Nightmare storm!?

[Andael]

I haven't seen mention of this peculiarity, but I just had a pure-Nightmare storm, and they were flowing into my world, or I intersected with a nightmare-pit of the Rust... however it goes.

I roughly counted at least 12 active at any one time -- hard to be sure with trying to avoid rocks and stretchy arms and the severe glichness. Many more corpses were piled, mostly from infighting as I only have copper spears and a copper falx... paired with improvised armor and a crude shield (having a rough go). I mostly huddled in a small squat tower. I got one-shot, as they sometimes push onto each other and they can then reach.

Early on there were a few lower-class drifters because there was a rift right beside the tower and activity was high -- so before the storm I already had a cadre of heavy breathers. Once the storm began though, it quickly became all Nightmares and stayed that way. No double-headed.

After the storm passed, trying to leave the area I was chased by a horde which was too reminiscent of Helldivers. I only managed to loot about 1/5th of the corpses... must've been more than 30 through the night.

First time I'm playing on Wilderness Survival. Y'know... watch a youtube video of someone playing and it doesn't look so bad... they find a trader with chests for sale, easy ores even though one must take care of cave-ins... So I try: cursed. Into late November and not even properly "bronze age", had 5 heavy and 3 medium storms. Three traders found: all agriculture, offering what I already have (crazy since I have nothing!) and buying things I can't make. Caves have mostly been vertical shafts into nests... short on ores, ruins, or translocators.

This is actually my fourth area in this world -- I couldn't get a temporal gear to anchor myself earlier. My first was going well -- had good amounts of copper and clays; bismuth-bronze soon, nice region... but as I crested a small hill: surprise-wolf-chomp. Then an ill-fated respawn with nothing at night before a heavy storm... killed by a Nightmare doing the step-up-and-reach off of a buddy. Surprise! But not really surprising... Next life also cut short in the stone-age, by a bear in dense foliage.

Anyway... Nightmare storm! Anyone else experience this? Most who keep storms active seem to only do it for farming double-headed drifters. This seems like a big middle-finger to them. I am keeping storms and glitches to play "as designed". I kinda like some of the idea... but in practice rather hate the storms as they are. I'm cultivating a list of thoughts/ideas about them.

 

[Khornet]

Can you elaborate what you mean by "Nightmare" storm?
If you mean the Nightmare-tier variants of the Drifters/Bowtorns and Shivers, then yes, they spawn in heavy temporal storms almost exclusively. 

19 minutes ago, Andael said:

Most who keep storms active seem to only do it for farming double-headed drifters

Unfortunately not much of an option anymore, because of the Nightmare Bowtorns pelting you constantly. Unless you make some kind of farm, arena, or go underground, but that severely limits the area for enemy spawns, and the amount of our lovable twohead goobers.
BUT, 1.20, intentionally or not, introduced IMO a better way of farming gears by 

Spoiler

making Stilt Shivers and Bellhead Shivers loot pinatas with plenty of gear drops and Jonas parts as well. They spawn semi-frequently in extremely deep caves. 
And appropriately hit you very hard and fast. So it's not exactly a painless farmin method.

There are apparently now "patterns" to the storm determining the spawn rate of specific mobs (I assume this pertains to the shivers-bowtorns-drifter ratio). So far I've had the unluck of getting Nightmare Bowtorns being like 90% of the mobs spawned in heavy temporal storms.  

Edited December 6, 2024 by Khornet

[Thorfinn]

Yeah, particularly in Wilderness, you can't turtle anymore unless possibly you do it completely. If you want the supernatural loot, you kind of have to get out there, always moving, and deliberately using despawn rules to get rid of the ones you don't want to deal with.

Might be some of those storm farming techniques will still work. You can definitely still set up farms deep underground that don't entail a lot of pain. Though maybe not bowtorns. I had an idea that I thought might work, but turns out I didn't understand their AI as well as I thought.

[Andael]

1 hour ago, Khornet said:

Can you elaborate what you mean by "Nightmare" storm?
If you mean the Nightmare-tier variants of the Drifters/Bowtorns and Shivers, then yes, they spawn in heavy temporal storms almost exclusively. 

Yes, a storm with only Nightmares. As I described, the only non-Nightmare were there before the storm due to the adjacent rift. And afterward, the pile of corpses were all Nightmares and at least 10 were chasing me -- very clearly visible in the light of dawn and without temporal gliches.

During the storm, Nightmares were the exclusive spawn, and it seemed they spawned at a higher rate than any other spawn situation I've had. I've only experienced around 30-ish heavy storms across all playthroughs. Any other heavy storm I've had a mix, and particularly of note: I'd be able to at least harvest some double-headed drifters.

I'm still on v0.19.8. Playing Wilderness Survival completely vanilla with no custom settings.

The new "patterns" to the storms did have me do a mental double-check that I didn't somehow update to a newer version, and I didn't. Because this seemed like the kind of variant I might expect based on that feature hint.

[Echo Weaver]

This honestly does not sound fun at all to my play style. Are ordinary pit traps a no-go now? Sounds like the Bowtorns are just as dangerous in a trap.

[Thorfinn]

19 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

Sounds like the Bowtorns are just as dangerous in a trap.

Depends on the trap. They have a fairly slow reload time, and it's pretty easy to create situations where the missiles they do fire pass through enough of a partial block to get stopped. Speleothems can really mess them up.  If you are halfway decent at sidestepping, they can still be dealt with in cramped quarters. Particularly since they seem to have trouble getting through one block gaps. There's probably a way to chisel something that allows you to shoot them from almost complete safety.

But they are not as easy to lure in as I thought they were. Or maybe they got an AI update from pre.

[Echo Weaver]

36 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Depends on the trap. They have a fairly slow reload time, and it's pretty easy to create situations where the missiles they do fire pass through enough of a partial block to get stopped. Speleothems can really mess them up.  If you are halfway decent at sidestepping, they can still be dealt with in cramped quarters. Particularly since they seem to have trouble getting through one block gaps. There's probably a way to chisel something that allows you to shoot them from almost complete safety.

But they are not as easy to lure in as I thought they were. Or maybe they got an AI update from pre.

Ah, so they don't just fall in if you camp out on the other side of a wall with a pit trap between them and you.

I was pondering a bit trap with trap doors such that I could shut up part of the opening and minimize the space they had to fire through. Or a bit trap with my basement beneath it so that I could take out a single low block and attack near the feet. Both of those ideas require AI gullible enough to fall into a pit trap to begin with.

[Thorfinn]

Yeah, I think what is happening is they have to be able to path to a location they can hit you from. And when you step back behind cover, they stop going to that location.

[Andael]

41 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

There's probably a way to chisel something that allows you to shoot them from almost complete safety.

I'm guessing this kind of exploitation is exactly why chiseling is disabled in "Wilderness Survival"? I'm a little sad that I can't chisel some detailing, but I can imagine that I might slide down that slippery slope even though I generally avoid exploits.

[Echo Weaver]

38 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Yeah, I think what is happening is they have to be able to path to a location they can hit you from. And when you step back behind cover, they stop going to that location.

That's logical, but also meh.

I'd rather come up with a way to outwit them than mod them out. I plan to stick with my 1.19 game until the official release, so I'll continue to study and ponder.