Temporal Storm Thoughts

[ClearSkies]

Temporal Storms are something I'd love to see get expanded and really give us a reason to make the Rift Ward. As of the moment Temporal Storms just appear and cause havoc all over the place. People have found clever ways to fix this, either creating the Minecraft bunker, laying boards on the floor to stop spawn, or prepping a house build to also stop spawn (setting a slab at low level so it doesn't count as spawn height).

These storms I think should open many rifts wildly all around the player(s). That way drifters aren't specifically just appearing in your home, rather you get a rift that explodes within the house AND maybe we might use temporal gears to damage/destroy these rifts.

Perhaps when you defeat the first boss, you get both the glider AND the Rift Ward schematic which allows you to place the rift ward (yes this means no access to the ward until then). What would happen is that a programming flag is tripped and Temporal Storms change in how they form now. Once you place a Rift Ward to protect your land, the Temporal Storms and natural Rifts will now spawn outside of the Wards radius. Critters will now have two focuses:

1. Attack the Ward: Critters will spawn with the directive to attack the Ward which keeps them from truly invading your home. They will do so by scaling the walls, shooting arrows at the Rift Ward, or bashing down doors/gates to get at the Ward.

2. Attack the players, again they will storm gates/doors, climb walls to get at the player.

*This requires the critters to be allowed to damage blocks. Meaning reinforcing blocks/items become more important and also needs re-tooling to allow players to not just reinforce a single block, but perhaps the better quality the tool is, the larger group of blocks we can reinforce.

Of course this means the Rift Ward NEEDS to be given protection by the player, much like how you can reinforce the blocks. If that Rift Ward goes, you WILL get the hoard on you. Of course this means in order to avoid cheese, a Rift Ward can only be reinforced by combining a metal with a temporal gear(s). Temporal-Copper gives the ward 10HP or so, Temporal-Steel gives 100HP etc etc etc.

With this I hope we can see more evolving or different drifter types like:

Knights: Tapestries tell us of the loss of many knights. The current drifters we've fought are all merely the pawns, or villagers that sadly transformed and now attack wildly. Knights though are armored and have actual weapons (lets say temporal-bronze/temporal-steel weapons that due to their nature, vanish upon the creatures death so no easy weapon for players to farm).

Mounted Knights: Make this a fast horrifying merging of the knight with his poor steed. This centaur like drifter has a high jump, runs fast, and is powerful. A player is going to need to outsmart these terrors with trap holes, or working with fellow players to confront these fallen battle brothers.

Drifter animals: There is a mod that comes to mind. One that gives us rust-bears, rust-wolves, rabbits, mooses. These things are terrifying and honestly I feel they would be a great permanent addition to the game to bolster the drifter army.

Finally a poison of sorts would make it cool to have a reason to create antidotes and jonas gas mask. A miasma that could spawn requiring you to pop on the mask to not get poisoned as well as higher level drifters poisoning us when they attack. Now you need to crush a temporal gear and mix it with a poultice to remove poison. (Poison could work like the inverse of bandages where instead a purple bar appears on your health bar that slowly takes away your health)

All of this is in the hope of being able to have our Helms Deep moments, or a battle of Thermopolis. Now that we found a human settlement. Imagine story wise, we find another but it has a week before a drifter hoard attacks so we need to prep a valley for a last stand style battle. Though we will die, we respawn, and it will allow the village to shore up their defense or escape to a new story village location!

As of the time, the storms are just kinda there, and after awhile they are mostly just a nuisance that you either deal with, block up and wait out, or depending on the server, you log off and log on after 20/30mins. Something more needs to be done to make them exciting and that's what I hope for!

Anyway, that's my dime. I really hope to see more done with the storm this time around, as the game itself feels like it has evolved beyond what the current storm/drifters offer.

[ChristopherGS]

4 hours ago, ClearSkies said:

These storms I think should open many rifts wildly all around the player(s). That way drifters aren't specifically just appearing in your home, rather you get a rift that explodes within the house AND maybe we might use temporal gears to damage/destroy these rifts.

