Multiplayer for someone with not a lot of time on their hands...

[BigBadBeef]

I am someone with not a lot of time on their hands.

How would multiplayer suit someone like me, since mechanics like food decay are present even when the player is absent from the game.

I can only play on the weekend, saturdays and sundays. Would I be able to function in such an environment?

[DejFidOFF]

Hi. There are many options. The basic is for example berry bushes, or fields with crops. Unharvested crops stays at fields all time long. So you can only take what you need and replant that. Then you can make a cellar and advanced food like cheese or cured meats whitch stays fresh for years. And when you advanced to the level when you have cellar ice, the cured meet and the cheese stays fresh double time sincein the cellar of course. So the food is not problem even you don't play in month at SMP servers. 

[BigBadBeef]

3 hours ago, DejFidOFF said:

Hi. There are many options. The basic is for example berry bushes, or fields with crops. Unharvested crops stays at fields all time long. So you can only take what you need and replant that. Then you can make a cellar and advanced food like cheese or cured meats whitch stays fresh for years. And when you advanced to the level when you have cellar ice, the cured meet and the cheese stays fresh double time sincein the cellar of course. So the food is not problem even you don't play in month at SMP servers. 

Don't winters or tropical summers kill crops?

[Maelstrom]

And cellar ice sounds like a mod.

[Thorfinn]

I can usually play long enough at a sitting to bring in one harvest. Because everything else will have rotted or season-died long before I log in again, I'm limited to grain and honey. Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I bother because my time on multiplayer is spent on the tedious stuff like making jam instead of playing the more enjoyable parts of the game. Single player is just much better for my circumstances. Which bites because I vastly prefer multiplayer interactions, and was one of the key draws to the game.

But that is an option. Grain and honey. Mmm, mmm, good!

[dakko]

I've not played MP. Is it the case that time passes only when players are on the server? Could a solution be to play with others that restrict their playtime to weekend only?

[BigBadBeef]

1 hour ago, dakko said:

I've not played MP. Is it the case that time passes only when players are on the server? Could a solution be to play with others that restrict their playtime to weekend only?

Well, in all honesty, they are making some efforts to accommodate otherwise less active players, such as slowing food spoilage. But if you want what you asked for, then you can simply have a server that closes on the weekends. Doing that would basically set the game to be likewise to opening it to LAN, which in my opinion is no longer an open server but just "a little something" to for people to get together on weekends.

[dakko]

I see it as a server that meets the needs of those players with limited time (weekend only).

I would do it... if I could get up the nerve to be around other people.   Ah well.

[Thorfinn]

It's not a competition, @dakkoalthough a lot of people play that way. (Yes, me too. Not PvP, but "Holy cow, he's got iron already!!!??") Just don't obsess and you will be fine. And if you all agree to only play the same 4 hours each weekend (or whatever) anyway, no big deal.

Yes, @BigBadBeefone problem is that the clock advances as long as at least one player is logged in, and even if you tweak things like food storage times, you can't get around crops wilting. Not by any reasonable way I can think of. Because so much of the advancement is tied to flax, and thus farming, I don't know how you would deal with that. Well, apart from one of the players deciding he's going to give away linen to anyone who needs it. The player who can't find time to play simply has nothing to trade for it.

[Anthony frailey]

Or perhaps start or join a server community, that only puts in few hours here in there, or cooperates in one big "communal" village, that helps each other maintain staples such as food/maintenance. 

[Domkrats]

This thing is challenging for me too. And i have tried many options except food related mods. Main options:

a) Played on own base in public MP server - always food grinding when finnaly had time to join, yet if you make some greenhouses and crop fields there can always be some food as time on server moves fast. One day its winter, another day - summer.  Food preparing can take your time away anyway, so finnaly you will have less time to explore and do other stuff. Area around you can be explored without you even knowing it. So you can find explored caves and ruins all the time.
b) Joining some active players in community at their base. That could work unless you don't see them struggling with time as well. Otherwise you feel that you are just wasting their resources and not giving anything in return. I tried to gather other resources in exchange for food. Food was plenty, but even grain eventually spoiled as time is moving fast in active servers. So again..some time for preparing cooked foods still should be spent, but this worked well untill other players started to dissapear. (Huge thing in this is to be at same time-line, so you can play together at one time.
c) Own server together with players like you - when you all play time progresses. When don't nothing should happen.

