lights out

[hkhm]

i run a lights out server. mostly because i like the game to be extra-hard and cruel. but lately the main reason i run it is to see the reactions to people who join. the set-up: i have surrounded the florid postern with fireflies to give some light after the spawn glow wears off. i have built a fire pit, alchemy engine and a chest which i stock with full stacks or twigs, flint, grass, rocks, gold and two stacks of logs. the area is surrounded by trees and i have planted twiggy trees, grass tufts and berry bushes around as well. there is additionally a sign which reads: 'please take what you need." i have no mods on my game whatsoever.

the very first person who joins asks: "why is it night?"

"it's a lights out server."

"but why is it ALWAYS night?"

i found his skeleton about 20 paces away from the portal with every stack of resources from the chest.

so i took the resources back to the chest and went back to surviving. and wouldn't you know it, a willow joins. okay, she has a lighter and... nope... the whole forest is on fire. chest on fire, resources consumed... better build that up again. willow logs out without saying a word. i replant trees, make a new chest, restock it. and wander off. about the time i am exploring the swamp, another joiner! a woodie this time. says nothing so i went back to what i was doing. after about ten minutes he dies and says: "why did you kill me?"

"well, i didn't kill you, charlie did, but..." he logs off.

then a wx-78 joins and says: "where are you?"

me: "i'm in the swamp, a bit south of the postern."

wx-78: "do you have a telltale heart?"

me: "yes..."

wx-78: "so i'm just gonna kill myself and wait for you to come revive me then." he then leaves about 30 seconds later only to log back in and out over and over for about five minutes before giving up. even then, he logged in 3-4 times the next day (in real time, not game time) before i said: "no matter how many times you log off and come back, you will still be dead." thus ended our correspondence.

 a wilson joins, who i suspect might have been an experienced player as the first/only thing he says is: "WHERE IS SUN?" just like a pig-man. i was laughing so hard but then he left so i never got a chance to find out if he was joking or serious.

most of my maintenance is carrying resources back to the chest because someone took them all and died a few feet away or they take all the resources and log off so i need to gather more and restock. and most of the time i am nowhere near the postern (i am a morlock, i live in the caves even in a lights out server) so i eagerly look forward to how new people will cope. somehow, this has become the most entertaining server i have ever hosted and oddly, the most frequently visited. and all i had to do was turn off the lights.

[Destros09]

There is a mod that drops items on kick/leave (helps with maintenance) don't have a link though 

[hkhm]

i don't use mods.

[CaptainChaotica]

Haha!  I love the "WHERE IS SUN?" guy.  Also, what's with the dude who kept logging out and back in...how was that supposed to make him alive again/force you to revive him? 

I've always been intrigued by Lights Out, but I've had a hard time finding decent playthroughs of it on YouTube that are both helpful and entertaining*, and when I try it by myself without pointers...it doesn't go well.  And as for a MULTIPLAYER version...hoo boy!  I _know_  most of my semi-regular players aren't ready for that--even less than I am, and that's saying something.

(Oh god--it just hit me:  The Together edition would be Lights Out...without...the ability...to PAUSE oh good _lord_ I'm not going anywhere near that.  MAP SCREEN, SAVE ME WHILE I FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO!  Yes, I know there are mods for this.  Seems like too much of a core gameplay change to me, so I wouldn't use it.)

Questions:  Is the full moon still a thing in Lights Out?  I'm guessing no, which is kind of a shame...I mean, that you're out in nighttime constantly but don't get to USE the night's own lighting system...  I guess it's less actual game's _night_ and more "IT'S DARK ALL THE TIME BECAUSE SHUT UP."  : P The planet got tidally locked, oh no!

--Do you still get the biolumenescent mushroom forests, lightbulb plants, etc. in the caves?  In that case...the underground would actually have MORE light!

It's intriguing, but I want to have some idea of the basics/how to even _start_ before I try it--or subject my Steam friends to it!  Heh.

...Notorious

*What I'm looking for is a multi-part series--not edited down to just the "highlights"--by someone who starts _out_ as a total noob but gets better over time, going through the learning process, with funny commentary.  So far I've found very few Lights Out videos, and they tend to be/have:  little or no commentary, in a language I don't understand, or done by people who already know what they're doing and assume you do too.  Ah well...