So many good ideas in here!

I really like the ideas that many rift wards appear--it gives the players a sense of where the dangerous areas are. One issue we have is there are some players that enjoy the challenge and others that don't. If rifts or something visual appeared in some areas and those were the source of most of the danger two things could happen:
1. people who enjoy danger and being a hero could seek them out and help close them, and
2. people who don't enjoy danger have an easy visual conveyance of where to avoid while their companions deal with the danger. 

It would really open up cooperation and strategy in a good way. It provides interesting choices during a storm. 

Edited October 24, 2025 by ChristopherGS

[ClearSkies]

That's certainly a great thought!

I figure the trouble is that sometimes the storm and rifts often feel like a nuisance, more than a threat. When drifters become that case of "Oh great, Bob is bugging us again," it really loses the horror factor that they are these terrifying beings of sludge, rot, and rust!

[ifoz]

22 hours ago, ClearSkies said:

*This requires the critters to be allowed to damage blocks. Meaning reinforcing blocks/items become more important and also needs re-tooling to allow players to not just reinforce a single block, but perhaps the better quality the tool is, the larger group of blocks we can reinforce.

In order to still allow player creativity while letting creatures break blocks, an idea I have heard discussed before is letting them temporarily "disable" blocks during a storm (same as breaking them, but the blocks return after the storm ends).

Edited October 25, 2025 by ifoz

[ClearSkies]

That could be difficult depending on the amount of blocks and such, as they would have to program that in and set it for ram. Plus on a server, if there are a lot of people running around, similar to say what we saw with Rubix Raptors crew. That could potentially cause major crashes and such or clipping issues.

Plus to have an invading army and have your home just magically pop back in afterwards somewhat defeats the purpose of the battle.

This is why I think, an important tool necessary, is making us able to reinforce not just a single block, but a massive group of blocks at a time. Perhaps rather than using a tool on the block, a reinforced block is something we craft, meaning we could craft a few hundred bricks with str 100 on them then place them down as normal. Of course another tool might be needed to help pick those blocks up if we accidently put them someplace they don't belong.

It is an interesting idea, but one that might be a bit difficult with programming smoothly.

[Diff]

If the pathfinding prioritizes going through already open holes, then there wouldn't be a ton of broken blocks. And if rather than vanishing, they transitioned to a broken state that has to be explicitly repaired, that'd make it less jarring in-universe than blocks popping in and out of existence. Could also be limited to certain types of blocks. We need axes to chop down logs, it'd be weird if rotbeasts could just punch their way through them. But if breaking was limited to doors, windows, and fences, that'd make more sense and be easier to manage.

It might also add a little bit more variety to the enemies. I can't see bowtorn or shivers managing to break down a door on their own, but drifters could. Maybe a shiver could break open a window or tear down a fence. Even then, unless you have suitable windows or extra large doors, it's not likely for shivers to be able to get inside, making them primarily a threat if you get chased out of your house. Same for bowtorn, they're not likely to want to get close enough to actually come inside but they might snipe you through broken those windows and doors.

[ClearSkies]

2 hours ago, Diff said:

If the pathfinding prioritizes going through already open holes, then there wouldn't be a ton of broken blocks. And if rather than vanishing, they transitioned to a broken state that has to be explicitly repaired, that'd make it less jarring in-universe than blocks popping in and out of existence. Could also be limited to certain types of blocks. We need axes to chop down logs, it'd be weird if rotbeasts could just punch their way through them. But if breaking was limited to doors, windows, and fences, that'd make more sense and be easier to manage.

It might also add a little bit more variety to the enemies. I can't see bowtorn or shivers managing to break down a door on their own, but drifters could. Maybe a shiver could break open a window or tear down a fence. Even then, unless you have suitable windows or extra large doors, it's not likely for shivers to be able to get inside, making them primarily a threat if you get chased out of your house. Same for bowtorn, they're not likely to want to get close enough to actually come inside but they might snipe you through broken those windows and doors.

