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Wich can be a nice strategy to start with?


Unqou

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I am used to play DS vanilla. On vanilla game, I usually can survive the first winter but I will be not able to go too further (Usually I survive until 40-50 days).

I am used, in vanilla game, to camp near to rabbit holes.  On first days I will go around the way, eating cherries, collecting a lot of twigs and cut grass (using torch at night). Than I will try to mine to collect gold and stones... trying to build crock pot as soon as possible and to have reeds to build bird cage before the first winter.

The problems of this approach, on ROG are:

- I rely about the fact that winter will start on day 21, but on ROG you can start very near to winter and to experience cold, if unprepared, also on day 3-4.

- I rely about the trapped rabbit will be alive forever until I kill them

- I rely on uncollected dried food... wich will not spoil until collected

- rabbit holes are always opened

- there is no wet penalty when raining.

Any suggestion for a better startup?. I like this game, but I am not so good at it (I'd like, one day, to be able to reach and survive under the ruins... but probably it will never happen)

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- I rely about the fact that winter will start on day 21, but on ROG you can start very near to winter and to experience cold, if unprepared, also on day 3-4.

In ROG, you can select your starting season. I highly recommend you set your starting season to Autumn, so the game begins in the same manner than vanilla DS does. You can still get chilly on the first few days sometimes, yes... so make sure you gather some grass and logs during your first 1-2 days so you can drop a fire if need be. I typically ignore the cold during the day since it comes-and-goes... but if it persists through dusk, lay down a fire and cook my carrots and berries over it at night. I only drop a fire if I see my health (heart meter) beginning to take a hit from the cold.


- I rely about the trapped rabbit will be alive forever until I kill them
- I rely on uncollected dried food... wich will not spoil until collected

You have to change these strategies up quite a bit in ROG. In ROG, you have to be thinking ahead... not just for the current season, but also for the season beyond. Lay down traps within a day or two of you preparing to make food, rather than collecting/hoarding until needed. You can still make the meat into jerky, but it spoils as well, so you'll want a Fridge ASAP when you find your base location. Part of ROG strategy is needing to be able to change your priorities on-the-fly. You also need to consider other sources of food besides just the rabbits. For example, one monster meat and 3 ice/berries makes Meatballs... so kill one spider and mine those glaciers or pick those berry bushes! You can also cook meat or berries to extend their lifetime a bit, if they've gone to the yellow/red stage.

An often-overlooked but very viable source of meat is Beefalos. I like to find one off on his own, hit him, and run away from the group so I'm only dealing with him. 8 full meat instantly! Koalefants are totally the same, hunt those animal tracks and get easy-peasy meat. If you aren't good with fighting, hit either Beefalo or Koalafent 4 times, dodge until they roar, then hit again. As you get the rhythm down, you can hit 5-6 times before dodging. Slow and steady wins the race with understanding how to fight for your food.


- rabbit holes are always opened

It's the same in ROG, except for Spring. By the time Spring rolls around (you will have 2 seasons to prepare, assuming you made the game start in Autumn), you need to have a good idea of where your other sources of food are. Also, don't discount Frog Rain in Spring. It feels like a total pain in the rear when it catches you unprepared. But look at it like this instead... those frogs can be caught in the same rabbit traps you've depended on, for practically infinite food. That's one strategy, but one of my favorite things to do is run away into the swamp when Frog Rain starts, since Tentacles kill Frogs also. Sure, spiders will eat some of the meat, but if you can find a good Tentacle spot to run in circles around while Frogs rain down, it will be a smorgasbord later. Another option is running into a Pig village, but you've still gotta watch out for Pigs eating the meat after they're done fighting.  


- there is no wet penalty when raining.

True, true. Starting in Autumn is a huge help with this. It rains for a few days here and there, but you'll dry out afterwards, and you can always dry out at a fire at night if it gets too bad right away. I consider "too bad" when I hit about the 75% wetness mark, that's about where I start losing my grip on my weapons and have to focus on heating myself and/or restoring sanity. You can knock down a pig house to get some pig skins and make an umbrella to help with wetness. Umbrellas won't cover you 100%, but you can also make a straw hat very early on, and the combination of the two will be 100% protection. There are other things you can craft that will cover you 100%, but you need to know more about fighting to get them, which you haven't addressed here so I'm not sure where you stand on that.  

 

What I would recommend is continuing to play vanilla a little bit more, and focus on changing up your approach to food. That way you can approach ROG with multiple "not starving" strategies ahead of time, and it won't feel so daunting. Your food situation will be covered, so you can look at learning and adjusting to the other major changes ROG brings.   


