How much nightmare fuel do you have/use?

[Furry Eskimo]

I tend to either have a lot, or none at all, and I’m not sure is that’s the case for anyone else. I’m finishing up a custom character mod and they have the ability to repair chilled amulets (which are useful to this character, but only has six minutes). The item isn’t meant to be used endlessly, but provide a buff when you need it, and be more reliable in summer. Right now I’ve made one nightmare fuel return 30% of the item’s durability, but is that too little? I really have no idea, since I don’t tend to keep track of my extra nightmare fuel.

[Traveler]

I tend to stockpile it while exploring the Ruins, but I normally only use it for fueling Magiluminescence. I don't rely too much on Nightmare gear since it's a pain to take care of Wigfrid's sanity.

In my current world (day ~300, solo) I had around a full stack of fuel after prototyping the stuff on Magic tab. I have tripled that amount since entering the underground 15 or so days ago.

[Furry Eskimo]

Originally posted by Purah:

I tend to stockpile it while exploring the Ruins, but I normally only use it for fueling Magiluminescence. I don't rely too much on Nightmare gear since it's a pain to take care of Wigfrid's sanity.

In my current world (day ~300, solo) I had around a full stack of fuel after prototyping the stuff on Magic tab. I have tripled that amount since entering the underground 15 or so days ago.

A full stack means about 40 left, but you managed to get over 100 in about one season after entering the underground? It’s so difficult to balance because it seems like you either have none, or you try to get some and suddenly you have a lot!

The way this custom character is designed now, it takes three fuel to recharge the amulet for a day. I’d like to reduce it to two, but I know I can farm fuel from bunnies if I want, and pretty quickly the amulet would just last indefinitely. I want the amulet to be repairable, not available at all times, you know?

[N.I.T]

use the bone helm drop from AFW to farm nm fuel , its super easy barely an inconvinient

[Furry Eskimo]

That's what I thought.

Just to get you up to speed, I have a custom character who's speed and nighttime sanity loss are affected by their temperature. Getting cold is legit hard, so I made the character able to repair chilled amulets, but it's not intended to be used non-stop, otherwise sanity will never be a problem for them!
Endothermic fires and the like are intended to be used.
The character has low sanity, meaning they go insane quickly, but also recover quickly. I found myself having trouble collecting food at times simply because all my rabbits had turned into beardlings. Thing is though, is the character can collect a lot of bearlings or whatever, you get nightmare fuel, right? So if you actually want it you Can get it. As of now it takes 3 nightmare fuel to fuel this amulet for a day, which seems fair to me. Less than that and I worry people would use the amulet non-stop.

[Spicybullfrog]

well, you can use a nightmare amulet to farm nightmare fuel infinitely at a rate of about 35/day so I wouldn't tie nightmare fuel to anything too OP. But magiluminescence is about the same mechanic you're describing and it gives you 3 minutes per piece of fuel so it'd probably be a good idea to balance it similarly to that.

[Furry Eskimo]

Thanks for the input! That would mean one piece of nightmare fuel would refill 50% of the amulet. Personally that seems like too much to me, but 40% might be ok.
The amulet will help this character run faster and stay sane, but I need to make sure it doesn’t provide infinite sanity, and since it takes up the chest slot it will need to be replaced with armor, and I personally want armor to still be the priority. Uhg, balancing content is hard. 😂

[N.I.T]

or if you really really need nm but do not have helm or purple amulet , wormhole is easiest way to get sanity low fast

[Furry Eskimo]

This character goes insane quickly when warm, and since their overall sanity is only 120, it doesn’t take many green mushrooms to go insane, but you’re right, a wormhole would work too! I’ve never tried to collect nightmare fuel, but three a day for good stats and a lot of extra sanity seemed fair. It’s easier to collect three nightmare fuel than the gold and gems needed to make a new necklace. I guess that’s the real measurement I should be comparing to. How much nightmare fuel is equal to the chilled amulet’s usual level of difficulty to make?

[Mr C.Folt Scruff]

I have 4 full stack rn in chest and still increase without me actually farming it
I tend to use thelulecite club rather than dark sword and i use it for the fuelwaver to fuel his lamp bait (forgot the name)

[Furry Eskimo]

So you do have a Lot lying around. How much do you think a chilled amulet should consume in a day? How much nightmare fuel is worth three gold, a blue gem, and the twelve or so sanity it provides?

[Spicybullfrog]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

So you do have a Lot lying around. How much do you think a chilled amulet should consume in a day? How much nightmare fuel is worth three gold, a blue gem, and the twelve or so sanity it provides?

that's difficult to say. Gold is usually pretty irrelevant as a resource since you can get tons of gold no matter what your situation is. You can foster a moleworm farm in the pig king biome to get ~40 gold every once in a while, if caves are enabled you can go to toadstool's domain and fish up 20 eels for 100 gold, and if you're feeling especially brave you can go to the ruins and trade out frazzled wires for more gold then you could ever use. The limiting factor here is definitely the blue gem, no doubts about it.
That being the case, this means that it depends entirely on your world generation. Blue hounds spawn as part of mactusk hunting parties, but who's to say you got a mactusk trio? You might get 4 blue gems from digging gravestones, or you might get 1. Other then hounds and gravestones, your other option for getting blue gems is mining stalagmites underground, which gives a 1/20 chance of yielding a gem of either type. I spent 3 opulent picks on mining and ended up with 6 blue gems. Take that how you will. In summary, the value of blue gems is extremely random, and decreases as hound waves get larger leading up to day 100.

[Mr C.Folt Scruff]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

So you do have a Lot lying around. How much do you think a chilled amulet should consume in a day? How much nightmare fuel is worth three gold, a blue gem, and the twelve or so sanity it provides?

Hmm prob 25%/33 %
but honestly i rather carry gold and blue gem around

[Furry Eskimo]

It’s set to 30% right now, so close to what you suggested, but you both seem to think the original recipe may be better. I guess that sort of aligns with my intention. I wanted this character to have access to a chilled amulet earlier than they normally would, but changing the recipe to be available earlier didn’t pan out like I had originally planned (it messed with code for other characters too..)

[Retrolicious]

Make custom chill amulett for the custom char.
Same with willow she got custom lighter recipe & torch is default for rest.
Look into ruins amuletts to see nightmare fuel balancing on the wiki page.

Having a stack of 40 nightmare fuel is always beneficial, since it is flexible to craft dark swords, refuel maginumlecence etc. Compare to 40 blue gems, which are kinda useless in lategame or very limited use outside of ice staff, ice chester etc

What would you prefer stacks gold / blue gems or living logs / nightmare fuel? Right the latter obviously ... Unless your custom char gets very special powers with blue gems / chill amulett, which make those items superior to dark swords / dwarf stars

Also wrong forum, look dere:
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/18446744073709551615/?appid=322330

PS: Those custom char balancing convos are much smarter to do on the actual custom char WORKSHOP page -> comment section+
example convos:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1655723764
29+ pages of bugs / balancing

[Furry Eskimo]

This post is more about nightmare fuel then the character, but I see your point.
Also I tried making a custom amulet and it was a pain in the butt, but making it refuelable was easy.