First-Timer thoughts on Darkwood

[meterion]

I've seen a lot of discussion about newbies thinking darkwood is too challenging, and thought I'd chip in with my own experience playing it for the first time. The only other non-browser survival game I've played is Don't Starve.

My most predominant thought about DW where I am right now (day 19, survived first night in Old Wood) is that veterans have a ridiculous info edge over first time players. I often ended up trading for expensive crafting components that I would find in the next 1-2 days. Toolboxes, a welder, both pistol parts, and so on. If I knew where these valuable components would be ahead of time then there'd be virtually no challenge for me. Maybe repeat difficulty could be kept up if important loot was randomized from a pool too.

With permadeath off, combat is not really a challenge and healing is pretty worthless. Although I haven't done it deliberately, it's easier to just drop your stuff and die and respawn with full health than try to frantically heal and escape. I did notice that when I died with my axe equipped it lost the upgrades it had. Is that normal?

Seguing from healing, the healing moth skill is pointless to me because of this, as are the skills in general. I saw a let's play of an earlier version and think the passive skills are much more interesting than these one-a-day actives. I just got the scream skill and hopefully I will use that more than moth and runner. As it is now I really don't care about any of the skills and just upgrade to get the trippy dreams.

It would be rather nice if the prologue was just slightly expanded to cover ALL the button controls of the game. I didn't know I could dodge until around day 12, and I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to drag an ammo clip over my empty pistol before figuring out how to reload. Even something as simple as having a flashlight with low power and a battery, saying "reload flashlights and weapons with 'r'" would have been perfect.

For more specifics: The pig farm was pretty disappointing. I had an idea that the pig tentacle monster was making the villager crazy so killed it (which was hilariously easy with 3 molotovs and a pistol), killed the villager anyway, then racked up rep with Piotrek so I could get the cable which I hoped would do something exciting... and nope, it's a light for the boss room. Just a light. Whatever. The pigs were also really hard to select. I thought they didn't drop anything first because their mouseover box was the ground by their feet.

It's pretty hard to keep track of locked stuff. If I hadn't looked on the forums afterward, I probably never would open the locked crate at hideout 2. It'd be nice if I could either make my own notes in the journal, or it made notes of locked doors/crates. I guess this ties in with the knowledge veterans have.

So I just read how Acid Wizard made it "very punishing" for players to play Wardrobe Fortress 2k15 at night, and, well... did that actually happen? Not gonna lie, I've been doing that since night 1 and it works perfectly fine. It is a relaxing break where I browse reddit and I doubt that was the developers intention... but it works. I have like 5 tanks of gasoline and 100 nails because I have not made a single barricade.

Between Piotrek and The Three I've never really gone back to see Wolfman since I set up in Forest; don't know if that's good or not. Maybe if he moved his camp to the biome you spend a night in I would bother to visit. Also light armor really sucks. Maybe I'll craft it again for a boss, but it blocks so little damage.

I could talk for ages about what I liked about the game (basically everything else) but I doubt anyone wants to read that much more. In all, I love Darkwood and eagerly await the next update!

[Inspired Jamez]

Nice write up for a first timer you hit alot of issues on the head in my opinion. You dont acutally fight the pig boss when you turn on the lights with the cable it dies instantly. My major problem with the game it hasnt retained any of the awesome unique game mechanics it had earlier. One by one they are getting phased out for more poorly implementated changes.

[meterion]

Oh wow lol, that would've made it earlier. It was actually even worse than that for me because though I killed the pitchfork guys, I didn't kill any of the pigs... which all aggroed when I tossed the first molotov. Now that was frickin stressful.

[Gold Handles]

I feel like your post is a clear example of what a lot of new players seem to complain about.

The issue is that most new players seem to be completely uninterested in making the game scary for themselves. Boxing yourself into a corner with wardrobes is a very, very old exploit (I'm surprised that the Wizards haven't glued the things to the ground by now), BUT: it's still the player's choice to exploit this design flaw. Especially when it's a pretty blatant cheat.

Couple that with the fact that a lot of players start with non-perma.

