Quite frankly, this would be most annoying. Play that out in your mind and you see what I mean.
If you want some bad things to happen in certain caves, these need either a longer buildup time or be triggered by the player himself.
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Eh. Minecraft does this with hostile mob spawners that you can destroy/neutralize, and of course the light vs. darkness spawning mechanic.
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Iām talking about an event that would eventually call for some sort of evil creatures that will attack you in one day because you defiled their sacred cave.
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You could always close it off, but mega is right. This would be similar to minecraft caves. The game already has a spawn timer for mobs on the main map. this would be the same thing but adding it to cave systems.
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Iād like to see natural caves, which contain enemy camps at world generation. The player knows that any natural cave, especially the very large and dark ones, could contain enemies; so exploring those caves is something you have to prepare for. The monster camps inside those caves wonāt sent out attackers, unless the player does something to provoke them.
I like the idea of lighting up caves to keep monsters away, though.
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Sure, Iād love to see this but for now the game desperately needs āfixing/tidying upā, like the bugs, performance, and building UI.
I think it would be great if caves are major discoveries. They are sources of unique material/items but at the same time very dangerous. Make mobs spawn in caves (there could be monster nodes that you need to destroy to stop them from spawning) and attack your town!
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Just imagine that in your head.
-You give the order to dig for resources.
-Your combat team is right now healing up and/or far away doing what a soldier does.
-You are busy queueing orders and such, suddenly a message that invaders are approaching.
-You click to zoom in where the monsters are. you look onto a mountain cause you donāt have xray vision on.
-You gotta pause, turn xray on, call a full town alert to make the miners run off (if they survive long enough that is).
-You send your combat team to the location.
-A group of goblins or golems are making their way to your town.
Ends up in mostly annoying situations, especially since miners are civilians.
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It could indeed become annoying as you suggested. How if a message pops up whenever hearthlings are close to a body of a cave. It could say that āYour hearthlings sense something unsettling nearby.ā, something like when you colonists are near an ancient room in Rimworld. In Minecraft, you as the player knows when a cave is nearby by the sounds it emits (from zombies, skeletons, and wind inside the cave).
That is way too complicated and since you wouldnāt know where the cave is, there is a major risk of false alerts to the point where you are annoyed cause no matter where you dig, you always get the message.
Why donāt you think that the event should be announced when you breach into a cave and the effects took place after 24 hours or only when the player interacts manually with things in the cave? Whats wrong with that?
The main reason Iād want to see caves sooner is so thereās an addressing of the slice viewing toolsā¦
Having a more ājustifiedā location for golems to come from wouldnāt hurt, either, as would a more interesting way to go looking for ore veins than just quarrying a massive pit / erasing the nearest convenient mountain.
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I see what you mean, but the cave doesnāt have to be a brude of monsters
it could be mostly empty(with more rich ore perhaps), and having some sweet-spots where there are precious resources which are either guarded by some sort of guardian or blocked by rubble or monsters(or bolth), those sweet-spots should obviously be located close to the center of the terrain(like the center of a mountain) to avoid immediate aggro from whatever is there when the cave is first discovered, so the game has time to notify the player(saying something like āA Cave has been discovered!!ā) when the cave is discovered(and actually visible or connected)
The mining region inside the cave should be automatically cancled after discovery so the hearthlings donāt run into the cave to mine things out
if we can do this, the cave will be a risk factor without being a large annoyance, bacause this means discovering a cave doesnāt mean youāll have to deal with whatever is inside of it, in fact youāll have more potent ore inside, so thatās a big benifit to discover, and you can chose to go inside and deal with the monsters to get the precious resources deep inside the cave when yoh want to, making a risk factor that you can chose to take
Sending youre troops inside will mean fighting an enemy You donāt know how strong is, and leaving the rest of your town guarded lesser while they fight, but you can get precious resources if you succeed, making a good reward and a risk that might be worth taking(especially if you know what youāre getting, like seeing an exposed crystal deposit)
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Oh, I was imagining that such caves would be exposed to the surface ā when I say ānaturallyā, I mean that in the sense of naturally exposed. How would the monsters get in there if thereās no connection? Some tunneling enemies maybe, or undead who dig the wrong way out of their graveā¦ but Iām thinking that cave-dwelling monsters should be more like trolls, ogres, bears, maybe yetis in the colder maps, and bats or giant scorpions in the desertā¦
Digging into pockets of enemies would be a pain, sure. But moreover, it would look weird and break the immersion. To me, thatās far worse than the annoyance of having to go rescue some minersā¦
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Hope you red my reply, how do you think about my idea?
Also you could say there use to be an entrance, but it collapsed!
Trapping anything inside of it including some ancient unlucky Hearthlings(whom are now zombies and skeletons)
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I do like the idea of deeper caves having more ore and crystals and gems and so on; however I feel like adding work-arounds for the initial issue of hearthlings uncovering a monster source will just add more issues. For example, cancelling any mining order which crosses paths with a cave might cancel the intricately laid plans for a series of tunnels all linked together. Or, worse still, it might lead to some hearthlings getting trapped in a half-dug-out tunnel, which players may not realise has happened until itās far too late to save them (after all, who isnāt going to immediately turn their focus to the new cave?)
Iām a big proponent of the idea that the player should be given tools to look ahead with, and then left to succeed or fail based upon how they use (or ignore) those tools. So, stumbling across a cave while mining and then having to go straight to dealing with it doesnāt appeal to my sense of narrative. Yes, the idea of digging too greedily and too deep is a great narrative; however to me that would be digging below the normal depth of the world (so, you can order a special kind of mining on the lowest level, and that opens up mini-dungeons below the normal undergroundā¦ call them the Nether World, or just the places much deeper than any sane person would normally dig).
