I feel like I'm missing something with large islands

[WhamyKaBlamy]

I'll straight up say I'm a noob, I only got the game yesterday so it's entirely possible that I'm just completely missing something.

I've been pottering around putting engines and armour on the raft just to make my life easier, but I've noticed that large islands don't really seem to be worth the hassle unless I'm looking for something specific from them as I'm pretty much guaranteed to have to fight a bird and multiple boars.

I don't seem to get any more resources out of the water around them. In fact, I seem to get resources slower on the large islands than on the smaller ones; On a small island I pop off the raft, kill the shark and I'll be back in a few mins with like 10-20 metal, copper, seaweed and loads of scrap plus whatever sand/clay/stone I want to grab.

I've found myself basically avoiding the large islands because I'm not currently looking to grab anything from the shops there. So am I missing something? Like, is there a wealth of resources I must be missing in the water or something?

[Abs]

need the large islands for farm animals and dirt, cant get it from small islands

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by Abs:

need the large islands for farm animals and dirt, cant get it from small islands

Aye, I know. I've got myself some animals on the raft, but I was asking if I was missing something regarding resources. Like have I been completely blind or something.

[Pixxel Wizzard]

Mushrooms, boar meat, and dirt are what you'll get. They also have lots of flowers. Don't bother with the screecher, though. You practically get the same amount of loot as killing a seagull, so it's not worth the time and resources to kill, and it's easy to dodge their attacks.

EDIT: Animal products, too (e.g. milk and wool).

[KtX2SkD]

For the stuff that isn't large island unique? Well, if you have accounted for the deeper than usual underwater areas, I'd say you've seen everything.

Although I've always felt they have more resources, perhaps more so in surface plant life and seaweed. Maybe copper, metal, and clams aren't really more but perhaps like small islands it depends on the type of island. Some small islands are clam-free or cheap/rich in certain resources, for example.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by Pixxel Wizzard:

Mushrooms, boar meat, and dirt are what you'll get. They also have lots of flowers. Don't bother with the screecher, though. You practically get the same amount of loot as killing a seagull, so it's not worth the time and resources to kill, and it's easy to dodge their attacks.

EDIT: Animal products, too (e.g. milk and wool).

I have to be honest, I'm just not confident in not having the screecher gone. Maybe it's inexperience, but it seems like a lot to handle if I'm fighting a warthog, or they're dropping rocks on me while I'm on the ship.

I do go there for the items that only spawn on large islands, but it just seemed like I must be missing something because for the water farming it seemed really time inefficient.

Originally posted by KtX2SkD:

For the stuff that isn't large island unique? Well, if you have accounted for the deeper than usual underwater areas, I'd say you've seen everything.

Although I've always felt they have more resources, perhaps more so in surface plant life and seaweed. Maybe copper, metal, and clams aren't really more but perhaps like small islands it depends on the type of island. Some small islands are clam-free or cheap/rich in certain resources, for example.

I did look for the deeper than usual areas, and I found a few, but it seemed like they were few and far between. For example, on my most recent large island I was on I looked all around the water and I found 2 areas that went pretty deep and I ended up getting 23 iron, some copper, a few chests and some silver algae. But the time it took me to do that I went through a pair and a half of flippers and most of an oxygen tank, and like a day in the game.

It just felt super inefficient which is why I felt I must be missing something.

Are there areas you have to go down that you can't see from surface level? I did do some exploring when I first got confident in the water and enough resources to spare for it, but it seemed like going down into the barren areas didn't have anything in them if I couldn't see some sort of flora or fauna from the surface.

[Sparkiekong]

Pufferfish... if you are catching animals. Lots of trees, flowers, dirt, mushrooms, the light blue seaweed stuff in cooking... Sometimes supplies and things off the merchant... bait etc... I usually scour the sea around the island for metals and come out with a stack. Also anything you pick up that's extra can be used for cubes. So nothing is really a waste of time. Even flowers are useful in getting honey for the bees. Most of it's good for a few things and then extra can be cubed. I only wish there was something I could do with the extra seeds. I always have an over abundance of those.

If you're all set with most of what you need, then I think you could skip the large islands if you wanted to or go for the primary targets and then scoot.