And now look at what happens. Nights are not scary, death is not an issue. And so the Darkwood experience is ruined.

I personally feel like it's an insult to the game itself when new players claim that it's "not scary" while they play on non-perma and hide behind wardrobes. It's hypocritical. It's like using console cheats in another game and then claiming that it's "not difficult". Just because you CAN cheat doesn't mean that you SHOULD. Not to bash on you OP, I just feel like your post is a good example of how new guys play this way.

On the other hand: I feel like it's the Wizards' fault for not patching out things like the wardrobe exploit. I hate to say it, but it's the truth that it should've been gone a loooooong time ago.

I've also come to believe that non-perma is, to be honest, the worst thing that has happened to this game. The devs didn't originally plan on adding it, but they did so sometime before launch due to difficulty fears.

Non-perma isn't NEARLY as scary as perma. It's almost like two different games, as you have to play perma so much more carefully. But, new players usually end up picking non-perma because they are scared of the challenge (and that challenge, to me, is the fundamental DW experience)

So really it's just a whole lot of little things that add up.

[meterion]

I see. Once I get through chapter 1 in this way, I will try playing with permadeath and no boxes. I would like to clarify that I don't think the game has stopped being scary, it is crazy scary enough for me in the day. Once I get more familiar with the game (like how you guys somehow survive without boxes and turning the generator on) I'll try it out. I was try convey amusement that it hadn't been patched yet.

I think for me, having non-perma made me approach the game difficulty. If I died quickly a lot of times, I would treat it as a roguelike where I just do trial and error, dying all the way. Like, if the game began with a savage attacking your hideout or something. Since that didn't happen, I treat it more like a horror game where I need to use every little trick to stay alive.

Thank you for your comments, I can see how I am approaching Darkwood from a perspective that isn't what the original aim of the game was.

[The Acid Wizard]

Thanks for the post! We're always looking for constructive criticism so we can make the game better. To be honest, it brings tears to my eyes reading negative comments about mechanics or decisions which I also do not like. But the game is designed by all of the Wizards, not just me, so it's inevitable that we need to look for a compromise on some things.

Originally posted by Jamez:

My major problem with the game it hasnt retained any of the awesome unique game mechanics it had earlier. One by one they are getting phased out for more poorly implementated changes.

Could you expand on this please?

[Gold Handles]

Originally posted by meterion:

I see. Once I get through chapter 1 in this way, I will try playing with permadeath and no boxes. I would like to clarify that I don't think the game has stopped being scary, it is crazy scary enough for me in the day. Once I get more familiar with the game (like how you guys somehow survive without boxes and turning the generator on) I'll try it out. I was try convey amusement that it hadn't been patched yet.

I think for me, having non-perma made me approach the game difficulty. If I died quickly a lot of times, I would treat it as a roguelike where I just do trial and error, dying all the way. Like, if the game began with a savage attacking your hideout or something. Since that didn't happen, I treat it more like a horror game where I need to use every little trick to stay alive.

Thank you for your comments, I can see how I am approaching Darkwood from a perspective that isn't what the original aim of the game was.

Interesting. You're right -- a lot of people have very different reactions to things such as perma and nighttime difficulty.

For example, I am (was) quite the opposite of you: I feel like I would not have continued playing DW if I didn't start out on perma. I really enjoyed the challenge and it led me to keep attempting the game over-and-over in hopes of pushing my "Days Survived" a bit further.

On the contrary, such gameplay can be very frustrating and boring for people who do not particularly enjoy roguelikes or having to do the same thing over again. But I come from a background of games that restart upon death, so to me it felt like a natural mechanic.

I generally try to advise newer players to at least try perma,because I feel like it may allow them to enjoy the experience more.

HOWEVER -- I find myself wondering, maybe the people who didn't pick perma right away just don't want that challenge starting out. That sounds obvious, I know, but I mean that maybe it's not always a matter of ignorance about what perma is like. It's a simple fact that a lot of people don't like roguelike mechanics.

People like myself who love roguelikes will take one look at the difficulty warning, laugh, switch perma mode on, and then jump right in.

