An inversion in monster distribution philosphy

[CastIronFabric]

3 hours ago, DarkGold said:

I was thinking about this. I have a couple of thoughts.

First thought... when I was at a traders and a bear climbed over the stakes to attack me, I found that quite distressing. It felt immersion breaking and like the stakes were not behaving as expected. So regarding their need to be functional, I would like more functionality than currently exists.

However, I do see the ability for players to abuse stakes if they did damage, for example. Make kill boxes, etc. What I expect from stakes is basically how I use fences right now; shivers can't climb them, you can't just jump over them. This is the functionality I would like to see implemented.

Second thought... I would like to see the option for palisades and stakes in the game, but I think they would mostly be an alternative aesthetic choice to fences, because wattle fences are just so cheap. We assume a palisade would be made of logs, not sticks, and is therefore going to be more resource intensive than wattle fences, so less immediately useful for the player to build when they are trying to set up a defensive perimeter in the early game. They are also just less functional; being able to see through a fence is very useful, a palisade blocks your vision. So while I like the cosmetic option for players who want to build a thematic defensive encampment, I don't see the game actually encouraging the choice of palisades over fences for any other reason.

My final impression is that monsters appear very unintelligent and incredibly hostile. Drifters will run at your door, but they can't figure out how to open it. They really want to kill you, but they just can't figure out how to get at you. They also seem to disperse when it's bright enough outside. Their priority goes from desperately trying and failing to murder you, to seeking less bright places to lurk? But if you happen to be somewhere they can attack you when it's bright outside, their bloodlust outweighs their discomfort and killing you becomes their number 1 priority again. So having a fence instead of a palisade seems less secure, but it's enough to deal with the low intelligence of your opponents. Palisades look sturdier, but we don't need to be stronger than the enemy, just smarter.

Edit: If the game made monsters make choices based on line of sight and made them able to climb fences (only if they saw you were on the other side), then palisades could become more useful, as blocking line of sight would be a meaningful advantage they had that wooden fences didn't (stone fences block line of sight too). But then palisades wouldn't be much better than a 2 high wall of dirt blocks either. I guess nothing could spawn on top of them? There could be something done with enemy logic here I feel, but it seems unlikely the game will go that route. It seems like that road leads to stakes on top of fences/walls, like the equivalent of modern razor wire.

I read the first sentence and I instantly remembered, for some reason, a real life time I saw a real black bear in the wild, or more specifically in a campground. A dog chased the bear up a tree, so, hostile? well black bears not so much. anyway, back to regular programing, that was just a side note.

Edited Sunday at 12:10 PM by CastIronFabric

[DarkGold]

37 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

A dog chased the bear up a tree, so, hostile? well black bears not so much.

I have heard the saying "If it's black, fight back; if it's brown, lie down". I've never seen either in real life, but my understanding is that an actual brown bear could be a real force to be reckoned with. A simple fence would do little to protect your bee hives from a hungry bear! So it's nice the game is a little more generous with how effective your fences are, rather than letting supernatural monsters or even hungry bears ignore them.

Edited Sunday at 12:47 PM by DarkGold
Correcting typos

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, DarkGold said:

Second thought... I would like to see the option for palisades and stakes in the game, but I think they would mostly be an alternative aesthetic choice to fences, because wattle fences are just so cheap. We assume a palisade would be made of logs, not sticks, and is therefore going to be more resource intensive than wattle fences, so less immediately useful for the player to build when they are trying to set up a defensive perimeter in the early game. They are also just less functional; being able to see through a fence is very useful, a palisade blocks your vision. So while I like the cosmetic option for players who want to build a thematic defensive encampment, I don't see the game actually encouraging the choice of palisades over fences for any other reason.

I think in this case, an easy enough fix is to just...let monsters(the ones that can climb) climb over fences, no matter how high, but not palisades. Fences can continue to keep out wildlife. In this fashion, fences are still useful for protecting farms and general aesthetics, but if the player actually intends to protect an area from serious threats then they'll need to invest in actual fortifications to keep the bad stuff out.

[ifoz]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I think in this case, an easy enough fix is to just...let monsters(the ones that can climb) climb over fences, no matter how high, but not palisades. Fences can continue to keep out wildlife. In this fashion, fences are still useful for protecting farms and general aesthetics, but if the player actually intends to protect an area from serious threats then they'll need to invest in actual fortifications to keep the bad stuff out.

I like this idea, and to add onto it wonder if it'd be interesting if palisades couldn't be placed on top of stone. Maybe not things like stone bricks since that might limit player freedom to build, but specifically raw and cracked rock.
I say this because that way the classic cheese of placing fences in caves to wall off monsters would require a bit more time to pull off, since suitable blocks would have to be placed first and then palisades.

[DarkGold]

5 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

let monsters(the ones that can climb) climb over fences, no matter how high, but not palisades.