Yo! That actually could lead to a nifty idea involving the drifters. Because these were once people. Imagine a lumberjack drifter with an axe arm that looks at a wood wall like Macho Man lookin' at a Slim Jim!

Perhaps you'd also get others like a drifter with a mace that would be useful against stone walls and such.

This could mean that variations could attack during a storm. With the starting few storms mostly being basic critters, then say, you defeat the 1st boss flips a flag that now gives you the axe and mace-drifters. Generally by this point most people typically have some semblance of a sturdy home made.

I did long ago posit one idea of a proper leader. Something like a Drifter Knight Commander who, when active, will direct drifters towards a players weaker walls and such, thus it is important to take out the commander, but this would require programming AI that could again overwhelm the game, since we are also trying to follow the rule of KISS.

Still a commander would be cool to deal with as the next level of enemy type. One that is smarter and more dangerous, again that horrific evolution of the rust.

[dean van beelen]

My thoughts? They're dogshit. Myself and most people I know just hole up and AFK during them. They add nothing of value to the game. 

Once you're geared up they're still just as useless because now they're not a threat and just an annoyance every so often where you have to take a break to fight for a bit. Except combat in this game is not that great so that's not very fun either. 

[Diff]

1 hour ago, dean van beelen said:

My thoughts? They're dogshit. Myself and most people I know just hole up and AFK during them. They add nothing of value to the game. 

Once you're geared up they're still just as useless because now they're not a threat and just an annoyance every so often where you have to take a break to fight for a bit. Except combat in this game is not that great so that's not very fun either. 

Not an uncommon opinion. What would you change to improve them?

[Blaiyze]

4 hours ago, Diff said:

Not an uncommon opinion. What would you change to improve them?

In my opinion, the worst thing about the Temporal Storms is how the mobs can spawn inside the walls of our bases. I understand, temporal-space-time wibbly wobbly logic, but it's still monumentally frustrating when you're just trying to hermit through a storm, baking bread, and suddenly get shot in the back and jump scared by a mob that spawned behind you. 

In theory, I love the concept of the Temporal Storms, it gives a great sense of foreboding. The visual issues need to be toned down, yes I know we can adjust those in the settings ourselves, but as it stands, the base setting is far too strong. It's near impossible to fight or do anything without excessive frustration during an active storm, without dialing down the visual distortion.

Personally, I love the idea of the storms becoming more of a base defense/tower defense mechanic, sort of in the realm of 7DTD but with less overall intent to completely destroy your base and you eventually. Ability to break down doors and windows and small fences is a neat idea (I play with Dana Tweaks and drifters can open doors and windows), which would encourage us to build proper defensive structures. The pitiful drops from enemies underlines why Temporal Storms are viewed largely as a nuisance rather than a neat mechanic we enjoy engaging with: because effectively, the storms serve zero purpose beyond Lore/Story, and that's neat the first couple times you experience them, but the longer you play on your world the less interesting this thought is - especially since it can take a long time of playing before you're able to start the questline and engage with the story. 

 

 

[ClearSkies]

This is why I believe the discussion is important! The Temporal Storms are certainly a design that worked for the early game and early players, but it never evolved to meet the demands of later game, especially with the creatures you have.

This is why I think the Wards are important to upgrade along with the Temporal Storms. Currently in my server and how long its ran, we've had no use of the Rift Wards at all, as their upkeep is expensive for little gain. Temporal Storms absolutely stop any positive benefits of these Rift Wards as well.

The Rift Wards should feel like a major accomplishment for players. They honestly shouldn't breakdown or should have months of energy behind them.

You brought up 7DTD and I do like the hoard mechanic, as long as its balanced out and you are ready for it. Primitive Survival Mod gives us pitfall traps and I've used those extensively to create spiked trenches for the monsters to fall into! Plus you'd have a bigger reason for building motes around your town in order to funnel bad drifters into kill zones where you can use archer ports or murder holes to attack them!

I feel that the Developers are definitely cooking something regarding the Temporal Storms, or at least I really hope so, because at this point of time, they must know that the Storms have more or less been surpassed by the Gameplay and the Game Lore itself.