So, at the end of the day, I feel like both options are simply better for their respective type of players. Thank you for sharing your opinion, it really helped me reach this conclusion.

But, and this is a big BUT: I still think that people should not feel encouraged to die rather than fight, or that wardrobe fortresses should exist. So it's a matter of fixing the wardrobes and implementing a death system for non-perma players that punishes them enough to encourage careful play. The loss of supplies from dying should be greater than the loss of supplies defending yourself. And you should also have to defend yourself at night, with no other options given.

Originally posted by The Acid Wizard:

Thanks for the post! We're always looking for constructive criticism so we can make the game better. To be honest, it brings tears to my eyes reading negative comments about mechanics or decisions which I also do not like. But the game is designed by all of the Wizards, not just me, so it's inevitable that we need to look for a compromise on some things.

It's not good to be hard on yourself when you and the rest of the Wizards have already created what I (and most other community members) will say is the BEST horror game on the Steam market. Period.

The community is at a point where there's a lot of people who have been playing over a very long time (heck, even Alpha 3 feels like years ago :P), and these guys (myself included) are gonna nitpick. Not out of animosity towards the game, but because, after so many months of playing, they've learned exactly what they like/don't like about the game. New players haven't seen update changes come and go, they're still figuring out their opinion on DW's mechanics.

It's just growing pains. Criticism has always defined the forums, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Early Access games die from one thing, and one thing alone: a lack of honest, often critical feedback. If everyone just said "Wow, Darkwood is perfect, all the mechanics are great!" then the game would be terrible by the time it got out of EA.

It's really great to know that you guys are on here reading the forums. Everyone here simply wishes the best for the game, and knowing that you guys take our comments into consideration is what encourages us to speak up.

[meterion]

Originally posted by ShotgunRagtime:

But, and this is a big BUT: I still think that people should not feel encouraged to die rather than fight, or that wardrobe fortresses should exist. So it's a matter of fixing the wardrobes and implementing a death system for non-perma players that punishes them enough to encourage careful play. The loss of supplies from dying should be greater than the loss of supplies defending yourself. And you should also have to defend yourself at night, with no other options given.

I agree! I think that a good solution to this problem wouldn't be changing anything with the wardrobes themselves, but changing some of the enemy behavior during the night. Imagine if savages/chompers/etc. could "know" what hideout you are in (if any) and would tend to path towards it. If they break inside and don't find you, then they would start to ransack the place.

This could be done in the form of any weapons stored outside your inventory losing durability and random items breaking, changing into the equivalent of "rotten mushrooms" (splintered planks, broken bottles, torn rope, etc.) Or like other suggestions, causing damage to the saw mill, generator, stove, worktable, and/or lamps. A similar modification would make death in non-perma sufficiently punishing, since the further you are in the game the more items will be lost to this.

In other words, there's nothing keeping you from playing wardrobe fortress and it wouldn't even be regarded as an exploit, but a strategy. Maybe early in the game using the wardrobe is a preferred strategy, but as you stockpile more and more items outside your inventory you would be forced to defend your hideout or lose the progress you made that day.

@The Acid Wizard:
In that case, what I specifically didn't like about the skills is that so many of them are one-a-day uses. IMHO, the best skills are passives, then actives, then limited actives. Passives are great because they are used the most, and you get a feel of satisfaction every time a regular action is enhanced by it. From what I heard, the see-under-bushes skill was like that. Actives can be just as great, but limiting them to once a day makes the decision to use it or not very painful, since I don't know whether I should use runner to cut back on travel time or if I'll need it to escape a fight later. Often, I'll use it at the end of the day or not at all. To make the skills more exciting and engaging, increase the number of times per day you can see or experience the skill's effects in a meaningful way. I hope that's helpful!

