Is Stonehearth worth it

[FRANKOOK]

Want to play the game but i have seen people say that it is abandoned, just wondered if the mods and the general experience is still worth it for the current price.

[Burden of Brine]

tl;dr The game is worth the price with the expectation of getting a game of "Okay" level of polish, enjoyable if you like the genre and fairly relaxing pace of gaming. A friend or two to co-op with might be ideal.

Circumstances had it's developement cut shorter than ideal but it was left in a playable state with fairly minimal bugs or issues for the most part. If you like these kinds of games, I'd say it is worth it with the caveat to expect some hiccups here and there.

It is a fairly slow-paced game, speaking from my experience playing at Normal difficulty, and I'd lean towards it likely being more fun if played together with a friend or a few thereof.

Authorized Community Expansion (ACE) is the most notable mod, as it adds quite a bit of content, unfortunately it also comes with what I personally would describe as needless tedium in the form of Fuel, and a lesser tedium in Drinks/Beverages. I say this because I have yet to get my workers to reliable haul items as much as I would like them to and the extra busywork of Fuel and Drinks does not help in that regard. But it is the biggest mod in terms of adding extra content in one comprehensive package, and I can't imagine playing without it at this point.

Other than ACE I'd say there is enough mods to add a decent amount of extra content, or quality of life tweaks. Personally I have a soft spot for "Fast Pickup/Dropdown" and "Bigger Backpacks".

I think my favorite vanilla feature of the game is the Re-Embark mechanic. Once your town is fully established, fairly late game, you get the option to select 3 characters, including their equipment, and some extra items which you can 'export' to use in future games you start. It also carries over learned recipes for crafting and agriculture. And the exported team can be re-used however many times you want, too.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by FRANKOOK:

Want to play the game but i have seen people say that it is abandoned, just wondered if the mods and the general experience is still worth it for the current price.

Have you ever been to a Steam forum without someone asking MP for a single player game or people saying a finished game is abandoned?

If you have I'd love to see it.

I do welcome you to read my review of the game tho.

[YetiChow]

Originally posted by FRANKOOK:

Want to play the game but i have seen people say that it is abandoned, just wondered if the mods and the general experience is still worth it for the current price.

Do you like to figure things out for yourself? Because if yes, the game is absolutely worth it; if not, then probably no amount of sale discount will make the game worth it.

Stonehearth is the kind of game that goes "here's a puzzle, solve it... or don't, you're the boss." Of course, if you choose not to solve the puzzle there's a consequence (inefficiency in your town, or someone dies from lack of food/being vulnerable to monster attacks/etc, or your houses don't get built because there's no way to build them); but ultimately the game doesn't "make" you do do anything required to play it well. This is a major stumbling-block for a lot of players; and a lot of people bounce off of it hard because they never figure out that solving the challenges is their job, not something the game is supposed to do.

But if you like figuring out solutions to challenges, and doing creative stuff like designing buildings, and figuring out better ways to do things based on what you learned last time you did it, then yeah Stonehearth is awesome for that kind of player.

[FRANKOOK]

Originally posted by YetiChow:

Originally posted by FRANKOOK:

Want to play the game but i have seen people say that it is abandoned, just wondered if the mods and the general experience is still worth it for the current price.

Do you like to figure things out for yourself? Because if yes, the game is absolutely worth it; if not, then probably no amount of sale discount will make the game worth it.

Stonehearth is the kind of game that goes "here's a puzzle, solve it... or don't, you're the boss." Of course, if you choose not to solve the puzzle there's a consequence (inefficiency in your town, or someone dies from lack of food/being vulnerable to monster attacks/etc, or your houses don't get built because there's no way to build them); but ultimately the game doesn't "make" you do do anything required to play it well. This is a major stumbling-block for a lot of players; and a lot of people bounce off of it hard because they never figure out that solving the challenges is their job, not something the game is supposed to do.

But if you like figuring out solutions to challenges, and doing creative stuff like designing buildings, and figuring out better ways to do things based on what you learned last time you did it, then yeah Stonehearth is awesome for that kind of player.

