Veteran Player Thoughts

[bojo2736 1016]

I bought this game the day it released on steam.  I have over 3700 hours into the game.  I have bought and given so many copies of the game, I don't even remember how many.  Because of frustrations with the game, I stepped away from it.  I was thinking of uninstalling it, but before I did, I wanted to check it out one more time.  So I have played it around 30 hours or so in the last couple of weeks.

Things I like:

I really like that you create blocks as you need them, and don't have to make them, then use them.  I always ended up with chests full of odds and ends pieces.  Also, it frees up the very limited storage and inventory slots that we have. 

I love that we can now lock items so they can't be picked up. This is a huge improvement.  

Overall this is the best building game I have found, and I have alot of them.  The only other game that comes close in terms of building, is 7 Days to Die.  The mechanics of both are very different, but both are unique and well thought out. 

This game is beautiful. I love the art style, and there is just nothing like a nice sunset on the beach.  

I like the mining nodes.  I love that I don't have to tear up the islands to get items.  I don't like that things are so rare, I think it's still not balanced.   I understand that it was really OP before.  I think it has been taken just a bit too far the other direction.  I do like that you have made them so that there is a reason to sail and explore again.  One of the things that frustrated me and why I left was that sailing was pointless.  You could literally see every biome from the beach of the starter island.  Now sailing has a reason.  It would be useful to have some sort of indication as to where various ores are. I shouldn't have to go to the wiki to find coal.

You have brought back some of the original music. Thank you. 

I do like that I can summon my horse from anywhere.  

 

 

Things I would like to see:

This is  a game about exploration.  It encourages you to get out and find fun things in the world. Yay!  Inventory and storage is too small.  I hate that it comes down to inventory management.  How about encouraging crafting by making larger backpacks. 

I could have sworn we had armor stands.  If they still exist, I can't find them.  The game now has the ability to make many kinds of armor and clothing, this is great!  I want to be able to display them.   

I would like to see what is possible to craft.  I am fine with being unable to build them, and needing to find them, or learn them in order to make them.  But I want to be able to see what I can make.  It helps to know what items I need to collect and keep (because of limited storage issues.)

Ylands still needs a better way to organize building shapes that you use.  Some way to favorite, or at least put the recently used / most frequently used at the top.  Having to search for a block I just used is infuriating. The devs have put so much thought into building, this is still a glaring problem.  In fact being able to organize anything is the game is still a huge problem. 

Ylands is still the great carpal tunnel simulator.  Grinding for supplies is understandable. It's part of every building / crafting game.  Please don't make me click a billion times to cut down a tree and then another billion times to pick up the items.  It's not fun.  Most other games just put stuff in your inventory as you harvest it.  Ylands does this with harvesting fruits and veggies.  

Lighting is much better, but still problematic.  We need more lighting options.  I use light and shadow as part of my build designs in most games.  Ylands is either  really dim or surface of the sun.  If you get a few workstations going, it's just too bright.

Food is still a problem.  Not getting it. That is pretty easy.  But having to eat every few minutes. OMG.   When I am building I don't want to have to stop every few minutes to eat.  I get it, it's survival. But if thats the issue, then why is thirst not a need. Why isn't sleep not a need?  I'm not suggesting that adding those things would make the game better (please don't add them.) But the needing to eat so often isn't fun, and it's immersion breaking.  I do like that the different foods give different buffs. It gives you a reason to try different recipes.

I would like to be able to craft a trash can.  Since dropped items are forever, I don't want a life long commitment to the half eaten leaf that I picked up somewhere. And I don't want to have to take up an inventory  space just so I don't have to look at it any more.  

Please make bark have a reason.  I can only craft just so many bark armors. At least the birch bark has a reason, for making white dye.  Why can't I use bark to fuel fires etc.  

We need a way to paint that isn't walled behind ylandium and skill level.   I know there used to be a paint brush, I'm pretty sure it still exists in the files and is accessible in the editor.  So let us craft a paintbrush and be able to use it. It would be slower and more tedious, so there would be reason to try to get the paint gun.  But again, so much thought has gone into the building options that we have, please make this a thing.  

We need to be able to craft cheap scaffolding.  It is really hard to build anything when you don't have the prop.  And the prop is walled behind ylandium. 

Back to the discussion of inventory problems.  Can we please craft saddles or something so that we can put things on our horse to carry?  And also a way to display crafted saddles and tack. 

And speaking of horses.  If we can be killed while riding our horse, we need a way to defend ourselves while riding a horse.  We have been asking for this since forever. Other games have this, so it's a thing.