Another tip that doesn't apply directly to your questions, but helped me immensely, is dropping a Science Machine as soon as possible. It doesn't matter where, as long as it's easily accessible by you. A major road or intersection or near a wormhole you visit often is fine. At that Science Machine I craft:

 

  • Backpack: more inventory immediately, SO NEEDED!  
  • Spear: you need a weapon to fight various mobs, may as well make sure you can craft it anytime instead of depending on set pieces.  
  • Log Suit: you need armor when fighting, same principle as the Spear.
  • Shovel: depends on how good you are with preparing for the game ahead. I like it to dig up plants, graves if I'm not finding gears in other places, and trinkets to give the Pig King if gold is hard to find. It's not totally necessary right away for ROG though, just nice to have.
  • Alchemy Engine: I don't drop the Alchemy Engine. I craft it, then right-click to get rid of it being placed... then it's available in my craftables to drop as soon as I find a place I want to build my base.
  • Chest: I know I will need many many chests as the game progresses. Sometimes I'll drop one at the Science Machine as collection for my gatherings that aren't needed immediately. Other times, I'll craft but not place it so it's reserved for my base later. It depends on if I've already found Chester for whether or not I'll need to clear up some of my inventory space. 
  • Crock Pot: if I happen to have the resources, craft it but don't place it (right-click to cancel placement).
  • Drying Rack: if I happen to have the resources, craft it but don't place it (right-click to cancel placement).  

 

With all of these, I'm thinking ahead about what I will want and need later. I will "make do" during Autumn in order to prepare myself for Winter. I survive off of berries, seeds, and carrots mostly, until I find my good base spot and can start crafting for realz. I typically explore and gather stuff until about day 15-ish, then lay down craftables for my base.

 

When Winter hits, I have a somewhat-sustainable system, so I keep that going while preparing for Spring. In Spring, I refine my system to sustain myself as much as possible, and prepare for Summer. In Summer, I gather rocks and explore the desert, just survive until Autumn hits and I can prepare and refine all over again, in better ways. 

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Most of your suggestions are very similar about how I usually play on vanilla game. The reason I use so much the rabbits in vanilla is not only related to the meatballs food (where I use monster food too, when I have it), but also related to another recipe I use a lot: bacon and eggs.

In vanilla games, infact, I used to NOT COLLECT AT ALL flowers (at least, not before the winter ends). One of my strategies was to find enough rocks, reefs (at least 8 to have 2 papyrus), etc to have a birdcage (and a captured bird) before winter comes, not stopping my sanity drain. This way rabbits becomes also a good source of monster food (cooked when alive) so 2 of them are converted to eggs, while  1 keeped for monster food and make a "bacon and eggs" recipe (killing birds with boomerang, or using some morsel I saved before sanity went under 80 with wilson). When sanity goes at 30 where I can face shadow monsters (the easy ones... I cannot face terrorbreak... perhaps becouse my tochpad does not work at 100%) starting to collect nightmare fuels, but taking small jerkies as a source to use to boost sanity (together with a tent if I collected enough silk in time). I find that the small jerkies are very good for sanity boost by food (you recover less hungher, allowing you to use a decent stack of them without vasting too much hunger filling). Jerkies are better for a more deeper recover (you have more hunger, health to recover and not only sanity).

 

Usually my order on vanilla is a bit (but not too much) different:

1) backpack

2) Croc pot

3) wood armor (to wear instead of backpack when needed)

4) spear

5) drying rack

6) alchemy engine

etc

[but drying rack could go after 6) sometimes... it depends by games]

I usually take the showel, in vanilla game, only when winter has begun (after crafting the thermal stone... usually I don't use winter cloaths, at least not in first winter).

Usually I don't kill befaloo (even if you are right, they are very good food sources) becouse I use them (when I find them) as a shield against hound attack (until the end of the first winter I usually not crafter any bee boxes or any bee mine).

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Yes you are right about suggesting to start in the Autumn (when I start in Autumn it seems more managable), but I'd like to try to be brave and trying to face even when I started in spring.

The greatest problem is cold generated by wetness becouse I have no enough time to craft a decent protection in the first three days. (straw hat helped a bit...). And also the umbrella seems to have a decreasing durability also when used for weather protection (unlike in vanilla). How can you prepare to summer when it urges to protect yourself from weather? And also.... there should be more chess biomes and chess enemies around... but in the most of maps I faced, there were chess biomes, but usually without guardians (except for wooden thing, like in vanilla... but I find easier to find wooden thing in ROG than in vanilla, strangely). I think that gears for ice cube and frig-o-matic should be somehow required to manage to survive in summer (I figure I cannot gues how to save my structures without them...). I'm trying to be more flexible... tha'ts why I'm trying to be sticky to ROG (swapping, sometimes to SW wich I also own).

