Question about regenerating vs respawning

[Sarudak]

I've found that with the new changes whenever I die I feel inclined to regenerate the world rather than accepting the respawn. Granted I've never gotten much past creating my first crafting bench but I feel that the amount you leave behind to find vs the depopulation of the worlds resources (specifically animals) is such that I always feel better just creating a new world. Do other people have similar responses or is this just my OCD?

[jackatthekilns]

I understand the sentiment, but what is the point of preserving the animal population if you are not going to go through respwans? I can see restarting very early on, I guess, but at some point you are going to be too far along. I think the best thing to do is to build up the infrastructure you need, before you die if possible, but on the respawns if you have to.

Ultimately it is up to you and what is fun for you.

[jorgebonafe]

I've found that with the new changes whenever I die I feel inclined to regenerate the world rather than accepting the respawn. Granted I've never gotten much past creating my first crafting bench but I feel that the amount you leave behind to find vs the depopulation of the worlds resources (specifically animals) is such that I always feel better just creating a new world. Do other people have similar responses or is this just my OCD?

I feel the same way, to an extent. I don't immediately feel like recreating a world on a first death, but as probably most players, I am dying a lot lately, and with every respawn I feel like I'm more and more leaving a wasteland behind me.

If we called "Area where animals are extinct due to repeating early game deaths" A, and unexplored areas B, I have no idea what the A to B ratio actually is, so I assume this is probably my OCD as well and things are not quite as hopeless as they seem. I suppose in the worst case scenario you'd have to make some long trips to bring back animals to your base...

[FlowerChild]

The area also gets much bigger as your progress, so unless you're exhausting the entire area around original spawn without ever making any substantial progress in any of your spawns, there's very little point to this, as you're going to get fresh respawns later. You're also eliminating the possibility of benefiting from any progress you made in previous spawns, which IMO makes things harder rather than easier. I'm usually absolutely thrilled to spawn in an area with a previous hidey hole these days.

I remember this came up immediately after HC Spawn was first implemented (I think we used to call it "world restart syndrome"). I've never really understood the impulse, and find it usually stems from a misunderstanding of the mod's mechanics.

@Sarudak, is it possible this has to do with you changing from playing nomad, and not being used to settling a single location? I have some vague recollection of nomad being your dominant playstyle in the past. In that case, you may just not be used to HC respawning in a manner that depletes local resources, and thus are encountering concerns that others got over long ago.

[Sarudak]

You must have me confused with someone else. I've never been a heavily nomadic player. I might wander for the first couple days. In fact these recent changes have pushed me to be more nomadic than ever before.

I think my feeling is that I haven't actually made any progress (as mentioned I haven't gotten much past getting the crafting bench) so when I die the world overall is in less state than when I started.

[FlowerChild]

I think my feeling is that I haven't actually made any progress (as mentioned I haven't gotten much past getting the crafting bench) so when I die the world overall is in less state than when I started.

I find the work stump is actually a HUGE amount of progress man. Me stumbling on one on a respawn has all the joy of Christmas morning :)

I'd think that is what? At least an hour of play to get one, if you're going at a fairly optimal pace?

Time breakdown of various activities to get there:

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-20 mins first day/first string
-20 mins clay hunting/setting up sun drying
-20 mins drying bricks/ore collection
-20 mins additional ore collection/smelting

So yeah, I'd say around maybe an hour twenty without any major mishaps or distractions, and I suspect a bit longer on average, maybe around the 2 hour mark.

[the_fodder]

I thought the changes to hardcore spawns actually helped with animals.

After 3 or 4 death cycles I have found old hobbit holes with animals right in front of the doors. Too many to have wondered into the area and not just cows, all animals that could not have survived multiple nights.


I haven't made it passed iron pick level tech and all tinfoil hat speculations from here on out. .

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It feels like there are 3-4 spawn circles that currently over lap each other. When I restart the loop, I also get animals spawning with me.

[FlowerChild]

I thought the changes to hardcore spawns actually helped with animals.

No, I haven't changed that either.

[karnak sam]

I was concerned about this myself. But a few observations I've made alleviated my concerns and slightly altered my play style.

