As anticipated, there has been some resistance to the idea of thirst being implemented in Wayward; however, I think most of this stems from the complication of distilling sea water into a drinkable form. It’s definitely not a perfect system yet and I wanted to do a blog post to discuss the following:
- Provide hints on stopping dehydration and staying alive in beta 1.4.
- Announce some changes coming up in beta 1.5 and beyond.
Hydrate Yourself! (Spoiler Alert)
There’s two new environmental items for water distillation including:
Stone Water Still
- Large Rock x3
- Sharpened Item
- String
- Pole-like
- Waterskin
- Fuel-like
With this one, you have to pour unpurified water into it (right click), light it on fire, and wait until it burns out to grab the now distilled water.
Solar Still
- Sheet of Glass (Tongs, Refined Sand x3, Limestone Powder, Furnace)
- Waterskin
With a solar still, you have the pour unpurified water into it, then wait a couple hundred turns. This will only work during the day. After it’s done, you can grab the distilled water.
You can also use a direct recipe method:
A Purified Filled Waterskin
- Flask (Clay Blow Pipe, Refined Sand x2, Limestone Powder, Furnace)
- An Unpurified Filled Waterskin
- Campfire
Using a flask, you can distill water directly from your craft menu.
There’s some other thirst-reducing foods as well including:
- A Pile of Snow
- Pineapple
- Nopal
- Coconut
Planned Changes
- Fresh water sources (from caves, oasis, and ponds). With fresh water, you can just boil to use (although not as pure as desalinated water). Perhaps later on, there will even be filtration as an option for fresh water to get even cleaner, healthier water.
- There will be two water containers: Waterskins and Glass Bottles. In addition to this, both of them will be find-able via loot instead of just crafting.
- Provide better descriptions and messages regarding the distilling and boiling process.
- Make thirst and hunger reduce a bit slower still.
Most of this will appear in beta 1.5, so stay tuned!
Pretty cool mechanic. I love how survival games shoot for ultra realism and make the details in depth.
One thing to consider is to make the basics of the mechanic straightforward while adding the fun technical stuff for crazies like me. Tough balance.
I like it, brings another thing to do and give you scope for all kinds of future crafting options…
Perhaps this is a silly request, but I was thinking that if you open a message in a bottle, you should be able to keep and reuse the glass bottle now, too.
Yep, that will be part of the changes for sure.
So … now, unless you start with sandstone AND forest and/or cotton … you always die? Great.
Because you now have less than 2 days before you auto-die (happened to me 10 times in a row) due to the health loss from thirst.
Unless you get “lucky” with the start point, you can’t survive long enough to get the water – even if you do NOTHING ELSE but quest for the bits needed to get water.
Very un-fun. The game was much, much better before you added this.
I’m not sure I understand your complaint. What does cotton or forest have to do with anything? Using the methods above you will be able to survive in any environment easily if you focus on water at the start of the game, like you would do in an actual survival situation. That being said, there’s still improvements to make, as discussed.
Just wanted to see how easy I could do this myself, so as a challenge, I started a new game, one in complete desert, and another in forest environment and was able to get a permanent water source within the very first day in both situations.
That’s also without a cave in the desert location, which would of made it much easier.
Your only problem is that you don’t know any efficient paths to get purified water. It is not impossible and its very rewarding when you figure something like that out.
Maybe someone should make a quick guide with tips for newbies getting water.
Is there a way to simply empty a waterskin without drinking it? (I forgot I had water going in a still and filled my waterskin from the ocean, then I couldn’t empty it to fill it with the purified water – “pour”ing it just dropped the waterskin.)
Currently the only way is to drink it, put it into a still, or to pour it on an open flame. This is a bit of an oversight, so expect some changes to this as well.
You can empty a waterskin by pouring the water on a lit fire, campfire or furnace. Use right mouse click while facing the lit fire.
I had all the parts – 3 large rocks, a branch for the pole, a sharp rock for the sharpened item, a log for the fuel, a string, and obviously I had a waterskin – required to make a stone water still (having been unable to find limestone in any rocks for the flask/solar still), but the crafting option never showed. I’m rather new here, so I’m wondering if there’s a certain condition I have to meet to be able to see the recipe to make the still?
