Something About Darts DST

[@crimsoniscrimson]

unless you upgrade your darts to super monkey fanclubs, use their ability, and then upgrade walter to have a supersonic slingshot, this makes blowdarts better than all weapons

[@zaptrap4802]

just buy a dart paragon smh my head 🤦

[@hatyyy]

Or pmfc

[@m4rcyonstation93]

pmfc solos

[@artasky6093]

I read this comments with OrangE man voice lmao

[@nitelite307]

Yeah idk i feel like the devs just don't want ranged combat to be a viable option for some reason. You gotta exploit everything as much as you can just to get below average results

[@mettatonfanboy]

they tried in hamlet and were afraid of the results So they decided to stop us from having fun

[@dragonslayer3552]

Well because if they did make ranged combat strong then they would need to make all bosses have ranged attacks to be able to fight back like in hamlet

[@HumanoidDerpling]

@@mettatonfanboy DST is a game with melee-focused combat. This means ranged weapons are inherently overpowered. Klei decided to have them be crazy expensive, or do inferior damage, so they don't break literally everything.

[@mettatonfanboy]

@@HumanoidDerpling but don't you agree these nerfs are boring

[@HumanoidDerpling]

@@mettatonfanboy Balance changes aren't meant to be "interesting" like new features are. However, by making a wider variety of stuff viable, you are indirectly "adding new content" by making pre-existing content usable. In the case of darts, however, I don't think anything can be done to make them balanced, so better for them to be underpowered than overpowered.

[@ludgerkres.1437]

My partner brought up blow darts should be a one time craft with ammo instead. And stingers be used for ammo as well, would be super useful.

[@doubleh3085]

The problem about viable ranged weapons in Don't Starve is that because of the design of the of the game, they would be extremely overpowered. Most enemies are slower than the player and don't have ranged attacks, so if darts were cheaper the player could easily decimate them without challenge. This is the reason why Wanda's clock whip, not even a ranged weapon but a *midranged* weapon is considered one of the best in the game. I think what the developers intended with darts is for a limited resource for extreme situations, such as being on the brink of starvation in need or food, or finding yourself locked in combat with no armor. If, for example, you hold onto a couple of blow darts, you run out of sanity and armor and there's no choice but to fight nightmare monsters, blow darts are the perfect weapon. Another case where I think it makes sense and it's a fair trade is when the player has to fight the few ranged enemies in the game (clockwork bishops and mctusk, who incidentally drops blow darts you can use against him). However, I still think these weapons treated unfairly. Supposedly, ranged weapons' power is limited because they don't take skill, but it's not like hoarding armor and healing items take skill either. Combat is DS for the most part is just resource trade where the challenge consists in managing your resources and picking your fights to make a profit. This whole thing is one of the many points where Klei is just stubborn and refuses to give the player options because they don't want to accept the problem. I think in order to have viable ranged weapons in the game, the whole system needs an overhaul. I don't have a solution myself, but I believe Klei are certainly capable of delivering if they finally decide to put their minds into it. They made combat great in the Forge, I don't see why they can't do the same for the base game.

[@42_violets]

Great points. It's funny how the Gorge tested the waters for what eventually became the new farming mechanics, but despite coming out before the Gorge, we've never seen any Forge combat implemented in DST. I wonder if the darts were intended to solve problems that the playerbase has largely outgrown. Like you said, basic combat gear is just as good, if not better, than darts in most situations. Did we just git too good for the safety net that darts were supposed to offer?

