The game is way too fast and easy now. Progression got trivialized.

[Darth_Angeal]

Title... and yes we play on a hard world.

Besides fishing, which has become some boring RMB spam:

- Leveling seems way faster in every way.
- Bosses seem to be tuned down
- Less need of food in general.
- Way too many stuff is thrown on you.

I haven´t played for a while, so i can´t say if everything happened with 1.0 or earlier, but a lot of stuff seems kinda pointless now.

Even with experience, i haven´t seen us running through the game like this. Due to obvious changes to the loottable and walls behind less resistent, it´s so easy to get the iron-table within maybe 20-30minutes gametime. The whole "tin-age" got completely skipped in our actual run and copper didn´t last more than a blink of an eye.

So far so good, we started to go for bosses. The slime atleast felt how i can remember it, maybe slower... but Ghorm? Dunno why this boss is even a thing.
It was already cheesable with traps, but you either had to grind them in a hive-dungeon or pay with a lot of tin for it. Now you can simply place some hundreds of cheap wood-traps and call it a day. Not to mention that this boss seem to lack its rage-mode. There is no speedbuff and player-targeting. It just runs pointlessly in a circle, easy killable.

Using that fire-guy as the 3rd required boss isn´t a good choice in my eyes aswell. Again... we already skipped "tin-age" anyway, but the whole hive-mother (tin) - biome has become even more irrelevant at this point.
Of course we went to fight him before we fought hivemother, because we thought maybe they changed or buffed her. But no... it´s completely pointless to do her even gear-wise. She doesn´t offer anything but a statue or the chest as cosmetical options. No new trader or something, nothing.
That we´re also able to skip the whole dungeons-aspect, because we already can destroy its walls without scarlet-gear, makes it even more pointless to go for.

And while i talk about gear, it´s great to have way more options now. But again... the most are pointless. Rare drops aren´t really rare. You just have to run in a circle on Ghorms path and you´ll get like 3 full sets of T6 / T7 gear, if not higher if you´re lucky, just because enemies still kill each other there.

On top cooking and gardening doesn´t feel as it should be. Dunno if all just grows faster in general, but i can also remember that i always looked for enough diverse food for armor / life etc... to keep buffs up, so my hc-character won´t die asap. I also had to play more slow-paced or simply grind some low-level stuff and gardening / cooking to catch some points that boost me just to be safe.
But hell... buffs seem to have double-duration and with all the other changes, fast gear-progress and easier leveling, i don´t even know why i need those food besides "I need to eat something...".

So before i write an endless novel, does cavelings got nerfed? I remember them being fast with a long jump on the player. The jump feels cutted into the half and the cavelings more "dumb" and slow in general.


I highly appreciate all the work Pugstorm put into the game, and also that they try to follow player-feedback. But with all the changes that got made, the overall experience for a decent gamer feels way worse. I don´t even want to know how standard or "easy-mode" are played at this point.

Yes i could start a new world and probably put the sliders on less dungeons / ores etc... (left them on the standard-settings), but i don´t think that it solves anything.
The main-issue lies into easy character-progress coming together with a way too huge loottable and nerfed enemies / bad world-pathing.
Also the "better biomes" seem to be way closer to the core now?!

And yes... i know dozens of poeple never have been fan of the fishing-game, because it was either too hard or progress to slow.... but instead of increasing the XP only, we lost something unique.
It´s about such little details that make corekeeper outstanding. Losing them to mainstream the game just sucks. That the whole survival / progress -aspects got trivialized sucks aswell.

Don´t get me super wrong, this is no hatespeech or something. The game is still good and is probably offers a good experience for new players or not so experienced gamers in general. The overall experience for poeple who either know the game or just being good at games is just way worse and too fast now.

I really hope some changes will be reverted or atleast

- nerf the loottable
- balance around the ore-biomes and the tables
- nerf XP / change it back to EA-standard
- make early bosses a fear again (dunno about late right now)

and just give the players sliders with x1,25 / 1,5 / 2,0 for several stuff, so they can have a faster / easier experience if needed.

I personally expect more when a game comes with 3 difficulties at this point and not "easy, easier, braindead."


Thanks for reading.

[Darth_Angeal]

To add:

Maybe even add rolls on gear, so it´s more than just filling your inventory once you already have your set.

Also minecarts are kinda irrelevant with the new teleporters aswell.

