Thermal Stone vs Insulation

[Czeraphine]

Hello there! As the title suggests, this post is about the Thermal Stone vs Insulation and the pros of each (though, more directed towards winter).

*The information below on thermal stones is, oddly, not on the wiki. I personally conducted some tests and found the numbers stated below. Please feel free to do some tests yourselves to either prove or challenge the data I found.

As most people know, the mechanics of the thermal stone in DST is NOT the same as its mechanics in DS. And, here's why:

It has a durability of 8 neutral-hot/cold cycles. Meaning, for every time it reaches a glowing red hot state, or a deep blue cold state and goes back to a grey neutral (ambient temperature state), it loses durability. However, it has been severely buffed compared to DS' thermal stone.

Firstly, the thermal stone neither makes you colder in the winter nor make your hotter in the summer. This means that, in the winter, it cannot reach a cold state. And, in the summer, it cannot reach a hot state.

Secondly, you may increase the temperature of the thermal stone by standing next to a fire. You may increase it even further than standing on top of a fully stoked fire pit by simply placing a spiky bush on the ground and setting it on fire. Then, simply digging up the spiky bush. This allows you to let the thermal stone reach a temperature upwards of 60 degrees. Compared to standing next to a firepit which can net you up to 30 degrees during the winter.

Third, the thermal stone gains or loses heat at relatively constant rates. It gains approximately .75 to 1 degrees per second and loses approximately .15 to .2 degrees per second when not next to a fire. This means that for every second you stand next to a fire, you can increase your time away from a fire by 5 seconds. This is especially true by using the bush trick as it raises your temperature far above that of what a fully stoked fire pit and provide you.

Lastly, wearing insulation on top of having a thermal stone on you does NOT reduce the rate at which it loses or retains heat whatsoever. This means that wearing an insulating item whilst carrying a hot thermal stone is pointless. This opens up the head slot for the player to do whatever they wish (miner hat, top hat, bush hat, football helmet etc.)

--

Insulation reduces the rate at which we lose heat in the winter while taking up a head or body slot (more commonly the head slot as most people run around with a backpack).

The first aspect of insulation is their relatively small upkeep compared to a thermal stone. With insulation, you can easily tell the when you are about to freeze and when your item is about to break (or needs repairing). Additionally, it may or may not require less time standing next to a fire due depending on one's insulation value.

secondly It also allows for combinations of some powerful sanity/insulation combos (cat cap, tam, winter hat). Unfortunately, you are pretty much unable to take your insulation off unless you are in the direct vicinity of a heat source. Most players will have to unequip their chest item and replace it with a log suit if they are in need of protection.

-That's all I can really think of for insulation.

Which one do people prefer to take and why? 

[Diaboliko]

I take both unless I don't have a spare slot of free space. Then I will prefer to carry insulating hat(since noone likes to throw their backpack away and Im usually carrying a miners hat and/or some defensive hat). Thermal stone is super nice because it gains heat super fast and emits light while super hot. Normally if you stop and burn a stick you will get around 5 game degrees, while thermal will become yellow already and will raise your temperature over time up to 28 degrees. Without it you gotta spend more time just standing near source of fire... The only downside of it is that you gotta grind stone for it (which is not bad at all, and becomes meaningless when using flingomatics to fight dfly)

[Czeraphine]

2 hours ago, Diaboliko said:

I take both unless I don't have a spare slot of free space. Then I will prefer to carry insulating hat(since noone likes to throw their backpack away and Im usually carrying a miners hat and/or some defensive hat). Thermal stone is super nice because it gains heat super fast and emits light while super hot. Normally if you stop and burn a stick you will get around 5 game degrees, while thermal will become yellow already and will raise your temperature over time up to 28 degrees. Without it you gotta spend more time just standing near source of fire... The only downside of it is that you gotta grind stone for it (which is not bad at all, and becomes meaningless when using flingomatics to fight dfly)

 

Though I agree that using both means being the most efficient with your time, for the few people that play as a nomad, the extra inventory space lost carrying the other counterpart becomes relatively significant. Also, grinding stone is pretty much like grinding for logs; it's way too easy since it's too plentiful.

