DrManatee

Yep you're right, I just didn't keep trying because I got the warning about claim restrictions I agree it's not hard to leave the area to light torches, but it is immersion breaking and tedious. I didn't forget a light source, I just brought a lantern which wasn't the right one to light the furnace.

Ah yep you're right, although I will say it's strange that you have to ignore the popup saying you can't do it and try again lol

But you can't light the boiler with a firestarter (I tested it), so I'm a bit confused on what you mean

It's a claimed area so you can't place the torch down, can you light it with the firestarter without it being placed?

You can already light a torch by right clicking an oil lamp, so I figured you should be able to do the same thing while holding them both. And yeah I definitely feel you on the protected areas issue, I think breaking or placing blocks should probably be protected, but not picking up or shift-clicking certain items.

The light isn't the issue, in fact I was using a lantern! I was specifically talking about the boiler in the engineering room of the first story dungeon. It requires a torch to activate, so if you are using another light source like a lantern, you have no way of activating the boiler.

(Based on discussion in a previous post) There is a story dungeon which requires you to activate a piece of machinery with a torch. If you're using a different light source like an oil lamp, it's impossible to progress without backtracking because the block-placing protection prevents every method of lighting a torch. If torches are going to be required in story areas, I think there should be ways to light them without placing them down. My idea is that if you hold a fire source like a candle or an oil lamp in your off-hand, you can shift-click with the torch in your main hand to light it.

Ah yeah I forgot about firestarters since I haven't used them since I got one of those torch holders haha. Did some testing though and it can actually only be lit with a torch. My problem is that even though it's easy to bring torches with you, if you don't know you'll need them and bring an alternate light source then there's no way to correct that mistake without backtracking all the way to non-claimed territory to place a torch on the ground and light it. It just feels less like problem solving and more like being punished for not reading a wiki beforehand. I have been thinking of a solution to this (and I'll probably make this into its own post), but what if you could light an extinguished torch by holding a fire source in your off-hand and shift clicking with a torch? Edit: like an oil lamp, candle, lamp, etc

Yeah that was my idea, for dungeons to have slightly different rules since the player will be in them for a lot longer and are incentivized to loot stuff. For traders keep it as-is but dungeons allow shift-clicking stuff onto the ground that's not stackable (peat, ingots, etc) to prevent cheesy barricades or tower strats. Wanted to revisit this since I did some in-game testing. Can the boiler in the engineering room be activated without a flaming torch? I don't see how to get a torch on fire without bringing one into the dungeon. The candle doesn't work and you can't place an extinguished torch into a torch holder.

To be honest I played in a server with latency issues, and it turns out I can actually place items in the vessels, lockboxes and display cases when I'm not lagging. Should have tested in singleplayer first, oops! I suppose my only remaining issue is with the book shelves and bowls then. Went back and tested this one too and it turns out that all items have hitboxes when shift-clicked, even bowls! (even though it's very shallow) So it wouldn't be as easy as I thought to categorize items as with/without hitboxes. Maybe it's as simple as allowing shift-clicking but not the infinitely stackable items like firewood, peat, ingots etc to prevent them from being used as blockades or step-ups. Thank you for linking me to this thread, it's definitely got some interesting ideas. I'm more in the camp that the spawn-protection is mostly fine besides being unable to place things back where you found them. That's the only thing that took me out of the immersion. Yeah this is definitely a valid concern, and not just from a coding perspective but also a clarity perspective. If there are a bunch of exceptions to what can and cant be placed then I can imagine it would be confusing for players.

Gotcha, thanks for the tip! I figured it was likely I was just being dense and missed the puzzle haha I'll remove that section now so that it doesn't derail the topic of the post

I recently beat the first story dungeon, and it was very atmospheric and interesting, great job on that! The block-placing protection needs a bit of work though, it made inventory management a nightmare in a non-immersive way. Being unable to break or place solid blocks makes sense, but if an item doesn't have a hitbox I should be able to place it down. Let me place items in display cases and bookshelves or shift-click non-solid items like bowls onto the ground. I wanted to read the lore books and inspect the doohickeys but I was discouraged from doing that because I knew it would either clog my inventory or I'd have to throw them on the ground to despawn. There was so many cool things to grab like the bird statue and the glider schematic that my inventory got filled really quick!