My suggested changes for Warly, to better fit his Nomadic playstle.

[Brewsterpigeon]

Just a disclaimer, I'm not claiming to be a good don't starve player - I'm not good. I just like thinking of game design and design philosophy is interesting to me. I just wanna talk about what would make Warly better fit his role as a character better suited than others to be mobile.

Alright, ideas for him to be good.

What about Warly could be changed so that he better fits what seems to be the role they're going for: a more mobile character that benefits from cooking his own food. Here are some random ideas.

• Rather than punish him for eating the same thing more recently, reward him for eating more varied food. Right now if you eat two meatballs right after another, the second one will heal less. Instead, maybe make it so that if you haven't eaten a particular food in the past 2 days, you get a 20% bonus on the benefits gained from the food. This would make it more worthwhile to cook different foods, solidifying his role as a chef.

• Change his Crock-Pot to be a handheld item that can also be dropped, sorta like the Lantern. If you right click in his inventory you open a menu to put the food in. Only allow cooking when it's held out, and when you have it out, let it produce light (say half of a torch's radius?) and a small amount of heat. Let the heat and light from cooking last about 20 seconds after the dish is complete, allowing for time to reload the crock pot for another recipe to be made. 

• New recipes. The specific foods are up to Klei to make, but right now he only has 4 character specific foods, none of which are worth making except one, and that one requires butter which is very rare. Give him recipes that take a long time to make, so he can use them to walk quickly while cooking. Maybe a recipe that briefly boosts his damage dealt, like a protein shake of some sort. Food is easy to acquire in this game, but if he exclusively could make foods that gave you utility such as speed, extra damage, or other things that are useful, his food could be utilized for many things.

• Instead of a steady 33% faster hunger drain, make his hunger drain faster the longer it's been since he's eaten. If he hasn't eaten for 90 seconds, for example, his hunger starts to drop slightly quicker. At another 30 seconds, even quicker until a max at say 50% faster. The numbers could be played around with, but the idea is that he's a very hungry dude and loves to eat. It'd make food more important to eat, and encourage him to get more raw food like berries or seeds in order to stop the hunger from dropping so quickly.

• He needs another downside of some sort. Maybe uncooked things drain his sanity? Maybe he can't eat during dusk/night? I need ideas here, let me know if you have any.

These are just some ideas, if they're dumb let me know. And what are your ideas for balancing Warly to be better than a hungrier Wilson?

[Donke60]

I prefer how warly is

and you do nut need butter you can use milk 

and you do get rewarded for making varied food that 33% bonus it's ok if you have to make it a second time your version just of his varied meal plan sounds worse for bonuses and more restrictive

Warly does like to eat and your already encouraged to feed him different food
 

and the hunger rate that keeps going faster would be a pain to keep track of and would be the end if you went for a long trek and forgot a meal and you starve to death

his crackpot is already really good with your addition it makes it broken

Warly is suppose to make you vary your dishes warly  isn't a problem for me because I know almost all the recipes so I know almost what I can make at any given tim and his boost to food properties makes healing salves and green caps almost usless

and warly is given is recipes to add more variety out of common ingredients.
 

I'm ok with warly passive buffs its nice to have a character that changes it up but not allow to do ridiculous things like most others do where they have a certain playstyle you can play warly anyway you want the same can be said for wilson,Walnini,wilbur,Wes. and I think thats nice

Also I feel like your hunger drain would turn warly into wes but much worse if you haven't played wes I think you should to get a better understanding of what I mean because to me that sounded really dumb sry.
 

[Brewsterpigeon]

This is gonna be long, but I definitely recommend you read this. I'm gonna copy and paste a comment on reddit by /u/Misuto-M that mathematically proves Warly isn't very good. Here it is:

 

First, let me preface this with a disclaimer: I like this character's design aesthetic. I love his voice. I love the idea of a chef in the DS universe. I even love how thematically fitting his portable crock pot and chef pouch are. I wanted him to be good. I still hold hopes that he'll be reworked. Sadly, math exists...

Warly is a sub par Wes in Shipwrecked and in RoG he is essentially a more whiny Wilson who can't grow a beard but has a 190 max hunger instead of 150. 

