Opening small glades is not worth it.

[ZirzoR]

Why does opening small glades still cost hostility? Its 2023, its gotta go man.

It's never worth opening small glades, there is no excuse for opening one either, unless you're sitting on tons of "opening glades causes X" cornerstones, and even then such a build is very inconsistent and takes a long time to build up.

[Zero Grim]

I saw a suggestion elsewhere that opening small glades should give temporary hostility and I really like that idea, I find myself just face checking dangerous glades and hoping I can deal with them rather than gambling small glades will have something good in them.

[koboldlord]

If it doesn't have some sort of drawback, then it's something you always do. In the current version, it's at least a choice you have. Usually you should decide that it isn't worth it, but sometimes you do have a particular need for food, or an order that you want to complete quickly, or a stack of perks that give stuff for opening glades.

The small glades could probably use a little more carrot to balance out the hostility stick, but they're really not too far off from a good spot, even in the status quo. Maybe some rare stuff that is very rewarding to find but only shows up once per map, perhaps? The crimson orchard has an excavation site in a small glade, somewhere, and I'll look for that one sometimes. The lure of 3 reputation is worth a decent number of failures.

[Morannon]

Honestly, the temporary hostility is the only thing I've seen suggested that feels like it makes sense here unless someone can come up with an alternative idea for a negative. All my maps wind up looking like mazes as I push my woodcutters to dig around the things and just hunt for the Dangerous/Forbidden glades.

Even so, with the temporary hostility idea, I suspect your first year or two would be a race to open as many as possible, then go back to ignoring them like "normal."

[faestone]

Originally posted by koboldlord:

If it doesn't have some sort of drawback, then it's something you always do. In the current version, it's at least a choice you have. Usually you should decide that it isn't worth it, but sometimes you do have a particular need for food, or an order that you want to complete quickly, or a stack of perks that give stuff for opening glades.

The small glades could probably use a little more carrot to balance out the hostility stick, but they're really not too far off from a good spot, even in the status quo. Maybe some rare stuff that is very rewarding to find but only shows up once per map, perhaps? The crimson orchard has an excavation site in a small glade, somewhere, and I'll look for that one sometimes. The lure of 3 reputation is worth a decent number of failures.

No one on higher prestige levels opens small glades. It’s a broken system.

[koboldlord]

Originally posted by faestone:

No one on higher prestige levels opens small glades. It’s a broken system.

I generally play P20, and I often do open one or two during the course of a run. Not very many, but it is one of several possible solutions to a food crisis and may be the least bad option in some particular case. I'll also do it to grab a revealed farm plot or geyser, or quickly finish an order that has something I want.

If you're not thinking about your choice, you might be missing out on a solution from time to time. Usually the answer to whether you should open a particular small glade is no, but usually isn't always.

[DG]

I think the human and fox starting bonuses have changed things and made it quite reasonable to open a small glade with fertile soil or a situationally valuable geyser. Opening a small glade without any clue to the contents still seems bad.

[kory]

Small glades are bad, bad enough that they need a change, but you can play high prestige and open them.

[LotusBlade]

Foxes already reducing impact of small glades a lot and i often find -15 hostility for opening caches as first cornerstone, so yes, it is usefull to open them now.

[Leisurely Luke]

Hey! I recently shared some of our collective thoughts on Small Glades in another thread. I figured you may be interested in them as well:

Over the past few months, we made numerous balance changes to small glades, many times indirectly. Here are a couple of examples:

• Small glades always offer resource nodes that you can already gather with essential Small Camps, unlike large resource nodes that require acquiring a regular camp blueprint (change introduced in the Camps Update)
  
• Small glades have a disproportionately high chance to include geysers. They also have Drizzle Water Geysers, which are hard to find on Dangerous and Forbidden Glades (change introduced in the Rainpunk Update).
  
• Dangerous and Forbidden Glades became more risky after Tools role was reduced. You can no longer be confident that you'll be able to deal with with dangerous events if you have just Tools (change introduced in the Explorer's Choice Update).
  
• New perks were introduced that provide bonuses for opening glades during the Storm, which is easier and safer when opening Small Glades (change introduced in the Explorer's Choice Update).
  
• Fox firekeeper reduces Hostility gained from Small Glades by 40% but only by 13% EDIT: 20% from Dangerous and Forbidden Glades (change introduced in the Sentinels of the Forest Update).

As always, we'll keep monitoring the feedback and act if necessary, though I must admit that we are rather satisfied with their current balance and role in the game. They come with a choice and a trade-off.

They don't involve risk, but as a result offer lesser rewards. In majority of cases, they aren't much profitable, unless your current build (perks, species, etc.) benefits form them.

We are unlikely to lower their Hostility, but we do intend to make them more interesting in the future.

[kory]

Originally posted by Leisurely Luke:

Hey! I recently shared some of our collective thoughts on Small Glades in another thread. I figured you may be interested in them as well:


They don't involve risk, but as a result offer lesser rewards. In majority of cases, they aren't much profitable, unless your current build (perks, species, etc.) benefits form them.

We are unlikely to lower their Hostility, but we do intend to make them more interesting in the future.

Yeah, I have noticed some of these, and its been pretty good, but I have a few comments:

The fact that they offer more geysers, in particular drizzle ones, needs to be stated in game somewhere, that is a hard thing to determine from playing the game. Additionally the P19 modifier needs to distinguish small and large glades, right now it seems unreasonable.

[koboldlord]

I also didn't know there was a pattern for geyser placement. Drizzle geysers are the most consistently useful, so this is very useful information.