ClearSkies

There is a mod for trails, and I think you have the power to modify it to only create trails where a player constantly walks, that way, as you travel across the land, you begin to create a Trail Path much like how our actual trails got made in the long run.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

I like what I've seen with combat overhaul, but I think what folks are missing from a game dev perspective is a variety in the mobs uniqueness. Currently all the mobs are essentially: A. Get in your face and slap you. B. Throw stuff at you. C. Summon stuff to get in your face and slap you and or throw stuff at you. Combat Overhaul for me follows something more of a For Honor PVP style combat which we currently don't have that from the enemy AI. Not yet at least. Not knowing what the future plans are, I figure what is missing and could fit with the story very well are a few of the following ideas. A. A Forlorn/Blackguard Drifter. These fella's are actually armed, will utilize shields, and don't specifically go charging blindly. If groups exists, they would move as a unit, making them extremely dangerous for single player. How to mitigate this difficulty is for the player to have to have a Battle of Thermopylae by forcing the guards to come at them in a line to take them on one by one, or utilize weapons that would create a form of AOE damage, such as being able to use explosives more effectively. These enemy types would probably have a similar combat style of, let them swing, then take advantage of their opening, something similar to the N64 Zelda games and all. B. Knights - Oh yes, lets just imagine a fast speeding knight drifter upon his drifter steed! Now you have a reason to really collect the cobwebs to lay a trap that slows the Knights down. But after you take out their steed, its pretty much the Forlorn/Blackguard battle. C. Forlorn/Blackguard crossbowmen, archers. Again much like their fallen brothers of battle, these guys are more serious to take on than the bowtorn as they are equipped with weapons that are filth covered and utilize ammo much the same as the player. These drifters also will take you on with knives in close combat. D. The coup de grace! Knight Commanders. These fellows are the ones who pull the tactical strings of the army. Perhaps to compensate, a Commanders logic block (invisible) is created with them to help compute their actions and how they move across the battlefield. Once a Commander is killed, the block vanishes and the fallen knights will now act closer to drifters/bowtorn with little to no tactical action because the commander was all that held them together. To balance these few ideas (of many I have, but unfortunately couldn't implement myself as I am busing writing), the drops they have are all "Rust Tainted" Rust Taint is a modifier that not only makes the equipment these people have low grade, but if you put them on, you begin to grow a "Rust Taint" meter that on full, you are now infected and get negative debuffs. I figure this provides some ideas of dynamic and dangerous enemies that you would find over at abandoned forts and such, or might have a rare moment where 1 portal near you will spawn a troop of these fallen soldiers. Now what is the benefit of finally using say, temporal gears, broken to dust and mixed with water? Why cleaning the Taint of course! All this would provide a variety of challenges that give the players a bit more to handle and it gives us enemies that do a little more than slap your face and throw stuff.

Right so, its the strangest, and most time consuming fix, but I am using replace to slowly replace each ? block, which crashes my game but not the server and turns said brick into turn to be removed.

I've been testing it out on other things. So far, one of our bee skeps turned into said block, but instead of repairing, it is also a God Block. It defies our order!

So that's the thing, I grabbed their update, but it replaced the block with the id and generated numbers. I went ahead and brought back the old mod and that unfortunately did nothing to actually fix it. It's kinda odd unfortuantely, as even pulling it from the server to singleplayer does not let me remove it.

So odd time to post what's going on, but I have a ? block that was a modded item (Ape Lanterns) and the most unfortunate thing about it is that nothing I do can destroy it without crashing my client game to the desktop. Once I return, the object is still there, defying my god powers of destruction! I may have in fact, brought onto the world the rock that I couldn't lift/destroy. I did do the debug, the mapping debug, and try using the erase block tool etc etc. Anyone else run into this? It's quite mind boggling.