Those are bold assertions, but if you follow me through this comment, I hope that by the end you'll agree with me. Let's go on a magically journey of math and logic. 

Upsides

First, let's look at what Warly brings to the table in terms of upsides:

 1. Portable Crock pot. He starts with and has a portable 6 charcoal, 6 twigs, 9 rocks. Cool in theory, even made me love him as a character when he first came out. It makes me sad to ruin this... But this is purely a crutch. Without it Warly would be unplayable thanks to his downsides that we'll discuss later.

 2. Chef Pouch. He starts the game with an 8 slot bag that halves the rate at which food spoils. Neat, starts the game with a boss item basically (Insulated pack and sea sack only have 6 slots). These can also be used, for the most part, as cheaper ice boxes since he can make them with just 1 rope and 1 cloth. I say mostly because they don't prevent ice from melting, unlike an ice box. This is yet another crutch, although far less required. 

 3. Big Stomach. He has 100 max hunger over Wilson, max 250. The rest of his stats are equal with Wilson's. 

 4. More Efficient Crock Pot Recipes. Food cooked in a crock pot provides 33% more stats. For example, bacon and eggs usually restores 75 hunger, 20 hp, and 5 sanity; on Warly this will restore 100 hunger, 26.6 hp, and 6.7 sanity. This is cool and thematically fitting, he is a chef so we can clearly understand how he makes the same food better. Furthermore, if a food has a downside, that downside is reduced by 33%. So monster lasagna will only cost 13.4 hp and sanity, instead of the standard 20 each. 

 5. Four Unique Recipes. I'm obligated to mention these. Only one is actually good, and that requires you to find butter. Another is arguably ok, because it turns monster meat into 10 easy sanity and some food without a downside. These are non-factors. They are cute and nothing more. If he actually benefited from variety these could be integral in playing him well. (We'll show math on why these and basically everything else in his entire design at this time in is a total failure as it completely misses the intended mark. )

Downsides

Those upsides sound nice right? Let's balance it out with his downsides..:

 1. More Hungry. He has a 33% faster hunger drain. Weird, 33% sounds familiar... Didn't we just mention how he got 33% more from crock pot recipes..? So his upside exists specifically to counter this if he eats from the crock pot. 

 2. Picky Eater. Cooked over fire food only gives him 90% of the stats. Dried foods like jerky give only 80% stats. Finally, raw food gives only 70% of it's stats. Ok, this is fair. his crock pot food is better, but he gets a bit less from some more convienent options that other characters can make great use of, like raw jellyfish being free food. Similar to this, if a food has a negative component the bonuses remain consistent but in the opposite direction: cooked over fire food with downsides cost 10%, dried food downsides cost 20% more, and raw downsides cost 30% more. So Raw monster meat costs 26 hp, dried costs 3.6, and cooked over the first it costs 3.3. 

 3. Really Picky Eater. If he eats a food that he remembers eating, then all of it's values are reduced by 10%, second time is 20%, third is 35%, fourth is 50%, and the fifth time is a whopping 70%. He remembers eating for 1.75 days. To clarify some situations here; If you eat meatballs one dawn of day 2, and then eat them again dawn of day 4, you are ok. But if you eat them around half way through day 3, you get a 10% reduction on all the stats, after his 33% bonus is applied. So first meatballs gives 83.1 hunger to him, while the second gives 74.8. Fair enough. But here is where things get difficult; Eating it the second time resets the timer, but keeps the counter. So if you eat meatballs again at the dawn of day 5, you'll get a 20% reduction and move the timer forward again. This can lead to a snowball effect on new players. Because you made a mistake with the timing, the next time you eat the same meal it's even worse, you have got less food from it, and will thus be hungry again sooner, and thus more likely to make the same mistake again... 

How the entire design fails to accomplish what they wanted and is mathematically disappointing.

Ok, let's rip the chef apart in general. 

He's intended to reward the player for being an expert chef. Being able to prepare numerous dishes should be a benefit to him (but it isn't). I assert this as true because... 3 of his special recipes are exactly on par with tons of other 37.5 hunger restoring foods. His 4th, is on par with meaty stew, but requires an exceptionally rare (exotic one might say) butter to make. They aren't more powerful or even easier to make than other options that already exist for all characters. Therefore, from a design standpoint, they exist to add more options such that it'll be possible to vary his diet more easily. 