[qwerm]

hmm, only thing else I can think of that hasn't mention mentioned directly yet so far, is the shop, and the extra treasure spots. I know early on a large island feels like a treasure trove of a lot of the stuff you need more of( I'm always ravenous for more wood), but once you've gotten mostly stabilised, you don't need to get a lot of those materials as much. I do rather appreciate how you can get literally buy titanium from the large island shops now. I never seem to have enough of that stuff either.

[Optimistic Cynic]

Puffer Fish, animals, dirt, mushrooms, and the trader. That is pretty much it. If you are not interested in those things than yeah, just doing some quick raiding on small islands might be just as good for resources (wood, fruit, flowers, chests) and buried treasure.
Of course if you are interested in achievements, than hunting the puffers, boars, screechers, and mudhogs will have to be done on the large islands.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Thank you for the replies everyone. I'm drawing two conclusions from the posts I've seen:

1) Large islands are there really for the really special resources you get from them and access to the shop.

2) This is probably inexperience on my part that I find it hard to locate the normal stuff like iron, etc, because I'm spending a lot of time looking in the wrong places so it makes it seem like a waste of time doing that. Along with me not be confident with the combat on land yet.

I hope I'm reading into the replies correctly. Please do put me straight if I'm not reading into that right, plus it's 7am and I've not had coffee yet lol.

I've only really just gotten to the point where I'm in an excess for everything and started using the trash cubes. My goal to this point has been to mitigate the shark attacks and work towards engines + steering wheel, so the need to get a lot of metal quickly has probably directed my opinion on this. But I'm starting to use some of the special bait to get my reputation up so I think I'll probably find myself using the shops more.

[KtX2SkD]

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

Are there areas you have to go down that you can't see from surface level? I did do some exploring when I first got confident in the water and enough resources to spare for it, but it seemed like going down into the barren areas didn't have anything in them if I couldn't see some sort of flora or fauna from the surface.

I've never tried going anywhere that I cannot spot from either the surface or another underwater area. That by itself is a lot of locations and items and is quite deep so I hardly expect more to be around.

Originally posted by Sparkiekong:

Even flowers are useful in getting honey for the bees.

You only need one though, or is more near the same bees better?

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

2) This is probably inexperience on my part that I find it hard to locate the normal stuff like iron, etc, because I'm spending a lot of time looking in the wrong places so it makes it seem like a waste of time doing that. Along with me not be confident with the combat on land yet.

Double-check. I'm not sure if that's what people said, but I'm only skimming that particular input line so I can't say for sure.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by KtX2SkD:

Originally posted by Sparkiekong:

Even flowers are useful in getting honey for the bees.

You only need one though, or is more near the same bees better?

Yes, number of flowers around a bee-hive decides if you get 1, 2 or 3 honey from one harvest

[qwerm]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Originally posted by KtX2SkD:

You only need one though, or is more near the same bees better?

To clarify further, having up to 12 flowers in range of each beehive is optimal to produce three honey per hive; There's a setup where you can arrange 10-12 hives around a cluster of 12 flowers to get 3 honey from all of them each harvest(about every 8 minutes I believe).

[KtX2SkD]

Yeah I've just read the wiki like a minute before coming back here because I accidentally caused two honeycomb to be produced, and DANG have I been doing it so slow... thanks for the tips y'all.

EDIT: Funny thing is, I still achieved overflow and I think I'm holding off honey production for a while (maybe 200 biofuel in reserve like bruh).

[Optimistic Cynic]

Originally posted by KtX2SkD:

Yeah I've just read the wiki like a minute before coming back here because I accidentally caused two honeycomb to be produced, and DANG have I been doing it so slow... thanks for the tips y'all.

EDIT: Funny thing is, I still achieved overflow and I think I'm holding off honey production for a while (maybe 200 biofuel in reserve like bruh).

Yeah, once you get honey production going, you quickly start overflowing. Honestly, for a very long time honey was my main food source due to this.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

I only just got biofuel and honey production up and going myself. Man, that's a massive game changer aint it?

I'm also kicking myself for not getting into farming and better food/drink production earlier. I see the appeal of the larger islands a lot more, although a lot of that was my initial foray into farming seemed like I'd be replacing a scarecrow every time I got far away from the raft.

I'm alsoalso kicking myself for throwing a lot of shark heads away.