1: HCS points are scattered such that you have a fair chance of not having to worry about over hunting until you've cycled through them a few times. You can mitigate this issue if you decide to go nomad in a different direction when you land in the same point ( i know it might be hard to keep track that you went, say, west last time, but the advantage to doing so is worth the effort. I pulled up my map in mcedit just out of curiosity and I was amazed at how much ground there really is between HCS points. It is likely more than you think because it was to me.

2: since the HCS points change later on, this issue is lessened as you graduate to the next tier of tech. I don't know the specifics of what you must do to widen the HCS point scattering but it mustn't be too far late into the game, because i'm currently just post crucible and it seems to have happened to me already.

3: knowing and fearing this issue has led me to do something I really never worried about before. Something i'm calling "de-gronifying" the world. I pack a ton of eggs, spool up some hemp for max storage, a stack of redstone, crafting benches and anything else I can think of that would help to help lessen the brunt force impact on my soul of death. My current strategy is to load up chests with eggs, melon seeds and a stray hoe here and there, so that If i happen upon a cache', i can make a stand there and see if I can make renewable food.

4: working around terrain limitations can lead to badass construction projects. My current HCS points are scattered amongst my home continent and one across a mid-sized sea. Getting back home, thusly, would necessitate me to grind on the other continent until I had an iron axe AND enough hemp for a sail. SO I DUG A FRIGGIN TUNNEL UNDERNEATH THE OCEAN with a sizeable monument on the foreign shore to mark that territory, then sailed around that continent, placing markers to help me find that tunnels' entry point. Now, if i spawn there, as long as I can feed myself and walk, all is well.

I know i'm crazy, but I actually think the recent changes have made HCS a MORE tolerable and interesting game experience,

[Gilberreke]

HCS points

There's supposed to be no such thing as "HCS points", we've been over this ad nauseam on this forum. You spawn in a completely random location within HCS range, not a pregenerated list of points. It does seem like there's a loss of entropy somewhere that makes certain areas more likely to have recurring spawns. Thordan did some testing IIRC, and it turned out he kept spawning in the exact same place a number of times, but overall, most spawns are actually completely random. (I think he got something like 25 unique spawns in 30 attempts, with the highest being one spot he spawned three times at).

[FlowerChild]

There's supposed to be no such thing as "HCS points", we've been over this ad nauseam on this forum. You spawn in a completely random location within HCS range, not a pregenerated list of points. It does seem like there's a loss of entropy somewhere that makes certain areas more likely to have recurring spawns. Thordan did some testing IIRC, and it turned out he kept spawning in the exact same place a number of times, but overall, most spawns are actually completely random. (I think he got something like 25 unique spawns in 30 attempts, with the highest being one spot he spawned three times at).

You're almost completely right, and for a general audience, close enough to be sure, but there's a few caveats. A fairly technical theory I have if you're interested:

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I believe why it appears to not be fully random at times is that it currently tends to favor chunks that have already been at least partially generated.

So, first time you HC spawn, it goes for a bunch of random points, causing those to generate, but I suspect that some attempts may fail because those chunks haven't been generated in time for the check to succeed. After awhile though, the checks inevitably stumble on chunks that started generating on previous attempts, and you wind up there.

As you play a world more, more and more of those areas are generated by previous attempts, resulting in the respawn locations becoming more random with time.

When I get a chance, what I'll likely do is have a background process during normal play that looks for the next HC spawn location that will be used, before the player dies. This will allow me to generate far off chunks with plenty of time to spare to do so, and to mull over the appropriate spot.

Then again, I tend to vary on whether it's a bug that should be fixed or not, because I think it gives new players a bit more forgiving repeat spawns in newer worlds, so, it almost results in its own form of difficulty progression over time.

I'm really not sure if I should have said all that, as I know I'll hear it echoed in various mutated forms for years to come, but there you go :)

[Gilberreke]

I'm really not sure if I should have said all that, as I know I'll hear it echoed in various mutated forms for years to come, but there you go :)

I will try not to use these newfound powers for evil. That was super interesting, thanks!

[Mason11987]

That is some interesting info FC!

The idea of a change where the game might already planning for my death ahead of time is interesting though.