I generally like this solution, as long as stakes also stop monsters climbing, so players have a few options. They can choose between stakes + fences/walls or palisades. The addition of some metal spikes (that behave like stakes, stop climbing) that can sit on top of fences/walls later in the game would be nice too, so you could do something like build a glass wall around your base (with all that quartz you have lying around) and just top it with spikes.

Edited Monday at 04:04 AM by DarkGold
Added clarification on how metal spikes would behave.

[pippo_]

I disabled rifts on the surface and temporal storms because surface enemies are super duper easy to fight and are more annoying then challenging or engaging. Maybe this will change with the combat overhaul but outside of caves, monsters are only going to be a threat in huge numbers (high or apocalyptic rift activity), and in that case I can just run into my house as there's not really an incentive to fight them outside of the occasional flax drop or even rarer temporal gear. Same deal for temporal storms, it was spooky the first time but is not engaging and unrewarding, so it turns into "sit in your house" similar to high rift activity. Side note, its kinda funny how the horrifying monsters are physiologically terrifying but a pushover to fight, while animals like elk, boar, wolves, and bears are far more mundane but much more threatening to fight (and much more rewarding).

[CastIronFabric]

On 7/26/2026 at 10:59 PM, DarkGold said:

I generally like this solution, as long as stakes also stop monsters climbing, so players have a few options. They can choose between stakes + fences/walls or palisades. The addition of some metal spikes (that behave like stakes, stop climbing) that can sit on top of fences/walls later in the game would be nice too, so you could do something like build a glass wall around your base (with all that quartz you have lying around) and just top it with spikes.

So a few things on that.

1. That basically instantly turns this game into a tower defense game, thus mechanics like spikes etc become a thing, then it turns into 7 days to die.

2. Your in your base, making some cool aesthetic furniture for your place, chiseling or perhaps thinking about how to make your next building. Then BAM not only did your lights not keep them away, nor your wall, so now you are fighting monsters. So are people who are chiseling and making beautiful buildings just playing the wrong game?

 

One of the main reasons why I personally play this game instead of 7 days to die now is because in 7 days to die I could never have a break long enough to make a cool building, it always 100% tower defense. I think I am not alone on that subject

Edited yesterday at 01:48 PM by CastIronFabric

[DarkGold]

2 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

So a few things on that.

1. That basically instantly turns this game into a tower defense game, thus mechanics like spikes etc become a thing, then it turns into 7 days to die.

2. Your in your base, making some cool aesthetic furniture for your place, chiseling or perhaps thinking about how to make your next building. Then BAM not only did your lights not keep them away, nor your wall, so now you are fighting monsters. So are people who are chiseling and making beautiful buildings just playing the wrong game?

The idea is to replace the functionality that fences currently offer (protection from shivers entering your base) with stakes and palisades. So the need for something to stop a shiver entering your base already exists, we are just changing which item you would build to address the issue. This doesn't make the game into a different type of game, as the need for and availability of an item to stop shivers is already present in the game.

A tower defense game also usually requires you to kill the enemy to stop them destroying your base, and defenses are designed to either soak damage while you deal with the threat, or actively damage the enemy. The suggestion does not propose either; it just proposes a different aesthetic for the walls the game already requires, that matches the aesthetic we see in structures that already exist in the world.

My suggestion to ensure the inclusion of stakes as an alternative option to palisades increases the aesthetic choices available to players; instead of only being able to build palisades to block shivers, the player would be able to build stakes and spikes (which functionally behave the same as stakes) to block shivers instead if they wanted to. LadyWYT proposes that palisades would offer both cover and the ability to stop climbers (like fences in the game currently do). Stakes and spikes would not offer as much cover, but could be paired with other blocks that do (walls/fences). If you just built fences or walls to provide cover, shivers would be able to climb them (like they can climb walls now), but if you put stakes or spikes at the base or on top, that would block their path.

Edited yesterday at 04:12 PM by DarkGold
Added note on difference to tower defence. Editing for improved clarity.

[CastIronFabric]

1 hour ago, DarkGold said:

The idea is to replace the functionality that fences currently offer (protection from shivers entering your base) with stakes and palisades. So the need for something to stop a shiver entering your base already exists, we are just changing which item you would build to address the issue. This doesn't make the game into a different type of game, as the need for and availability of an item to stop shivers is already present in the game.

A tower defense game also usually requires you to kill the enemy to stop them destroying your base, and defenses are designed to either soak damage while you deal with the threat, or actively damage the enemy. The suggestion does not propose either; it just proposes a different aesthetic for the walls the game already requires, that matches the aesthetic we see in structures that already exist in the world.

My suggestion to ensure the inclusion of stakes as an alternative option to palisades increases the aesthetic choices available to players; instead of only being able to build palisades to block shivers, the player would be able to build stakes and spikes (which functionally behave the same as stakes) to block shivers instead if they wanted to. LadyWYT proposes that palisades would offer both cover and the ability to stop climbers (like fences in the game currently do). Stakes and spikes would not offer as much cover, but could be paired with other blocks that do (walls/fences). If you just built fences or walls to provide cover, shivers would be able to climb them (like they can climb walls now), but if you put stakes or spikes at the base or on top, that would block their path.

so to be clear you do not think your suggestion is not moving the escalation ladder more toward tower defense mechanics than what already exists but instead is keeping the threat level and tower defense focus the same just changing the mechanics? correct?