[@kevingriffith6011]

I personally don't have any issues with the fundamental mechanic of Don't Starve's combat being that of resource trading more than a test of twitch reflexes, to be honest. Not saying there should be 0 mechanical input from the player, else why have deerclops when you could have a kiosk that will trade you one deerclops eye for three pierogi, two football helmets and a ham bat... but more that the fundamental challenge of Don't Starve is one of exploration and resource management, and the current bosses do a pretty good job of challenging the player to figure out the most resource-efficient way to deal with them. Like the video said, though, it's really a matter of resource efficiency: you have to go out of your way to farm reeds: there's no easy way to collect them without going to the swamp... conversely, traditional healing and armor are *very* easy to farm in bulk once you've established a farm for them. I personally don't mind the idea of ranged combat being a significantly higher resource investment than melee combat, but I do think that the reeds create too big of a bottleneck for ranged combat to be truly viable. Like, imagine instead of 2 reeds, you had to spend 4 grass per dart: Suddenly darts would be *very* good (but at the same time, I think it would be balanced thanks to the significant time it would take to farm the grass and craft the stack vs the time it takes to make a single darksword)

[@ozylocz4078]

Ranged weapons shouldn’t be viable in dst. It’s that simple, if they thought it was a good idea they would have done it at some point these last 10 years

[@42_violets]

@@ozylocz4078 I don't understand the argument you're making. They only just made mushrooms a part of world regeneration, does that mean it's a bad idea cuz they didn't do it within 10 years of the game launching? Is the next update, and every update after, going to suck because they didn't think of these ideas within 10 years? The game is growing and improving over time, the playerbase is continually learning about the game and applying old tools in new and creative ways. I don't think there's anything wrong with us interrogating the idea of ranged weapons and their place in the game. There's no reason to shut down that conversation because it hasn't been addressed by devs yet.

[@ozylocz4078]

@@42_violets idk how, it was literally a sentence. Anyways, look at all the mods that have ranged options, they’re all overpowered regardless of how much they try to balance it. They could add a bow that does 10 dmg per hit and it would still be viable since you’d never take dmg and you’d have a bunch of utility. They would have to change the entire game’s ai to accommodate a more boring way of gameplay and people who rather use melee would just be punished for no reason. I was simply using the 10 year thing as an example. I’m not shutting anything down, they tested ranged options in don’t starve (solo) and it went terribly. They’ve surely tested ranged options for dst as well and know it’s not a good idea. Nor would it make for better gameplay, which should always be the priority.

[@alangreene5776]

I really liked the Speargun from Shipwrecked. Its relatively cheap and it has multiple uses AND can deal massive damage if you have multiple spears. But in DST i never craft darts since their unique purpose is not worth a trip to the swamps.

[@watervssodies]

I agree. Speargun is so fun and i often found myself going out of my way to make them

[@atean9841]

It would be cool if Wilson could transmute feathers into other feathers

[@antynomity]

I feel like klei should tackle balance of combat items in an update someday, both small tweaks and big ones, especially to armour, looking at the new dreadstone armour set, it's clear they cornered themselves in a wall with the boring 90-95% protection armours which leaves them to have to come up with unique abilities for each new set for it to be useful or considered by players... Where is april beta brah

[@moat_n_coat]

I like having electric darts on me when I go sailing. That way if shark dares to spawn, it gets shot to death, and considering how often I encounter them, two stacks at most is all I need, and canary feathers are the least difficult to amass, at least to me.

[@dwight3555]

I really wish more love was given to the darts, the feathers and reeds (and even hounds tooth cost since hound waves appear less often now) are just required in too big numbers for it to be viable. It might sound op, but a buff like the one for turfs, where you'd always craft 4 darts with the recipe, could be a solution to make them viable sometimes. It's not like there's much risk either in farming 40 healing food and 8 thulecite crowns.

[@incyray9709]

Another use for sleep dart is rushing a bird for birdcage without using silk. Birds hit with the dart will fall down stunned rather than asleep, allowing the player to simply pick them up. It’s not good for bulk farming, but it is good early on when you have mats for it from tumbleweeds and swamp reeds.