I think that if caves are there, they should be evident before you even start mining. Some kind of clue ā whether itās the shape of the terrain, or a Dwarf dropping by your town and letting you know there are probably monster-infested caves below a set level, or even having your Geomancer seek for the caves before you start digging.
That latter is my preferred option ā some shallow caves exposed to the surface, and deeper underground there could be some Minecraft styled caves with water and lava pools, mineral veins, rare crystals and so on; plus abandoned dungeons or mines or Dwarf holds or crypts orā¦ you get the idea; but whatever is down there you can have your Geomancer sound it out to show the outlines.
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Iām glad this is such a topic of discussion. I am surprised by the number of voters, I hope the team sees this and gets good feedback.
Right now caves and dungeons asap has the high voting percentage with 51 %
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Iām of two minds on caves and dungeons and the like.
On the one hand, thereās my experience in Minecraft- thereās always caves. Everywhere. Long, snaking tunnels that mean itās harder to dig to bedrock and not hit a cave than to find one. Thereās enemies all over, and it can destroy any plans you may have for that mine- possibly everything above too, depending. Sure, itās an easier way to find ore, but I find it to be more painful than helpful most of the time.
On the other hand, Stonehearth isnāt nearly so big on throwing tons of monsters at you, and itād be interesting to see some underground encounters. I like the idea of there being these pocket caves and even a more developed dungeon layout as an optional encounter or source of raiding parties. After all, if Stonehearth is meant to be something akin to the cities in Zelda or Secret of Mana, there should be something out there nearby for the heroes to venture into, right?
So hereās what I would like to see, albeit with full knowledge it isnāt likely to be implemented as such:
Random small āpocket cavesā that are no bigger than a goblin settlement, with a distinct entrance (Iām thinking large flat stones forming a doorway, possibly with wall torches) where random encounters can spawn. These show up only in mountainsides (i.e., solid rock) rather than on hills. The monsters inside could be the same as normal ones or could be new (mushroom giants, slime creatures, monstrous cave crawfish) or have overlap between the two. You could throw in veins of ore or other rewards for fighting there. Say, glowing mushrooms that act like lanterns and can be moved, or the odd chest full of random items (like mid-tier weapons and armor or coins- standard adventuring loot).
Dungeons, meanwhile, should be something separate and special. They should have visible representation on the world seed map, so you can decide whether you want to include them in your game map. A small tower or building or something that says, āHere there be monsters,ā with all the associated risks.
You can send a group in to explore and fight, with a procedurally-generated layout of two or more floors of rooms, with monsters, treasure, and traps to deal with. Every in-game day, a room repopulates; the deepest rooms get higher priority, with two rooms identically far from the entrance either choosing randomly or the one thatās been empty the longest going first. This basically means you can never truly āfinishā a dungeon, itās always there and dangerous to venture into (though nothing exits).
Obviously this would be a large structure underground, taking up a big portion of the map, which would be why making it clear where they are when picking your starting location is an important aspect- you can decide if you want to put your settlement near one, and how close. You could build around the entrance, making it a major feature of the town (at the expense of mining for ore) or you could set up at a distance, forcing would-be heroes to trek through the wilderness to get to it (letting you mine safely near your town but meaning your adventuring parties are more likely to get hungry or tired before they get too deep).
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I see, but normaly, mining plots never trap a hearthling just because the mining stops at some point, they usually get their way out while they get their way in, and intricate mining designs are likely already ruined if you find such caves, which is a problem on itās own and one to be addressed another way
One of those ways may be having some sort of explosives or the geomancer,
After you discover the cave, the mining plot will, instead, pause, and you can still chose to continue on the mining, but to compensate for the fact that the design is ruined, you could order the geomancer or use explosives to āCollapsā the cave, restoring the full mountain terrain, and letting your designs be made since the terrain is now as you expected, but the geomancer and explosives should be late-game, so you will have to wait, but it also means you canāt just get rid of caves immediately, giving time to maybe consider exploring the cave before collapsing it
Iām afraid you misunderstood my meaning of ācaves that have monsters and treasure deeper insideā
What i ment is that thereās a Single Large cave, that may take over a whole mountain layer, and that cave is mostly empty near the edges with some ore deposits or simple loot (no monsters) so the mosters donāt attack immediately
And inside the cave(which you can see) deep inside(usually the center) you can see some monsters guarding precious resources or treasure, that you have to get rid of to get the said treasure, for one, the monsters guarding will not attack anyone until you agro them, so you can still mine and gather resources that are away from the monsters, and you can chose to send in some troops to deal with the monsters to get whatever they guard
While i do agree that the player should have some means of detecting caves before they mine them out, it may break the immersion since itāll be odd to be able to āscannā or something,
One way would just letting the player āSeeā all the caves using slice tool, just letting them know how it looks and where it is fromt he beginning, and youāll have to explore inside of it/gain vision of it in order to see whatās actually inside of the cave, like treasure or monsters alike, maybe just making a breach into it cave will reveal whateverās inside of it, this will be usefull since they donāt have to hide the cave until you find it, and it will help players avoid making mining plots that may overlap and get ruined my the cave, since you an already see where it is
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Maybe the option to turn caves on or off. Im not sure how this would be done, maybe as a difficulty option. However, I think this should definitely be a feature, especially if dwarfs are released.
Also loving the @Teleros reference.
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Iām not confident thereās a dire need to caves right now, but Iād certainly like to see explorable caves and dungeons. Dangerous monsters and more loot!
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