[Palo Wagner]

The game has always been easy, i dont know what mean, the map is smaller tho im pretty sure. This whole i can just skip stuff has nothing to do with the game being easier, you just kknow the game so you know what to do. I played terraria, the first time the game was difficult i didnt know what to do or how to do it, now, even at master difficulty the game is easy. Long story short, they reduced map size, you know the game so it seens easy.

[Darth_Angeal]

Originally posted by Palo Wagner:

you know the game so it seens easy.

It´s not just that and i also gave examples for it like way faster progression, Ghorm and cavelings definately nerfed into aggressiveness and way too many lootdrops / getting too fast gear.

Sure the game was never THAT hard, but it was somewhat harder and more slow-paced the last time i played, so even bufffood and leveling had way more impact than they have right now.

And just saying... i read one or another thing in the patchnotes to be sure about it, so yeah game got faster and easier in general, which has nothing to do with experience.

[Koumori]

Ghorm definitely needs a buff. All of the bosses are pretty easy (and always have been; I didn't really notice if any of them got easier in 1.0), but Ghorm in particular takes no effort whatsoever. Can you periodically walk a few feet to the side? Yes? Congratulations, you possess all the skills necessary to take out Ghorm without ever being hit.

[Resh]

Mang, it's time to move onto other ventures. You out here writing up telenovela scripts.

[Tanyon]

I mean my friends and I just picked it up.. we are playing on normal and we have all died.. like A LOT.. now that does not mean the game is hard.. usually when I die I'm just simply not paying attention to my health and forgot to heal.. but it sounds to me like what Palo said above you just seem to know what you are doing.. we didn't know you could use traps to cheese Ghorm we just fought him how we thought we were supposed to.. I mean we could look up things like that but we are trying not to.

This post reminds me of how I feel about V-Rising.. I thought their 1.0 release made the game easier but truth be told I just know what I'm doing. So do all my friends we all have like 450+ hours in the game. Knowing what to do reduces any challenge drastically.

[Sotanaht]

Leveling for Gardening, Fishing, Crafting and Cooking are all fairly fast, but that's a good thing. Cooking could actually do with being a little bit faster. Crafting and Cooking specifically require going out of your way to grind them for no direct benefit, so minimizing that is a good design choice.

ALL of the other skills though are pretty slow. The only skills I managed to max out in my playthough are the first 3 I mentioned. Even Cooking only got to 96 though I COULD have finished that. Mining only reached 91 after significant, deliberate grinding basically clearing out a whole section of the crystal biome so that one is way too slow. Vitality got to 92, that one might be in a decent enough place if I had gone out of my way to kill more it might have capped. The combat skills though definitely need to go much faster.

[MrMans]

how do i play i just get black screen and crash before main menu

[NorionV]

Was there ever a time when this game was hard...?

It's a pretty casual kind of game. When the game launched, the only time I remember dying was when I'd alt tab out of the game and forget to pause, lmao.

[NorionV]

Originally posted by Koumori:

Ghorm definitely needs a buff. All of the bosses are pretty easy (and always have been; I didn't really notice if any of them got easier in 1.0), but Ghorm in particular takes no effort whatsoever. Can you periodically walk a few feet to the side? Yes? Congratulations, you possess all the skills necessary to take out Ghorm without ever being hit.

Ghorm should have some kind of scattered AoE attack, similar to Malugaz, but not with a lingering effect that can quickly kill you.

Like perhaps rocks fall from the ceiling periodically, and will do damage if you're standing on the tile when they fall. Or maybe it shoots out small bombs from the stone on its head.

Idk. Ghorm was a joke, for sure, haha. It's especially silly if you bring move speed and slime immunity - you're literally faster.

[eighmy_lupin]

Dude this is a cozy game. Go play Eldin Ring if you want another Dark Souls

[Darth_Angeal]

Originally posted by NorionV:

Was there ever a time when this game was hard...?

It's a pretty casual kind of game. When the game launched, the only time I remember dying was when I'd alt tab out of the game and forget to pause, lmao.

It´s insane that so many poeple actually start writing without even reading more than the header.

It´s simply not about dying, it´s about all the changes that made the game more fastpaced and trivialized several bosses and progressions, which make the game pointlessly easy in the end and destroys a lot of needed exploration we had before.

