so uses would take a ton of reeds, require a boomerang or a wickerbottom to actually get the feathers for the darts in the first place and if you're aiming for constant usage, you'd need to trap a Warg to get the hound's teeth for blow darts or kill a bunch of bees (yeah, the stingers pile up, but only because you're never using them for anything ever over many days. If you wanted to use sleep darts like 1/10 enemy encounters, you'd need to get out of your way to kill bees over and over. The lureplant can make things easier, but it digests them very quickly, so this isn't a viable strategy, just an opportunity, which practically sucks). Let me illustrate some comparisons that make darts useless:

Sleep darts - Ice staves (darts stack up to 20, staves have 20 uses, yet 20 darts would require a stack of reeds (40), half a stack of stingers and half a stack of jet feathers, whilst an ice stave would only require... 1 blue gem and 1 spear (that's 3 grass/1 rope, 1 flint and 2 twigs, all of which are easy to come by). Yes, some mobs require a few less hits to put to sleep than to freeze, like the Warg (1 sleep dart to put to sleep, 3 ice stave hits to freeze), but the crafting recipe makes all the difference, putting ice stave majorly superior to sleep darts).

Fire darts - Fire staves (pretty much the same thing as with sleep darts and ice staves, just in terms of fire).

Blow darts - Dark Swords/Ham bats (similar thing as with sleep darts, apart from the small range difference that you can gain from using blow darts, the time to make a bunch of them is really pointless. Imagine just walking around and a slot being taken up by darts you never actually use for anything and there's no real reason to hold onto them. Dark swords deal a lot of damage per hit and the attack period of melee weapons (actually for staves as well!) is much faster than darts, so even if you're dealing more initial damage, a lot of darts in comparison to melee would deal less damage over time than dark sword would, perhaps even ham bat too).

Electric darts - Morning stars (I think you get the idea by now. If you don't, tell me).

I really cannot think of any ways in which darts would be the go-to in the game, can you? Everything seems to stack up against it, as with the example above.

The only practical way I see darts as a primary or a mixed weapon (e.g. using melee 60% of the time whilst darts 40% of the time, or 50%/50%, or even just 70% melee and 30% darts) is if you're playing Wickerbottom, your world has reed trap, your world has a lot of bee hives (because you'll need a lot of honey for all the taffy that you're going to use up getting feathers from killing birds with, say, ham bat due to you losing sanity upon summoning and putting to sleep all of the birds) and you're willing to waste the time obtaining the resources and crafting all the darts pretty much all of your time because of the rate that you're wasting them at.

22 hours ago, Mday said:

I don't even know where to start:C.

Why do you need to be a pro to get "a bunch of" darts? I can hardly understand this.

Reeds, tooths and feather, these aren't hard to get. It is more like a matter of how much time and resource you want to spare getting these darts. It doesn't matter if you are pro or not, it takes the same amount of effort to get these resources. By comparison, solo kill DF by kiting is something that actually takes a pro to do.

Which is why DST is a 2D melee game. What you are saying is like asking CS to buff the knife because players are scoring kills with guns, and that knife should have be more prevalent since it is already in the game. 

I guess what I am trying to say is, players enjoy the melee part of the game, just like players in CS enjoy their guns. It doesn't stops you from doing a "darts only" run, just as sometimes players in CS will do knifes only map.

You can't really compare ranged weapons and melee weapons like this since the game is suppose to be 2D melee based. Like I've said earlier, ranged weapons are mainly for aggroing mobs. So it is only fair to compare it with other ranged weapon. When you actually compare it with boomerang, ice staff and such, you should be able to notice some advantage from it.

Usually in a world that pass 100 days I will start crafting some darts. The reason being that tooth and silks starts to pile up and I need a way to get rid of those. Sure I can kite the deerclops, however it is more convenient and quicker to just spam some darts at the deerclops and be done with it. In that sense darts are actually rather OP.

How about early game you may ask? Early game I am too busy building my base and I hardy have to aggro passive mobs. A boomerang is all I need for saving noobs form shadows creatures, and killing birds/ rabbit for a quick morsel. 

Because a) You need to know that you need to have somebody as Wickerbottom or play yourself as Wickerbottom b) you need to know that reed trap exists and how to utilise it to get all the reeds you'll need for a bunch of them very quickly c) same going for feathers and the only time you can get the blow dart ones is during winter and d) you'd need to manage everything else ALONG WITH dart resource gathering, which would only be feasible if you're pro, especially if you're going to fight a bunch of Krampus from the amount of birds you're killing.

They aren't hard to get, they take a long time to get in huge amounts, especially the feathers and there's no way around that, as you yourself mentioned. Which is grindy af. BUT they also require prior knowledge to various things, which is essentially in the professional category. Otherwise, it's like you going to a newbie, presenting them with the game and straight off the bat giving them to watch a video about the ultimate beefalo domestication:

I highly doubt anyone new would comprehend even half of what the **** is going on before experiencing the basics first or watching a huge portion of this playlist of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rv5WgTbcIs&list=PLWOVyxUYVEax5XfqK1hWX7XoedXxIOCi1

No, my point is that a lot of things in the game for the most part are much more useful than darts, rendering darts nearly useless, and two of which even more so than the other two (sleep darts and fire darts being the epitome of useless).

I've never heard a developer say it's all meant to be like 99% melee. And even if they did and that was their intention, I would argue it's better to have ranged weapons buffed anyway, because it creates variation in the game without the extra grinding and specific requirements that you need to fill in before you can rely on something like darts for... pretty much anything, really. Different ways of game-play is what can keep the game more fun, but if the grind is too high, the whole thing (the method of gameplay) is just a stained dish, rather than part of a full meal (as in it's something that's there but never really noticed or cared about).

It is pointless, really, because you're wasting time, trying to get the reeds and the feathers just for that Deerclops kill with darts. And you're wasting time, spamming that craft button 40 times in a row, whilst you can obtain resources for a single dark sword or a ham bat very quickly, it takes only a blink of an eye to craft one of them for 100/infinite durability and still be left with good durability/staleness to kill some more things.

"How about early game you may ask? Early game I am too busy building my base and I hardy have to aggro passive mobs. A boomerang is all I need for saving noobs form shadows creatures, and killing birds/ rabbit for a quick morsel. " <= EXACTLY one of my points!  Meant to only refer to the boomerang as doing the whole "aggro" job of the darts. Apologies for not understanding the whole phrase from the beginning and pointing out what specifically I was trying to point an arrow at.