Dungeon Keeper+ Terraria + Dwarf Fortress= Craft The World

I’ve got a very casual 72 hours logged in CtW over the past 6-7 months. 99% of that time was spent in the first map of the campaign, which I still haven’t finished! Having said that, I agree with most of the complaints mentioned here and elsewhere. CtW starts out fantastically, like your first job out of college, with so much excitement and promise of a long, successful career! And then somewhere, probably right around when you realize there’s no more coal or iron nearby and you have to use MANA to open portals to fetch new veins of the stuff, all the while watching the clock tick down for the next wave of monsters and suddenly everything seems like WORK…tedious, boring, mind-numbing work.

Honestly, with 72 hours I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth but it was a slog for many of those hours. The only thing keeping me going is that I’m doing a full playthrough for Youtube and want to complete the mission. I’ve got all the techs already and now have to face the 5 big dead elf dudes and fix the portal and then I’m done with CtW for good. I have no interest in carrying on as it seems like the game has little replay-ability once you’ve done it all.

The worse part of it all seems like with just a few changes this game can go from mediocre to amazing. My gut feeling is Dekovir is working on their next project and just want to see this done.

It is worth playing through worlds 2 and 3 of the campaign if you feel you’re “done” but haven’t finished world 1. World 1 is really easy in a lot of ways. Worlds 2 and 3 make it a lot harder to get water and wood, because they’re respectively ice and desert worlds. World 3 is a lot larger, and resources seem more scattered. Getting Mithril was much harder on world 3 than worlds 1 or 2.

World 3 has pyramids that are really hard to crack, because the main chamber is absolutely chock full of tough monsters, and you can’t tunnel through the pyramid walls, you have to use the existing passages, and spells won’t function near the pyramid. I lost count of the number of runs I made at it before I succeeded. The fireball and snail-transformation potions were essential, regular weaponry just wasn’t going to cut it. Unfortunately, the reward is trivial compared to the difficulty. It’s something you do to have done it.

I’ve gone through all 3 worlds in the campaign. Since this ran a total of 120 hours, I’m not really all that tempted to play a “custom game” just to up the difficulty. I don’t really want harder monster waves, I want larger / more varied worlds.

I didn’t have a problem with the monster waves being too difficult, but I was able to construct trap defenses that could pretty much wipe out the waves by themselves. Specifically, a couple of level-3 Tesla towers situated over a water-filled moat with fences along the bottom to slow stuff down a lot. I had a few interesting adventures with the monsters breaking through the walls of the moat until I realized I really needed to set it below ground level, where they won’t do that.

Regarding the mana shortage, I figure that’s what mana potions are for. They’re not all that expensive in terms of resources. Sure, they take a boatload of crap, but it’s all crap. Mostly monster parts and such that you have a near-infinite supply of.

There are a lot of things I’d change. I’d get rid of the positioning element of the crafting grid, since it serves no purpose other than to remind you of Minecraft. I’d revise the tech tree so that decorative stuff is all leaf nodes, things that are unlocked by other tech, but not required to unlock anything else. I’d make it possible to break stuff down for parts, i.e. melt things down for their iron content, since you end up with mid-tech stuff that’s obsolete. But overall, I definitely got my money’s worth.

You can actually do this in the game. Open the crafting window, and drag a crafted item to the box on the bottom of the window next to the anvil, then click on the anvil. You won’t get all of the materials back, but a random amount of some of them. I use this a lot. You’d be surprised how much material you can get this way.

After about 8 hours of playtime on the first map, I think I’ve had enough. I’m about halfway through the tech tree, still first world. It’s way too grindy for my liking and I feel like I’m just doing busywork.

I haven’t really played any crafting games before. Is this representative of that style game (Minecraft, Terraria, etc)? If so, I’m pretty sure the genre isn’t for me.

No, Terraria and Minecraft are very different because CtW doesn’t really have an avatar.

The pacing and crafting in Terraria at least is very different. If you haven’t tried it yet, you really need to grab a copy, especially during a sale.

Yeah. Minecraft and Terraria are very different than craft the wold and from each other. If you have never played minecraft, I suggest you try a mod pack version, like the feed the beast infinity mod pack which is super easy to install and a lot better than vanilla minecraft.

Terriaria is also very good and quite different than minecraft. They are both worth a look before you write off the genre.

I own Terraria, and I may even own Minecraft, so I won’t doom them to the same fate as Craft the World.

Any other thoughts on this? Did the updates improve the issues described above?

This game is so obtuse. It really feels like it’s a quality game, but darn if I can figure this thing out, even after reading the guides that are out there & watching some youtube videos.

Anyone have a youtube or something that gives a better introduction to the game and what you should be doing after making your first abode?

Just played this and had a really great time. The main issue that kept me away so long was that I kept hearing that crafting was tedious (and videos I watched backed that up). You had to drag components every time you wanted to craft something. I don’t know when that changed, but now once you know the recipe you just click the recipe and then click the craft button. As long as you have the resources, it will make the item.

I got all the DLCs except the multiplayer one. They are all probably worth having, depending on how much you enjoy playing it. There are 2 that add new worlds, so if you don’t want to play different scenarios then those probably wouldn’t be worth getting. The ones that add things to every world are nice to have.

I would have liked to see more things to setup farms for and a lot more automation. Oxygen Not Included is still the gold standard for me, so this feels like a less complex game but also with less control over what happens (for example the individual job priorities in ONI would have been a welcome addition to this).

I’m glad I didn’t get it at release and also glad that I finally did play. I ended up playing through the 6 campaign worlds (2 of which are DLCs, I believe) and then a couple custom scenarios.

I haven’t played it, but this is one of my wifes favorite games. It’s pretty cool.

I enjoyed it quite a bit a few years ago when I did long playthrough of it. Seems to have a lot more content now and many of the issues have been addressed. Might have to take another peek!

Has anyone played this lately and, if so, did you get any of the DLC that seemed worth it? Yesterday I just played through an entire small world and “won” that map. Wasn’t advancing on the tech tree fast enough so I had a long way to go to get gold bars to build the 5 portal pieces, but had plenty of silver and gold ore so it just took a loot time to make a bunch of stuff.

Really enjoyed it again, but not sure that I’ll enjoy just moving to the next world and starting over though I know the world and biomes will be different and add variety. Can’t remember if that’s why I stopped before or not. I did have around35 hours in it previously and while a couple were starts I did not finish, I know I made it through at least one world.

Might have been the reason why I stopped playing it then, and that I didn’t remember either!