There are several things about this mod that i think needs a little change (though its ok if you disagree for whatever reason, because i think the mod is already awesome as it is!), like for example the fact that maxwell can get super super strong in such a short time by only farming nightmare fuels and still have time to do other gathering things, all he needs is a worker to do all the work while he is fighting the shadow creatures on his own (and maxwell can easily switch between insane and sane modes if the player knows how to play as maxwell and kite shadow creatures), i have several ideas that could potentially help with that (or maybe im just dumb and im missing some obvious points) regarding the leveling system and the decay system

One could be that instead of letting shadows level up linearly from level 1 to 100 by just feeding them nightmare (1 nightmare fuel = 1 level is kinda too strong and a somewhat boring way to level up imo) lower the amount of total levels from 100 to (for example) 5 and let them level up by setting some milestones and instead make the difference between levels much more distinct , for example a shadow can get stronger the longer it lives without having its stats changed (not dying and being fed nightmare fuels to stop decay from killing them) up to a certain point which then we can give it certain items to upgrade it to its next level (these items could be things such as red/blue/purple gems , deercyclops eye balls , guardian horn , shadow atrium , etc based on the level they are) when upgraded their upkeep would change ,i mean the better the shadow, the more resources they consume per day ( in this case its nightmare fuel they eat for their decay), for example a level one shadow is very weak (maybe even weaker than vanilla) but will last for very long without any nightmare fuel given to it while a level 2 shadow would be decent at its job with a normal decay rate, a fully leveled shadow would consume resources like a beefallo does, this way in late game where you have so much resources lying around, you have a way to put them to good use.

By doing this several things will change:
1- the levels are much more meaningful: this way when your shadow is leveling up you can feel the difference rather than just having a small stats change per level

2-progression takes time and effort :
maxwell cant get super strong before other characters even get the chance to build their starting base and he now actually has to spend a few days in game

3-less confusing numbers! :
the player has less interaction with number changes now, allowing them to remember things better (like the player can now tell whether his shadow can fight a certain mob at a certain level or not)

4-feel much more joy after your shadows are leveled up:
due to the fact that you are putting more effort into upgrading your shadows, you get a bigger dopamine kick after you see your efforts bear fruit!

5-quantity OR quality! :
now maxwell can choose (before the answer was always upgrading) between having many different and cheap yet weak shadows that can do many different things (like having several workers each with their own item or several duelists attacking different mobs) or having elite yet expensive to keep around shadows that he can invest his resources into strengthening them

Thank you for the suggestions.
I like the idea of more expensive decay depending on the level :)

For the leveling itself:

The max is 100 because of the problem you already mentioned, that 1 nightmarefuel would give too much advantage otherwise. So with the current desing of only giving them nightmarefuel, a high level like this is needed.
I never did farming of nightmarefuel myself, so I have no clue how long it takes to get 100 of them. Yes, the intention was, that you will get like ~ 2-3 fuel per day, so the shadows will get stronger the longer they live. But if you are able to farm 100 nightmarefuel within few days, you are right, than this mod is absolutely overpowered.

You suggest to use things like deerclops eyeball and such for leveling... While the eyeball is quite easy to get, other things like cave stuff or stuff from bigger monsters like dragonfly and so on is quite hard to obtain and I personally never got them in any of my games, cause I dont like the "Kite to Win" mechanic, so I never fight against bigger bosses.
But maybe we will make it optional, so in case of 5 levels, for every single level you can use one of a list of 20 items. This way, if some of them are too hard to get or even not obtainable, you can use another one. Or we could categorize them, so x nightmarefuel or marble to get level 2. blue/red gems for level 3. eyeball or x purple gems for level 4, any high tier bos item for level 5. Or sth like this. hmm...

