Shiver Early Game Issues

[Seadog94]

After installing 1.20.21 Stable version and cave exploring is pretty busted due to shivers. My brother and I jumped into a cave (not too deep or big), and got swarmed by a nonstop flow of shivers spawning. With their high speed, silence, and generally high damage against low tier armors (We are in the bronze age with leather armor), it has totally busted early game cave exploration. The only thing that kept us alive for more than a few moments was water flows slowing them down. Without water, it would be completely unplayable without hefty armor. Last week we were testing deeper and deeper, this week it just is not fun to be in the dark anymore.

I have loved the difficulty of the game and uncompromising elements, but these guys may be balanced for late game armor sets without early game in mind. I find shivers well designed and cool, but suggest any of the following:

- Reducing the number of enemies that spawn as shivers by a significant amount to make them rarer.

- Having them spawn only deep down or during certain temporal storms, so you don't get swarmed in normal caves.

- Reducing the speed and damage of higher rank variants to make them more manageable.

[Thorfinn]

Don't know if you are aware of it, but watch rift activity carefully. Caving in even Medium is not for the meek. Try on Calm to see the baseline, and work your way up to your comfort level.

[LadyWYT]

Shivers are a different beast entirely from the drifters we had before. They do tend to be on the quiet side, making nothing more than a soft clicking sound unless they are spazzing out or have caught a whiff of your presence(in which case they'll emit a raspy growl). High level shivers will take the idle behavior a step further by occasionally ramming their head against the floor or a nearby wall.

As for fighting prowess, shivers are currently the fastest monsters and have a bit more health than the standard drifters. They're able to climb over obstacles up to two blocks high, though they can't climb over fences(currently). Their general tactic is to rush up to the player and get a bite or two in before scuttling away for a short time. Their main drawbacks are self-sabotage(when they spaz out, you can get some free hits in on them) and their size; they need a 2x2 space to move through, if I'm not mistaken.

Generally, you shouldn't be encountering them as often as drifters. They tend to be most common in temporal storms, although that depends on the enemy spawning pattern of the particular storm. The higher tier shivers seem to be more tenacious about attacking the player as well, compared to the lower tiers.

In any case, caving is a lot more dangerous now if you're under-equipped. Those who venture in will probably wish to bring extra healing items and, as @Thorfinn suggested, stick to periods of lower rift activity.

[tonechild]

Shivers made me turn off temporal storms.  Being introduced to multiple nightmare shivers with low-tier armor is guaranteed to kill you.  I don't see anyone managing that without hiding or sleeping through the temporal storms, both of which made me feel like I may as well turn them off since I'm just sitting there or sleeping past them anyway.  Complete game ruiners IMHO.  The fact that they are faster than you and can one-shot you (nightmare shivers) on the surface just breaks the game.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Have you tried just waiting out the temporal storms and... idk... panning gravel or sand from the safety of your hole in the ground?

[Thorfinn]

Just noticed there is a new mod that says it turns storms back to drifters-only.

Looking at it, I thought it would have been cleaner to replace the values of groupWeights in the spawnPatterns field of the very same file. Just change the drifter to 1, the shiver and bowtorn to 0, just like it is for drifterstorm. Which he did, but he also changed things that don't look like they needed to be changed, like the weights of the storms themselves. As a bonus, he also doubled the chances of double-headeds in each storm.

But I have not tried it. Just glanced at the code. Maybe there's a good reason not to do it that way.

[EDIT]

Assuming changing the weights of the storms themselves works, I suspect the most elegant solution would be simply to set all weights of storms to 0 except for drifterstorm.

Edited January 21, 2025 by Thorfinn

[tonechild]

39 minutes ago, traugdor said:

Have you tried just waiting out the temporal storms and... idk... panning gravel or sand from the safety of your hole in the ground?

I'm not sure how to go about that to be honest.  Since during temporal storms mobs can spawn anywhere, I'm guessing that doing activities in a "hiding room" of sorts would mean they could spawn in said room as well because the room would need to be big enough to do an activity, which could then mean there's an open space for them to spawn in.  Maybe there's a method or proved way to do this without accidents but I'm not sure what that is.   I tried searching for videos on YT I didn't really find anything.
 

I'd love to fight during temp storms again, but I dont know how to handle the nightmare shivers early game.  Them being faster and one-shot you really limits options I think.  If there's a non-cheesy way to handle them though I'd love to try it.

