Hearth flood exploit

[JackTheRiot]

First of all, we are aware that this was partially our own fault. This doesn't make it less of an exploit.

Secondly, this may be a known exploit already; I personally don't browse the forums too much (as it can be seen by my post count), but looked and searched around and didn't see anything about it.

Thirdly, no one with murder was online at that moment.

So, on to the problem.
A certain guy got a hold of our hearth secret. While we are by no means the weakest guys, we still are somewhat newbies. So, a random person spawning in our village wouldn't be much of a problem by himself. However, destroying a hearth takes some time, and can only be done IF it is inside a claim, by the owner of that claim. And this is where the problems began. This guy logged out before we could do anything about him.

And then, a different, new guy spawned. He logged out.
And then another one.
And another. And so on and on.

Removing our own HS obviously didn't fix this; he would just make his own and spawn there.
What did he achieve with this? Flood our village with his hearth fires, "trolling" us. And yes, this problem could be easily solved by having murder; but not everyone does, and for some noobs (like us) this can be a HUGE problem.
Other exploits/bugs have a "reason" to be there. Cliffjumping, fast tanning, things like these, while also able to piss off people, have another function. This one, however, doesn't. It can pretty much only be used for "closing pools", random trolling.
I really don't know of any way to fix this. Allowing the owner of the claim to destroy things quickly? Or adding another restriction to the claim, to avoid people spawning in there? Or maybe, just maybe, having a limit to the amount of characters you can make, or some time needed between one character and the other?

[Arcanist]

I like the option of on the claim screen having a [Allow Spawning to Heart Secret]
and the claim owner can select yes/no

[aelaren]

Correct me if I am wrong, but if you remove their HFs and your place is covered by your claim, they cannot spawn there anymore, since they don`t have rights on claim. HFs are pretty easy to remove if you have pickaxe, even if your STR is subpar. Bear cape, bear talisman and wine help, too.

[JackTheRiot]

HFs are pretty easy to remove if you have pickaxe, even if your STR is subpar. Bear cape, bear talisman and wine help, too.

As I said, we are quite noobish. It still takes us a few hits to destroy a hearth. There is only one guy who can do it too; and if the hearth fire spawns outside of his claim, we are fucked. If, for whatever reason, we weren't online at that moment (or, at least, no one that could destroy a hearth fire in a reasonable amount of time), the flood would be unavoidable. And EVEN if we were able to destroy the HF quickly, creating a new character and spawning in your previous one's fire is probably faster, even if you aren't trying too hard.
When you realize what's happening, there may be already five or ten fires around you. And this is a single griefer doing it. Imagine what would happen if there were two, or even more.

[TeckXKnight]

Hearthsecrets should always be temporary or hearthfires should be kept indoors where others cannot spawn on them.

[JackTheRiot]

Hearthsecrets should always be temporary or hearthfires should be kept indoors where others cannot spawn on them.

While I agree with this, I don't see how any of these things correlates with our problem, or the exploit for that matter.

[aelaren]

As I said, we are quite noobish. It still takes us a few hits to destroy a hearth. There is only one guy who can do it too; and if the hearth fire spawns outside of his claim, we are fucked. If, for whatever reason, we weren't online at that moment (or, at least, no one that could destroy a hearth fire in a reasonable amount of time), the flood would be unavoidable. And EVEN if we were able to destroy the HF quickly, creating a new character and spawning in your previous one's fire is probably faster, even if you aren't trying too hard.
When you realize what's happening, there may be already five or ten fires around you. And this is a single griefer doing it. Imagine what would happen if there were two, or even more.

Ok, I got it. I just don`t really understand what your situation is atm.
Have you tried to surround infested area with tons of build site markers and maybe wait for the str guy to come online, go in and decontaminate them one by one, covering his tracks with build signs?

UPD Scratch that, it`s hypothetical problem anyways, one by one elimination and covering up the area is probably the best way.

[JackTheRiot]

Ok, I got it. I just don`t really understand what your situation is atm.
Have you tried to surround infested area with tons of build site markers and maybe wait for the str guy to come online, go in and decontaminate them one by one, covering his tracks with build signs?

UPD Scratch that, it`s hypothetical problem anyways, one by one elimination and covering up the area is probably the best way.

Our problem is fixed (in fact, it was almost fixed when I posted this thread). But the only reason we could solve it was because the troll got tired and/or bored, and just stopped spawning new characters, so we were able to destroy all hearth fires in the area.
However, this is an easy way to render a whole newb village useless (remember, if the HFs aren't in your claim, or you don't have vandalism, you can't destroy them). If you see a certain hermit house, and think that there aren't enough HFs around, you can easily spawn dozens of them in a few minutes; that player will probably have to look for a different area.

Again, our problem is fixed, and we took measures so that it doesn't happen again to us. But this is an easily exploitable problem, and we felt the need to report it.

[Tonkyhonk]

devs are already aware of it, if that is your only concern.

[JackTheRiot]

if that is your only concern.

To be honest, yes. If need be, this thread may be closed; its original purpose was to report a problem (and maybe find a permanent fix to it), not to help us personally to solve it on our own, which we already did anyway.