My feedback about the beta.

[Rhovious Aran]

Thank you very much Klei for giving me this opportunity to test your game and now even gift the game for me.  I would have loved to pay you though.

So here are some thoughts I have of everything.

The density

I heard some other people finding the world to be too packed to the brim with stuff. Like everything being too dense. I, however, love that aspect. For example when I play DST (which I have 1050) hours of, I often find the world a bit empty and yet at the same time the RoG world just bursts at the seams with resources, whereas Hamlet seems packed, but the important resources are much harder to get by, which I really like. Gold feels like Gold again, it feels like it has a real value. 

The Map Layout

I really do like this rather oval or round shape of the island as opposed to these branchy ones we have in RoG. Everything is closer together and it's not as much of a pain to walk towards your destinations. 

When it comes to the pig city though. And especially the "pig farm" biome. It really bothered me so much in those instances when the pig city biome was not directly connected to another wild biome and was only accessible via the pig farm biome that I tended to start over. 

Furthermore the location of the shack and the shops within the city itself is also very important, especially the shack. If it happens to spawn like deep within the city, far away from the wilderness I also tended to reroll the world. In RoG or DST you can always make smart choices about the base location, whereas here you end up being cornered. One might argue that this gets evened out by the smaller map size with less branching. 

Housing and Trading and the City

I really like the cities, I think you did strike a good balance between them being interesting from the getgo and leaving enough room to expand on them on your own. My biggest concern as mentioned above is the spawn of the entire biome and the shack itself. 

Housing is just amazing. Many of the furniture is just visual but that didn't bother me. This game is a sandbox after all, and thats what you do in these games, get creative in all kinds of ways. I would love to see bigger houses though with 2 or 3 rooms. But maybe the intention is to just have several of them. Anyway, I really love this pocket universe system you introduced in hamlet with the Houses, Shops, Cave Clefts and Temple Ruins. 

The Trading is really amazing and is by far the best addition you have ever done to this or any other Don't Starve versions. However, I am a bit disappointed that so many endgame things seem to be acquireable in them. Getting an Eyebrella, Walking cane, Tam etc all in that shop kinda makes to even go to the RoG world redundant. But I am torn on this also. I do like when a game offers you several ways to achieve a goal. But 50 oincs doesn't seem like equally challenging as killing a deerclops yourself. Maybe drastically increase the price of those endgame items.

Crafting


I am not sure how much you did cut out of the beta, but the number of new craftable items seems to be too low. I would love to have some alternative endgame versions of the walking cane and tam. The cane you can dry on a rack is a nice alternative but not really viable to me when they have a durability. I really do like all the kinds of armor you can make with like the chitin and the red beetle plates. I also love that you can cook with those too. I am so happy about the addition of Iron and smelting. That was really long overdue.

There need to be more ways to acquire cloth. 

I would love to see bamboo tufts being sold by the florist. 

 

The Seasons

The Hayfever seems fine, annoying initially but the Oscilliating fans are fine end game solutions in my opinion. It's a bit weird though that you can briefly equip and unequip the gas mask to get rid of it. Kinda kills the immersion a bit for me.

The Mist is also alright I guess. One time I was caught in the mist while being in the poison jungle while being chased by like 10 glowfly beetles. I think the Mist maybe should not be able to appear in the toxic jungle, as there seems to be no counter play to it there. You either have to take poison damage or take the slow effects. A real shame.

Well I can only sepculate atm about what the aporcalypse is gonna be, but I don't like the idea of not being able to enter the pig city for an entire season. I always hated having to run seperate small summer or caves bases in the summer because keeping all these flingos active is too much of a chore at some point. Maybe that would be ok for the initial cities, but if you create your own as a mayor maybe not. Or introduce some ways to counter it, like anti pig hex totems or whatever.