@Thorfinn That mod might be worth a try, to be honest though I'd love to change the storms so that all mobs spawn. mostly drifters but with one or two shivers or bowtorn on occasion.  The nightmare variants of shivers would just not spawn at all early game using some threshold (maybe time or something else) - the fact that the storms are just drifters (very easy) or shivers (very hard) or all bowtorn (hard) and its all RNG based seems broken to me.  Personally I think the game itself needs some balance tweaks when it comes to the new mobs but I know I am a sample of one, and I understand it would be best to really see how many players handle it to make a proper balance change.

Edited January 21, 2025 by tonechild

[Thorfinn]

35 minutes ago, tonechild said:

That mod might be worth a try, to be honest though I'd love to change the storms so that all mobs spawn. mostly drifters but with one or two shivers or bowtorn on occasion.

Do it.

Use his mod as an example. Refer to the original file that spells out the storms, which is .\survival\config\mobextraspawns.json to see what he's replacing. Set those values (in your version of the mod -- it's bad taste to just copy it if you intend to distribute, but if it's only for your own use, doesn't really matter) to anything you like. That's plenty easy.

If you are up for a bit of a challenge, add compatibility with ConfigLib, so that you can tweak those settings to your desires. It's not that much of a challenge, TBH. @Maltiez has done an awesome job making it fairly easily approachable.

[EDIT]

If you are serious about trying out ConfigLib, I highly recommend downloading @Spear and Fang's Buzzwords and look at his configlib-patches.json.  It's an awesome example.

'Course, that's always good coding practice. Find someone who is good at it and imitate his style.

Edited January 21, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

53 minutes ago, tonechild said:

The fact that they are faster than you and can one-shot you (nightmare shivers) on the surface just breaks the game.

Pretty much any nightmare-level monster can kill a player in 1-2 hits, if the player is unarmored/has low-level armor and assuming default settings. Bronze armor enhances survival chances by quite a lot when facing most threats, but it's not until you reach iron equipment that nightmare-level monsters start being a little less of a threat. Steel is preferable, as it will soak up a major chunk of the damage, but I wouldn't say nightmare monsters ever stop being dangerous, especially when there is more than one.

If the shivers aren't that fun to fight, I'd recommend looking for a mod that disables them, or otherwise tuning your game settings to make combat a little easier. Increasing the player's health will need to be done at the start of the game, as I don't think you change this setting after creating a world, but more health will help you survive attacks. Likewise, turning down the amount of damage that enemies are able to do(by default I think it's 100%) will make them a little easier to deal with should you be caught off guard.

5 minutes ago, tonechild said:

I'm not sure how to go about that to be honest.  Since during temporal storms mobs can spawn anywhere, I'm guessing that doing activities in a "hiding room" of sorts would mean they could spawn in said room as well because the room would need to be big enough to do an activity, which could then mean there's an open space for them to spawn in.  Maybe there's a method or proved way to do this without accidents but I'm not sure what that is.   I tried searching for videos on YT and only video I didn't really find anything.

What I do in the early game is typically go hide in my cellar. The space is small and cluttered enough that nothing should spawn in there at all, but not so small that I can't make a little spot for panning/clayforming. Of course, sometimes I just lock myself in a dirt coffin and go AFK for a few minutes while the storm passes.

7 minutes ago, tonechild said:

To be honest I'd love to fight during temp storms again, but I dont know how to handle the nightmare shivers early game.  Them being faster and one-shot you really limits options I think.  If there's a non-cheesy way to handle them though I'd love to try it.

Shivers need a 2x2 opening to fit through, and cannot climb fences. Poking at them through a doorway/small hole or from a fenced off area are options. However, keep in mind that more than shivers can spawn in storms--bowtorn are nastier when it comes to damage, especially when there are multiple.

9 minutes ago, tonechild said:

Personally I think the game itself needs some balance tweaks when it comes to the new mobs but I know I am a sample of one, and I understand it would be best to really see how many players handle it to make a proper balance change.

It wouldn't surprise me if the spawn ratios still need some tweaking--I think there have been multiple tweaks over the course of 1.20. From what I've experienced with the last couple of versions, the ratios have felt mostly fine to me; it's just a matter of getting used to how the new mobs operate and developing strategies to deal with them.