Sounds good, will be playing it. Thank you for the insight into Stonehearth

[FRANKOOK]

Originally posted by ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Saltflop:

tl;dr The game is worth the price with the expectation of getting a game of "Okay" level of polish, enjoyable if you like the genre and fairly relaxing pace of gaming. A friend or two to co-op with might be ideal.

Circumstances had it's developement cut shorter than ideal but it was left in a playable state with fairly minimal bugs or issues for the most part. If you like these kinds of games, I'd say it is worth it with the caveat to expect some hiccups here and there.

It is a fairly slow-paced game, speaking from my experience playing at Normal difficulty, and I'd lean towards it likely being more fun if played together with a friend or a few thereof.

Authorized Community Expansion (ACE) is the most notable mod, as it adds quite a bit of content, unfortunately it also comes with what I personally would describe as needless tedium in the form of Fuel, and a lesser tedium in Drinks/Beverages. I say this because I have yet to get my workers to reliable haul items as much as I would like them to and the extra busywork of Fuel and Drinks does not help in that regard. But it is the biggest mod in terms of adding extra content in one comprehensive package, and I can't imagine playing without it at this point.

Other than ACE I'd say there is enough mods to add a decent amount of extra content, or quality of life tweaks. Personally I have a soft spot for "Fast Pickup/Dropdown" and "Bigger Backpacks".

I think my favorite vanilla feature of the game is the Re-Embark mechanic. Once your town is fully established, fairly late game, you get the option to select 3 characters, including their equipment, and some extra items which you can 'export' to use in future games you start. It also carries over learned recipes for crafting and agriculture. And the exported team can be re-used however many times you want, too.

Thank you very much for the details, i like Rimworld but want something co-op to play. will give it a try

[thekins]

THIS GAME is a glorious meh like its not good but it aint bad
its Meh decently okay at best

Normal mode is ludicrously easy and hard mode is ludicrously hard.

Theres no middle ground of okay i have a challenge.

For example if you grow pretty quickly in hard mode it might just straight up throw a 2k hp monster at you at like day 4 and you just flat out lose

[YetiChow]

Originally posted by thekins:

THIS GAME is a glorious meh like its not good but it aint bad
its Meh decently okay at best

Normal mode is ludicrously easy and hard mode is ludicrously hard.

Theres no middle ground of okay i have a challenge.

For example if you grow pretty quickly in hard mode it might just straight up throw a 2k hp monster at you at like day 4 and you just flat out lose

There's a trick to fighting high-level monsters without high-level soldiers of your own: fight dirty. Draw the monster's aggro with a soldier, put the town on alert, and have the "bait" soldier lead the monster on a merry goose chase (using move flags) while the civilians all gather at the marker. Then, when the civilians are all assembled, lead the monster over to them -- they all swarm in at once, getting heaps and heaps of "free" hits in because the monster can only attack one target at a time. What's more, the civilians only start to flee from enemies if they've been hit; so if the monster never hits them then they just keep pummelling away. Even a giant bear or giant varanus with 2k health will lose to this strategy on hard mode.

There are only a handful of enemies this tactic doesn't work on -- the main one is Zilla (which is specifically designed to counter this strategy with its AoE attack), and then you have the various Kobold squads that have their own knights and clerics and archers so you can't just bait them into a fight they'll lose. Some of the Titan's minions also have AoE and ranged attacks too. But honestly, by the time Zilla can spawn you should have multiple archers so you can equip a couple with spiky arrows (and maybe one with fire arrows too), making it much easier to control the fight. In fact, the key to beating Zilla is just to keep doing step 1 of the basic "draw aggro and lead them around" strategy, only you replace the massive pile-on of civilians with some archers staying just outside Zilla's reach.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I play hard mode all the time. It is of trivial difficulty for me. You could however finish the game once on normal and then embark with 3 of your levelled Hearthlings for a new adventure on hard... If that's your thing.