But I'm not sure if I would like to use shuch an item based level system...maybe I would just limit the number of fuel you can give a shadow per day...Or can you imagine a third possible solution?

about your 5) point:
This would mean the sanity penalty should be lower / the max number of shadows should be higher by default?

another thing i wanted to mention was that i believe it would be better to make all the information that you need to be told from your shadows to become conveyed to maxwell through visuals rather than text.
i mean instead of having to press examine button on each shadow to tell them apart, you could convey the needed information to the player through visual animations.

for example the decay rate could be shown by different animations and effects ,like for example when a shadow is fully saturated and not decaying at all, they could have the shadow trail effect seen behind them similar to when someone is using a walking cane with "ancient cane" skin , or when a shadow is neither saturated nor starving , they would appear as how they normally do (like how they are right now) , and a starving shadow could use the player starving animation similar to when the tummy rumbles and the player put their hands on their tummies (probably without the rumbling audio)

as for their levels if you ever decide to implement the milestone type of leveling mentioned in the post above, you could change the name of the shadow entirely upon leveling them up
for example a shadow duelist name per level would be something like : shadow grunt, shadow fighter ,shadow soldier , shadow warrior , shadow knight , and so on...
or for the worker would be things like , shadow peasant , shadow laborer , shadow worker , artisan , and so on...
this way the player can associate each name with a level and (if you ever to decide to give each level unique functions) skills each level of shadow creature has.

also if possible instead of having maxwell comment on the shadows status ( like when he says that his friends are getting pale) make the dialogue come from the shadows instead (due to the fact that shadows dont talk, their dialogues would be shown as things like * Slowly losing its color * or * fading away *, because if maxwell has more than one shadow following him, it becomes kinda hard to tell which one is having the problem that maxwell mentioned.

Originally posted by Serp:

"You suggest to use things like deerclops eyeball and such for leveling... While the eyeball is quite easy to get, other things like cave stuff or stuff from bigger monsters like dragonfly and so on is quite hard to obtain and I personally never got them in any of my games, cause I dont like the "Kite to Win" mechanic, so I never fight against bigger bosses."

as for this part, i have to mention that by the time you need to use items from harder bosses/monsters your shadows are already quite capable and strong (its even easier to do with the current way the mod is, imagine going on a boss with two 1k hp shadows + armor and dark sword weapons)
also the maxwell does not need to strengthen his shadows in the first place if he never wants to fight the cave mobs

also by level 3-4 a maxwell shadow is supposedly very strong already, so a level 5 would be super strong mode, in that case i think its fair to have to make maxwell put the extra effort into leveling up his shadow

Originally posted by Serp:

But maybe we will make it optional, so in case of 5 levels, for every single level you can use one of a list of 20 items. This way, if some of them are too hard to get or even not obtainable, you can use another one. Or we could categorize them, so x nightmarefuel or marble to get level 2. blue/red gems for level 3. eyeball or x purple gems for level 4, any high tier bos item for level 5. Or sth like this. hmm...

you can definitly make it possible to change the requirements for items in configurations, as you said some people dont have caves on or simply dont like to fight certain mobs and bosses, so it can be customized to their likes (also i forgot to mention i really love the fact that you put lots of options for everything in the mod configurations! thanks a lot)

Originally posted by Serp:

about your 5) point:
This would mean the sanity penalty should be lower / the max number of shadows should be higher by default?

yes because i think if each shadow is less effective in vanilla, they should also cost less to create (less sanity %)

I'm a coder, not an illustrator and such stuff. So while I can write code, I can neither desing an item nor animation nor specific look or sth like this. And I also dont have much knowledge about animations itself (where and how the existing animations do work).
That's why and since I prefer clear numbers (combinded status and show me mod always enabled) I always show such numbers in my mods, instead of visuals. But of course I would like to allow players to swithc between numbers/visuals, if I was able to make visuals. But I'm not. So if you know how to make visuals or know someone who want to help me with that, I will add them.

How much time are you willing to spent on this project? If you want me to change this mod accordingly, I cant do all the work myself. I can do the code, yes. But I'm not creative, so eg. names for the levels, what kind of items, what kind of animation and all those ideas must be "ready to code".

