Remixed Community Centre and Mine Rewards - Observations and Commentary (Spoilers Ahoy!)

[Salty1]

So after seeing all the end game content, I decided to get around to starting a new beach farm to specialise in ducks, and naturally I wanted to try out the remix options too.

To clarify, I don't know if the remixes are simply an alternative set or if they are more randomised. I am hoping for the latter, but due to all the added art for the CC remix I have a feeling it might be more the former. If anyone has experimented enough to feel comfortable commenting, be sure to let me know.

Biggest difference I have noticed with the mine rewards thus far is all the boots seem to be gone and you get a wider variety of weapons as you go down. I always preferred sword myself, so didn't even really use all the daggers or heavy weapons from the chests (apart from the wooden club from level 20 or so - that got some play time before I got a forest sword). Weapon drops from monsters seems way better than in prior patches, and I got two forest swords and three bone swords while working my way through the mines in spring. I used these over all the weapons from the chests right up until I got a steel falchion from the chest on 110 (which has been a much better deal than the obsidian sword). Was nice to see and use new weapons more regularly, but I was surprised at how the lack of boots didn't seem to matter that much. Yeah, it did hurt more when I got hit, but I didn't seem to get cornered that often - proper jukes and kiting are just better than tanking any day, I guess.

I decided to go for pushing foraging early on since I didn't think I'd be expanding my house any time soon, and having a mess of salmonberries on the first spring seemed like a good way to circumvent a lack of a kitchen. What I didn't realise initially was how impactful this seemed to be for the remix. Getting level 4 foraging before salmonberry season started let me walk away with about 270 berries, then when I unlocked enough of the other wings in the CC I discovered there's a forager's bundle which wants 50 salmonberries and a kid's bundle with a 10 salmonberry option. So I got a leg up on those right away, and still got to the bottom of the mines by the start of summer with 170 salmonberries remaining. Sweet.

Right now, the biggest difference with the (my?) remix seems to be the forge wing. There's a new engineer's bundle that calls for a battery and one iridium ore. I'm not playing right now so I totally forget if you need to get everything in that bundle or if there's an option for exclusion, but right now I'm assuming you need everything (else the 5x refined quartz is the nice easy option for engineer). Fortunately I still pushed foraging up to 6 by summer so I have five lightning rods to try to catch me a battery right away, but I have no idea how or when that iridium ore will come about. Having a significant delay to the mine carts going online would change up my play style quite a bit, so I'm trying to decide if I want to remove my furnaces from the elevator lobby in the mines or not - even without the mine carts, though, I think it will be convenient for them to stay so long as I pick and choose my trips wisely.

The rare crops bundle was a nice change to see too - ancient fruit becomes an option if you get a seed early in year 1, but if not you can opt to get an extra rare seed to dedicate specifically to the bundle. I almost feel lost not having a quality crops bundle to fret over and try to account for - this feels much nicer on the RNG side of things. Also, I am so glad hops have a bundle purpose now (even if they are in foraging for whatever reason)! Was always nice to have some going during summer for the constant drip of farming xp that comes from plucking them daily once they mature, and now they have a purpose besides profit.

Still not sure how to handle that 100 flour for the home cook's bundle, though. In other playthroughs I never bother making that much flour from wheat, nor growing that much wheat - which seems like it'd be doubly annoying in the beach farm. At least buying it all from Pierre is an option, if I can get animal production going instead and don't want to bother? Hmm.

How's everyone else's experiences with the remixes been?

 

[Bananapaws]

There's one I think is a glitch. CA changed the bundles a few updates ago so that unless otherwise stated it will accept different qualities of items. For example, before for 3 apples they all had to be the same quality of apples. You couldn't put in one regular quality and 2 silver quality. Which was a big pain the butt. And that's fixed of almost everything except for fiddlehead ferns. One of the remixed bundles is wild medicine. I had to have 5 fiddleheads of the same quality to get it to accept them. I think all around the remixes I got have been a lot easier on me. I'm on Fall 23rd of year one in my current game. I've already completed everything except the Community bundles, I have Shane at 7 hearts, my house has been expanded once, and I have a barn and a coop with the first upgrade. Still need a duck feather, a pomegranate, and a rabbit foot, and to force myself to buy the stupid flour from Dirty Cheat...I mean, Pierre. Not having to worry about quality crops has feel so nice.