For the moment I have some difficulties on changing my game style... but I am still trying...

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OK cool, it sounds like you have a really good strategy towards food and survival already... my apologies for misunderstanding! If you really want to master a Spring start, leading into Summer, then you need to adjust your strategy away from food gathering, and instead think more like a fighter and nomad.

 

Gather what you need to survive, not what you need for longevity. You literally just need to focus on Spring and Summer, pretend the other seasons don't exist. Make a very minimal and functional base - alchemy, a crockpot or two, flingo, fridge, a couple drying racks. Oh, and a lightning rod, ALWAYS. Don't worry about the birdcage, you can deal with that and everything else that helps after you get through Spring and Summer. I would focus on wetness protection first (pretty parasol, umbrella, hats), then some fighting gear, and then find a semi-decent place to build a small base.

 

Think of the small base as temporary, it's just there to help you through the first two seasons. You have all the time in the world to move or rebuild it as you want later... for now, it should just be functional. You'll be spending the Spring and Summer on the move mostly, gathering supplies and resources every day to help you survive both of these seasons. 

 

My preferred biomes would be the desert first, or the deciduous forest near a pig village second. If you're lucky, they are near each other or connected by a wormhole so you get the supplies they both offer easily. Also, don't be afraid to take a run or two through a swamp to find some spider silk and/or green mushrooms to help with sanity.

 

Oh, PS - yes, RoG has more chess monsters ... that means you have to learn how to take them down by fighting on your own instead of relying so much on the guardian. The desert tumbleweeds are also a nice source of gears, just less reliable on a regular basis.

 

EDIT: I thought of something else right after I posted this.

 

Have you played Adventure Mode in vanilla DS? If you can play through that with any measure of success, whether you complete the whole thing or not, it can really help you get into a good mindset of approaching RoG. You could perhaps treat Adventure Mode like practice runs, to prepare yourself for changing your approach.

 

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OK cool, it sounds like you have a really good strategy towards food and survival already... my apologies for misunderstanding!

You don't need to be sorry about anything :). After all I die too early (even in Vanilla) to be considered a decent player (around day 40 - excluding resurrections). I wanted to arrive at day 100 without resurrecting.

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My preferred biomes would be the desert first,

Desert is cool. But my main problem is that I still not get the right timing to hit hounds without being hit back... also my touchpad doesn't help...  So I end to attack them countinously until they (or I) die. I still asking myself if the "birds" you see on deserts behave like normal birds or not. But I never tried to capture/kill them with a bird trap or with a boomerang.

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or the deciduous forest near a pig village second

This is the biome I know less. So any suggestion about how to manage it is wellcomed :p

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Also, don't be afraid to take a run or two through a swamp to find some spider silk and/or green mushrooms to help with sanity.

Yes... it is a thing I like do when swamp is not too far away. However I have problems on finding green mushrooms ready to be picked. And, even when I found them, I probably use them in a bad way (usually as ingredient of a croc pot recipe).

About silk... What is the best use of silk for sanity boost, in your opinion? Building a tent? Crafting a top hat? Other ideas?

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Oh, PS - yes, RoG has more chess monsters ... that means you have to learn how to take them down by fighting on your own instead of relying so much on the guardian. The desert tumbleweeds are also a nice source of gears, just less reliable on a regular basis.

Well... I have to say that most of times I found only the chess monster I could find on Vanilla (those ones around the wooden thing). While in Rog you surely have more chess biomes than before, this does not mean that you are granted to actually find other chess monsters, unluckly :(

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Have you played Adventure Mode in vanilla DS?

It can be sounds strange, but it is easier to me to find Maxwell door on RoG than in Vanilla. However... I feel too imprepared to face an endless winter (thinking of stage 1)... I tried one time only (when I was a complete noob, without knowing almost anything), but I guess I would have too much trouble on managing it (mostly because of possible lack of grass that you need for a lot of basic technology)

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On 10/23/2017 at 11:23 PM, Unqou said:

Desert is cool. But my main problem is that I still not get the right timing to hit hounds without being hit back... also my touchpad doesn't help...  So I end to attack them countinously until they (or I) die. I still asking myself if the "birds" you see on deserts behave like normal birds or not. But I never tried to capture/kill them with a bird trap or with a boomerang.

I wouldn't worry about the hounds in the desert, honestly. Don't fight them, just run away and get beyond their reach until you're better established and able to fight them.

 

"The birds" ... do you mean the buzzards? No, they don't act like regular birds. You can kill them if you want, or not, no big deal either way. Just don't leave meat on the ground near them.

