The 2C3D

Follow along with me for a moment here, I normally lay things out in a mechanical sense, but this time I’m going to try a different style: Let’s say you and your partners run across a small-medium chunk of the moon that split off into its own island that. The island is composed of patchwork blue crystal and is empty, spare for some cyan shrubbery and a well containing a heart encased in crystal. At this point, someone pulls out a pick axe, perhaps knowing what they’re doing, perhaps not. They strike at the crystal heart until enough hard crystal has been dislodged that the heart once more begins to beat. The very island itself begins to quake as a war cry rings out from below the surface. At this point you have 30-ish seconds to run back to your boat before it wakes up and shakes itself off, hurling any stragglers to a watery grave. A turtle’s head and legs unfurl from beneath the ocean surface, revealing a once-ordinary sea creature twisted beyond recognition by the influence of the moon. It begins to chase the ship that disturbed it and the crew must flee, but before they get to far, the creature strikes the ocean floor, bringing the water-logged bodies of dead beasts floating to the surface to obstruct their path like a sea stack. The captain must weave between obstructions to avoid the inexorable advance of the creature from the depths, lest the creature begin to bash the raft to splinters, bringing up leaks. The creature understands, for as long as the captain stands, it is too slow to reach the sailors, and so it releases moon-addled amphibious warriors from nests built against the safety of its shell, using the mind-warping properties of the moon to instill upon them a unified purpose: kill the captain, bring the ship to a stop. Defenceless at the wheel, the captain must rely on allies to cut back them back. After the last of the warriors have been cut back, the monolithic creature make one final attempt to rush at the ship with every bit of force in its body, before collapsing, surrendering itself to exhaustion, and to the victors. The survivors can now mount the back of the creature and claim the heart, a powerful celestial catalyst, from the body. Now, the dead can rest... until the moon’s damnable power inevitable brings it back to suffer once more, for unlike hounds, there is no limit to the moon’s ability to restructure and reawaken this creature. As for some mechanical notes, more players make the fight run with higher spawn rates. If the captain dies, someone else could take the wheel, but the spawn rate wouldn’t change halfway through the fight, so their teammates would struggle to fight short-handed as punishment for allowing a teammate to perish. In addition, if a single player takes the boss on alone, the boss incurs a movement speed penalty to accommodate their need to juggle tasks, however, the fight should be more difficult alone, because otherwise there would be no need to bother with the multiplayer focus.

WX-78 seems the least unlikely, even though up until now they’ve seen the other survivors as useful, I suspect they’re not exactly loyal to the team for anything more then they get out of the deal, whereas the humans tend to have some group loyalty mentality. Second place, after much deliberation, is given to Wendy. Her highest loyalty is to Abigail, and I think she would turn on any one member of the group to get her back. I also think she would turn on the entire group minus Webber, her only friend, for Abigail. What gives me pause for thought, however is the entire group including Webber. Some of her more recent quotes suggest she’s been growing up a little, so who knows what she’d do in practice. Third place goes to Maxwell, I don’t think he was ever evil, but he’s used to having to make compromises with his morality.

I really, really want a raft-based boss battle. Most of the mechanics to make a “Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime” style of co-op ship piloting combat are already in place, all we need is something to fight (and preferably a cannon of some kind, because hitting an aquatic boss with a melee weapon from a raft seems tricky, but blow darts are too expensive)

Too late. It’s already there, you can splash yourself with oars.

Tough choice. I can see Wigfrid dying in battle as the most likely, but Maxwell would be more dramatic, since he’s deeply important in the lore, unlike Wigfrid, whos only canon accomplishment is dragging everyone into The Forge. Ended up going with Wigfrid because I was thinking of the most likely, but perhaps I should’ve picked Maxwell. I could also see Winona dying, but only in a dramatic event involving saving Charlie. Unlike some other people here, I think Wilson would be the least likely one. No, wait, make that the second least likely. There’s no way they could kill Webber. They’re just a kid. Ms Wicker, I don’t feel so good...

Yeah, I’d love to see some king of super dramatic final battle, but if we’re leaning further into the “Cosmic Horror” theme, our survivors can never stand a chance against Them, or at least not alone. I think it would be a pretty cool to have the survivors be participants in a battle between the Celestial and the Shadows. If we’re relating this to Endgame, then I don’t want us to... (This spoiler tag is an actual spoiler:) If we need a champion, it should be Charlie. She’s fused with the shadows and seems to have been absorbing Celestial power from the ancient gateway. All the survivors have are some magic ruins items, which to Them, I imagine would come across as party favours. tl;dr: I don’t think we can directly confront either of the major forces of The Constant alone, but I want to be there and help when it all goes down.

You’ve answered your own question, sort of. The reason people don’t like meatballs isn’t because they’re a bad food. It’s because they’re so good and so easy that any other recipies pale in comparison. Meatballs are by far the best solution to hunger. All the other recepies you hear used a lot are for other stats (Pierogies or Jellybeans for health, Taffy for sanity) When’s the last time you made a meaty stew?

