Loving the game but it has a VERY rapid burnout rate.

[Sililos]

This games great, i really love this style of game and the world editing is fantastic.

Not a complaint topic but i have some points im finding taxing to the point of being detrimental.
Oh and for "This gets fixed/resolved after X quest" Its possible the resolution is too late in the game as its very easy to get 'trapped' early game with no time to progress quests without lose progress.

Points of interest for me:
- Inventory: This is a pretty major one for me. I just never have enough! I know you can get 10 more slots but honestly that doesn't 'scratch the itch'. A backpack of some sort would be nice to double your slots around the early mid game point.

- Micro/macro management Very quickly early game its possible to get stuck in a unsustainable loop. Plant, watch plant get destroyed, try again, repeat. Placing walls can help a little there but they feel a little lacking and are destroyed just as easily plus are hard to make 'look good' with how long it takes to flatten ground for them and then ofcourse that causes other aesthetic issues. (Plus they seem to only affect small plants directly under them but also contribute to crowding reducing what you can do with them even more). There is the wind break option, but to me at least, it doesn't feel like these work? I still see dust storms blow through my 'protected' area surrounded by wind break trees and still everything inside gets destroyed and crowding adds up fast.
Im not really sure how to get around these issues, but I do know that its VERY easy to get trapped trying to keep your oasis maintained with no time to progress quests or lose what you have accomplished. I find when i leave my oasis for any period of time i lose plants, they just get destroyed out of nowhere.

- Digging/Landscape management. This feels really, really, REALLY SLOOOOOOOW! It also leaves us with ugly deep ditches all over the place with jagged edges rather than 'cute creeks'. I have the second item that creates quakes and such and while it is an upgrade, its not without its issues. Id personally like to be able to just flatten a very large area with one click or create a stream channel in one go without needing a 50 foot deep channel for water to flow lol.

- Grid placement/snapping Would love some way to create tidy rows of plants.

- Seed auto growing Too sum this one up, id love some natural growth.
Lets say, around your Oasis you can activate or deactivate an option on your first water source/tree that prevents seeds from auto sprouting within the radius.... but... outside that radius.... wind blown seeds that land where theres ideal conditions id love too see sprout reducing the workload a little.
I like to activate every spring i find causing water sources to appear all over. I think it would be cool to drop a few Dunegrass plants down then have any seeds they produce get wind blown and sprout, same with other plants, maybe add birds to the game that will be attracted to fruit and nuts/seeds outside your oasis and spread them around the map when they visit active water sources to drink.

Some way to find discovered graves Guessing this is more of a bug. Once you have found a grave, even if you waymark it, it vanishes from the map shortly after. Unless you know where everything is on the map that you have seen (My memory's not THAT good sadly lol), its easy to lose where the grave was and end up with a journal full of grave quests but no way of finding them.

I think i have put about 3 days of IRL play into my current game and only just now have started to plant around a second spring, it feels like a very exhausting prospect covering all springs with growth and that thought pattern ends in 'burnout' before i have even begun.
So pretty much im just requesting some natural automation as the game progresses and a little relief from the maintenance traps and fear of everything being destroyed the moment i leave my oasis.
Its a big game, a huge map, but I feel trapped in a very small area and theres always more to do than i think one person can manage. I cant imagine how much worse that will get as I progress further in the story.

Oh and finally, please can we 'lock' paths? they highlight when we walk over them and are constantly selected when we try to click a plant or storage container etc.

[Phoenix Cat]

Without spoilers, alot of your concerns get better later in the game. You only really need to concentrate on your home spring. Bring seeds and plants back to it. Worry about planting stuff around other wells later. You also get another ring that gets you more inventory and with memories you can wear the first and the second giving lots of inventory space. Concentrate on getting ghost and graves to get memory points. I found this out a little late. I'm had to play catch up near the end to get some of my skills unlocked. If you hit E in the map and click where you are standing "if you are next to the grave" you can place and name icons. It is what I use to keep track of graves. There are many icons to use. I also found this out late game.

[Soul in Shadow]

On the topic of discovered graves, once you discover each one they appear in your quest log along with the required offerings with an option to toggle the map marker.

I often see natural growth as seeds that drop far enough from their parent have a chance to bury themselves and sprout. Unfortunately they count as cultivated plants an usually die of dehydration.

I tend to agree on the walls, while the sun sigil stone provides enough protection for plants to survive, I would like to see an upgraded version that serves as a barrier against other environmental hazards like tumbleweeds and sand devils

[Phoenix Cat]

Originally posted by Soul in Shadow:

On the topic of discovered graves, once you discover each one they appear in your quest log along with the required offerings with an option to toggle the map marker.