I will admit though, I feel kind of lost by what you meant with dfly.

[Diaboliko]

3 hours ago, Czeraphine said:

I will admit though, I feel kind of lost by what you meant with dfly.

Freezing lavae yeilds rocks.

[HomShaBom]

I use both. Whenever I take off my insulation my Thermal Stones seem to cool down faster. Apparently it's just all in my head, but the insulation will still help after the stone loses its warmth.

[FTR]

Both. Thermal stone is neccesary when you fight, and you need to replace your hat for helmet. Insulation obviously prolongs time you can be warm after thermal stone gets cold, which is always great.

[Knislinge]

Stone, situation-appropriate hat, and campfire materials. Maybe a held item for emergencies, like a whirly fan. The bonuses from the chest pieces are great, but without a backpack I feel very restricted in exploration/gathering.

[Rellimarual]

The best is the tam and the thermal vest. As long as you make fires at night you really don't ever need to think about the cold.

[Czeraphine]

15 hours ago, HomShaBom said:

I use both. Whenever I take off my insulation my Thermal Stones seem to cool down faster. Apparently it's just all in my head, but the insulation will still help after the stone loses its warmth.

 

 

9 hours ago, FTR said:

Both. Thermal stone is neccesary when you fight, and you need to replace your hat for helmet. Insulation obviously prolongs time you can be warm after thermal stone gets cold, which is always great.

3

That's what I used to think too -until I saw the numbers. It's true that the insulation helps a ton after the loses its warmth though. It gives you a grace period for you to heat back up.

1 hour ago, Rellimarual said:

The best is the tam and the thermal vest. As long as you make fires at night you really don't ever need to think about the cold.

I tend to shy away from using the thermal vest; a backpack feels too precious to give up when I could just use the tam/winter hat and/or a thermal stone. There are cases, however, that I feel having a head slot free would work out better -such as when you're fighting all the time and have to constantly equip your log suit (drops your backpack), or equip a football helmet (removes your insulation).

--

I did a little more testing, and apparently, with a fully stoked fire pit and a nearby burning item (spiky bush), you can get your thermal stone's temperature to 90 degrees -the thermal stone's maximum temperature. And, it lets you roam the entire day without insulation.

[HutGenerator]

During early days, my suggestion would be tam o and backpack. Later on when you have base, you could go for tam o and hibernation vest, as your inventory is sufficient even without backpack. Swap to log suit when fighting.

With wilson's beard, there is no need for thermal stone.

But if you have a slot, carrying a thermal stone is fine too.

[edhells]

First of, sorry for the "necro". I was looking for themal stone informations and OP experimentations were worth digging a bit more. I thought I could share it.

Formulas used here come both from the wiki (Freezing) and from the game code itself, both confirmed by in game testing. Testing occurred during winter time with world temperature below freezing. 

First, from OP experimentation, thermal stone gain/loss temperature rate is around 0.2 °/sec. This is further confirmed by taking 120 as self insulating factor for the thermal stone: 30 / (30 + 120)

Second, despite the thermal stone loosing/gaining temp steadily, the actually heat produced is set for a given range (that range being set relative to the ambient world temp). ie: If stone temp > +30° => stone will emit a fix 60°. IF stone temp < 30° and > 10° => stone will emit a fix 40° etc... Fixed emitted temperature are -10/10/25/40/60 (corresponding to the 5 stone colored stages) and limit for each range are -30/-10/+10/+30.

Third, insulation process (both cold/hot)  take place only when, either you are loosing heat while colder than your "starting temp@35°" or gaining heat while hotter than your "starting temp@35°".