Oh yeah, it’s bad. I am under no impression that we’re gonna get along fine and dandy with the moon. It’s gonna kill whatever it comes in contact with. I just don’t think it’s trying to, it just doesn’t understand what kinds of suffering it’s inflicting. It’s bad, but not malicious.

Okay, it’s lore quote time. Question One: How much faith do we want to put in the word of Webber? Moon Altar Idol: “It doesn’t want to be here. We don’t either.” Moon Altar Glass: “It can’t talk like we do, but it’s a friend.” Gestalt: “They want to talk, but they don’t know how!” Wickerbottom, Glassed-Over Hot Spring: “I strongly suspect Moon Glass is organic in composition now.” Moon Fissure: “This is not the same type of magic I’ve seen from Maxwell’s fuel.” (Nice to know, but I suppose that was a tad obvious) Gestalt: “They are the projections of something stronger” Congradulations to Maxwell for getting over his “Useful Lore Quotes” phase. Beaten by Webber, what a humiliation. Winona, Puffin: “Taking her mandated break” All puffins are canonically female. Actually, every bird lays eggs, so... every bird is canonically female? Do the constants birds reproduce like amoeba? Is this why Woodie doesn’t trust them? Okay, jokes aside, according to Wickerbottom and Webber (and no thanks to Maxwell), we can be somewhat certain that the moon entity is an at least partially benevolent creature that is simply so alien to us that its attempts at communication... deal damage. In addition, this entity is probably somewhat organic in nature, and has access to its own class of psychic Celestial magic, separate from the shadows.

That’s 90%, I think you mean 25% for rocks. (Please tell me I can still add) I was wondering about how to get the item “Raw Stone Fruit”, which doesn’t seem to exist and is probably a figment of my imagination. I swear, it used to drop instead of Ripe Stone Fruit. I need to go to bed and stop posting until my anesthesia wears off. I’m gonna be pretty humiliated when I read over my notifications tomorrow...

Did an update remove raw Stone Fruit? They used to spawn 100%, now they never do. This is a lot of effort for fruits that do nothing. Unless, of course, that’s been fixed too. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Normally, I’d be like “no, this isn’t a useful thread so I’m not gonna make it” but I’m in the mood to spew interesting nonsense while my mental barriers are still recovering. I mean, it wasn’t anything serious and I’m barely still feeling funny, but I’m leaning on it as a weak excuse to make a bonkers posts. So, I’m thinking Sea Stacks aren’t interesting enough for sailing, so I came up with a fun mechanic. Might mod it in once I’ve got time off. Probably won’t, I can’t even mod a beard, lol, some CS student I am. Urk I shouldn’t be posting in this condition. I’ll make an extra effort to stay on-topic from now on. So, my idea to make the seas more dangerous: Other boats manned by NPCs, who try to sink you. In fighting back, the combat would naturally becomes a Guns of Icarus / Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime type deal, where people are running around manning stations, avoiding collisions, firing guns and fixing the hull. For this to work, let’s establish my ideas for the tools of the trade in naval combat. All the exact details are made up on the spot, so on the 1/1000000 chance I make this happen, they’re subject to extreme change. With these tools, enemy ships can be combated. Enemy ships are like yours, except masts are black with a light-blue crossbones, and upon defeat, enemy ships drop a single use, uncraftable item that can be used to restore 100 Hull Integrity. Not all enemy ships are created equal. Ships spawn a screen-width away from a ship, out of sight of any players, explicitly to hunt that particular ship and being customized to match that ships difficulty. Should the ship escape, they will eventually despawn. Here are the rules for ship creation: But who, exactly, are we fighting *against?*. This is where be being slightly high on anesthesia comes into play: as if it hadn’t somehow already... They’re Moon-Fractured versions of Singleplayer exclusive characters, who are retconed to be unplayable in Together because they canonically died to the moon, and we’re corrupted. Like uncorrupted characters, they can respawn after death, so they can be reused. I simultaneously love and hate this idea. It’s the most completely ridiculous retcon and I love it anyways. I divided the enemy tasks into 5 types: Fix Breaches Man Steering Wheel Man Cannons and Make Ammunition Man Battering Ram Board Players When the ship is breached, the nearest enemy drops everything to fix it. Otherwise, a character attempts do do their favourite task by their personal priorities, listed below. If they favour a task more the the person performing it, they will kick off their teammate and replace them. Here’s the characters and what they do: Footnote: Pirates only spawn far-ish rom land. While you can’t boat-bridge oceans without risk, one or two rafts will be safe. Also why the hell did you read this entire pile of vaguely cohenrent words.

So quick. So diligent. Love you all!

Yep, figured that out with some help. It’s only “ripe” in the Spring (and possibly Summer), other wise it’s just “raw”

Not that I’ve figured out the rocky fruit and a catalogued a few odds ends, this documentation seems complete. Thanks for the help, couldn’t have done it alone.