[Asch The Conjurer]

Meterion's original post was a rather intriguing read. I've been playing this since Alpha 1.0, and to be honest, I've not had most of what was covered in the first couple of paragraphs, but find myself agreeing with a lot of the latter:

I've only ever reached the Old Woods once, rarely survive longer than 10 days (I haven't played with perma on since Alpha 3.0, but I usually restart after I die anyway), and have yet to kill a chomper with a melee weapon - I always find it necessary to use BOTH fire sources and firearms - with the exception of finally killing the chomper in the grave dream the other night for the very first time - which, coincidentally, was the first time I've ever got a shovel other than the prologue.

Because I personally have a COMPLETELY HORRIBLE relationship with the Random Number Generator for loot in videogames, I find that getting Reputation and resources is insanely difficult in Darkwood. I never find items of any sale value, simple as that. I've managed to buy a gas mask twice by selling an assload of petrol, and neither time did I get to the setpiece where you use it. I've even gone whole ingame-week-long survivals without finding a wire for a lockpick and without a vendor selling one: even worse now we need 2 per lockpick. Now that we constantly have to get toolboxes and welders - By the way Acid Wizards, I'm still finding Repair Kits that have no longer have a function in random containers - this game has turned into absolute HELL because I can't upgrade my workbench.

I had to do a couple of runs in Alpha 6.0 to realise that the parts for the handgun and a couple of other items are actually in a set location: these items all tend to get shuffled round each update. I was rather put out when I discovered the Small Key and the outhouse were gone, and almost inconsolable when I discovered there's no longer a handgun in that chest anyway.

I totally agree with the Wardrobe fort statement. The old way the Shadows worked made it impossible to sit behind it all night - though we vets all know how terrible that mechanic was in all other aspects - but now it's back to being the most efficient way to survive.

The controls statement I agree with, and that's also an issue I had when I got a controller for Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, which didn't state the controls anywhere in the game.The Acid Wizards do have the splash screen about how the prologue is incomplete, but since it's the "drawing in period" of the game, it definitely needs to explain everything as much as possible.

I agree that the skills need another overhaul. If I'm terrible at reading the map and understanding its scale comapred to the game world, how's another marker going to help me? I'm not sure how the Moth skill even works, or how to tell if it's working, because standing near a light doesn't seem to do much. Same as Runner, I've never seen my stamina bar not decreasing. I don't know if that's beause I accidentally tap SHIFT at the start of the day and screw it up, or if it's a F1-F4 key like most active skills have been, but that's just it: the game doesn't actually tell us exactly how those skills work. Your statement of Passive/Active/Limited Active seems pretty much like my ideal as well. Also, yes, I personally think the seeing-more-under-trees perk absolutely needs to come back.

Originally posted by ShotgunRagtime:

HOWEVER -- I find myself wondering, maybe the people who didn't pick perma right away just don't want that challenge starting out. That sounds obvious, I know, but I mean that maybe it's not always a matter of ignorance about what perma is like. It's a simple fact that a lot of people don't like roguelike mechanics.

Also, look at the attitude of a lot of horror games lately - I'm talking about "Dark-room walking-simulators" like Amnesia and Daylight and Outlast: You don't fight. You don't even really interact. There is no challenge. You run away and suck your thumb and wait for the monsters to leave you alone. People aren't really playing horror games for horror anymore, they're playing horror games because horror games are losing complexity and nuance. I want to use the word 'casual' to describe them but I worry that gives the wrong overtone. Old horror games like Parasite Eve 2 and Silent Hill and Resident Evil had the gumption to throw a monster in your way and mutter, in a condescending voice, "Guess what, you have to deal with this, or you don't get any more game. You don't even get to leave this room till you kill it, or you die - and then you're just back here again. Nut up or go home."
Since when was the game dev telling people to "git gud" a bad thing? Dark Souls did a damn good job building off that premise, as did a good few DOS-age games.
Hmm.... maybe casual actually was the right word?


Time for a tangent -
Unfortunately, horror experience from a randomly generated game is VERY your-mileage-may-vary. I personally get the crap freaked out of me often in DARKWOOD 19 runs out of 20, and I don't get scared by any other horror game. But then that one run happens where I get a huge trove of gasoline and all the rags in the world and suddenly I'm Iron Man......
Still doens't help me kill chompers, sadly.