Craftable vendors.  Neat idea.  There needs to be some way that indicates which way they will be facing.  Or have them be able to be moved.

 

To be filed under WTF:

Killing cave monsters, at least in tropical, doesn't get you anything most of the time.  Once in a while I have gotten a metal piece or a little gold.  But mostly , they don't drop anything.  They used to drop ylandium.  I understand that the game is being developed to make progression necessary.  So having them not drop ylandium on tropical, or even temperate, maybe makes sense.  But to have there be no reason to clear a cave other than to get crystals makes no sense.  

I killed a night monster on a tundra biome, and got nothing.  Not even a rock.  I do understand that they were OP and farming them for ylandium was too easy.  But to get nothing when I spent arrows?  At least give me my arrows back.  There should be a reason to kill them, or why even have them there?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by bojo2736
spelling

[BinarySemaphore 31]

I only have 500-so hours in the game, but also been around since the early days.  Glad to see you came back to give it another try 😀

In terms of swinging to much the other way from resources being everywhere, I also agree.
I'm hopeful it's just part of the natural process of settling in to find a sweet balanced spot for the devs and players. I think it'd be great to increase resource abundance in caves as a good compromise. It's already higher than surface rates, but the deeper you go or more mutants there are should scale the resource reward IMO.

I also hope to see some of the things you mentioned:

• Backpacks - Yes yes yes please!
• Organized building blocks could definitely still be improved and favoriting/pinning crafting recipes would be so helpful!
• An improvement to combat is coming, but I too hope for more. Like if it played like Zelda or something and combat from mounts would be great!
• Storing on mounts is in talks, but they're not sure about the implementation (see here for more details https://ylands.com/community/topic/32278-community-corner-4/?tab=comments#comment-112690)

Some tips since you've been away for a while:

• Resources like coal are shown on the world map screen when you hover over regions.
• Click and hold to pick up same items within a radius of your character. Improved axes/picks or different tools like saws can reduce clicking or increase resource return.
• I used to jump into creative or the editor (you can filter entities that have crafting recipes) to check for items I didn't have. Still do to when testing some things out (ex: the new resource packages and if breaking them would return all the resources). I believe the reason the devs have avoided showing all recipes in adventure/exploration mode is to not overwhelm new players. I highly recommend building in those modes since you don't like the hunger. The editor is more flexible and blueprints are super easy now. I know it has a learning curve, but definitely worth spending some time in. I also know the editor is less immersive, but I feel those tools are best left out of adventure mode anyway.
• For stackable items you can quickly destroy items from your inventory's inspector (the eye icon). Not so much the case if you make or find a bunch of non-stackable items - needs some work still.
• For now keep the bark for making charcoal and gunpowder. Just make sure the bark is more top left than other wood stuff you plan to keep. Crafting/workstations pull from left to right and top to bottom.
• There is a dyeing stand for early painting, but a paintbrush would be good.
  • Workaround for now: Click on a building block in the crafting menu, then click inspect (eye icon again). Hold CTRL when you click "craft" in that inspect window to take a number of those blocks into your inventory. You can split and dye stacks of those blocks as needed prior to placing them.
• For hard to reach areas while building, check out https://ylands.fandom.com/wiki/Building_Plans

Edited March 9, 2023 by BinarySemaphore
Added instructions for paintbrush workaround

[SandyT 128]

Hi, @bojo2736 It's great to see you back! I remember some of your builds and you are really good at designing buildings. They now have a feature to put your blueprints in a market where people can purchase them with coins. You might be interested in looking through those and maybe uploading some yourself. Hope you continue to enjoy this game. Sandy

[handofthesly 211]

I agree with practically everything you are saying but just to add on to Binary's tips ...

 

You can go for a full hour (real-time) without eating before you actually start to take any damage, assuming the timer starts from 0 hunger level.

It takes 18 minutes to get the hunger notification, then another 18 minutes before the starving notification pops up, and then another 24 minutes before you reach 100% hunger and then you will start to take damage. It then takes another 20 minutes before you die of starvation itself as long as you don't take any other form of damage during that time and don't heal.

Also, it's worth noting that foods can't take you into negative hunger, it always stops at 0 so there's no point eating a whole loaf of bread when you get the first hunger notification (aside from the bonus effects you get from it) as you would be wasting half of it's potential. It's much better to eat it when you get the first starving notification or eat a half bread or even a quarter bread at the first hunger notification instead as these would take you down to 0 hunger or close to it as well.

I have to say that the notifications are annoying as heck though so I understand the desire to just eat to get rid of the notifications. I think they should just have the notification pop up once and keep the hunger icon there as the reminder.