Enemies Spawning Inside Valid Rooms

[BoringKeys]

This is an image inside a highlighted, valid multi-story "room." Some blocks that aren't highlighted are able to spawn enemies if there is room above them. There are two floors above the pictured floor with slab floors. Both commonly spawn enemies even during low rift activity. I think it would be an improvement if the game was ( potentially barring special circumstances) completely unable to spawn enemies inside valid rooms. At the very least, it should consider slabs and stairs as non-spawning like full blocks. Shouldn't we be able to have stairs between floors inside a valid room without inviting enemies into our buildings?

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, BoringKeys said:

This is an image inside a highlighted, valid multi-story "room." Some blocks that aren't highlighted are able to spawn enemies if there is room above them. There are two floors above the pictured floor with slab floors. Both commonly spawn enemies even during low rift activity.

Welcome to the forums! Is an oil lamp the only light source? If so, that is probably the reason that enemies are able to spawn. Oil lamps are useful for lighting up areas enough to see what's there, but aren't bright enough to really stop monster spawns.

 

1 hour ago, BoringKeys said:

I think it would be an improvement if the game was ( potentially barring special circumstances) completely unable to spawn enemies inside valid rooms. At the very least, it should consider slabs and stairs as non-spawning like full blocks. Shouldn't we be able to have stairs between floors inside a valid room without inviting enemies into our buildings?

Realistically, monsters should smash their way through obstacles to get to their target. However, it's not ideal to have monsters tear up chiselwork that likely took the player hours to build, and many players tend to get frustrated at having their stuff dismantled in general. 

As for preventing all spawns on blocks like stairs and slabs...all that really results in is players using lots of those blocks everywhere in order to stop spawns. Chiseled blocks would also need to be taken into account, since slabs/stairs can't be chiseled but full blocks can be chiseled down to function as slabs/stairs. Likewise, it gets a little messy by banning monster spawns from spaces that qualify as rooms, since the space calculations are pretty generous and at that point the player can essentially just build everything into rooms, greenhouses, or cellars and never have to deal with monsters.

The better solution to me would be to add some kind of "safe zone" around the player that stops monsters from spawning within that radius. It'd be a big enough radius that the player could enter a room, close the door, and continue working through the night or a temporal storm without worrying about getting bothered by monsters, without letting them cheese the mechanics entirely. Likewise, if the player chose to go out and fight monsters in a storm or near a rift, they don't have to worry about a monster spawning on top of them, but will still need to keep their guard up to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Edited Wednesday at 11:16 PM by LadyWYT
forgot the welcome

[DeanF]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

The better solution to me would be to add some kind of "safe zone" around the player that stops monsters from spawning within that radius. It'd be a big enough radius that the player could enter a room, close the door, and continue working through the night or a temporal storm without worrying about getting bothered by monsters, without letting them cheese the mechanics entirely. Likewise, if the player chose to go out and fight monsters in a storm or near a rift, they don't have to worry about a monster spawning on top of them, but will still need to keep their guard up to avoid getting overwhelmed.

I endorse this.  I seem to regularly have drifters spawn literally on the block right next to me during temporal storms.  Annoying.

[BoringKeys]

Thanks for the welcome!

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Is an oil lamp the only light source?

No, there is a lantern just outside the double doors on the left. It's possible the monsters are spawning outside of the lantern's range. I'm working on getting more. I noticed the handbook, in the Temporal Stability guide, says that torchlight deters rift appearances, possibly implying that only torches have this effect. Do all light sources prevent rifts to different degrees? 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

As for preventing all spawns on blocks like stairs and slabs...all that really results in is players using lots of those blocks everywhere in order to stop spawns.

I guess I'm lacking understanding of the spawning mechanism. I only mean the spawn rules for the stairs and slabs in the image should be the same as the green highlighted floor. I thought the highlighted blocks indoors meant they had reduced or disabled monster spawning. Seems like I need to spend more time in the wiki. Thanks!

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, BoringKeys said:

Do all light sources prevent rifts to different degrees? 

Kind of but not really. Bright lights help deter spawns of rifts and monsters, but the only way to stop rift spawns for certain is to build and maintain a rift ward. Otherwise rifts tend to pop up wherever they please, though they don't tend to spawn inside structures.

As for bright light stopping monster spawns...it does help, but it's not completely foolproof either. I think lanterns placed by the player will stop it, but monsters can also spawn in broad daylight, albeit at a much lower frequency. So mileage varies...

21 minutes ago, BoringKeys said:

I guess I'm lacking understanding of the spawning mechanism. I only mean the spawn rules for the stairs and slabs in the image should be the same as the green highlighted floor. I thought the highlighted blocks indoors meant they had reduced or disabled monster spawning. Seems like I need to spend more time in the wiki. Thanks!

I'm pretty sure the green area in the screenshot is only showing that the space qualifies as a room, unless I'm mistaken and that's supposed to be showing where monsters can't spawn. I'm a little fuzzy on those particular console commands. The point I was trying to note though, is that if stairs and slabs specifically can stop monsters from spawning, then players will take advantage of that feature and use those blocks to mobproof areas in ways that aren't intended. There was a similar thing that happened with rocks in a previous version, in which monsters couldn't spawn on blocks containing rocks, so players would scatter rocks everywhere as a cheap way to stop all monster spawns.

[Rainbow Fresh]

8 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The better solution to me would be to add some kind of "safe zone" around the player that stops monsters from spawning within that radius. It'd be a big enough radius that the player could enter a room, close the door, and continue working through the night or a temporal storm without worrying about getting bothered by monsters, without letting them cheese the mechanics entirely. Likewise, if the player chose to go out and fight monsters in a storm or near a rift, they don't have to worry about a monster spawning on top of them, but will still need to keep their guard up to avoid getting overwhelmed.

I agree there should be an unconstestable safe-zone around the player if only to avoid unavoidable insta-damage from unlucky spawns specifically during temporal storms - but I also still second the idea of just making valid rooms spawn proof. In general, even during temporal storms. Building a room is harder and more limited than just spawn-proofing an entire area with un-spawnable blocks (as one could do in older versions with slabs or pebbles) and is a more conscious effort. Pair that with a system that tracks native cave areas so one can't just place down occasional walls in a cave to make it spawn-proof rooms while a house's cellar remains safe and it makes for a rewarding system of "earned safety". If one want's to "cheese" monster spawning in total they'd be much better and easier off turning off monsters entirely while at the same time allowing the player to earn a save space by building a home. And since many if not most players value asthetics in these kinds of games, making your entire base just "rooms" is usually a bad idea, and the limited room size makes impressive builds harder to begin with so only some select options are actually save spaces.