Sanity drain from sneezing is a bit too much

[Charsis]

During the Humid season you can very well go through without much help from the rain and such, though it does help a bit if you have the right equipment. Lush, however, you either have the Gas Mask by now, or you can say goodbye to your sanity. I tried keeping it up any way I could, until I realised that it was causing me to go insane even though I should have been gaining sanity. But you lose 5 sanity every time you sneeze, that's insane! I would suggest keeping it somewhere between 1 and 2 sanity lost, then at least, if you don't have the mask, you can be on the edge to keep sane that brings a reasonable challenge and not one that will keep you from doing anything else, because I got to a point where all I was doing was gathering enough food for a few days and sitting in my house, fighting off nightmare creatures.

[Zeklo]

The seasons in Hamlet are weird. Unlike winter/summer that directly kill the player by depleting life these seasons indirectly kill the player.

You may "survive" humid season w/o the right equipment but it'll be a detriment in the long run. Either the fog was coming at poor times and causing combat to be difficult or disallowed backpack and/or rain gear. In the end you're going to lose valuable time and resource gathering which leads into Lush season. If you struggled but survived through Humid season it's very possible you weren't able to get much done, especially prepare for Lush. Lush, while still indirect, greatly reduces sanity which in turn causes nightmare creatures. For some, this means death as they're unable to juggle them. For others however, it's just a nuisance which prevents any progress. 

Basically, Hamlet seasons try to indirectly kill you. Which is good in the sense that it's new and different, but bad because either you won't realize that it's "killed" you until down the line, or you'll just be more or less waiting and doing nothing productive for the remainder of the season.

I say all this, because I don't think you should be able to squeeze past seasons unprepared as much as you can in Hamlet. Sure, you can do the same with winter/summer but not nearly as easily. The "punishment" of not being prepared seems more convenience/inconvenience based. If you have the right gear great you can slide by. If you don't you can still live but it's just a huge nuisance, and I'm not sure I find that enjoyable.

[lakhnish]

17 hours ago, Charsis said:

Lush, however, you either have the Gas Mask by now, or you can say goodbye to your sanity. I tried keeping it up any way I could, until I realised that it was causing me to go insane even though I should have been gaining sanity.

There are a lot of avenues for gaining sanity though a bunch of food items that you can buy and make yourself cheaply for massive sanity.

Stuff you can buy:

• (Cook it) Blue Shrooms: (+10 sanity, 3 oincs)
• (Cook it) Green Shrooms: (+15 sanity, 2 oincs)
• Pumpkin Cookies: (+15 sanity, 3 oincs)

Stuff you can make (it seems you can always buy ice):

For the fillers, look up the correct fillers cause it gets more complicated than I want to write about.

• Banana Pop (Banana, Ice, Stick, Filler): (+33 sanity, minimum 2 oincs)
• Melonsicle (Melon, Ice, Stick, Filler): (+20 sanity, minimum 2 oincs) 
• Taffy (3 Honey, 1 Stick; 4 Honey): (You're better off selling your honey for 6 coins to the berry guy imo. You need to place nectar in the honey boxes for more honey as a 1:1 ratio from what I understand)
• Ice Cream (Ice, Sweetener [Butter], Honey, Filler): (+50 sanity, minimum 1-2 oincs and luck with butter.)

There's also an oscillating fan that seems get rid of hayfever season in its range, which I find somewhat akin to Ice Flingomatics for Summer. There's also something called Nettles which delays hayfever, but I don't have much experience with them.

But yes, if you don't have a gas mask and are not good with dealing with nightmare creatures, you're gonna have a rough time, but that's not unique to Hayfever season. If you have the gas mask, it has a small insanity aura, but currently, you can just switch between the mask and a different helmet every-so-often to save durability. If you're good at nightmares, well hayfever season is a nice money-maker since in the second village, the magic pig buys nightmare fuel for 10 oincs.

17 hours ago, Zeklo said:

Basically, Hamlet seasons try to indirectly kill you. Which is good in the sense that it's new and different, but bad because either you won't realize that it's "killed" you until down the line, or you'll just be more or less waiting and doing nothing productive for the remainder of the season.

I say all this, because I don't think you should be able to squeeze past seasons unprepared as much as you can in Hamlet. Sure, you can do the same with winter/summer but not nearly as easily. The "punishment" of not being prepared seems more convenience/inconvenience based. If you have the right gear great you can slide by. If you don't you can still live but it's just a huge nuisance, and I'm not sure I find that enjoyable.

I agree with this sentiment. The concept of the seasons being a more direct threat to your survival is something that's more of an easily overcome inconvenience in Hamlet. Fog season? A pith hat. Hayfever season? What I said above. I'm feeling that maybe it's the fact that there isn't a seasonal boss/imminent death that pushes the player over the edge of inconvenience to survival? I'd have to think about it some more, but it's beta, so stuff may just be missing.

[Charsis]

@Zeklo the issue is the there is nothing you can do about the situation; once you're insane, that is all you will worry about more or less until the end of the season, so you can't have yourself the gas mask, the nettles were only available last season, and the fan is probably out of the question because gems are rarer than tamoshanters.

I agree it should be a bother, but not to the point where one entire stat is unmanageable 100% of the time.

[Zeklo]

2 hours ago, Charsis said:

@Zeklo the issue is the there is nothing you can do about the situation; once you're insane, that is all you will worry about more or less until the end of the season, so you can't have yourself the gas mask, the nettles were only available last season, and the fan is probably out of the question because gems are rarer than tamoshanters.

I agree it should be a bother, but not to the point where one entire stat is unmanageable 100% of the time.

I wasn't disagreeing in the first place but regardless I just found out seed pods work against hay fever.

[axxel]

I think sanity food to keep sanity high is not even worth the time since hey fever won't pause. Good that Zeklo found out that seed pods work against it. Mud Spa in the first town should have at least a Nettle. 

Regarding the items, Hamlet is somewhat weird. It doesn't feature (craftable) items with different levels of protection for fog and hay fever. It's very difficult to start a Hamlet game if you change the starting season. A condenser for humid season and a handkerchief/dust maks for lush season easy to make would be nice...

[Szczuku]

Lush season ain't that bad. When you're exploring the map early game try to get some feathers durring night. Then hammer ballon and you have cloth- gas mask completed. With gas mask you can basically stop worrying about sneezing

[PlayMoGame]

The Lush season is pretty tolerable, but it's almost essential to use that first cloth from the crash site to make the Pith Hat. I'm not about to go without a backpack or armor when that fog hits. I like to get that cloth, kill some large flytraps for the 3 vines and chop a couple cork trees for the 6 cork, but since it requires an alchemy engine for some reason (which I hope they downgrade to science machine) you need to find at least 5 gold and 16 rocks (as well as flint for axes and pickaxes) before day 12. Cave clefts are good for this, but it seems like you can't focus much on exploring at the start of the game as much as frantically resource hunting. I do like to get those 4 Peagawk feathers pretty early too though. Currently you can exploit them, as the will constantly run into one corner of the map if they know you're near. You can just pick 4 feathers in about 2 minutes if they get properly stuck. If not just wait for them to fall asleep at night and follow them around with a torch. To get the second cloth I hold onto 50 or 60 Oinks, stand in front of the General Store, save and quit, reload, buy all cheap stuff first, and if you don't get a cloth just Alt+F4, reload and try again. This might make me seem like a filthy cheater but it's kinda ridiculous how low the chance to get cloth is and I'm not about to spend another in-game week collecting more money only to spend it all AGAIN and not get cloth. Hope they change this somehow as well.