Hardercore of Darkness, new moon, and respawn timer resets

[Arx]

Alright, so:

1. HC Spawn doesn't reset the time to dawn if you've died too quickly.
2. At new moon, Gloom covers the surface.
3. Gloom will inevitably kill you in less than a night*.
4. If you respawn in the first ~2/3s of the night during new moon (into a new environment), you will die again.

It thus follows that if you have the misfortune/lack of skill to die near the beginning of a new-moon night after dying too recently, you are doomed to an endless cycle of dying and respawning until the night finally passes, unless you find stuff from a past life. I've experimented with some things, but as it stands the most effective way I could find was climbing a tree, and the Gloom finished me off anyway. A foxhole would have the same issue.

It is preventable by player skill (i.e. not dying twice too close together), but it feels a bit extreme in terms of the mistake/loss relationship.

*My very minor testing suggests that it takes about 1/3 of a night, assuming something else doesn't get you first.

[FlowerChild]

It's not entirely fair, no. However, I consider it to be a fringe case where all the solutions I've come up to resolve it so far revolve around decreasing the effectiveness of HC spawn and/or Gloom for the majority of cases, which would inevitably lead to players exploiting the system in ways that would lessen the overall experience. Fear of death and the overall tension that creates during play is something that I think has become rather central to the overall experience (maybe more so than any other game I've played that doesn't have permadeath), and I'd be very reluctant to do anything that would lessen it.

It may be something that I resolve eventually, but until then I consider "leave the game running and go make a tasty sandwich" the lesser of evils here. Once you are used to the mod, this really doesn't happen very often (or at all), and until you reach that point, it's likely best that you step away and consider what you could do differently if you are dying multiple times a day anyways.

But yes, I am aware of this.

[jstu9]

I guess this basically answers my question.

I died (dumb preventable mistake). After being generally annoyed, I started walking hoping I was close by my base. Nope. I start punching trees, get wood, get stone tools, dig a hole down with one hole for light....... and it's a new moon. I die.

The first death was preventable, but the 2nd, 3rd, 4th weren't. Though the above basically answers it.

[FlowerChild]

After being generally annoyed, I started walking hoping I was close by my base.

If it's any consolation, that occasionally happens to me as well. Hope of a quick recovery can get you killed right quick :)

The first death was preventable, but the 2nd, 3rd, 4th weren't. Though the above basically answers it.

Well, the 2nd was as well considering the choice to wander was yours, and if you had spent that day productively you likely would have had enough resources to keep a furnace burning through the night.

I'd also add that the 3rd and beyond were largely meaningless as you had nothing to lose at that point. Yes, the wait until the next day isn't entirely fair, as I said above, but the deaths themselves, and the total number of them, are largely irrelevant.

[jstu9]

Well, the 2nd was as well considering the choice to wander was yours, and if you had spent that day productively you likely would have had enough resources to keep a furnace burning through the night.

That's an interesting question which I kinda want to try.

If I had known it was going to be a new moon, could I have survived the night? The time I spent walking only prevented me in looking for food. I had stone tools (1 of each) and wood. I was going to dig down to get more cobble to make a furnace. I think I just focused in the wrong area. I focused on wood with the bare of cobble when if I had known I would have gotten the bare wood and went after cobble. Then I could have had a furnace.

[FlowerChild]

If I had known it was going to be a new moon, could I have survived the night?

You can (I've done it before), but it's of course a bit tougher than a regular first night. The way I tend to play now on respawn is to assume there will be no light that night, as I'm rarely aware of whether it will be a new moon or not (you can also get gloomy nights if a storm sets in with just a sliver of moon too).

You have to have your early game down pat to get everything setup quickly enough and still have enough excess fuel on you to keep it burning all night long, but if you're willing to forgo using wood for extra tools and reserve it strictly for burning, it gets much easier. Alternatively of course, if you happen to find coal it gets trivially easy.

But yeah, setting up a furnace and collecting some wood to keep it burning for ten minutes before first night on a new spawn is all very doable. If spawning on the morning of a new moon were an automatic death sentence, I'd definitely consider that something that would need to be fixed, and it was something I made sure to test myself before putting out the changes to moon phase affecting gloom awhile back.