[@kevingriffith6011]

Fundamentally combat in Don't Starve is about trading resources for potentially more valuable ones, so *in theory* I understand why darts are so expensive, since they're meant to stand-in for the price of weapons, armor, healing and sanity recovery that you'll likely need to duke it out in melee, but the ultimate problem is that all that stuff is actually *very* easy to farm in bulk. Personally I think that it wouldn't break the game too much to allow players to make darts out of something easier to farm, like Grass (Imagine if instead of 2 reeds you had to spend 4 grass). That sounds kind of busted, but considering that a darksword costs 5 nightmare fuel and 1 living log, vs the price of three stacks of darts taking 60 teeth, 60 feathers and 240 grass for equivalent damage, the sheer time it'd take to farm that up I think would be just fine as a balancing factor. (Yes, I'm aware that the darksword would also need armor, healing and sanity-restoration items, but I think my point still stands). That being said, the Darksword requires some pretty siginficant investment in science and some advanced resources while the darts are tier 1 tech items that can be acquired entirely in the overworld, but I think that's something that should have been addressed with the Walter update when they released ranged weapons that could accept ammo. (I could absolutely see multiple tiers of blowguns to compensate for the easier access to the ammunition. Hell, if you really wanted to you could give them durability, too.)

[@DVGMedia1]

Yeah I like the idea and it's because grass it's probably one of the most important items in the game it's used for so many things it's kind of like a debate I had with someone saying that helmets were overrated and that pigskin is not used for anything else other than a few items. Wow say like log suit the lugs are used for fire they're used for storage or use for structures there's a lot of things you can use logs for so you don't really want to use them for armor. So changing the crafting recipe for Dart could be a good Exchange

[@dragolantis7333]

I personally feel the lightning and plain darts are in a good spot. They aren't nearly as difficult to obtain as mentioned if not a little boring, but thats by design. Most mobs and bosses lack any form of ranged capabilities, so ranged weapons are inherently powerful, as you can just keep your distance and hold left click, avoiding the mechanics of most the enemies in the game. This is made even more powerful by the fact they don't need to be aimed like in other games or even in the forge. You sacrifice overall damage output for convenience. Making them any more powerful or easier to obtain would be overkill. The sleep darts however, are an interesting case, as they have been butchered by the busted nature of its own mechanic: sleep. Currently, the way sleep works, is through a "sleep" value, when hit with a sleep effect, the game adds an amount of sleep dependant on the method for sleeping onto the enemy (with grogginess being applied to players only) that goes away after a certain amount of time has passed (also dependant on the method used). All mobs have a "sleep" threshold, which when hit or passed, the game will force the mob to sleep until its level of sleep goes below the threshold again (bosses have . The only two exceptions to this rule are through minimum sleep time, which dependant on the method used can vary drastically and forces mobs to remain asleep until its gone in addition to sleep going below the threshold, or being disturbed, which forecs an enemy awake even if they arent below the threshold or have minimum sleep time left (think damage, smelling fire or being forced awake by another mob). For players it works a bit differeintly (only in dst), with the sleep effects instead applying seconds of grogginess, which slows a player down. When a players grogginess goes over 10 seconds, they fall asleep until the time falls below ten seconds, with minimum sleep times being applied. when woke up, either from the effect wearing off naturally or being attacked, the player is hit with 10 seconds of grogginess following their wake from their nap. Eating a mushy cake increases the threshold to falling asleep from 10 to 33.3 and removes any grogginess. The effect it has on players isn't very relevant though for the discussion of darts though, but I figured it fair to at least put out the disclaimer it works differently on players This doesn't sound very bad until you compare it to the overall best option, and one of the most broken items in the game combat-wise: the pan flute. The sleep dart deals 1 sleep per hit, which wears off after 15 seconds without minimum sleep time, but the pan flute deals a massive 10 sleep with 20 seconds of minimum sleep time, but the sleep value itself has no staying power. For reference, the creature with the highest sleep threshold in any Don't Starve game is the White Whale, with a value of 5 (bosses and raid bosses not immune to sleep having around 3-4 in most cases). The main problem with this is that pan flutes are way too easy to get (you're literally gifted one in DST), and with DST, can be renewed for ridiculously easy sleeping. Giving mobs (especially bosses) a sleep resistance buildup, making them more resistant for every successful sleep, would balance out the mechanic and make both options viable. The pan flute is still undoubtably more potent and good for crowd controll, but eventually bosses will effectively go deaf to it, which for bosses like bee queen and dragonfly can create problematic moments. With sleep darts though it becomes the option players turn to if they are determined to cheese or continue sleeping bosses after a pan flute becomes inneffective, since its faster use time and longer lasting sleep value allows you to sleep mobs well beyond the pan flute's sleep amount before the sleep goes away, at the cost of less time to act before it wakes up. As for the fire darts... Yeah nothing Klei can do will allow those things to be viable, so best let them rest in peice as they rot in hell with the ash and cooked meat.

