Drifter Profit (Drifter Trap)

[Sharidan]

Greetings!

I've been playing Vintage Story for a few weeks with a good friend of mine. At first we were overrun by Drifters during temporal storms, to the point of us just bottling up and waiting out the storms. Then I set out to turn the tides against the storm Drifters and spent some time designing a trap that would allow us to farm the Drifters for their lucrative loot with relative ease.

The first design I made had a minor design flaw regarding the water streams, causing Drifters to get caught on the corner of the safe house, so I have spent some time redesigning the entire trap setup and this is the result. The screenshots I'm sharing here are (obviously) from my creative world where the redesigning took place. Overall the second design has not changed much compared to the first design, apart from how the water streams run and the surface part of the safe house has been extended a bit in size.

The excessive amounts of trap doors are there to trick the Drifters into walking over the watery pit below, as Drifters see a trap door as a walkable space, however they don't appear to be able to spawn directly on top of a trap door. To ensure as many of the Drifters that spawn during a temporal storm choose to "path" to the trap, the entire outline of the water pit is lined with trap doors all the way around the safe house in the middle. While using the first iteration of my design, we discovered a significant increase in trapped Drifters after we installed trap doors all the way around the safe house. We more than doubled the amount of Drifter kills during storms, just by adding those extra trap doors.

Trap doors are cheapter and easier to get a hold of than glass is, so the upper part of the safe house makes use of trap doors as "windows". Usually we leave all the "window" trap doors open for visibility and it does seem to make them "see" us relatively quickly after they have spawned in. If Drifters stop short of the trap pit and start throwing rocks, we can just flip the trap doors and close the "windows" which usually makes them change strategy and try to get to us instead, causing them to drop into the trap pit.

Since building this in our survival world, temporal storms have become a fun excercise in Drifter killing with much more loot gathered and far less deaths. We frequently harvest several temporal gears and a good handful of rusty gears each temporal storm.

I have additional screenshots of the build that show-case how to build this trap. I will see if I can upload these as well.

[Sharidan]

I was hoping I might be able to cheese the upload size limit, but it appears this forum keeps proper track of author upload sizes (nice, but also annoying since I've got more to share).

Anyway, building the trap takes a bunch of materials:

You can use any full block you like for the build, however the quantities of the two first trunk screenshots are the amounts needed. The same goes for the slabs: they can be any material you like, as long as they are slabs. The slabs serve two purposes: primarily to prevent Drifters from spawning where we don't want them and secondarily to allow access to hitting them with weapons while at the same time preventing Drifters from throwing rocks at us. So, slabs are important!

The amount of trap doors and ladders are also important. In the second trunk screenshot, I've dropped in 4 trunks and 8 additional blocks - these are choice options. If you want storage down in the kill chamber, use trunks or chests as you see fit (might be nice to have a few storage slots for things like healing and maybe a bit of extra sticks and stones to knap up a few extra weapons in an emergency. I have also added in tool racks for hanging weapons - again optional. You can use the optional lanterns or regular torches, as long as you attach them on a block space directly underneath the ceiling (slabs). We have found that in 1.18 Drifters are sometimes able to spawn on top of a torch / lantern if it is placed with one block of air above it.

The two stairs help push the Drifters down into the pit when they drop in from above. That little indentation in the middle, helps funnel the water streams to the center of the kill area where Drifters would otherwise gather up against the far wall away from the kill area. Using a solid / full block in that space will have the Drifters stand on that block and stay there for longer.

The third trunk is stuffed with Packed Dirt. I have added a 4 block wide border around the edge of the water collection pit, which serves the purpose of better visibility during temporal storms. Grass can't grow on Packed Dirt, so that area is guaranteed to be grass free making it easier to see the Drifters around the safe house.

My material choice shown in these trunks is solely for the purpose of providing greater visibility by having sharp contrasts between the dark safe house and the bright inner part of the watery pit, which should make it slightly easier to see the Drifters during a storm where everything twists and the sepia takes over. There is no other reason for the choice of materials than that, apart from trying to select materials that are a bit easier to come by in survival and relatively early game.

