Caves-only survival tips?

[myxal]

I've been entertaining the idea of caves-only survival challenge (ie. no forest world, just caves), the biggest reason probably being "the caves florid postern finally getting some use".  

Upon closer look, I realised how many items I consider essential in a full world would become unavailable:

• All tier 2 and tier 3 warm clothing items require something only available in the forest (beefalo wool, koalefant trunk, thick fur), leaving me with rabbit earmuffs and a thermal stone to survive the winter.
• Is there another way of getting rabbits in caves besides waiting for them to drop during an earthquake? This is going to put a serious damper on being able to make magic items.
• Considering the above, any early revivals will have to be at the portal, or with a telltale heart, and both have a max health penalty. Is there any way restore max health? No bees -> no stingers -> no booster shots.

[Sinister_Fang]

28 minutes ago, myxal said:

All tier 2 and tier 3 warm clothing items require something only available in the forest (beefalo wool, koalefant trunk, thick fur), leaving me with rabbit earmuffs and a thermal stone to survive the winter.

That would be correct. Winter is usually the hardest season to survive in a caves only world because of this. The rain can also complicate things even more.

29 minutes ago, myxal said:

Is there another way of getting rabbits in caves besides waiting for them to drop during an earthquake? This is going to put a serious damper on being able to make magic items.

That is the only way as far as I'm aware. Thankfully it only needs to be done once. If you're lucky you should have enough of them at around 3 quakes. Give or take a few.

31 minutes ago, myxal said:

Considering the above, any early revivals will have to be at the portal, or with a telltale heart, and both have a max health penalty. Is there any way restore max health? No bees -> no stingers -> no booster shots.

There is no way to restore max health in the caves. You'll need to rely on meat effigies and life amulets. Otherwise you'll have a permanent loss of max health. So try not to die until after you've gotten your rabbits.

[myxal]

19 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

That would be correct. Winter is usually the hardest season to survive in a caves only world because of this. The rain can also complicate things even more.

Rain is the reason why I'm strongly leaning towards Winona. Stackable replacement for sewing kit, made with cave-only loot, to keep my rain coat.

22 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

There is no way to restore max health in the caves.

Yikes, wasn't expecting this spike in difficulty. But yeah, in my first attempt I wan't paying attention to rabbits early on, and the one that was near my camp by the end of autumn died to falling rocks

What's the cheapest item to keep the early rabbits alive in inventory? Foliage, I guess?

And speaking of ferns, do they regrow in DST? The Regrowth wiki page doesn't mention them, but I can't seem to run out of them in my long-running world.

[Sinister_Fang]

45 minutes ago, myxal said:

Rain is the reason why I'm strongly leaning towards Winona. Stackable replacement for sewing kit, made with cave-only loot, to keep my rain coat.

She's certainly a good option for a caves only world. It's the few times her tape is actually useful. Although the rain coat is made entirely of renewable materials, so it's not 100% necessary. It does add a lot of convenience though.

50 minutes ago, myxal said:

What's the cheapest item to keep the early rabbits alive in inventory? Foliage, I guess?

I personally just feed them carrots. It's easy to get a bunnyman farm going when most of the work is done for you already. So carrots are pretty easy to come by down there. Although if they can eat foliage, then that would likely be an even cheaper alternative. I've never tried it so I'm not sure if it would work.

And even if ferns aren't affected by regrowth, it doesn't matter much anyway. They're not very useful in terms of survival. And It's not like you'll be needing to keep the rabbits alive for your entire caves only run. So a cheap, renewable source of food for them doesn't seem like a big deal (even though carrots do fulfill that role if necessary). If you still want to know then you could easily test this as you play. Just clear an area of ferns and check back from time to time. At the very least it could be useful to know just so the info can be added to the wiki.

[myxal]

12 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

I personally just feed them carrots. It's easy to get a bunnyman farm going when most of the work is done for you already.