 

[Bilqy]

I had a few notable ones and a few with just 1 change, such as Spring Onion in Spring Forage Bundle and Cactus fruit instead of Duck Feather in Dye Bundle. Combined with no Animal Bundle, I could skip getting a duck early.

I as well got the Engineer's Bundle instead of Blacksmith's Bundle, which wasn't so nice. I stockpiled some geodes, got my spreadsheet out and checked which magma or omni will be my ticket. Manually by reseting the day, because Switch version.

Treasure Hunter's Bundle wanted 1 each of various gems and replaced Geologist's and felt nice and vanilla-ey. Changed things up enough to not require floor 81 by itself, although other reasons made me have it an early goal anyway. Lucky Lunch was a nice reward.

I also got the Home Cook's bundle. It replaced my Fodder bundle, meaning I could skip getting an Apple Tree. The 100 wheat flour didn't bother me. Wheat seeds are 10 each and grow in 4 days, and a mill isn't super expensive. I waited until summer turns to fall and used the byproduct wheat from keeping soil tilled. In the end I skipped on the mill, made beer worth 200 and bought the flour which costs 100 each.

I liked Sap Bundle. It replaced my Construction bundle.

My Animal Bundle was replaced by the Fish Farmer's bundle, which was nice and interesting. It had me choose 2 of 3 options: 15 Roe, 15 Aged Roe, 1 Squid Ink. According to the community wiki, that's the only configuration for that bundle. The pick 2 of 3 options is nice, but Caviar should be a potential candidate for one of the 3 options. The reward was a Worm Bin, which was underwhelming. Thematic but underwhelming. I would have preferred a preserves jar as that would also fit the theme (even more so, might I add) and be more in line with many original CC Rewards where you get an appliance to help with other bundles. Even a Dish o' the Sea would be a better reward than a Worm Bin.

All my fishing bundles were vanilla. I was a bit disappointed, but became even more so when I looked at the wiki. River, Ocean and Lake feel natural to be permanent bundles, like seasonal crops and forage. But why is Night Fishing a permanent bundle, though? Why, with a million different fish in the game, weren't more added to the random pools of existing bundles? So much wasted potential. :(

Overall, I feel like my CC had decent and interesting enough variation, but in general feel that the remixed CC is wasted potential and that it's nowhere near what it could be.

I also did remixed mines. I'm no expert on balancing but the rewards felt very underwhelming. Why can lava floor chests drop swords weaker than bone, for example? I would have also liked to see stacks of buffing foods added to the reward pool.

 

[imnvs]

Re: Remixed bundles:

Well, when it comes to that 100 flour one? See, these days I love stocking up on those staples (flour, oil, vinegar, sugar, milk, cheese) for cooking, especially with the Qi's Quisine challenge. That means I'm stocking up on these things already... so no big deal... except that I'm trying to stock up and 100 flour is a decent pile of flour.

Re: Remixed mines:

I mean technically, theoretically you could still get boots all the way down... but it's unlikely. The chances of boots seems to be low, because there are so many weapons compared to the number of boots.

 

[Elenna101]

The bundles and mine chests are random, BTW, not just an alternate set. You can see the full list of possibilities on the wiki (spoilers of course):
Remixed bundles
Remixed mines rewards

It's been a while so I don't remember exactly what I got, but I believe the remixed bundles I got mostly made things easier for me - the truffle was gone, so I only had to get the basic barn, and the three apples were also gone. Ironically this is the one file where I actually got three apples from the bat cave before winter. They were even the same quality. Figures it would happen on the run where I didn't need it.

I also got both the "50 salmonberries" and the "10 salmonberries" bundles, which was mildly annoying. I could have skipped the 50 salmonberries and done 50 blackberries and 20 wild plums, but I was worried about not enough plums spawning. Ended up collecting about 70-80 salmonberries, and I managed to get enough energy from random other forage and a pile of gold-quality hops.
For the 100 flour I just planted 100 wheat. Since wheat grows so fast, I only had to plant 10 wheat at a time and I got them all before the end of fall (I was also on the beach farm so didn't want to do much watering). That did force me to get the mill which I wouldn't normally have gotten, but at least it's fairly cheap, and it looks nice on the farm.

 

[imnvs]

Well, some bundles can have different requirements... and some bundles are replaced with other bundles. There are also many ways these can be combined so shuffling the bundles doesn't just result in one other set of things to do. You can't be sure what all will be required of you as you start your new save.