Well on the idea itself I vote absolutely not. Palisades and spikes are ugly and I do not want them anywhere near my base for any reason at all whatsoever. Now if its an either or then that is fine I suppose but I personally have zero interest in spikes or palisades but to be fair I have no intention of not changing my settings away from passive anyway so there is that as well.

 

Edited yesterday at 04:47 PM by CastIronFabric

[DarkGold]

6 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

so to be clear you do not think your suggestion is moving the escalation ladder more toward tower defense mechanics than what already exists but instead is keeping the threat level the same just changing the mechanics? correct?

Correct.

To be clear, because the standard game mode with default settings has aggressive creatures wandering around on the surface, and predators will currently spawn in your base and kill your livestock without adequate precautions taken, the default standard game mode already encourages the player to build both lights (to stop spawning) and fences (to stop undesirable things wandering into your base).

So LadyWYT isn't suggesting big changes to default gameplay by pitching palisades instead of fences. They just look a little more in line with a defensive perimeter;

1. a strategy the game encourages with default settings
2. something we see at trader locations
3. something we might see in other places in the game, like tapestries

Instead of building fences (which don't necessarily look like they were made for defense) to keep things out, build palisades (or stakes or spikes, I add) to keep things out (because they look like they are made to keep things out).

Of course, not everyone wants to play the standard game mode with default settings. We're just discussing how the game could look when players don't want to set the animals and monsters to passive (so there is an element of danger to ignoring them), and what options the player has and could have to deal with threats.

Edited yesterday at 04:49 PM by DarkGold
Correcting typos

[CastIronFabric]

21 hours ago, DarkGold said:

Correct.

To be clear, because the standard game mode with default settings has aggressive creatures wandering around on the surface, and predators will currently spawn in your base and kill your livestock without adequate precautions taken, the default standard game mode already encourages the player to build both lights (to stop spawning) and fences (to stop undesirable things wandering into your base).

So LadyWYT isn't suggesting big changes to default gameplay by pitching palisades instead of fences. They just look a little more in line with a defensive perimeter;

1. a strategy the game encourages with default settings
2. something we see at trader locations
3. something we might see in other places in the game, like tapestries

Instead of building fences (which don't look made like they were made for defense) to keep things out, build palisades (or stakes or spikes, I add) to keep things out (because they look like they are made to keep things out).

Of course, not everyone wants to play the standard game mode with default settings. We're just discussing how the game could look when players don't want to set the animals and monsters to passive (so there is an element of danger to ignoring them), and what options the player has and could have to deal with threats.

 fair enough, for aesthetic reasons I completely reject this suggestion. 

Now, if its fences OR spikes then that seems fair enough

oh and by the way its not just because of aesthetics either, its also about moving the goal post ever so slowly toward tower defense. People start seeing spikes all the time they are bound to start making suggestions that escalate the base security game play which I want nothing to do with for this game. Basically its a gateway drug

EDIT: oh and I forgot to mention, I do not like the new trader buildings and very much do not like the spikes there for the very reason I gave in the sentence above

Edited 5 hours ago by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, DarkGold said:

So LadyWYT isn't suggesting big changes to default gameplay by pitching palisades instead of fences. They just look a little more in line with a defensive perimeter;

1. a strategy the game encourages with default settings
2. something we see at trader locations
3. something we might see in other places in the game, like tapestries

Yeah pretty much. Generally when I make suggestions I try to work within the framework of what's already in the game and what the overall direction seems to be, rather than make sweeping changes that would drastically alter what the game is. In regards to tower defense...I'm really not a fan of them, especially if the game is intended to offer the player a lot of aesthetic building choices. There's not much point in putting in the effort to make everything look nice when it's just going to get constantly destroyed, and in Vintage Story it can take a LOT of time just to collect all the materials needed for a project and then a LOT more time on top of that if chiseling is going to be involved.

[CastIronFabric]

10 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Yeah pretty much. Generally when I make suggestions I try to work within the framework of what's already in the game and what the overall direction seems to be, rather than make sweeping changes that would drastically alter what the game is. In regards to tower defense...I'm really not a fan of them, especially if the game is intended to offer the player a lot of aesthetic building choices. There's not much point in putting in the effort to make everything look nice when it's just going to get constantly destroyed, and in Vintage Story it can take a LOT of time just to collect all the materials needed for a project and then a LOT more time on top of that if chiseling is going to be involved.

So on the topic of the spikes in the traders, that is exactly the 'gateway drug' to tower defense I am talking about. The second I saw that on a trader building the firs thing I thought of was 'I hope this does not slowly move the goal post toward tower defense mechanics'. This is why I am not a fan of this idea even though the first iteration of this suggestion would not be any base defense changes, but it does seed the thought in many which is why I am against it other than its just ugly.