I often see natural growth as seeds that drop far enough from their parent have a chance to bury themselves and sprout. Unfortunately they count as cultivated plants an usually die of dehydration.

I tend to agree on the walls, while the sun sigil stone provides enough protection for plants to survive, I would like to see an upgraded version that serves as a barrier against other environmental hazards like tumbleweeds and sand devils

They often don't reappear on your map once you unmark them. Idk if it is a bug or not. But I'm not the only one with that trouble.

[Sililos]

Thats good to hear ty for the replies.

So issue then i guess comes down too getting the player out of their oasis early on to find these items/skills etc.
Its very easy to get 'stuck' and overwhelmed early on lol.

[Mysterious Pixie]

Why don't you build storage baskets?

[harkonian]

- Grid placement/snapping Would love some way to create tidy rows of plants.

Agree with this. Just the farming in general is a bit kludgy. I'm currently using only planters for my plants because it's the easiest way to keep things neat, aligned and organized.

- Inventory: This is a pretty major one for me. I just never have enough!

Make a basket. Carry the basket. There is no penalty for carrying it around. One thing I would like to see though, if you are carrying a container, its inventory should be visible/available when you have your backpack open so you can easily manage all your inventory at once.

Some way to find discovered graves Guessing this is more of a bug.

Ugh, yes. I'm currently searching for a grave I visited earlier and can't complete the quest because I can't find it.

feels like a very exhausting prospect covering all springs with growth and that thought pattern ends in 'burnout' before i have even begun.

There are some shortcuts that make this less grindy. For example, upgrading a sunburst tree to a mother sunburst will extend soil out quite a bit in one shot.

[One (1) Lini]

Originally posted by harkonian:

- Grid placement/snapping Would love some way to create tidy rows of plants.

Agree with this. Just the farming in general is a bit kludgy. I'm currently using only planters for my plants because it's the easiest way to keep things neat, aligned and organized.

- Inventory: This is a pretty major one for me. I just never have enough!

Make a basket. Carry the basket. There is no penalty for carrying it around. One thing I would like to see though, if you are carrying a container, its inventory should be visible/available when you have your backpack open so you can easily manage all your inventory at once.

Some way to find discovered graves Guessing this is more of a bug.

Ugh, yes. I'm currently searching for a grave I visited earlier and can't complete the quest because I can't find it.

feels like a very exhausting prospect covering all springs with growth and that thought pattern ends in 'burnout' before i have even begun.

There are some shortcuts that make this less grindy. For example, upgrading a sunburst tree to a mother sunburst will extend soil out quite a bit in one shot.

This isn't an ideal solution, but if you've got the upgrade to the ghost-locating altar, it can show you graves as well. I've noticed the marker will disappear after some time, but if you choose to search for the same type of grave again it should re-appear on your map (provided that it's the closest of that type)

[ohioguyo]

I agree on the list of side quests, a good UI improvement would be to let markers for discovered but incomplete locations like graves always show up on the map, and make it so if you press Pin on a quest it should actually drop a map pin on the destination if known.

As mentioned there does seem to be some occasional spontaneous scattering and growth of seeds which I guess gardeners would call 'volunteer plants'; it seems some people like this and some not. I personally like it as a feature but perhaps could be made controllable by a game option or local sigil if some people find uncontrolled spread more frustrating.

Originally posted by Sililos:

feels like a very exhausting prospect covering all springs with growth and that thought pattern ends in 'burnout' before i have even begun.

I also enjoy reviving springs, but you don't have to take it too far for every spring unless you want to. In the midgame Naia's seeds can unlock a way to strongly 'autorevive' the local area around springs (it seems like this also makes some locally revived plants independent of water needs?) so it's largely ok just to restore them to the extent you want to (or that is helpful as a local plant/water source).

[Inkjet]

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! I've noted it down.
There are more tools (especially for digging) that you will find later in the game, but we don't want digging to feel too frustrating in the early game either!

Thanks again,
Jennifer

[Sililos]

Thanks Inkjet :D

I do use baskets, preserving ones for plants.
I loot EVERYTHING i come across "because i might need them later."
Typical RPG player habit lol. Baskets, Frogs etc all fill surprisingly fast.

[Acierocolotl]

The thing that got me was Gleb's gift. Without getting into details, of course, this so radically changed up the game for me that I had a profound sense of regret at all the time I spent shovelling.

So much so that if I could get Gleb's gift before I got Naia's, I'd be a much happier camper the next time I played through.

[[Muse] Bubbles]

One thing to note is that, once you use the ancestral altar to reveal the location of a grave or ghost, you can go into map and use the custom map markers to mark them. This way, even after the ancestral altar no longer shows the ghost location, you can still know where it is on the map. Hope this helps! Thanks so much!