Mid-Game Slump

[Psion]

I experience this slump as well. for me it feels almost like a loss of concequence. for early game, some examples:

overhunt and avoid securing animals: issues later with breeding since you'll have to drag them from pretty far away
chop down too much wood without replanting: suddenly a log shortage that nessesitates a long trip to the nearest woods
fish without proper precautions: new killer fashion statement
don't plan a caving expedition safely: get set back. waaaaaaaaaaaaay back.

but for midgame, there's things like:

grind near animals: bad things
hellfire in the wrong pot: badder things.
don't automate things: nothing bad persay but you probably want to automate em if you want to get anywhere sometime this century.

basically hunger is no longer a danger unless you forget to bring food, you often have armor to do better at survival and can strip mine safely, and much of the dangers of midgame are easily avoidable. this feels different from say, factorio, where there you have to worry about pollution causing biters to level up and swarm. pretty much the old consequences fade out and there doesn't seem to be any new, serious consequences to more power such as thaumcrafts taint or what have you. there's some, but unless you're not familiar with them its generally easy to avoid entirely.

i guess it goes from being a survival crisis in early game to an existentialist crisis in midgame. no longer is it "what do i need to do next to not get completely crushed/starve/be without needed materials" but "what should i automate next". automations fun, don't get me wrong, but i guess some of the magic and thrill of sheer survival is gone.

[ion]

kill yourself and start from scratch. make a rule to go back to your base until windmill or nether is breached or watermill. sometimes i just do that even now with a lvl 4 SFS beacon on

[LannyRipple]

So I've never once played even to the nether solo but my wife and I have played through many times and are starting our 6th or 7th time. Once we kill the dragon I'll occasionally improve some automation but at that point we call the play through done. So what's required to get there.

1. Punch trees. Shelter. Coal.
2. Gather food. Collect some chickens. Find pumpkins. Get a hoe. Plant hemp.
3. Gather iron. Build a windmill.
4. Find diamonds. Enter the nether.
5. Explore to leave markers. Find gold. Find pumpkins. Find melons. Find nether fortress. Gather blaze rods. Automate [here's that crucible]. Hunt some enderman.
6. Set up villager farming. Trade. Wait for resources. Trade some more. Wait for more resources.
(Obviously you could do all the waiting first then all the trading. With multiple people it's much easier to be building up resources in anticipation for village trading. I'm not sure I'd want to tackle it solo although that might be an opportunity for a lot more automation than I'd usually go for.)
7. Wither skeleton heads. (Not a big deal with saws and chopping blocks. Quiet a pain without them. Did it with plain swords once but won't do so again.)
8. Wither fight. Dragon fight.

1-5 and 7,8 have you moving around and/or doing something. 6 not so much.

I have many fine suggestions on how to fix all these problems which, regretfully, the margins of this post are too narrow to contain.

[dawnraider]

Calling the playthrough done after the dragon is like calling a meal done after the appetizer. Getting end access is the beginning of the late game, and honestly is where the best parts of the mod are IMO.

[jackatthekilns]

So I've never once played even to the nether solo but my wife and I have played through many times and are starting our 6th or 7th time. Once we kill the dragon I'll occasionally improve some automation but at that point we call the play through done. So what's required to get there.

1. Punch trees. Shelter. Coal.
2. Gather food. Collect some chickens. Find pumpkins. Get a hoe. Plant hemp.
3. Gather iron. Build a windmill.
4. Find diamonds. Enter the nether.
5. Explore to leave markers. Find gold. Find pumpkins. Find melons. Find nether fortress. Gather blaze rods. Automate [here's that crucible]. Hunt some enderman.
6. Set up villager farming. Trade. Wait for resources. Trade some more. Wait for more resources.
(Obviously you could do all the waiting first then all the trading. With multiple people it's much easier to be building up resources in anticipation for village trading. I'm not sure I'd want to tackle it solo although that might be an opportunity for a lot more automation than I'd usually go for.)
7. Wither skeleton heads. (Not a big deal with saws and chopping blocks. Quiet a pain without them. Did it with plain swords once but won't do so again.)
8. Wither fight. Dragon fight.

1-5 and 7,8 have you moving around and/or doing something. 6 not so much.

Steps 6 and 7 have been affected by the recent changes. What I really want to know from people is if these changes have altered the nature of the grind during this period.

Calling the playthrough done after the dragon is like calling a meal done after the appetizer. Getting end access is the beginning of the late game, and honestly is where the best parts of the mod are IMO.

This is something else that has changed. more automation is now available pre-dragon. Personally, automation and building for their own sake don't interest me as much. One of the reasons I love BTW so much is that I have a reason to build things and to search for automated methods. Once the Dragon is defeated the game reverts to a "for its own sake" mode that is basically all of vanilla. I would love for BTW to be a perpetual search for more resources in order to defeat bigger and badder bosses., but that is unrealistic.

I will say that I enjoy building much more now than I did when i started playing. For example, I don't know if I will ever feel compelled to build clay farm in the End unless there is an in-game use/need for clay.

[dawnraider]

A tier 4 steel beacon is always a good end-game goal. And clay is needed in large amounts for automated steel, which is basically needed for a tier 4 beacon (168 blocks * 16 ingots each).

[jackatthekilns]

A tier 4 steel beacon is always a good end-game goal. And clay is needed in large amounts for automated steel, which is basically needed for a tier 4 beacon (168 blocks * 16 ingots each).

Ok, I am really not trying to be argumentative(but I probably am), but that is very arbitrary. So you build the SFS beacon and then stop? I guess my point is where each of us decides they have accomplished all of their goals is a person thing that depends on what each of us finds compelling. FC cannot and should not please all of us. Before there recent changes it took me 185 hours (i think) to defeat the Dragon. I call that a worthwhile spend of my time. And even killing the Dragon is in its own way an arbitrary goal. the game does not end. SFS weapons and armor are very useful. for killing more withers to make more beacons, but even that is so that you can build more things for their own sake.

I know a lot of people that play BTW absolutely love building the automated systems, figuring the best way to construct it within the constraints of the available water and the nature of the terrain. That isn't isn't me. And that is OK

[FlowerChild]

[jackatthekilns]

I agree, and I apologize for getting my back up. The crazy thing is, no one(including me) has really said anything about how the new versions have affected this slump that many of us experienced.

[dawnraider]

Currently being between crucible and villagers, I find it largely unaffected. Though one of my issues with the mid-game slump was with the villager trading process being somewhat tedious, and I haven't gotten that far yet to speak on that.

[Mesh]

Personally I've loved the villager trading aspect of the mod and I find it helps with mid-game slump if anything. For me it provides a new motivation to build bigger farms and semi-automated systems to address bottlenecks in my trades, where the old motivations of early game die off.

I haven't started a new playthrough yet since the latest Updateageddon™ but I'm sure it'll be just as fun especially with the new UI making it easier to bulk trade. I must agree with the earlier poster though that once I've gotten to the End I really suffer from the motivation to go any further. However that's a personal trait of mine. In all games I play, without a clear cut goal or story element I tend to just stop playing and isn't a fault with the game itself.