The Temple Ruins

 

I don't know what it is. But going into these little dungeons has something really fun about them. This sense of discovery and mystery and hidden treasures is just so fun and encouraging. Amazing job. I love bell pen hammering the gold pieces or the Relics. It's just so much fun to come home after a treasure hunter trip and see your wealth grow. I do hope though that there is some way of replenishing these as its kinda meh once you completed them. I kinda already see myself setting their number on the world generation to maximum. I mean, not that there aren't better or more relaxed ways to acquire gold, but exploring them is really fun. 

I hope, in case you do still add some more content in the future that there will be some more uniqure treasures to find in these.

Also the Pig totem relic seems to spawn far more often than the other two ones, that pig nose relic seems to be the rarest.

The Flora and Fauna

Getting new tree varieties always brigthens my day. 
I think you did an amazing job with all the new plants and creatures. My personal favourite is the thunderbird. It beginning to charge its feathers as you approach it is the most adorable animation I have seen yet in this franchise big kudos to the artists! The Pugalisk is also an amazing idea, seems a bit easy to fight, but the idea and the visuals are just spot on. I totally gave me chamber of secret vibes, when that thing crawled out of its canal. 

I ADORE the long grass.

The Bat Waves I am not directly opposed to the numbers these beasts arrive in. However, as of now there seems to be a lack of ways to deal with them. Only ever taking care of them with the help of the Pig Guards seems a bit lackluster to me, especially if you often end up having to wait inside your house till it's day time for them to not burn down the entire city. There really need to be some more ways to deal them with, as single targeted combat doesn't really seem to be an option.

One problem that I see is that many of the animals don't seem to reproduce and will eventually go extinct after so many cycles, like the glowflies, the thunderbirds don't seem to interact with their nests ever again once you shooed them away to get the iron. The Peagawks die easily and don't seem to respawn anywhere. I accidentally killed like 3 of them when I tried to pluck their feathers and ended up hitting them accidentally with a torch. I haven't tested long enough but do the Pugalisk and the Mantqueen respawn at some point? Would love to be able to do them repeatedly. 

The one animal I am not a fan of are the spider gorillas. There is just something about gorillas that always makes me despise them in any kind of video game. Whereas I do generally like them IRL. But apart from that, the issue in hamlet is that they are too annoying to kill for how little they yield. The drop % on silk seems to be smaller than on normal spiders and the only reliable but also finite sources seemed to be the silk trees (apart from trading ofc).

I am also a bit bummed out that these Mangold creatures ( dont remember their name yet) and the Hippotamooses don't seem to drop any item that is unique to them. 

It was probably a missconception I had from the gameplay trailer earlier this year, but I thought you could walk on those giant sea rose petals. I am really sad that you can't  Though I don't know where to go with this really, but there seems to be potential there, maybe a water base? 

I hope there will be a way to combine these robot parts? Being able to infinitely farm them for iron seems OP but then again it seems to be the only renewable Iron sources atm as Thunderbirds don't seem to refill their nests.

It bothered me a bit that the burnt rainforest trees don't seem to have an own sprite but rather use the sheet from the burnt SW jungle tree.

Some things I personally would love to see

-Being able to "refine" small oincs into big pieces and vice versa

-Being able to build a pig city with the key to the city in the RoG world as the small size of the Hamlet world makes it kind of redundant to start one on your own.

-Being able to connect Hamlet, RoG & Shipwrecked in one safe. I am not sure if that's gonna be a thing but I read you could only connect 2 worlds?

P.s. Queen Malfalfa looks like toats adorable in her dress especially with scepter and crown... you go girl!

Thanks for making this world a better place with your art and creativity. 

I love you guys!

[Zeklo]

Briefly skimmed through this but what caught my eye was the comment about the gasmask.

It got changed, and you pretty much had to wear it the entire season. You were better off making nettle rolls at that point.

[Michi01]

14 hours ago, Rhobious_Aran said:

But apart from that, the issue in hamlet is that they are too annoying to kill for how little they yield. The drop % on silk seems to be smaller than on normal spiders and the only reliable but also finite sources seemed to be the silk trees (apart from trading ofc).

Not sure if it's true as I haven't tested it myself, but I read that spider monkeys will actually create new silk trees as you chop down the old ones.