In conclusion. Surviving can happen in any of this scenario. Without share-able waypoints it can be hard to know which areas are explored already, unless server uses some mod or external map to show TLS and roads made.

But if in MP you want to look at full cellar with those attractive crocks and veggies it will better work in b) option.

This is just how it is in this game.  Game has so many nice small things in it and it can become hard to deal with not being able to use them fully all everytime you have some time to play. My main struggle was large trips and cave explorings (which i love) without wasting much time to prepare for them and being able to return to base in time (so next time i wont start game with full inventory half of which will be ROT.

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2022 by Domkrats

[ArrayPointer]

We encountered the BigBadBeef's issue on our server due to my nephew playing many more hours than the rest of us in the beginning.

The best solution that worked for us was to just find a weekend that all of us could devote more time in the game, and start a new world for it. I think if one commits to playing enough at the start to at least create a cellar and stock the shelves up with meat/vegetable meals, then it's not as annoying to play less frequently than other more active players.

We also set the days per month for the first 6 months to 30, because we figured we'd all be pretty much ready for the winter that way, regardless of some playing more than others. Then once winter starts, setting the server back to the default 12-day month permanently seemed a reasonable compromise overall for less active players.

On 11/22/2022 at 1:55 AM, Domkrats said:

if you make some greenhouses ... there can always be some food

This is something none of us have done yet, but it sounds like an excellent solution to wintertime and spoilage in general.

 

Regards,

ArrayPointer

[Sukotto82]

I don't play multiplayer for this reason specifically myself.

I used to have multiple greenhouses, livestock and a cellar. I was working on a massive wall around my base/town and things were pretty cool. the people on the server were nice and there wasn't any notable griefers or anyone causing trouble stealing or anything like that. everyone was pretty nice and even helped me get a little extra coper to help speed things up for me by giving me a small staring tool kit.

I quite enjoyed the sever but I had less and less time to play my animals were completely out of food and things were starting to fall apart because I was having less and less time to work on things so I have started playing single player and throwing my hand and learning modding again. 

I still have very little time to invest in playing and I'm trying to learn how to make a canning mod that would allow you to make a special crock that prevents spoiling rates. instead of reducing spoil rate by 37% or other things I want to make it so it never spoils and can be used for any food. I've got an idea that might work and working on it now but I'm also struggling with a crop tier quality mod that speeds up crop growth as you improve the tier of the seeds and makes them more resilience and higher production rates. all of this will help reduce the pain of trying to find the grind while only playing for short amounts of time.

this wouldn't solve anything for servers that don't use mods or for people who play single player who don't want to use mods and I'm sure there are plenty of other mods out there that would also help. some are complex and complicated or add a lot of stuff so I'm trying to make smaller simpler mods mostly because I'm just getting back into trying to learn modding so I can't make anything like many other people. there are a lot of awesome modders out there who can do some amazing things. compared to them I'm nothing. I can't compare to any of them but I'm still trying to learn regardless.

for vanilla. there are a few things I've done to improve the quality of play with the limited time I've been able to play recently and that is.

faster walking speed to improve travel time.

higher durability on tools to spend less time constantly remaking new tools

higher tool working speed. making the time it takes to cut trees down and other harvesting acts that will take less time giving more time to do other things and get to what you want.

increased copper and tin surface spawns to help speed up getting to at least copper age.

changed spoil rate so food spoils slower (can be a double edged sword if your trying to spoil food on purpose for high quality soil that requires 64 spoilage in a barrel to make 1 block.)

there are a few other things I can't remember off the top of my head but I think you get the idea.

all these changes help improve the quality of time you spent on the game when you don't have a lot of time to play.

finding a server with similar setting may help but ultimately a server would still be hard to manage if you don't have much time to play even with the right settings. that is where finding a small server where a group of people agree to only play during a certain timeframe on certain days would certainly help.

finding a community that would help support you during the short time your able to play, I can relate how that can make you feel bad as you are draining resources from the community and don't have much time to do anything to pay back what they have done for you. I know that feeling all too well.

[Anthony frailey]

Quote

finding a community that would help support you during the short time your able to play, I can relate how that can make you feel bad as you are draining resources from the community and don't have much time to do anything to pay back what they have done for you. I know that feeling all too well.

