Hamlet beta feedback

[ImpactedTooth]

Thanks for the beta! I kept notes while playing so when the beta was over I could post them here, some of it is stream of consciousness so it is probably worded oddly. My longest life was ~40 days and I unfortunately didn't play enough to encounter any bosses. Overall I had a lot of fun and wanted to play and explore more. Like all Don't Starve titles it lends itself well to emergent stories, which I love.

I only played Wilson and Maxwell as they are my favourites and I loved their strings! So I was very happy and pleased to see that they were in tone with the rest. In particular I liked their strings regarding the very elderly pig.  My only nitpick is there are so many gorgeous new tropical flowers/foliage and they all get one string. One other nitpick Maxwell seems to be hung up on roses. With the obsession of Victorian England on floriography I would assume he knows of other flowers.

The Hamlet

I really like that the shortages of certain resources required me to trade with the pigs. At first I wondered what reason I would have for interacting with them, as at the time the town seemed rather dead. Until I picked up some plop. I love picking plop for pennies! It gave the town a breath of life and I would like to see that pushed more. Perhaps a particular pig you trade with daily comes to your door or greets you when you come into town. Or says something different based on your continued business with them. I also like that men and women curtsy and doff their hats. I would like to see a lady pig guard/ farmer/miner though.

The masked pig is fun, at first I thought how could I ever get robbed by this guy? I'll see it a mile away! and then he smacked me ehn I wasn't looking, and then the pigs around me stole my coins. Oohg the swines! I dispatched him once and was so happy to see the map to the scoundrel's ill gotten gains. That was great!

Biomes

I like all the new biomes, especially the water one, the water falling off the edge is so pretty! Just wish I could fish!

I wish there were more mushrooms in the miasma zones of the rain forest and that the green mist was a little bit easier to see. I wandered deep into one and died before I ever noticed it. But I can see reasons to keep it a little bit hidden! I eat green mushrooms a lot when I play Maxwell, as otherwise I would never go insane. I know I can buy them but they weren't there as many as I would have liked.

The farmland? just outside the hamlet tended to be a bit barren and boring. Perhaps a bit more POIs or something different to do there like a hunt or work for pigs could help it out.

Mobs

Some of the mobs seem too passive to me. Hippos especially would just chill in my base and I thought that was weird since all I know of their real life counterparts is that they are dangerous as heck. Pangoldens too, fight back you big lizard!

Dung beetles are so cute!Them and the big snaptooth flowers are my favourites.

Scorpions are great! I love that being poisoned isn't a given, and how they fight.

Snakes didn't aggro immediately after being felled from a tree. I'm not sure it is intentional or not, but I;d rather they come after me than the scorpions who also just fell.

Spidermonkeys, they never seemed to respawn. Spiderweb was the thing I had the hardest time finding. It was nice that I could buy premade umbrellas, fishing rods, and nets, but I really needed web for bird nets and I never saw those on sale. I liked that they are far tougher than spiders and drop beard hair, but their web drop rate was terrible.

Pogs. I didn't really care for them. I don't play with followers so much and so I was annoyed by them. I wouldn't give them anything and they'd still follow me and attack anything around me. I would like to see their follow/beg distance lowered. I do like that they dig out your containers. I remember seeing a hound doing that ages ago and I was floored when everything toppled out of my fridge and it stuffed itself. They seem pretty weak to drop a whole piece of meat in my opinion.

Pikos are also cute and their noises are just great. Love how they swarm! I never got any in my base even though I planted tea trees everywhere.

Poision Frogs - turn lemons into lemonade. Or poisonous meat into jerky. I started living next to bodies of water thanks to these guys and the greatness that is the lotus root/flower. Odd that you can't make a poisoned spear though.

Vampire Bats were kind of broken in that they would get stuck pathing left and right spinning in place until I came by. Even then sometimes they'd just go left right left right around me. Also I hate to say this, but maybe there are too many bats by the fourth wave of them. Usually I dealt with hounds/crocodogs with tooth traps, but I can't do that with these bats! Maybe a new trap to help counter them could change my mind, but agh I got stun locked to heck by a bat wave around day thirty and it wasn't fun.

Thunderbirds are neat! My only gripe is that poor Maxwell the lightning rod can get killed by them off screen if something spooks them. I laughed but I was also kind of miffed when this happened. Chasing them around is pretty funny though.

Dungeons

I wish I could've seen more of these, but I really loved what I did see of them. The Manthills being shortcuts was a great and welcome surprise to me as I always have to camp next to wormholes/triangles so I have access to a much larger part of the area. I really liked that the exit/entrance of a manthill could cave in so you'd be forced to find another way out. It was a great do or die situation I wasn't expecting! I was too slow to make a mant disguise but I'm hoping I could rob them of their honey with it.

Plundering ruins almost always paid off and was a nice departure from the overworld. I thought they were really small though. I did find some of the bigger ruins, but had to leave them before I could get through them.

Seasons

I didn't figure out a Pith helmet would help get me through the fog until the last day and I still don't quite understand why it helps. But I'm thankful the slowing can be countered. I wonder if the limited visibility would allow me steal from the pigs. I didn't try because I was sorely routed from the city that time I accidentally smacked a shop keep. But if that's not a thing then I would enjoy it if it was.