Hmm, how long into the run should I be able to locate a bunnyman village? Last run took quite a while (7 days  I think?) before I had enough resources to make alchemy, make a lantern and find a village after some exploration. (I was initially targeting a miner hat, but looking back, making the bug net and getting a firefly took more time than it would take to just get enough grass + twigs to make a lantern).

I also thought that rabbits only live 2 days in inventory - the actual time, 5 days is much more manageable when waiting for a quake  Testing what the rabbits eat, I think I'll go with light bulbs. Not only are they more plentiful and won't cut into my limited early food supply, it's something I already need to carry when exploring, so I don't waste the precious inventory slot. As a side note, a rabbit will also eat lesser glow berries (and will make the player glow), which the Wigfrid player I'm playing with should find useful.

[Sinister_Fang]

7 hours ago, myxal said:

Hmm, how long into the run should I be able to locate a bunnyman village?

Unless you're really unlucky, you should be able to find one on your first day.

[myxal]

15 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Unless you're really unlucky, you should be able to find one on your first day.

Whoa, really?! How far are you assuming the village to be?

I mean, sure - I can find it in 1 day in a world like this:

but to me this is more of an exception, and kinda defeats purpose caves-only challenge.

In the end, we started playing the first world which had  >100 saplings (pretty often the worldgen puts ~30 sapling in the entire world). Finding the village took even longer (11 days, I think), but we did get some food in a spider-rich biome. The first death coincided with first treeguard, 4th rabbit, and end of autumn, so the timing ended up being perfect.

Fun fact: hounds teeth are actually available from hammering bones. I think if I collect enough I'll make a dapper vest to keep the sanity up (vest + tophat), the constant drain is a real pain when you can't even get normal meat from the bunnymen - at least until we get pig farm going + lots of drying racks.

[LuxuryHeart]

On 5/25/2018 at 1:54 AM, myxal said:

I've been entertaining the idea of caves-only survival challenge (ie. no forest world, just caves), the biggest reason probably being "the caves florid postern finally getting some use".  

Upon closer look, I realised how many items I consider essential in a full world would become unavailable:

• All tier 2 and tier 3 warm clothing items require something only available in the forest (beefalo wool, koalefant trunk, thick fur), leaving me with rabbit earmuffs and a thermal stone to survive the winter.
• Is there another way of getting rabbits in caves besides waiting for them to drop during an earthquake? This is going to put a serious damper on being able to make magic items.
• Considering the above, any early revivals will have to be at the portal, or with a telltale heart, and both have a max health penalty. Is there any way restore max health? No bees -> no stingers -> no booster shots.

A great strategy would be to play as Wilson.  Wilson naturally grows a beard that provides more warmth than a winter hat.  Growing his beard and having a thermal stone is like having a winter hat and thermal stone, but slight better.  

[myxal]

1 hour ago, LuxuryHeart said:

Wilson naturally grows a beard that provides more warmth than a winter hat.  Growing his beard and having a thermal stone is like having a winter hat and thermal stone, but slight better.

This was also one of my considerations. I stuck with Winona mostly because I haven't played her in a long-running world.

 

70 days in, some observations:

• No birds means no seeds/rot litter around the landscape. It's definitely easier to find a safe spot to quickly burn something because...
• ...the universal early-game strategy for staying warm while out of base is to have a thermal stone, torch, and optionally a shovel, sapling, and pitchfork. Plant it, put the stone down, set on fire, dig it up after 14 seconds (or don't - I was collecting grass tufts during winter, so I could afford to lose some). With Winona's tape, I don't even need to worry about the stone losing durability.

Intuitively, I expect that tier 2/3 items will eventually be available via winter's feast event, but testing it now, the festive tree planter recipe isn't available in the caves (even in full 2-shard world). Can anyone chime in if this is a bug or intended?

[Rellimarual]

4 hours ago, myxal said:

Intuitively, I expect that tier 2/3 items will eventually be available via winter's feast event, but testing it now, the festive tree planter recipe isn't available in the caves (even in full 2-shard world). Can anyone chime in if this is a bug or intended?