This trap works best when sunken into the ground, so having reached the Copper Age is recommended, unless you can accept doing a lot of dirt digging and landscaping with flint tools. For the kill zone to work the best, again it is recommended having reached the Copper Age at minimum, so you can craft yourself a hammer and a chisel. Use them to chisel out an indentation into the kill area, as I've shown in the last screenshot. You can use the 8x8 size which cuts away a quarter of the block space size at a time. Cut the three middle blocks and slabs in half. Doing this will allow you to crouch and slide into that space so you can reach the dead Drifters to harvest them - some of them will end up right outside the one dry spot in the setup.

[Sharidan]

Well, seems I might have been wrong about the upload size, so here is the first batch of the build guide screenshots.

To build this trap you will need to dig a 15 x 13 hole that is 5 blocks deep.

If you don't care about the looks of the trap, you can dig a 13 x 11 hole that is 4 blocks deep instead and reduce the amount of blocks accordingly, however at the very center of the build there has to be a 5 x 5 block are that is 5 blocks deep! This is where the (slab) floor of the kill chamber will be, so it is important.

For the purpose of the build guide screenshots I have chosen a bunch of polished blocks, solely to make it easier to count out the design while building it. As mentioned in the initial post you can pick whichever materials you like - it makes no difference to the functionality of the trap.

The bright orange blocks indicate where to place the water sources. They do not have to be a different material - this is solely to make it clear where the water sources have to be placed.

Once you have completed the second layer, you can place the water sources in the 4 corners of the build. The 4 water sources at the bottom should be placed before the 2 upper water sources, to ensure that the water streams behave. Note the ladder placement - you can pick either side, whichever fits with your preferences.

By the third layer, you can chip into the pit walls and install the last two water sources, which then completes the water stream setup.

On the 4th layer, I have installed 4 trunks for storage in the kill chambre. You can of course use chests if you prefer or if you don't want storage in the trap, replace the trunks / chests with solid blocks (that's the optional 8 extra blocks in the material listing). Note the additional two trap doors that are installed just above the stairs! These are important to coerce the Drifters into walking off the stair block quicker.

The 5th layer is where you should reach the surface and where you should start placing trap doors all around the inside the pit.

[Sharidan]

The rest of the build is for the surface of the safe house - or the "come to pappa" part of the trap. If you find the Drifters seem unwilling to come to the trap on their own accord, go upstairs and basically just stand at the centre of the safe house for a bit. That'll make the Drifters track you and start moving towards you, thus ending up in the trap, so you can go below and kill them.

Continuing on, the 6th layer is where the surface part of the safe house starts taking shape. Note the placement of the trap doors and also a regular door. You can pick the location of the regular door basically any where you want, but leave the rest of the walls open and with trap doors.

It would seem that I have run into the upload limit, so I will instead try to link the remaining screenshots for completion. Apologies about that.

Layers 6 and 7 are attached here, but just for reference I'll start the links at layer 6:

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_6.png

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_7.png

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_8.png

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_9.png

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_10.png

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_Finished.png

As mentioned previously, you can optionally add a border around the trap to increase visibility during storms:

http://www.sharidan.dk/vintage-story/drifter-trap/Layer_Optional.png

Edited August 23, 2023 by Sharidan
Added links for consistency.

[Thorfinn]

Interesting. Not my thing, but fun to see how others use game mechanics.

I think it would be fun to see something that used a single hot water (so obviously you need to build on top of a geothermal spring) to  drop down onto the block they are pushed into. Or even just making it a bit larger so one could use a pit kiln to do your killin' in the no mans land between where the two lower streams meet. Sure, they will run into the water to extinguish themselves, but then will be pushed right back onto the fire.

[Sharidan]

We have found a hot spring in the area where we have settled and we tried to snag the hot water, which sadly turned cold straight away. We could probably have set up the trap there, though the travel distance is still a bit too far, to go ride out a storm at the trap. We ended up building the trap just outside of our settlement instead.

I do like your idea of putting a pit kiln in the dry spot - might try that out at some point