[hkhm]

yes, there is still a full moon in lights out. i use that glorious full "day" to fight giants, though it usually ends up being the dragonfly since that fight takes me the longest to solo. and, yes, there are still bio-luminescent mushroom forests and lightbulb plants. so the caves indeed have much more light than the surface.

i'm on day 186 so far and the first 10-15 days were the hardest. really, once you get a miner hat built and start making a decent amount of jerky, every thing else is fairly routine. but there are no birds, so no eggs, so no gunpowder. no daylight means no farms either. i mean you can build them, but nothing grows. i even tried dropping fireflies on the farms but nope, withered crops. lights out also seems to keep bees permanently hibernated when you build a bee-box (which in and of itself was an odd chore). so i have to kill bees by the droves just to get precious honey. the pig king is always sleeping so i have more trinkets than ever. pigs never leave their houses and rabbits never leave their warrens. i had to wait underground until enough earthquakes had dropped enough rabbits so i could build a prestihatitator. spiders, merms and mosquitoes are always out so the swamp is intensely exciting.

[CutChemist]

IIRC star callers staff provides light for farms to grow crops, also feed stuff to catcoon for a chance for it to spit up a bird 

[hkhm]

good idea about the star-caller's staff. i have to find a way to test it without starting everything on fire.

the issue with the bird is not exactly that i can't get one, it is that even when i put it in a cage, it is asleep and i cannot feed it until it wakes up, which is never. but i can log out standing right next to the cage and start quickly force-feeding it as soon as the server launches. though that would mean i would need to leave and rejoin my server pretty frequently to keep my bird from starving to death. i just need these catcoons to drop me a bird now, instead of feathers.

[CaptainChaotica]

Oooh...this is kinda fascinating. I like how it's not _just_ darkness itself but the whole world only ever behaving the way it does at night, totally taking away several resources/utilties and making others always available.  I like it, I like it...changes up the whole mechanics of the game. Different from living in the caves, where you "only" have to deal with darkness all the time...but there IS have a day-night cycle (and you can always go to the surface and see full daylight _then_ if you need something from there). Hmm...

I'd still DIE instantly if I tried it, but it _is_ damn interesting. 

...Notorious

[Destros09]

Grass and sticks are your life early on

[CaptainChaotica]

And later, frankly.  In any game mode, I _never_ stop having those things on me.  It may be a habit I picked up back in my singleplayer days, but they're both used for so many things!

...Notorious

[Twofacedcat]

do you still run this server. id like o join and give it a go.

[ButterStuffed]

On 3/2/2017 at 9:21 PM, hkhm said:

good idea about the star-caller's staff. i have to find a way to test it without starting everything on fire.

the issue with the bird is not exactly that i can't get one, it is that even when i put it in a cage, it is asleep and i cannot feed it until it wakes up, which is never. but i can log out standing right next to the cage and start quickly force-feeding it as soon as the server launches. though that would mean i would need to leave and rejoin my server pretty frequently to keep my bird from starving to death. i just need these catcoons to drop me a bird now, instead of feathers.

If you take the bird out and place it back into the cage it will stay awake long enough to get 4-5 eggs before it nods off again.

[Corvidae]

A friend and I tried a Lights Out server recently but I had to postpone it since my server hardware died. We were in the first winter more or less, right before the Deerclops spawns. It was incredibly dicey for the first 15-ish days as you said, but it was such a change from the normal experience that I loved every minute of it. The first 2 days were the most frantic, it was hilarious.

As for crop withering, you could possibly do what I used to do for crops in the caves (before I realized that light shafts work). Literally just fertilizing the plant immediately after planting it in the farm. As far as I am aware, fully-grown crops don't wither - but even then, there's bundles. I like to use Guano, then Rot, then Manure. Typically I only force-grow crops when I want to quickly amass a stock of a particular fruit/veg like dragonfruit, but when there's no light...

[LuxuryHeart]

I might have to try this.  This might convince my brother to play again, since he got bored of doing the same thing over and over again, and he hates playing with other people.  Lights out might be a fresh take on Don't Starve Together that will interest him once again.

[ImDaMisterL]

Obligatory DW reference.

[Asparagus]

I wholeheartedly support what you're doing here. Do you have a Patreon?

Might I suggest you spawn in some Light Plants near the Postern so they have a constant source of light? (tried it once on mine, people joined even after I put in all caps that the server is LAGGY BEYOND BELIEF and some fared longer than expected...)

[Thieverpedia]

Hehe...me and a friend get a lot of people who can't read our server's name, so I can relate. Too many times, we had people join and leave, or stay and die to darkness. The ones that did make it to the base usually base squatted or died somewhere else.

Oddly no Willow griefers. We thought one of them torched the postern area, but it was just two things in Summer from smouldering.

Had a couple newish players who questioned how we achieved the "impossible" task of surviving 350 days without the sun, and I think they promptly left after our obvious answer.

But enough of my experinces. It's nice to know other players are giving this kind of world a try.

[Mencken]

What a great idea, I'd love to play in such a challenging environment.