What to do next:
1) Yes I like most of your ideas and will implement them.
2) But we need to discuss further to define the ideas exactly, so we both like the endresult. Maybe we should write a Klei Forum https://forums.kleientertainment.com/profile/881349-serpens/
3) After we have an exact plan for every single feature, I can do the code.
4) We still need an animation/art specialist, if you want more visuals.

one thing that i wanted to mention was that i think in the case of 5 level system, shadows should not just get higher hp/damage per level, they should have other unique effects given to them too, such as:
1-the ability to use less durability of the item they are carrying and in the case of shadow duelist, the armor they are wearing should have increased durability too, (and maybe infinite durability at shadow level 5 ?!)
2-the ability to regenerate more health per second after being damaged (if the health is something like 500 and you get the same 10 hp per 2 sec , its gonna take really long untill you can heal that shadow back to full health)
3-innate resistance and damage (a base armor like wigfrid and increased punch damage for duelist)
4-increased inventory capacity for worker (also i think both duelist and worker should have a much much smaller inventory at the start because a 12 slot and a 9 slot inventory is like having several free chesters to store your items and equipments in!)
5-the ability to hold more complex items in hand , in case of worker it would be the ability to certain tools only after certain levels, and for duelist it would be the ability to hold certain weapons only after certain levels ( to balance out their number 1 ability with tool efficiency)

Originally posted by Serp:

I'm a coder, not an illustrator and such stuff. So while I can write code, I can neither desing an item nor animation nor specific look or sth like this. And I also dont have much knowledge about animations itself (where and how the existing animations do work).

i understand what you mean, i thought that if the mentioned animations were already in game , they could be recycled into your mod (all the mentioned animations are already in game) but it seems like i misunderstood how things work (im not a good coder so i dont really understand how things work)

Originally posted by Serp:

That's why and since I prefer clear numbers (combinded status and show me mod always enabled) I always show such numbers in my mods, instead of visuals. But of course I would like to allow players to swithc between numbers/visuals, if I was able to make visuals. But I'm not. So if you know how to make visuals or know someone who want to help me with that, I will add them.

i too personally prefer to have all the information that the game has to offer, but i tried to see it from the general prespective because most people dont like to see the numbers because it kind of feels un immersive to click on something and have your character say a bunch of numbers.
i was only suggesting this and if you dont like it its all ok!

Originally posted by Golden Demon:

i understand what you mean, i thought that if the mentioned animations were already in game , they could be recycled into your mod (all the mentioned animations are already in game) but it seems like i misunderstood how things work (im not a good coder so i dont really understand how things work)

at least we need no artist if they are already in the game. But I would need to study the code, how it works and how to transfer it to the shadows. This might be ~5 hours of work per animation. So I ghope you see why I usually dont add visuals if I personally dont need them :D (eg shadows were not able to do the picking animation, it took me ~10 hours to make this work (mostly because I had no clue how the code of it works and alot of try/error)

Originally posted by Serp:

How much time are you willing to spent on this project? If you want me to change this mod accordingly, I cant do all the work myself. I can do the code, yes. But I'm not creative, so eg. names for the levels, what kind of items, what kind of animation and all those ideas must be "ready to code".

as much as "You" would be willing to !
i would love to help with this project and will help for as long as you would like me to be around and help

Originally posted by Serp:

What to do next:
1) Yes I like most of your ideas and will implement them.
2) But we need to discuss further to define the ideas exactly, so we both like the endresult. Maybe we should write a Klei Forum https://forums.kleientertainment.com/profile/881349-serpens/
3) After we have an exact plan for every single feature, I can do the code.
4) We still need an animation/art specialist, if you want more visuals.

1-Thank you very much!
2-Sure, im really ok with the results as long as you are ok with them, as i said i already love the mod as it is.
3-Great!
4-I think i know a few people, if you still need an artist i think i can talk with a few people and see if they are willing to help too

Add farming and watering for worker shadow please

@RushiaBoingBoing: I currently don't play DST, so I have no clue how the new farming works.
I may consider this addition when I played myself with the new farming, might take some months.