Cave Hermit Lifestyle: Needs Boughs

[abt79]

Clearly there has been some effort (underground wellsprings, the Credo, farmable shrooms, animals, trees) made to enable a fully subterranean lifestyle.

However, there are no bough-bearing trees underground. You need boughs for pickaxes, Dreamcatchers, and most importantly Saws.

There are three reasonable ways to add Boughs to the caves:

• add to existing tree/bush - ideally Witherstand for L1 access
• add new tree/bush with boughs - requires world reset
• add forageable bough - ideally lowish perexp requirement since bonesaws are so critical

So yeah do one of those.

[Barbamaus]

+1 to improve cave life!

The cave layers have so much potential, being 9 levels as big as the surface map. We need biomes, more creatures (maybe some neutral ones) and critters, resources (was high q clay or water ever found underground? Best I've found was probably 30ish a few worlds ago)... It would make for an interesting large update

[abt79]

String is also weirdly difficult to obtain underground.

The most plentiful and straightforward source is “Hide Straps” from the skins of various fauna, however you need String to dry the hides in the first place. The only string feasibly obtainable without first getting string from the surface is “Tough Roots” from tree stumps, but stumped trees only occur on levels 3(?) and below, certainly not on L1. Guess what material you need for the ropes to reach L2+ via minehole?

Caves need more sources of String. There are a few possibilities:

• 1. Add a forageable string. Could even make “Lamp Stalks” count as string since they’re otherwise pretty useless
• 2. Add “Tough Bark” to at least one underground tree. Moundtrees, perhaps? Ideally it would be a tree available on L1 but that would require a world reset to put a tree in L1 naturally.
• 3. Give Rats (either/both sizes) an uncommonly-dropped Rat Tail that works as string.

I’m making these suggestions not to add random mishmash content to caves but because I’m interested in a “Caves Only” type of challenge and these limitations are impossible (in the case of Boughs) and practically impossible (in the case of string, yes I know about Troll hairs) to overcome.

[Barbamaus]

If we really want a full cave-only kind of gamestyle, more things are needed.

Resources: you would need shallow water for clay. Right now it's extremely rare on level 1 caves, and rivers in caves are only deep water. Also real trees as mentioned above.
Animals: all animals you can tame right now are surface only. So either we need a tameable animal underground, or surface animals to have a chance to enter caves by themselves.
Farming: we have a few mushrooms now which is amazing. We'll need more weird stuff.
Safety: no underground base is safe if they don't claim the surface above them. I've lived in caves before, and it's pretty lame needing a village and palisade on top of you just so people can't dig into your claim. Easily solvable by making claims count as obstacles underneath a minehole. If the area below is already claimed (and u don't have perms), you can't build the minhole.
Travel: charterstones! Screw sunlight, they should work underground!
NPCs: More common NPCs. Just like you get random quests when you are on the surface, meeting new npcs, why not give a chance to have the same happen in caves? Last world I lived in a cave 24/7, and other than credos I never had the npc "whisper" to get quests while below ground.
Industry: other than everything fine-fiber related as mentioned before, an industry that is specifically fucked with underground villages is silk. Even assuming you catch the months outside, you can't feed them with anything found in caves.
Water well: weird noice to prohibit wells underground

and probably more stuff

[abt79]

devs potentially reading the forums Bump

[overtyped]

I think cave troggs should be able to live underground permanently if they so choose.

[Audiosmurf]

I think not everything needs to be the same. Cavechads having reasons to return aboveground is probably a good thing.

[terechgracz]

I think not everything needs to be the same. Cavechads having reasons to return aboveground is probably a good thing.

hearthling meat

[Vert]

who let the miner out to the surface it was a bad idea

[abt79]

Ive touched grass one too many times! Let me keep to my hole.