I know that I built one in the caves during the event. It’s possible, but unlikely, that I prebuilt the planter on the surface and placed it while underground, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case. However, I do know that you won’t get gifts for sleeping near it while in the caves.

[myxal]

3 hours ago, Rellimarual said:

I know that I built one in the caves during the event. It’s possible, but unlikely, that I prebuilt the planter on the surface and placed it while underground, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case. However, I do know that you won’t get gifts for sleeping near it while in the caves.

Well, currently the caves completely ignore the "Events" worldgen setting. Looking at recipes.lua, there's nothing indicating it should be limited to Forest world, so I reported it as bug.

No presents for cavedwellers is definitely a letdown, though  

[Rellimarual]

I suppose Santa can’t fly his reindeer down there. But I do remember that during the regular event enemies in the caves did drop Christmas treats and baubles. Is that not the case with manually set events? 

[camelot]

18 hours ago, myxal said:

70 days in, some observations:

• No birds means no seeds/rot litter around the landscape. It's definitely easier to find a safe spot to quickly burn something because...

You could pick light bulbs and burn it when necessary 

[myxal]

On 5/28/2018 at 1:04 AM, Rellimarual said:

But I do remember that during the regular event enemies in the caves did drop Christmas treats and baubles. Is that not the case with manually set events?

I didn't check, but from the lack of recipe I assume caves now ignore manually-set events completely. Will get back to this later.

EDIT: Yep, no sweets dropping from monsters underground. I even found a function IsAnySpecialEventActive(), which returns false in the caves, while returning true in the forest world.  

As for the winter gifts, winter_tree.lua:

local function dogifting(inst)
    if TheWorld.state.isnight then
    ...

And then worldstate.lua:

local function OnCavePhaseChanged(src, phase)
    SetVariable("cavephase", phase)
    SetVariable("iscaveday", phase == "day", "caveday")
    SetVariable("iscavedusk", phase == "dusk", "cavedusk")
    SetVariable("iscavenight", phase == "night", "cavenight")
end
...
self.data.isnight = _iscave

As I read that, it should be possible to get gifts in the cave, at any time in fact - the isnight variable gets set once and then never changes. Hoping to hear from devs what the intention was.

On 5/28/2018 at 1:04 AM, Rellimarual said:

I suppose Santa can’t fly his reindeer down there.

I've since learned not to apply common sense to video-game logic  ("Would you like some meatballs? I made them from a pair of frog legs and ice cubes!")

[myxal]

Caves-only log farming tip (not that twigs and flint aren't plentiful, but...):

Toadstool, similarly to bearger, will cut down (some, ~50-80%) trees without dropping anything, making you lose pinecones. Rook OTOH makes loot drop from every single one (though, digging is up to the player). But alas, using rook isn't quite as trivial:

1. Before beginning, make sure worms won't spawn during the operation. Healing a rook beaten up by worms is possible, but will be hella expensive, and rook even surviving the attack is far from guaranteed.
2. Rook will be parked at its spawn point.
3. Prepare a blockade (walls with a gap of 2 or smaller) far enough from the spawn point (~2 screens), then put the rook behind it by making it charge close enough, freeze it (2 ice staff uses), and push it so that it will keep going into the blockade. Alternatively, you can freeze it and build the blockade before it. (pushing mobs when you're not playing on the host is much harder)
4. Plant trees around the spawn point.
5. On your way out, release the rook. As long as it's far enough, the rook won't aggro on you and will slowly hop back to its spawn point.
6. Return some ~15-20 days later, and go all toreador at the site.  Keep ice staves at the site, you don't want treeguards to kill your lawnmower.

[camelot]

I vote for cave Reanimated Skeleton as the best way for mass farming logs in caves. Rooks are quite unreliable.

[myxal]

1 hour ago, camelot said:

I vote for cave Reanimated Skeleton as the best way for mass farming logs in caves. Rooks are quite unreliable.

Maybe in a full world. I don't think there's a way to get the Shadow Atrium without the forest world. (No set piece or suspicious marble, and no pig king or the chess piece trinkets to sculpt your own.)

