Temporal storms are a bad implementation of a good idea.

[Blaiyze]

6 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

Well since someone else reopened the topic. Did anyone else listen to the interview with Saraty & Tyron talking about temporal storms? She was very adamant that the storms were not finished. It sounded like as we have discussed, they are just a placeholder. They mentioned adding something to the storms to make them worth interacting with vs sitting and hiding. Made me feel better at least.

Where's the interview at?

[williams_482]

4 hours ago, Blaiyze said:

Where's the interview at?

I believe they are referring to this interview: 

 

[QueenGeeBee]

Its exciting to hear that they want to fix the storms. I think they brought up new entities for the storms too so that's always fun.

 

[Moosejaw]

Something I would see as interesting would be having a boss attached to the storm, kill enough regular mobs and the boss spawns kill that to get some interesting loot. Maybe also block monster spawns and temporal storms in an area for a few months or a year a few chunks around it so that way you can't just use your bases mob grinder to farm temp spots in safety forever

Edited April 1 by Moosejaw

[QueenGeeBee]

I know some people aren't too keen on making the storms drop lots of useful resources or being too beneficial because of the whole lore angle and it being a phenomenon vs a loot event, but I do think they have to game-ify it at least a little bit.

A strong entity that arrives at the midpoint of the storm, and if you kill it the storm ends early sounds like it could be neat, but they would also need to drop something so that the player has an incentive to do something difficult / risky. 

I think, if they buff / change some of the jonas devices to be more worthwhile and maybe add a few more, then making the reward for engaging with the storm and killing this miniboss being guranteed jonas parts for the player to build and play with these devices, it would go a long way.

[Gobs]

Here's my 2 cents on the matter (not that anyone asked of course ), simply put: temporal storms ask a lot of the player and provide almost nothing in return. An average player will need cheese or t2 armor to fight it out directly, and it feels like 95% of the mobs don't drop anything (I realize it is closer to 70% by the numbers, but that's still way too high).

Personally, I generate my worlds with a large proportion of water and spend every storm on a raft exploring the edges of coasts.

I think it would be enough if the game flagged rooms as not eligible for spawning mobs even during storms, and made it so that they always drop some loot, even if it is still just a single flax fiber. That wouldn't make storms loot piñata events, but at least offset the cost of repairing the gambeson you have to wear to participate.

[PineReseen]

I've had a storm happen on my world not too long ago, and I think the wait time between the "A light temporal storm is approaching" message and the actual storm serves to support my point rather well.

So, when the message popped up, I was mining copper. I mined a few more blocks, then went to pick berries. Since the deposit was on a different island than the one I live on, I then sailed on my raft for like, a minute or two? After that, I picked more berries, and then I went to a forest and picked mushrooms. Then I finally got back to my house, but guess what? I had the time to stare at two bronze bars heating up to 1100 degrees on a forge, smith one bar into a scythe head, and the other into an axe head (after a minute of pondering), and then I even managed to gather three stacks of dry grass in a field with the scythe. And go home.

Now, I don't know if the time between that message and the actual storm shortens or if it is just the time between storms that does, but that is still a ridiculous amount of time you have to "prepare." In my opinion, temporal storms should be unexpected and short, a flash flood of sorts, so if you slack around during that period between the storm and the warning, there would be consequences. Otherwise the stress and adrenaline fades rather quickly by either knowing about it far in advance, or the storm just being too long and not nearly as dangerous.

The storms could be made more interesting by simply cutting out that warning time so it is way shorter, and reducing the length of the storm. But that isn't enough on its own, so I propose that the stability should play a bigger role in storms, so if you let it drop low, then you'd start losing health or something akin to that, so that you'd have to come out of your hiding hole and fight enemies. The stability drop should be fast enough (or the stability requirement during storms high enough) so that you have to engage in every storm, excluding perhaps the first one and maybe even the second one. Maybe if you want to give the player a sense of pride and accomplishment, then the temporal creature loot drop rates could be slightly increased.

