Minidungeon thoughts

I remember before the unstable update, the thing that kept me playing was searching new planets for the towns and dungeons and stuff, but now I find myself totally ignoring a lot of dungeons cause I know that there's absolutely nothing useful for me in them.

The apex jumping puzzles in particular, they always just have the 3 tech cards in them so I totally ignore the dungeon, since I really don't want to add to my pile of tech cards that I have no use for.
The sewer dungeons I ignore cause I can't recall ever seeing a chest spawn in there, and the novelty of fighting poop monsters has worn off for me.
I ignore the floran dungeons for the most part, cause if I'm lucky there'll be maybe two chests, but nothing special in them.
I do still go into the USCM, apex, and avian dungeons since they all have randomized containers in them, but even then it's mostly just pixels, torches, and bandages.

I'd like it if there were dungeon specific items like how alien/rust/crystal/flower/etc chests all have biome specific items, or just more interesting loot in general. I think I've played around 30 hours since the winter update, and aside from new clothes (which I find almost entirely on the surface in biome chests), I've stopped finding anything worth taking back to my ship at all.

All that said, though, it could just be that 120 hours has burned me out, so I dunno.

 

All the dungeons really need to be rethought, making them less totally useless.

The best weapons and armour are crafted using materials only obtained via mining, making fighting monsters and exploring a waste of time. If you had to purchase some materials, use monster drops and get materials from dungeons and minidungeons in order to make better armour (the best gear should be crafted with drops from end-game monsters and materials found in end-game dungeons) then the game would be much better.

For example: Hardened Monster Plates and Cell Materia do nothing. If they were needed in gear which is slightly better than the gear you can craft with ores alone, that would make fighting those monsters more worthwhile.
If you needed to go to an apex research facility and find some synthetic materials (which would be quite rare, depending on the type of facility) to make even better gear than with Hardened Monster Plates alone, looking for those facilities would be more worthwhile.
If you needed to look for some minidungeon on a planet orbiting a neutron star to fight some ancient evil sealed within a singularity to acquire the materials needed to craft the best armour in the game, then that would make bosses something more than the way to get to the next tier.

In short: The current gear you can craft with a tiers ores alone should be the worst you can get in that tier, with better gear being crafted with drops from tough monsters and materials found in dungeons and minidungeons, whilst the best armour is crafted with drops from end-game monsters and materials found in end-game dungeons.

 

I dunno, the Floran electroprod I prized from a Lvl10 Floran prison is still one of the most powerful weapons I've ever had, and the Avian machinegun is an amazing all-purpose blaster.

But yes, there does need to be a bit more prize to the dungeons. If not gear/tech, then at least a good haul of pixels and processed bars and stuff. Either spread out throughout the layout, or in a well-guarded "treasure room" deal.

A miniboss inside probably wouldn't hurt either.

 

The chests dotted around planets might as well not exist, though, with the junk they provide.

"Oh wow, a Crappy Dullhammer from a Fiery Star! Its almost as good as the sword I can craft with Iron!"

 

It's why I've tried, in my dungeons mod, to make all missions drop something interesting or unique which can only be obtained from that mission.

 

One of the things that kept me playing was searching for dungeons to collect blocks and decorations to take home and build my own cool stuff out of. I just encountered my first dungeon in unstable, and when I tried to collect things it wouldn't allow me. Is this not allowed in unstable, or am I doing something wrong? Like you said, at some point you're just not going to find anything else useful in it so.. what else is there to do?

 

Uhm, for armor that might be true, but the best weapons ingame is found in random chests and from boss monsters... The crafted stuff is good but its not even near "the best".

Explore higher risk worlds for higher level gear.

 

I have searched a lot of chests and killed a lot of monsters, and very rarely find anything better than what I can craft (no guns I have found are better than what the Novakids or Accelerator Table can create)

 

many (not all) dungeons now have a shield generator that prevents you from placing and removing blocks until it is disabled

 

Maybe they changed things in the new build (I'm still on Enraged Koala), but yeah, all the weapons I'm toting are found, and their damage output puts anything I can craft OR buy to shame. Has done at just about every tier, too. Crafting is an okay start, but the stuff you can obtain via dungeon-crawl, while rare, almost always win out.

Boss monster drops typically aren't better than what I can find in chests or from slain dungeon foes, though.

 

I have not played the stable recently, but the issue with randomly generated weapons might have gotten worse in unstable (not 100% sure.)

Really, "Grey" tier would be better as a rare-ish monster drop and ore-only crafting.

 

I found an awesome hammer on the first planet I went to in Sector X. It does 2399 damage and sets my enemies on fire. It was in a chest. Also, I found two rocket launchers. The first ate up all of my energy in a single shot and while it dished out high damage it was virtually useless; the second could shoot about four rockets before it had to have more energy and did 544 damage. These were both in surface chests on level 9 planets. I've only ever crafted one weapon: the 'Ape Sticker.'

 

My opinion is that there should be less and they should be more rewarding.

From what they keep saying in the news, the plan is "make digging MORE interesting" by "adding MORE", and honestly this prospect bores me even more.

Have few in world gen, so that their sight is welcome, then make them relatively big and with one guaranteed relatively useful thing, which makes their sight even more welcome. The ideal thing would be to have them unbreakable too, but the game seems to be going in the direction of leaving unbreakable things for missions only?

If the rest of the game is going to be organic and working, digging itself is going to be interesting for finding the ores you need, the atmosphere, the combat and finding yourself in hard situations. Mini-dungeons are only part of the issue with the digging in this game, fix the whole game and digging will likely improve by itself at least a bit without thinking of dungeons, which should be a plus.

 

I agree with you here, underground does not really need more dungeons, it needs more aesthetics than just "spikes", like small rocks\bones\mushrooms. And less chests. And more stuff (and more better stuff) in the chests.

Edit: Oh, and some dungeons have shield generators (I am hoping that they will redesign all dungeons to have shield generators.)

 

As dangerous as this is considering the...lack of maintenance, there should be a jamming device in a surface dungeon that prevents beam up, as well as a good reward like 1000 pixels or a rare/legendary weapon.

That way, there's incentive to actually bother with the dungeons. Of course my idea is rough, but still there should be some reason to care.