[@taulitaulington197]

About the sleep darts - if play in a long-term world and you have bearger stashed away as a lumberjack, sleepdarts can come in handy, since you don't need to waste panflute uses once his work is done.

[@cheesedust-n3w]

It almost feels like a Wicker-exclusive weapon kind of like how batbats and tents were almost made for WormWood and how Wendy + Ornery beefalo gets comparable damage to Wolfgang. The cool thing about Wickerbottom is just the sheer power scaling you get with her. Get a advanced horticulture and you are good for health and sanity. Get the bee books and you start to get scary. Tentacle books? Easy bee queen farm. But then you grab an ornery beefalo with a war saddle, summon 15 bees, use practical rains and amass a stockpile of electric darts? Now you have surpassed Wolfgang and you know what? You actually earned that power ;D.

[@dragonweirdocreap]

I feel like Klei is deathly afraid of ranged combat ever being good. It's very risk free, bypasses kiting and most bosses aren't designed for it.

[@ronanclark2129]

The feathers are the most difficult thing for me to get, most notably for blow darts. I don't think darts are supposed to be accessible though.

[@gi-go8575]

4:15 You mad lad, you found usage for sea shells.

[@a76329]

Using napsacks to duplicate shroom skins would provide tons of golden feathers as side products. The best use IMO is to take down the big tentacles.

[@nitelite307]

So true brother 💪💪💪

[@Boney9551]

I think this is more so a problem with a lot of damage sources being completely outclassed by standard pieces like Ham bats and kiting, still I don’t really see it as an issue since your trading damage/dps and resources for safety, which lets ppl play to their strengths.

[@dwight3555]

Problem is, the trade off is always bad, even if you want to play safe. It's just too costly and doesn't do enough damage, and especially for reeds, you'll need monkeytails for any reasonable number of darts, and those you generally only get very late in a world.

[@Boney9551]

@@dwight3555 yeah that’s really the main problem with em, but I suppose it’s costly because they want people getting better at fighting the main way (kiting) rather than ranged weapons (other than Walter of course). Darts to me are kind of a relic of DS’s old days in that regard ig.

[@dwight3555]

@@Boney9551 A big issue though is that you can still brute-force most fights by spamming healing food and armor, and despite taking 0 skill it is still systematically easier and faster than using darts. Darts are just so bad at being cost effective that farming an entire forest for wood armor and getting 40 pierogies is still much easier.

[@Boney9551]

@@dwight3555 I guess then it’s more of a problem with combat in don’t starve in general, not many ways to really combat that issue besides maybe what uncompromising mode mod did with food healing over time.

[@DVGMedia1]

​@@Boney9551 you should check out the adventure map I did in my streams it was a fun map that really tests knowledge and combat

[@Rudy137]

it reminded me of that one time when one funky youtuber made a series where he was allowed to only use darts and boomerangs he killed some bosses and it was painful

[@OpurpleO]

It's pretty good, when you pick Wolfgang and use woltgoat jelly with red spice from Warly. With 400-500 dmg by shot you can pretty fast annihilate almost anything without any risk

[@tallkids-spencerhuyck179]

You can use electric darts as a group of players during rain to kill bosses super quickly but too bad it’s not worth the grind, even doubling the amount of darts per craft would make them good enough and maybe make them stack to 40

[@ImNervv]

i didn’t even know there was more than one type of dart until i watched this

[@Thexus]