Originally posted by Tanyon:

but it sounds to me like what Palo said above you just seem to know what you are doing.

As i´ve already written down, i also looked stuff up in the patchnotes, which seems curious to me. The proof is in them, the game got speeded up, bosses nerfed / changed in order, the early map is smaller, walls are weaker, XP earned faster and and and...

When we skip the tin-age, just because we can easily get tons of iron within 20 minutes of gametime, then something seems wrong to me. And it continues with free gear laying around etc... I already wrote what is wrong imo above.

The experience is way different than in any run before even if i / we knew what was to do.

[Lorska]

Did you make new characters?
I know it's a dumb question but if you keep your skills (biggest offender is mining) you can just mow through the early game if you know what you're doing.

Tbh it was never hard to skip early tiers because it's so cheap to build the next bench.
There's also no actual reason to even skip tin because it's by far the most important resource for a while.
Conveyor belts and drills are very important for automated mining setups which both exclusively require it.

The game has shifted a bit due to more build choices as well. Melee is like the only path that really benefits off the anvil crafted armor and weapons, any other playstyle can just get armor and weapons as drops completely skipping any dependency on ores.

The main reason the game has always been easy if you know what you're doing is that you can just overgear and overskill any issue. Malugaz being the only real roadblock (formerly hivemother).

Malu is easier than hive I would agree but hive is also a super boring boss as a last early game challenge. So it does make sense that the cooler boss is the mandatory one now. He's also less cheesable.

Imo the tin-age doesn't actually exist. You'll never actually want any equipment from tin, you only care about the pickaxe at most and wanna sink the rest into automation stuff.

So yeah you got gud and know how to be efficient in your progression.

[NorionV]

Originally posted by Darth_Angeal:

Originally posted by NorionV:

Was there ever a time when this game was hard...?

It's a pretty casual kind of game. When the game launched, the only time I remember dying was when I'd alt tab out of the game and forget to pause, lmao.

It´s insane that so many poeple actually start writing without even reading more than the header.

It´s simply not about dying, it´s about all the changes that made the game more fastpaced and trivialized several bosses and progressions, which make the game pointlessly easy in the end.

It's insane that people make baseless assumptions about others with no valid evidence.

I read your whole post. As others have pointed out, the game seems more fast paced and trivial because you've already played it before. It certainly felt that way to me, because contrary to what you're saying, not much about the game's 'old' content has actually changed.

You mentioned 'skipping the tin age' and 'Ghorm is easy'.

Ghorm was always easy. You just get slime immunity. And Ghorm probably should be easy. It's the second boss most people will encounter.. Hive Mother is also easy. You just get acid immunity. You can have both of these buffs as much as you need the moment you get a fishing rod.

But a new player wouldn't know this, because they're new. A new player is going to struggle through the game figuring stuff out. Might run across Ghorm's patrol path, wondering wtf all this slime is on the ground for, and then subsequently become road kill when a titanic worm runs them over. Woops.

Might stumble into the larva hive and if they're persistent enough to wade through the actually rather dangerous dungeon (to the uninitiated) - probably with no acid immunity, the brave little troopers - get to Hive Mother and wonder why this game is so unfair because why does this stupid boss cover the ENTIRE floor in acid? That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Bad game design, etc etc.

Then they cool off and maybe go explore some more before coming back. Maybe they find some neat, colorful fish to eat... or realize how actually overpowered the hoe is. Either way, it's going to take them a lot longer to get through all of this.

Meanwhile, if we're gonna talk about 'skipping ages', I pretty much skipped the entire inner circle age. Because when the slime boss died and dropped its staff, that was it. I popped some omega-3 and just walked over and killed Ghorm. I then killed Hive Mother almost immediately after. Between the drops from these bosses and random junk I picked up along the way, I was able to speedrun the inner circle and get to Azeos faster than I could have ever dreamed of when I first played. Didn't actually craft anything prior to Scarlet, aside from picks and bags. I think I made the iron shield, too. Wasn't having much off-hand drop luck.

That's not a flaw with the game design, though. I just know what to do, because I've already done it.

[Darkhulk ʕ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°ʔ]

The game has no challenge, because the only thing that bothers us is receiving damage. The base is not attacked, resources are not destroyed - the basic things that are placed in the game Dont Starv.
That is to say, in the extreme case if for the entire game we will be avoiding opponents then there is nothing that will defeat our hero.