 

On 10/23/2017 at 11:23 PM, Unqou said:

This is the biome I know less. So any suggestion about how to manage it is wellcomed :p

Deciduous forest (the orange ground with the trees that drop birchnuts, and often containing pigs, catcoons, and moleworms) is actually pretty straightforward once you get the hang of how the different elements act. Pigs there are like pigs in any other biome, they just happen to be more common. Catcoons can steal stuff you leave on the ground, as will Moleworms, so either destroy/move those creatures, or keep your tools and gathered items in chests. Don't chop down the largest Birchnut trees unless it's winter. If you see leaves on the trees, only chop the smaller ones when you need wood, or simply burn them for charcoal and to clear out space to build your base. There's often mushrooms and berry bushes scattered throughout the Deciduous biome also, which is nice for crockpot filler.

 

On 10/23/2017 at 11:23 PM, Unqou said:

However I have problems on finding green mushrooms ready to be picked. And, even when I found them, I probably use them in a bad way (usually as ingredient of a croc pot recipe).

About silk... What is the best use of silk for sanity boost, in your opinion? Building a tent? Crafting a top hat? Other ideas?

It's totally fine to use the green mushrooms as filler when you have a bunch of them - just stay aware of your sanity, and if you think you'll get low soon, save a couple of the mushrooms to cook later. There's plenty of other crockpot filler to be found. Red mushrooms are everywhere and basically useless, so use them as crockpot filler whenever possible.

 

Green mushrooms come up when it's dusk. After you pick mushrooms, you need rainfall to make them grow again. I like to pick the random green mushrooms throughout the world during Autumn, and save my swamp-green-mushroom-foraging for Winter. That way I end up with plenty of crockpot filler AND sanity restoration for a while, and when Spring hits, they'll all grow back like crazy.

 

I never actually use spider silk for tents - I know some people like that option, and it is viable, but it's never been my playstyle. I typically play as Wickerbottom, who can't sleep, so I always forget about tents and bedrolls being a thing I can use when I play other characters. If I'm really hurting for sanity, I'll make a Top Hat to bide my time, absolutely. But I always make sure to save enough spider silk to make the Winter Hat first thing when Winter starts, and continue to collect it so I can make sewing kits later on.

 

On 10/23/2017 at 11:23 PM, Unqou said:

It can be sounds strange, but it is easier to me to find Maxwell door on RoG than in Vanilla. However... I feel too imprepared to face an endless winter (thinking of stage 1)... I tried one time only (when I was a complete noob, without knowing almost anything), but I guess I would have too much trouble on managing it (mostly because of possible lack of grass that you need for a lot of basic technology)

Not strange at all, I agree! It can be just about anywhere in Vanilla, but In RoG, Maxwell's Door is typically in the desert - sometimes the world can also generate it in a weird random spot in the forest, but I almost always find it in the desert.

 

The reason I ask about Adventure Mode is because each of the levels are so challenging on their own, and being able to face those challenges in vanilla (whether you live or die) can help you have a better understanding and preparation for RoG. Adventure Mode forces you to adapt your playstyle to the world, instead of adapting the world to your playstyle. Being able to change your playstyle according to what's right in front of you, while knowing there is something totally different coming soon, is vital for playing RoG.

 

The endless winter world isn't always the first... the first world can be that, or three others. It's definitely the hardest beginning with the winter world though. If that happens, there's no shame in just dying and starting over until you get a different one. Many of us, myself included, have done that. Especially while we were still learning. 

 

The winter world as your first is the hardest. My preferred first worlds are "The Game Is Afoot" or "A Cold Reception". I'll spend as much time as I want in either of them, crafting everything and building my character up. I'm in no rush, I want to give myself as much opportunity as I can to be able to actually complete the rest of Adventure Mode.

 

A tip for when you get the all-Winter world (King of Winter)...

Spoiler

Craft a backpack and a shovel ASAP,  and dig up any resource you find. Dig up grass, twigs, berries, mushrooms, etc. You still get the resource grass/twig/berry, and then you can use the plant itself as amazing fire fuel. Plus, digging up mushrooms gives you two instead of one, and they won't grow back while you're there, so why not get maximum benefit?

One more tip for King of Winter, since it's definitely one of the most challenging ones...

Spoiler

Don't try to build a base and live in the world. Keep yourself running, rush it. The quickest I ever did it was 3 days if I recall correctly, the longest was 10 or 11 days. Find your "things" ASAP, while making sure you stay warm and don't starve. This is a "survive" world, not a "prepare" world. Don't be afraid to drop multiple fire pits, science machines, etc. Yes, you will use those precious resources you've been saving and hoarding... but you won't be taking them with you, so use them as you need them. You won't always have a full belly, and that's OK... just live.

 

Also, Deerclops will spawn the longer you stay in the world... and he can spawn multiple times. More reason to rush through the world.

 

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