I think that's a worry that's possibly really a non-issue. 
Everyone who plays this game, understands the mechanics of ... there are usually communal areas for reasons after-all. 

- composting can be done quicker ( or rot making) in hotter temps, and in reed baskets out in sun.  

- I'd set food spoil to lowest possible setting. 
-take advantage of mods,  salted/dried foods , Jerky ,smoked foods, and flours last incredible amounts of time. ( In the early game, its harder to obtain these things though.) 
( maybe set up a "food shack" , have server admin creative mode in few already done things , new players "contribute" what they can, even if its peat and firewood there ... fat/ect. ) 
that way foods not much a spoiling issue ... and that rot, just barrel it all up turn to compost, i'm sure farmers that play more will appreciate the compost you supply for things. 
Not supplying your own foods fully, might detract from sore-vive-all a bit, but frees up time you do have, to explore the other things needed and wanna do. 

I'm just saying, there's ways to make it work.  

 

[Lumber Jackson]

How about building beside a mountain? Grow your food at the base and store your food at the top where the temps are far lower, slowing the decay.

[daretmavi]

As described, getting enough food in MP is basically no problem ... in your base if you have enough seeds and some animals. In active MP server plant growing / animal breeding, everything is very quick.

If you want to go on trip and explore the world, than you can prepare yourself that all food will spoil. If you have enough grain, you can tak it with you, or honey I think don't spoil at all.

 

[Mindframe]

On 11/18/2022 at 11:33 AM, Thorfinn said:

I can usually play long enough at a sitting to bring in one harvest. Because everything else will have rotted or season-died long before I log in again, I'm limited to grain and honey. Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I bother because my time on multiplayer is spent on the tedious stuff like making jam instead of playing the more enjoyable parts of the game. Single player is just much better for my circumstances. Which bites because I vastly prefer multiplayer interactions, and was one of the key draws to the game.

But that is an option. Grain and honey. Mmm, mmm, good!

This is my complain as well Thorfinn:

 

[Credinus]

I run a small personal server with a small group of friends, and initially we were running into this issue due staggering schedules meaning that the gameworld was essentially running 24/7. This presented various issues; food spoilage is an obvious one, but also seasons changing would often cause crops to hit temperature thresholds and either reduce yield or wither entirely. It also creates issues with milking goats, since there's a limited window there to be able to get it done. Now, several versions and tons of experience later, here's how we address -most- of the issues, and admittedly it is with the help of mods. I agree with your assessment that without mods, some of the systems are not ideal for persistent multiplayer worlds, and hope that we see that problem tackled in a future version, but hopefully this can help you work around them in the meantime.

1) Make the world spawn in a warm zone, and find a nice valley. These regions will often let you grow crops even without a greenhouse year-round, though you will need to be mindful of growing certain crops in the more extreme summer and winter months. The world generation default settings will start you in a climate where you will have 3-4 months where you likely won't be able to grow crops even with a greenhouse, and is just a nightmare for multiplayer. Also reduce the food spoilage setting as needed to reduce the impact of spoilage as a whole.
2) Prioritize building a proper cellar, and get into beekeeping as soon as possible. Honey doesn't spoil, so it's a good emergency food, plus the beeswax can be used to seal crocks of food to improve the shelf life significantly. A storage vessel in a cellar containing a sealed crock pot will give you a heck of
3) Consider using the world setting command "/worldconfigcreate bool allowCropDeath false" which will prevent your crops from dying off.
4) Get into animal breeding early, and also set up "kill pits" for animals to wander into as an emergency food source.
5) Look into mods. Several mods add very balanced ways to tackle a lot of the issues that come up from multiplayer. Primitive Survival, for example, gives you additional sources of protein and adds a freezer you can build and stock with ice for very long term storage at the cost of needing to keep it stocked with ice. The XSkills mods introduced interesting new mechanics for character "job" specialization that can assist in various ways. Various mods introduce ways to get more seeds from crops, which honestly is something I believe needs to be added to vanilla because multiplayer can make farm expansion overly difficult.

Milking goats is still a tricky, but soybeans do provide you with an alternative to raise your dairy nutrition. One approach I took was to have multiple ewe pens stagger introduction of the goats to pens so that I could have pregnancy and lactation times offset, which meant I usually had at least one milkable ewe at all times.