Or does the waterskin have a to be in a certain state? Empty or Filled with not-purified water?
Of course, without a source of fresh water and without any limestone, I eventually died.
So far, it’s a great game! But I struggle to get past the first night without water.
Currently, it needs to be empty. Coming up, the water situation will be much less deadly.
I would hate the water being less valuable. It adds a lot of tension. Maybe just make possible to squeeze some water from eating regular leafs, very inneficient but enough to ward off dehidration for some time for newbies.
I tried a new game on the download version to since my main game is getting rather involved. I still cant get past a few days the second try around, even after finding another snow source. I think I was just being to combat happy without the proper gear. Anyway just wanted to say how great i thought this game was especially the thirst part. As long as you can find 1 skin by the first day, you usually die from something else. Very balanced in my opinion, Great Job!
Question how does one make an additional waterskin?
The recipe uses up the waterskin leaving me with no waterskin to get more water to make purified water.
Hey there, you can find that (and more) information in the Wiki: http://www.unlok.ca/wiki/wayward/items/
I have got the basics down, but need a new waterskin, and canèt find it on the wiki page, also, once a wall seems really small will it keep out animals still? thx 😉
Okay, I died. Is it rare to get the leather thingymabobajiggy from killing a rat?
Nope, you can get a leather hide from a Giant Rat 100% of the time. You have the skin the corpse though.
Okay, thanks. I don’t even need one anymore, I started a new game and spent the whole time mining rock, I found snow in the middle. 🙂
I was also just thinking about how amazing it would be if you made a version to the game where other players can play with each other, so you could fight each other and stuff. 😀
OK a bit of constructive criticism.
Keep in mind.. just because YOU know what is required to survive, a new player does not. So.. unless you know that you need to immediately start creating a complex machine (still) then you are just about guaranteed to die as a beginner. Since you do not have the ‘urgency’ of “oh wow.. I cant find any water on my desert island so what do I need to do now that my only bottle of water has been used up?” By then it is too late.
As a ‘noob’ I have a bottle of water, no other water source but the ocean, and no water providing plants. The wiki itself does not even say what the ingredients are to make a waterskin, but from reading above at least one is required for both types of stills as well as “A Purified Filled Waterskin” I died on the 2nd day before I could even find any limestone. All I saw on the island was shale and rock.
“just about guaranteed to die as a beginner”
Perfect! As with most roguelikes, this is the preferred difficulty curve. I understand this is polarizing for more casual players, so I’m working on something for this (softcore mode?). Wayward is first and foremost a simulation. Survival in real life, like Wayward requires you to understand that you cannot just simply drink ocean water, or that you need to boil fresh water or suffer possible contamination. It also expects you to know how to create a still and water containing device out of the resources you are presented with. Survival or “winning” is not supposed to be a guarantee.
Perhaps that’s the disconnect, you don’t know what items are in the game to make it with or how to get them, so there’s a logical leap that hurts intuitiveness. It’s a hard balance, I could simply just give players all the recipes, but then removes the sense of discovery. It’s a constant work in progress and I hope to one day reach that point, but we’re not there yet
The Tweakward mod by Grom_PE actually adds in a “Crafting?” hint for each item and tells you what the item can be used for. This might help you out right now if you don’t wish to wait:
http://www.unlok.ca/wayward-mods/
Thanks for playing!
Actually the wiki DOES show the ingredients. Try pressing Ctrl+F and typing ‘waterskin’
Cant seem to boil fresh water i made a campfire with stones of coarse i face it but it keeps telling me i need to face the fire to boil water. Any helps or hints?
What if you could drink blood?
Could you keep the game from restarting every blimey I x out of it?
Or some type of save button?
Adding a game mechanic that would allow players to craft and place a well would be a very lovely thing for the absolutely lovely game developers to do.
It fits into the whole “realistic survival” theme of the game, and seems like it could pacify both new players and seasoned ones as well.