[meterion]

@Asch:
I haven't been so unlucky as you, but I've had similar trouble with getting reputation. One thing that worked for me was crafting planks with nails, selling it to the Three, and if I needed something from a different vendor, I'd buy something I could then trade to them. Inefficient as hell, but it worked in a pinch when I spent all my rep on Piotrek and realized I needed that repair cable. For the skills, you have to push a button (default "q") to open a skills menu, click on the desired skill to activate it, after which it'll show up as an effect.

The whole trading/crafting does feel a little rough to me, in particular the very limited amount of items you can craft without a workbench. Do you really need your tools to make a molotov? Why is that so different than a torch? It shouldn't really be that complex to make a board with nails in it, either. It would make more sense if there was at least one weapon you could craft on the go, even if it was crappy.

I think the Three do have too much overlap with the other traders--I don't even really remember if Wolfman had anything unique to sell, it's been so long since I talked to him. Likewise, the only thing I now go to Piotrek for (other than the cable/old woods map) is rope. It would be cool if each trader had some unique items, like if the watch's battery would run out after a week and only Piotrek has extra, and Wolfman could sell a one-time use pepper spray that would make any enemies it hits (except maybe Chompers) retreat.

Speaking of chompers, Asch, I have found that the pistol is great against them. The first time I encountered one after the dream I panic-fired and it took maybe 4 shots to put it down? The one after I hit with the axe before it formed and shot it dead with no fuss.

[psyllid]

Originally posted by ShotgunRagtime:

I feel like your post is a clear example of what a lot of new players seem to complain about.

The issue is that most new players seem to be completely uninterested in making the game scary for themselves. Boxing yourself into a corner with wardrobes is a very, very old exploit (I'm surprised that the Wizards haven't glued the things to the ground by now), BUT: it's still the player's choice to exploit this design flaw. Especially when it's a pretty blatant cheat.

Couple that with the fact that a lot of players start with non-perma.

And now look at what happens. Nights are not scary, death is not an issue. And so the Darkwood experience is ruined.

I personally feel like it's an insult to the game itself when new players claim that it's "not scary" while they play on non-perma and hide behind wardrobes. It's hypocritical. It's like using console cheats in another game and then claiming that it's "not difficult". Just because you CAN cheat doesn't mean that you SHOULD. Not to bash on you OP, I just feel like your post is a good example of how new guys play this way.

On the other hand: I feel like it's the Wizards' fault for not patching out things like the wardrobe exploit. I hate to say it, but it's the truth that it should've been gone a loooooong time ago.

I've also come to believe that non-perma is, to be honest, the worst thing that has happened to this game. The devs didn't originally plan on adding it, but they did so sometime before launch due to difficulty fears.

Non-perma isn't NEARLY as scary as perma. It's almost like two different games, as you have to play perma so much more carefully. But, new players usually end up picking non-perma because they are scared of the challenge (and that challenge, to me, is the fundamental DW experience)

So really it's just a whole lot of little things that add up.

Appreciate this. I had perma death turned off so I could learn the game but lost interest after a while. However, your comment inspires me to jump back in and really survive.

[Gold Handles]

Originally posted by AschTheConjurer:

Snip

I believe that a lot of necessary items are automatically spawned at pre-set locations in every playthrough. Make sure you check every area you can in the forest and meadow. If you still have nothing after sweeping the major locations and most of the minor ones, then you might have an issue with loot drops :P

Aside from that, your statement on horror games is 100% correct. You'd be completely right in saying that most of them are casual. I see freaking second graders playing stuff like FNAF and laughing through it.

The reason horrror games these days don't make you fight back is because that would be too difficult and scary for the mainstream market. Hence why Darkwood (a game that's ACTUALLY scary) has a much smaller playerbase than, say, Amnesia -- The Checkpoint Descent.

Originally posted by psyllid:

Appreciate this. I had perma death turned off so I could learn the game but lost interest after a while. However, your comment inspires me to jump back in and really survive.

Thanks! Glad to hear it!

As long as you take things carefully (but still explore locations daily) you'll do fine! At least until the chompers show up...