Sneezing is cute as heck and also horrible (in a good way)! The overlay makes my eyes itchy so it's perfect.I figured out how to counter it, but when I didn't know oh that was miserable. I was expecting to have to refine the nettle into something more proper to better counter the effects. Just eating it is fine, but I certainly wouldn't mind a longer term option using nettle.

The brambles were a nice different way to also make living/exploring a bit more difficult but they stayed out of my base so they were pretty much safely ignored. It would be neat if they could tangle up or straight up destroy certain buildings in your base, or even make them unusable until you remove them.

I was hoping a seasonal boss would show up and punch me, or at least something other than a horde of bats. Seasonal bats maybe?

Hamlet Home

I am a dingus who didn't notice you can buy things for your house in your house until yesterday. But I couldn't buy what I wanted to see, so I'll mention that here. A bed or a built in stove would be nice. I know I can just build a crockpot in my house but to have something built into the back wall (like the cinder block shelf you start with) to use instead would be nice. Or things like wall safes or floor safes to use as chests. The furniture I did see/buy I really liked! And remodeling the outside of the house is great too! I loved my Gothic little home. The first house I bought burned to the ground with tons of stuff in it. I'm glad that can happen! I wouldn't mind some other house pests to give my teeth a good kicking. Termites destroying it, or rodents raiding my fridge. A honesty box you can build outside your home would be neat too. You can put something in it to sell while you are off in the forests or ruins, or it could get stolen. I wouldn't mind seeing these at farmer's places either. I don't want to steal, but I'm sorry I was dying and the grocery store was closed/too far away. A tiny sanity buff in your house would be nice!

Crafting

I really like panning for gold, and the shears, and the little hammer. I never got to use the magnifying glass properly. I didn't see any new magic items and I have no idea how to get living wood to get the second tier of magic items. I hope there are new magic items. Getting the feathers for the first tier magic machine was such a pain with my massive shortage of spiderweb. I usually try to get it asap after the alchemy engine and I just couldn't.

I never found any gears, maybe I should have tried taking on those robot limbs again.

Bat hat is great! I thought it was a little too cheap but it has some serious drawbacks that balances it out in my opinion.

Cork bat. Broke quick and was slow, not sure what I would use it for.

Bugs

I burned down a pig's house at night with a magnifying glass. I thought it was funny, but that probably shouldn't happen.

You can't sneeze if you are on a boat.

I couldn't find anywhere to fish. Hopefully that wasn't intentional and was because of the beta, as I just love fishing/fish.

Aw, heck this is long, sorry! Thanks again for the beta!

 

[Zeklo]

1 hour ago, ImpactedTooth said:

Spidermonkeys, they never seemed to respawn. Spiderweb was the thing I had the hardest time finding. ... I liked that they are far tougher than spiders and drop beard hair, but their web drop rate was terrible.

I think the reason people are having trouble with this is because they expect them to work like spiders. They don't.

The cocooned trees don't spawn spider monkeys, spider monkeys spawn spider monkeys. Just like beefalo, there needs to be one spider monkey alive for them to respawn. Also unlike spiders the source of silk isn't from the creature alone. They're more like guardians. The real source of silk is the cocooned trees. When you chop down a cocooned tree the spider monkey herd will look for a new tree and it'll get cocooned acting as the new "home".

In short, spider monkeys won't respawn if they all died, and the main source of silk comes from the trees themselves which renew themselves upon being chopped (though make sure to plant some trees during lush season if normal trees start running out).

[Mime]

SPOILERS LOOK AWAY CHILD

 

 

i expecting ancient herald to get some sort of dungeon( you said something about dungeons), or spawn sometime during season 4- idk.

[ImpactedTooth]

4 hours ago, Zeklo said:

I think the reason people are having trouble with this is because they expect them to work like spiders. They don't.

The cocooned trees don't spawn spider monkeys, spider monkeys spawn spider monkeys. Just like beefalo, there needs to be one spider monkey alive for them to respawn. Also unlike spiders the source of silk isn't from the creature alone. They're more like guardians. The real source of silk is the cocooned trees. When you chop down a cocooned tree the spider monkey herd will look for a new tree and it'll get cocooned acting as the new "home".

In short, spider monkeys won't respawn if they all died, and the main source of silk comes from the trees themselves which renew themselves upon being chopped (though make sure to plant some trees during lush season if normal trees start running out).

Thanks for letting me know! I left the trees but killed all the monkeys. Whoops! If I'd played more I might have figured that out. The several cocooned trees clumped together that I found make sense now that I know this.

 

[Rhovious Aran]

On 10/30/2018 at 3:22 AM, Zeklo said:

I think the reason people are having trouble with this is because they expect them to work like spiders. They don't.

The cocooned trees don't spawn spider monkeys, spider monkeys spawn spider monkeys. Just like beefalo, there needs to be one spider monkey alive for them to respawn. Also unlike spiders the source of silk isn't from the creature alone. They're more like guardians. The real source of silk is the cocooned trees. When you chop down a cocooned tree the spider monkey herd will look for a new tree and it'll get cocooned acting as the new "home".

In short, spider monkeys won't respawn if they all died, and the main source of silk comes from the trees themselves which renew themselves upon being chopped (though make sure to plant some trees during lush season if normal trees start running out).

Well its a problem though if you can't really isolate single ones reliably and the whole pack always gets aggroed on you, nor can you realiably chop their trees if one is still alive.