Edited April 2 by PineReseen
Added a sense of pride and accomplishment

[QueenGeeBee]

Just to comment on your point, you already lose health at low stability.

[PineReseen]

5 minutes ago, QueenGeeBee said:

Just to comment on your point, you already lose health at low stability.

Yeah, but that's like, 10% stability left or something. I don't think the storms can actually reach that point from 100%. Maybe if the threshold was higher during storms, like maybe 30% or 40% and it drained faster, then that could actually be an issue that'd make you go out and fight something.

[Maelstrom]

6 hours ago, PineReseen said:

that is still a ridiculous amount of time you have to "prepare."

Unless you get that notification when you're a few thousand blocks from home.  I once was exploring for bauxite and wandered north a good distance when that announcement came and immediately started running home.  You can read the rest of the tale here. 

[Kiko]

All that you need to do to make storms fun would be to spawn enemies in a radius around the player rather than wherever. It's fun to stand on a wall or something and fight waves. It's not fun to have an enemy spawn on top of you. As of now the meta for dtorms is to build a pit and a space enemies can't spawn in, then poke drifters that fall in. 

[Broccoli Clock]

On 3/26/2026 at 11:05 AM, williams_482 said:

I believe they are referring to this interview: 

I've not watched it, I tend to avoid listening to devs, not just this game but all games. I presume @Mongster (*) did a decent job considering they've invested a fair bit of time into the game, so it's not that. It's an unwrapping of presents sort of thing. I also don't want my opinion to cloud how the development goes. I trust the devs (after all, why not, they've shown commitment over the decade) but I'd rather avoid "future spoilers" other than the roadmap. Current updates I will sort of follow but not d/l the RC, again I want to experience the fully implemented mechanism rather than do it piecemeal. 

In regard to the horror/storms stuff, as @Zane Mordien mentioned, from what I read this is more Saraty's inclusion than Tyrons, and that it's here to stay in some form or another. Despite not watching that vid, I expect that is the same message as it was months ago.

 

(* - I am going on the assumption the Mongster on this forum is the same Mongster/Mahjong Blonsky, apologies if you are different people)

Edited April 7 by Broccoli Clock

[Meezredeye]

Personally, I think they need a LOT of work. I don't think they're really all that fun to deal with even in the late game, and tbh the loot they provide isn't even worth the annoyance imo. I have always found it way easier to farm gears/Jonas parts in an underground setup, with the added bonus that you don't have to wait for a specific event. I feel like the best solution would be to increase the amount of loot enemies drop during storms, as a way of naturally encouraging players to fight out the storms rather than hide, (or at least encourage players to build a farm setup) and to make the even something the player has to actively choose to interact with. Instead of being forced into a temporal storm I think it should be something like the barrier between the normal world and the rust world thinning, allowing strong monsters to begin spawning on the surface for a time, without changing the normal spawn rules, so monsters still only spawn in low light areas around rifts. For a storm to actually begin the player would have to use some item to call the storm into full effect. Perhaps it's not a perfect solution, but I think it would at least be better than how they currently operate.

[Rainbow Fresh]

Excuse me for not reading all 12 pages of this thread and potentially echoing into the wind here. But to answer the initial question of

On 3/3/2026 at 6:06 AM, Tabulius said:

Does anyone actually like storms as they are now? I've seen people talk about how they like it mostly for the lore and atmosphere, but the actual mechanic? The novelty wears off quickly and they're too gamey and simply implemented to exhibit the horror they were intended to at least for me.