Also, doesn't the skeleton have same issue where over half of the trees drop nothing?

[myxal]

Hey, is anyone familiar with the caves worldgen? My recent worlds don't spawn the cave marsh biome anymore  -> no reeds. Is that intentional?

[Crystal Kourosh]

51 minutes ago, myxal said:

Hey, is anyone familiar with the caves worldgen? My recent worlds don't spawn the cave marsh biome anymore  -> no reeds. Is that intentional?

might be i have a really small one

[fimmatek]

54 minutes ago, myxal said:

Hey, is anyone familiar with the caves worldgen? My recent worlds don't spawn the cave marsh biome anymore  -> no reeds. Is that intentional?

That happens often to me, I guess it's something like the triple walrus camp on the surface: you have a chance to have it but it's not quaranteed. Furthermore, setting the caves to smaller seems to lower this chance. Maybe you have higher chances to get a marsh underground if you have large or huge caves?

[Daniel86268]

On 28.5.2018 at 10:25 AM, myxal said:

Yep, no sweets dropping from monsters underground. I even found a function IsAnySpecialEventActive(), which returns false in the caves, while returning true in the forest world.

If you activated it manually on the server main shard, you'll also have to activate it manually on your cave shard, since they are seperate servers.

Run this either from an admin client while being in the caves or from the caves shard server console. Afterwards restart your cave shard.

TheWorld.topology.overrides.specialevent = "winters_feast"

All possible values are 
"none", "default", "hallowed_nights", "winters_feast", "year_of_the_gobbler"

 

[myxal]

5 hours ago, Daniel86268 said:

TheWorld.topology.overrides.specialevent = "winters_feast"

Thanks, that worked   I can confirm gifting does work at least in areas of permanent darkness (even during daytime, if you're able to tell) - in illuminated areas I didn't get gifts even during the night.

9 hours ago, fimmatek said:

you have a chance to have it but it's not quaranteed.

Dang it, I thought it came standard. Just my luck with worlds I decide to play properly - one more thing to add in the checklist.  

[myxal]

I thought I'd finally get around to killing Toadstool. My plan was to keep him frozen while chopping down some sporecaps and burning the rest, to keep their numbers down, but my attempts hit a brick wall when I realised that toadstool (and some other mobs) build up resistance to freezing. Each subsequent freezing requires more and more ice staff charges, and lasts shorter.

Any hints (other than bunnyman spam)? Currently considering treeguards.

[Alarsin]

5 hours ago, myxal said:

I thought I'd finally get around to killing Toadstool. My plan was to keep him frozen while chopping down some sporecaps and burning the rest, to keep their numbers down, but my attempts hit a brick wall when I realised that toadstool (and some other mobs) build up resistance to freezing. Each subsequent freezing requires more and more ice staff charges, and lasts shorter.

Any hints (other than bunnyman spam)? Currently considering treeguards.

Got some bad news for you.

First, bunnyman spam won't really help. Toad's mass aoe will take most of them down before the 1st sporecap spawn.

Second, treeguards no longer aggro the Toad if they take damage from the boomshrooms or spore clouds since those do not count as the Toad (for example, if you die to either of those two, it'll say that you were killed by boomshroom/spore cloud). The ground pound will possibly aggro them but it's only active during the 3rd phase so you'll have to get it to 33% health somehow.

[ShadowDuelist]

29 minutes ago, Alarsin said:

treeguards no longer aggro the Toad if they take damage from the boomshrooms or spore clouds since those do not count as the Toad (for example, if you die to either of those two, it'll say that you were killed by boomshroom/spore cloud). The ground pound will possibly aggro them but it's only active during the 3rd phase so you'll have to get it to 33% health somehow.

Haven't tested myself, but I saw once a guy that planted trees very near toadstool's giant mushroom, so upon summoning him, his natural size would break those trees and any treeguard witnessing it, aggroes toadstool right from the start of the fight. 

I'll need to check if this still works tho(or if anyone knows pls comment)