From there, it's understandable why your body temp keep at a steady level (around your "starting temp" of 35°) despite the stone getting colder than you, but staying in his max orange level. In other therm, you max body temperature, even with a max heated thermal stone @90°, will be around your 35° starting temperature. Overheating your thermal stone will make it stay in it's orange state longer tho.

 

Now on the comparison side of thing:

Quote

Lastly, wearing insulation on top of having a thermal stone on you does NOT reduce the rate at which it loses or retains heat whatsoever. This means that wearing an insulating item whilst carrying a hot thermal stone is pointless.

I will start from this statement. While the 1st part is true, as the thermal stone have it's own insulation determining it's own heat gaining/loosing rate, it doesn't imply the second. Quite the opposite actually, carrying a hot thermal stone is pointless whilst wearing insulating item. And this statement is correct as long as your total insulation is greater than the thermal stone one. (In reality you need slightly more than 120 (162 to be exact) since thermal stone can be overheated to 90° and you body can only reach 70° at max)

As soon as you start loosing heat faster than you current insulation allow, you're stone is literally useless in your inventory. Since you start loosing heat as soon as you leave your warm place (firepite/itemfire) and thus even with a glowing orange thermal stone, you are entering "insulation mode" directly. 

In fact, the only situation were it would be worth switching your insulation for stone, would be at the moment your reach your "starting temp@35°", then you could swap in your overheated thermal stone and wait for it to decay to its yellow level and switch back to your insulation. Since you rarely found a glowing thermal stone out in the wild, it's indeed a purely theoretical case. (I will come back at it at the end tho)

Most practical use of those knowledge would be to reach your body overheat limit @70° (with burning evergreen or similar) and than wear up a greater than 162 insulation clothing. Thermal stone only use would be if you have less than 162 insulation cloth available to you or you would want to preserve them to wear out for small/quick task around your base.

Before freezing, that mean a maximum of around 7.5 minutes with an overheated thermal stone (90° to 0° at -0.2 °/sec) while wearing anything upward from 162 insulation at body overheat limit (70° to 0° at -0.15 °/sec) will provide you with gradually more than 7.5 minutes to reach totally realistic number like 20 minutes @480 insulation (beefalohat + puffy vest for exemple).

To end this non intended wall of text, I would say that similarly to use a blue chester as a mobile icebox to cool down your summer heated stone, you could totally burn anything hot enough (only did testing with evergreen, but OP suggest small object like spiky bush works too) each time your stone reach the end of its yellow state, in order to overheat it and enjoy another 7.5 min. of heat, all that without even touching thermal stone durability, since keeping it yellow at worse.

I hope all that could be useful to some of you. In the meantime, excuse my poor wording/grammar, English isn't my mother tongue.

[DVGMedia]

i was wondering if you tested out having multiple stones on you since 1 it provides a bigger source of light with each hot stone and 2 if they actually play off of each other  slightly increasing the amount of time b4 needing to warm up again..

that and also there is a strange interaction with a cold stone and winter attaire during summer causing the stone to last longer than it normally would. so why wouldn't the opposite be different  with heat retention

[edhells]

Initialy, I didn't tested stacking multiple stones, trusting some veterant player comments on reddit.

That being said, I just made some more testing with 4 than 8 stones, both either in your inventory or backpack. It increase, as you predicted, but very marginally with in increase of less than 1min. overall with 8 stones stacked. Reason behind it is mostly that, despite your "plateau" temperature at each stone color stage is overall higher (like 50° instead of 35° at the orange level), all stones decrease their temperature at same rate than before, without influencing each other. The small added duration most likely come from the fact that at the end of your yellow stage (more or less the moment the stone will near 0°, as seen before), your body temp. is higher than previously and thus it will take a slighly bigger time for it to floor at 0°.

Regarding your second assumption, can you be a bit more detailed on the "strange interaction" you mentioned? Didn't tested anything like that for now, but game code suggest that during hot season, winter insulated attire are out of the equation. I'm willing to do some testing tho.