Wicker can extremely easily mass produce darts by growing reeds, and spawning birds and putting them to sleep and then killing them. Then you can use Wolfgang's damage boost to get more damage out of them. For example, Deerclops has 4000 health, Wolfgang deals 200 damage with a blowdart, which means you need 20 darts. That's 20 feathers and 40 reeds: a single cast of bird of the world spawns 20-30 birds, and a reed trap has around 50 reeds, which is a single cast of applied silviculture. You can also use a lot of methods to kill birds faster (firetraps, winona catapults, or the seedshells that you showed), and you can use multiple players, lureplants, or maxwell's minions to pick reed faster. Ranged combat is also extremely cheesy and unskilled. You can literally stand in place and hold down F and the enemies can't do anything about it. Almost as bad as using gunpowder before the nerf. They would have to rework the bosses in order to make ranged combat interesting, and that's not going to happen.

[@iguessthisismyworkaccountl8437]

Wolfgang buffs darts?

[@kliveran]

I didn't know about the spike balls being so useful in that case The worst long range weapon is actually the one for farming the best long range weapon 🤣

[@iguessthisismyworkaccountl8437]

I think allowing darts to stack to 40 would be a fair buff since it makes them take up less inventory space, reducing the reed cost would be nice but that has the risk of being broken. i do think ranged combat should be a bit more viable in dst, even Walter struggles to fight with his slingshot unless he is trying to aggro and de-aggrow a boss (or using cheese methods)

[@ViriDeniaVT]

Your png (idk what to call it) looks amazing

[@freya9107]

Honestly they need to rework darts. You should craft a blow dart weapon with reeds that shoots different type of darts that are crafted by stingers and feathers. Making it similar but less reeds intensive to craft. The blow dart weapon should be able to shoot 20 darts before breaking and cost 5 reeds

[@HumanoidDerpling]

The thing about a melee-focused combat system is you can't slap on a ranged weapon and expect it to ever be balanced. If it isn't really sub-par, it's broken.

[@FratoiuAlex]

I have to say that I am one of the rare sleep dart player and I use them to put asleep dragonfly in her enrage state, one of the twins of terror and Klaus

[@shadowreaper4970]

imo if we were able to craft two for the cost of one it would help a lot

[@TheRedarm75]

Fun fact sleep dart only need 1 to sleep a MC Tusk and Krampus

[@tarinriley8839]

100% correct and as I’ve said before underrated KZbinr!!!

[@operaface8119]

Hello, I am new to your channel, I like this video, and your avatar is adorable. X3

[@eddsilva4212]

great video!

[@averygwyn1857]

great video! (also sorry for messing up the catcoon farm :| )

[@DVGMedia1]

No worries! It's for people to see it as an extra option

[@Fireboss34DST]

Once in my worlds in DST, I only got 16 reeds💀

[@DVGMedia1]

aww that really sucks that be rng in generation sadly

[@mr.wafflesrz1137]

They're not bad but they require a lot of stuff so it's mostly ignored

[@themjbrothers6536]

Darts, in my words: a really useless one time ranged weapon which is only useful for lighting gunpowder but firestaff is better because it can be used 20 times instead of once and is cheaper to make while the sleep dart is worse than an icestaff because mobs require less hits from the staff to be frozen than being put to sleep. Edit: yes

[@shadowstorm2361]

What’s with the knife!?!

[@michaelbowman6684]

So basically, if you don't mind the grind, then Darts are an effective strategy for casual players. You stockpile multiple stacks of Darts, then instead of engaging in melee combat you just kite and spam darts from a safe distance so long as you did the math and figured you have enough Darts to kill a certain boss before engaging. Just compare them to Walter: They have much higher DPS in ideal conditions than what Walter could ever achieve in his ideal conditions. They are available to any character in the game and therefore are not tied to Walter, unlike the Slingshot. They are much faster and easier to use than the Slingshot, making them safer to kite with and more reliable. The only con is that they are "tedious" to farm, and why that is true, keep in mind that farming Darts isn't _hard._ It's _easy,_ if boring in that it takes a while to do. If you aren't sweating about beating the game as quickly as possible, Darts are a perfectly viable alternative playstyle.

[@lks19]

I miss the old glommer exploit.