Yes and no, in the same way the topic is phrased - a "good idea, badly implemented". I like the concept and atmosphere of temporal storms enough to not turn them off entirely. Especially with the "Temporal Symphony" mod which, by all means, should be how the base game treats temporal storms; immersive, spooky, not an in-game chat SMS of "your wasted day is arriving in 6h". Wandering out of your house, ready to get to work for the day, having forgotten all about the last storm again just for the sky to turn red, the ground to shake and the distant bells to toll warning me "Nope, you're staying at home today." It's a nice atmospheric touch. It fits into the world and what little I know of the lore. Turning storms off entirely would just create an even bigger gap of "something is missing here".

But on the other hand, I hate their current implementation mechanically. As do I lament the lack of any mods that change this (can storms even be modded?). Aside from their atmospheric contribution and their success at making me not want to go outside and make any progress for the day because the hordes of hell are roaming my front porch, they don't contribute anything other than annoyance. Not because of the limiting they do, but because of how they limit and the lack of any sort of contrary value they offer. And I'm not talking about loot here; hell, for all I care a good implementation of storms, however that may eventually look, could spawn special monsters that don't drop anything at all as temporal storms should not be loot goblin events. But they need to offer some value for not just waiting them out.

First and foremost gripe: Spawning mechanics. Who the f- thought it's a good idea to remove any and all spawning restrictions allowing the highest tier of monsters to spawn 3 blocks besides you on your lit campfire cooking pot. This is stupid for so many reasons; I get it is probably to force storms to be a threat but actually they aren't. If you don't want to deal with them, you dig a 1x1x2 hole and cover it up until your screen stops being wobbly. No spawn restrictions or lack thereof circumvents this, unless mobs can literally spawn inside you, which would be even bigger bulls-. So instead of taking away the safety we earned by building and reinforcing our homes, acknowledge us earning safety and the possibility to do some work even during storms. Outside hell is unfolding, inside you are safe. Get caught outside, far away from home when the storm hits? Well, F. Good luck. It also makes no logical sense. Considering how frequent storms are, the game's entire lore would not make any sense. If monsters kept spawning during storms inside of your walls for no reason, the ancient civilization before us wouldn't have survived the age of nomads and there would be no ruins for us to find, let alone technology as advanced was whatever Mr. Jonas did.

Secondly, rewarding interaction. Current storms are pointless, ignoring loot. And nobody needs that many temporal gears, seeing as every other resource dropped by monsters is either obtainable by much nicer means or useless. So if you sit out the storm, you lose a day for no reason. If you decide to fight through the storm, you lose the day for no reason, on top of the durability of your armor and weapons, probably health and as such healing items and food for recovery. All for nothing to change. Just going outside in full steel plate armor doesn't allow you to actually do any work, with the barrage of endless high tier monsters hot on your heels. There is nothing notable gained from interacting with the storm. And better loot is not the solution, that's just creating severe imbalance in the ecosystem. I honestly don't know "the" solution for this problem, so I get why storm haven't been improved upon yet, probably. But some of the suggestions around could possibly help. Make storms rare but heavy events resulting in a special mini-boss. Fail to fight the boss and they continue as normal, slay this mighty foe and you get a reprieve from temporal storms for a while. Dude's already walking circles around you anyway. Or make storms more like 7D2D blood moon nights, where the monsters are all actively out to get you and you better prepare actual defenses. If at all, please, make them potentially breaking blocks or something a toggleable option. Or something more aking to my third point.

Three. What I can only assume to be content not yet implemented. When I encountered my first in-game temporal storm I was kinda disappointed. I saw the cool part in the game's trailer about the player walking around the twisted and warped castle-esque structure during the storm and thought this was the storm's doing - not just the storm's VFX on top of the cool building that had nothing to do with it. I saw mentions in the wiki about how low temporal stability brings you ever closer to the "Rust World", an entry that does not yet exist and currently low temporal stability just kills you. This could very well be the lacking link; temporal storms introduce us to whatever is on the other side of those space-time-rifts, the home of the rust, brought into our reality if even just temporary. Special structures and locations you can only explore during a storm, with high risk as if you stay on the other side when the storm ends, you die and your items are essentially lost. Something like that, maybe.