After I read the patch notes initially, I thought, "well, jars are kinda pointless since they are a one time use, it would be nice if there was like a 75% chance of getting them back when drinking and using them for crafting".
And now they've added that option, which is great, although allowing for a return rate of over 80% starts to lean back towards square one.
However, the nail in the coffin is that they've also allowed jars to be craftable, a colossal failure to the water survival balance. It doesn't matter how difficult they try make it to craft jars, the moment they are craftable, we go back to square one before they added the dew collector, but since we also have dew collector (which I think should need jars to collect water from), the whole water survival is going to be so much easier than before they removed jars in the first place.
Reasons why jars should NOT be craftable:
1) As I don't like to use traders, I went all of A21 without a dew collector, since they were a trader only luxury. And I was still swimming in murky water, glue and duct tape from looting.
2) I played a mod recently this year, 28 Alpha's Later, which removed the dew collector and added jars back, but jars were loot only, and they were refunded when you drank from them, but jars were lost forever when making glue, foods and lavender oil, and even with all of the lost jars to crafting and the rarity of jars in loot, I still ended up with a few hundred stocked up by late game.
3) You can drink from a water source with your bare hands, vitamins prevent you from getting sick, and medical/food/perk healing is abundant.
4) Assuming durability is NOT added, the water purifier mod has infinite use, which means all water found in loot and from collectors can go into glue and food production.
When is a dew collector NEEDED?
1) If you are playing on 25% or 33% loot.
2) If you are doing an explosive build using explosive arrows/bolts and rockets.
If you're not doing either of these, then a dew collector is simply a want, not a need, as there is so much water, glue and duct tape in loot.
What I think should be done for the best of both worlds.
1) Jars NOT be craftable.
2) When drinking or using water in recipes, there's up to an 80% chance to get the empty jar back.
3) Jars are needed to collect water from dew collectors. This could be a tool slot within the collector that gets consumed whenever water is generated.
4) Assuming molotovs will require a jar, they should be buffed in damage (about 50%), and the petrol cost reduced to at least 200.
The reason for this is because pipe bombs are by far superior to molotovs, pipe bombs do more damage and are much cheaper to craft without the need of a chemistry station to mass produce them, unlike molotovs, you can't make petrol in the early game, but you can mass produce gunpowder in your backpack.