[@DVGMedia1]

Yep that was a fun exploit seeing hundreds of krampus spawn

[@youngpotato203]

I want darts to be weak but easy to mass produce with any character. They would be funny to use against pigs 😎

[@azureblooet5053]

if darts just made like 4 at a time they'd be making leaps and bounds. (also fix fire but that goes without saying)

[@عليالمرسومي-ب5ظ]

well the whole compat system is about kiting if range is cheap then killing stuff well be too easy thats at least what i think

[@Damglador]

Blowdarts feels like gunpowder, its kinda op, but why would I grind so much stuff for it? (I will tho do it for gunpowder bcs bee queen is impossible pice of shit)

[@slimporcupine3]

“30-60 reeds” my world has seven in my swamp and 3 underground. Lunar island has 17. I hate world gen sometimes.

[@Smoketrees1969]

Did you checked if is not the mini swamp from the pig village forest? otherwise thats a hell of a bad luck

[@TeddyBear-fv3nx]

Bro u got three in your underground cave? I got one because some rando burned my other two😞

[@slimporcupine3]

@@Smoketrees1969 I have the whole map explored it’s horrid, by far the worse gen I’ve seen 😅

[@Financere425]

THE ONLY THING U WOULD NEED DARTS FOR IS BOSSES. BUT LETS BE HONEST GUNPOWDER WORKS BETTER. JUST USE GUNPOWDER.

[@Chemble-qq3il]

HOWLITZER FTW!!!

[@necromsjunder3004]

Yea Darts are pretty expensive and are not worth for it I hope there doing a bit more dmg or atleast u can stack them up to 30 or 40 darts then yea maybe worth it

[@frzzzzz]

at 4:11 wtf is happening to the ground????

[@DVGMedia1]

The left is my chroma key mod so I can get a green screen right is a bunch of sea anenemy

[@freyanimations5040]

i kinda want to use it now 100 dmg and long range and on top of a beef i can be more cowardly nice.

[@slimporcupine3]

Just play Walter if you’re gonna go that far

[@freyanimations5040]

I just need to get rid off this houndz tooth base im just really really fond of farms and console dation i dont play for efficiency hahah ill treat it as a luxury

[@freyanimations5040]

Also i use maxwell's hat to summon ornery or the fast beefalo like a pokeball i put salt licks on my base and cage all my beefs there and call em when i need them I just feel cool summoning beefs it feels awkward leaving the bell there and the beef when im designing stuff

[@mrMEMES-mj3nv]

hey just a question does the rain also affect the spawn rate of birds in the original dont starve?

[@DVGMedia1]

im not exactly sure really lol But maybe most things are similar between the 2 versions

[@frzzzzz]

at 1:36 what mod makes the transparent klause sack?

[@DVGMedia1]

Insight

[@GoldenRosesss]

What even do eye shots do? And poison darts suck. Poison in general sucks.

[@DVGMedia1]

eyeshots are just 25 dmg darts. poison is actually more of a cc dart. minor damage over time. applies a slow and lowers attackrate of the creature. so they don't attack as often.

[@GoldenRosesss]

@@DVGMedia1 I don't like poison because its slow and the meat gets half spoiled but if I have a venom gland I will make a poison spear for no reason at all. Also eye shots generally seemed like they did no dps whenever I used them because there's no reaction from enemies when you shoot them with it

[@smutnejajo5149]

🎯

[@apecksar1858]

Why do you have a female character with a male voiceover?

[@DVGMedia1]

Why not? Maybe will find out why later ;)

[@The_ever_preset_Bee_Eater]

Below average they say I say highst dps in pvp WITH range

[@AA40002]

Are you a femboy

[@DVGMedia1]

nah just a guy with a female avatar

[@a76101]

@@DVGMedia1 why

[@DVGMedia1]

​@@a76101 why not?

[@a76101]

@@DVGMedia1 you are a guy i think

[@DVGMedia1]

@@a76101 yeah I said that I'm a guy with a female avatar.

[@naranciaghirga3935]

Are you trans? uwu

[@samdan406]

What are your pronouns