After 2.6... why use dew collectors?

DanoOppenheimer

DanoOppenheimer

Refugee
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the point of using the dew collector if you need to put jars in it.
Instead, fill the jars at any water source (or create a water source with a bucket in your base) and just boil them. It's easier and faster.

In which cases is a dew collector useful?
 
I agree they're not that useful until you put a filter in them. Once I did that, it was nice to passively get clean water saving me the time it would take to do it manually. Admittedly, its not a huge time saver.... but it is a time saver nonetheless.
 
I have turned off rivers and lakes hoping that made more room for towns and cities to show up (lol, I am not a map person as you can probably tell) so having the dew collector still helps a bit as sometimes I build and am not as close as I like to a water source such as ditch or pool. In one of my latest playthroughs though I am fairly close to water, but in next one, who knows?
 
Gamida said:
I have turned off rivers and lakes hoping that made more room for towns and cities to show up (lol, I am not a map person as you can probably tell) so having the dew collector still helps a bit as sometimes I build and am not as close as I like to a water source such as ditch or pool. In one of my latest playthroughs though I am fairly close to water, but in next one, who knows?
Click to expand...
Unless you aren't anywhere near a town, it's kind of hard to not have any water source within a couple hundred meters. And even then, a bucket and a hole gives you water at your base.

DanoOppenheimer said:
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the point of using the dew collector if you need to put jars in it.
Instead, fill the jars at any water source (or create a water source with a bucket in your base) and just boil them. It's easier and faster.

In which cases is a dew collector useful?
Click to expand...
There really isn't any use for them anymore. They look nice. If you don't want to fill up jars whenever you're running around (if you're looting them, fill them while you're out and you have filled jars without any effort) and don't care that it takes a long time to get water from a dew collector versus by hand, then I suppose you could say they have a use. But how many people are going to sit and wait for a long time to get water instead of instantly getting it by stopping at a water source and filling the jars there?

As far as the mod to make the water clean, sure... that saves the step of boiling it. But you can boil it in less time than it takes to wait on the dew collector, so it's not really any benefit beyond someone just not wanting to click on the campfire. Dew collectors unlock late and cost a decent amount of resources, especially with the mods. You can build campfires for basically nothing. Campfires can boil up to 60 water at a time, while dew collectors can only make 18 (now) at a time if you have the mod to double it. Boiling is faster and gathering water is basically instant beyond just having to stop at a water source. There just isn't any benefit to the dew collector for most people.

meganoth said:
First iteration. I assume when we complain often enough (after playing with it, they tend to view experimental knowledge as superior to theoretical knowledge ;)) they will buff the dew collector so it makes sense again
Click to expand...
Maybe.... but then again, we have solar power that really has almost no benefits and certainly no benefits that outweigh the cost, and that's been that way for a long time... probably since solar was first added. So I don't have much hope beyond using mods to remove jars.
 
This is what I rambled about it in the other thread:
MiTHMoN said:
Yeah, I just got into a conversation with someone who actively avoids campfires and runs 2 dew collectors in their base and subsists purely on food bundles who is pro-dew-collector change.

But for me, I previously sometimes get 5 dew collectors in early game (1,000 plastic investment), so maybe day 1-3 or so. In some playthroughs I went to around maybe 20 dew collectors, slowly building it up as I go. And the point was, having a steady supply of murky water. Then I'd boil the water, 60 at a time in campfires, and some of it would go to food, some to drinks, some I'd drink as just plain water, and some to glue.

But now... There's literally no purpose for me to craft a dew collector.
They used to turn plastic + iron pipes + some space in my base, into a steady supply of murky water...
Now I can just take 2 seconds per 10 empty glass jars, and I've got murky water without paying the plastic, iron pipes, and space taken up. And (depending on whether Dew Collectors produce heat or not, I'm not sure) it might even lower my base's heat generation.

So for me, I enjoyed the immersion of dew collectors. They said something about the space. Seeing a group of dew collectors was like announcing "there's a player that visits here to collect the water". But now, they don't serve a mechanical purpose, so I won't be using them anymore, because they don't benefit me. And a lot of players will feel the same, and I just won't see dew collectors on servers anymore.

It took intention to collect the plastic and iron pipes and go out of your way to make space and commit to a location.
Click to expand...
I've been thinking about this during my new playthrough on a server running 2.6... It's like, every time I gather plastic, I'm asking myself "what do I even do with plastic now?"
Post automatically merged:

Riamus said:
Unless you aren't anywhere near a town, it's kind of hard to not have any water source within a couple hundred meters. And even then, a bucket and a hole gives you water at your base.
Click to expand...
Depending on how your base is set up, you don't even need a hole. One water "source block" doesn't really spread in 7dtd like it does in Minecraft.

I used to kind of do like, 2/3 farm 1/3 dew collectors (roughly how much area given to each in my base), and now... I'll have so much more space for farm plots, I guess?
 
Riamus said:
Maybe.... but then again, we have solar power that really has almost no benefits and certainly no benefits that outweigh the cost, and that's been that way for a long time... probably since solar was first added. So I don't have much hope beyond using mods to remove jars.
Click to expand...
Disagree strongly about solar.... with solar and a battery bank, I can run my traps non stop without ever having to worry about refueling. The cost isn't really that bad by the time you're ready to set it up. The biggest pain point, IMO, was finding enough Q6 solar panels to buy.
 
Automation as a progression goal tends to be the design approach to some survival-game mechanics. 'Saves time clicking on a campfire' - if I've gained the resources to not have to do something, why should I do it? Solar panels are an absurd and ridiculously costly late-game Duke-sink (like the water filters were before, honestly), but regardless of your gas use, if you don't have to refuel or listen to a gas generator, why would you want to? A progression-locked craft-from-container system would be pretty amazing, as a hypothetical example of tedium removed over time.

I personally think the systems should get more tweaking and refinement, like a number of other things in the game, but if smoother inter-system balance is a lower priority versus introduction of new systems/features, it is what it is and I still enjoy playing regardless. Maybe the defaults will be refined after bandits or incrementally as smaller changes in other updates, but until that time, sandbox settings and mods do a lot to boost the base experience for me & mine.

The 2.6 jar return % change specifically is a weird choice that I don't know if I've seen explained, but that's an entirely configurable setting, isn't it? Really boggles my brain cells why there's so much vitriol about things that are so easily configured straight from the pre-game menus. Tying jars to the crucible makes sense with a moderate return chance, and not gating them to the crucible makes sense with a 0% return chance - but no crucible and 60% is a confusing choice I just can't reason out. Maybe TFP just got frustrated and threw up their hands on the jar issue so they could move on to other things. Wouldn't blame them.

In a 1.4 playthrough, I made a 3x3-or-so dew collector pit just to bring in screamers for the XP and to work through an overflowing ammo box; I think the dew collector's heat signature was reduced so that wouldn't work now, though.
 
Feels like it might now be a "very late game" QoL item. If I read the notes correctly, and they tripled the capacity, that's 18 ready to use waters whenever you happen to need some. But only once you have enough resources to trivially dump on filters, extra jars to dump into them, and the excess plastic lying around. Useless for mass production, but maybe handy for day-to-day coffees.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top