He doesn't want variety in his current state anyways. The way the math works out is that it's easier and safer for you as a player to make 3 meatballs, and eat them all at the exact same time. This restores 192 food even after you factor in his penalty on the second and third. That's nearly 2 full days of hunger, thus you can just keep doing this forever and break even. Meatballs are easily made in bulk, and doing it with this method prevents you from ever making a mistake. Further, as you establish a base, you can have two new options; double eating bacon and eggs restores 190 food and is again enough to survive until his memory slips and eating just a single meaty stew is enough for 2 full days (200 food).

Forced variety is bad design the way it is now. It punishes new players far more than experienced ones. And experienced players will counter this weakness not the way designers intended (by having a varied diet) but by using simple math and logic to see that binge eating is optimal. I would love to see this the opposite way. Rather then lower the stats for repeated eatings, reward the player for variety through a similar mechanic. Maybe if hasn't eaten a buttermuffin in 14 in game days then it's value is tripled. Or, maybe he thinks of a new food he hasn't eaten in a long time and if you provide it to him within a time frame then it gets a huge stat bonus. Like mini objectives that you have a 2 day window to fill and if you complete it he gets a huge sanity bonus and double the food value. This goal method could even stay in tune with his character and have small slap on the wrist for the player - fail to satisfy him and he takes a small 5 or 10 sanity hit cause he's sad he didn't get the food he was craving. Anything over what we have now. I'm not saying do it these exact ways this is just off the cuff, but I prefer the carrot over the stick option we have now. A method that rewards skilled players, not one that punishes unskilled players and let's skilled players go even with standard or lower than standard characters. If Warly has severe challenges that he faces, it should be rewarding to conquer them. And that reward should not be being just ok. Or a little less than ok as it were...

A great benefit in the mid and late game is the players ability to mass produce. To go intentionally crazy to farm beard hair and nightmare fuel, then go to max sanity on command with 8 or so taffy. The ability to make 10 or so bacon and eggs so that they can leave base for longer, while sacrificing only 1 slot to food in their inventory (he can do this, but it isn't what his character design wants). The ability to stack honey up and eat it raw. For a normal character a stack of 40 honey is 5 full days of food. For Warly that stack of 40 honey is worth a drum roll 95% of a single day. 40 honey would only give Warly 95 hunger compared to 375 to other characters and remember that Warly uses 100 hunger a day, normal characters use 75. 

 

Shipwrecked

This is Warly's home turf. Surely he's best here... right? No. 

 1. Shipwrecked is Flooded with Food. There is way more food in shipwrecked that you can just pick up and eat while exploring to stay out longer. The best example of this is jellyfish. They provide insane hunger and hp, and they are literally everywhere. There doesn't exist an island that you can't pop off for a quarter of a day, hunt jellyfish, and have a full belly twice over if you take time to cook them. Food literally falls from every tree in this format; Bananas, eggs, coconuts, monster meat from snakes, just falling from the trees. Not being able to use these resources, being punished to a ridiculous degree if you were to try binge eating jellyfish or any other food that you just can pick up... This is a huge downside, and he doesn't have an upside to counter this. 

 2. Wes Exists. This sounds sarcastic, and I feel will garner the most backlash out of all other points in my post. But let's compare the two briefly. Wes gets 25% more hungry, and has a small belly. This means he needs eat every 1.2 days. But, he can eat that flood of food in shipwrecked that we mentioned above. Keeping Wes fed is provably easier in shipwrecked, than keeping Warly fed. Especially for new players. WHAT? A new player given guidance on how to kill jellyfish with snakeskin gear on, will have more success on Wes, than the same new player, trying to vary Warly's diet, making mistakes, and getting punished in a snowball manner. The amount of advice and counter-intuitive tips required to help them pilot Warly's restricted diet is way more than they need to know about Wes; how to exploit his downsides by binge eating meatballs, getting them to understand that it's ok to go down to 1 or 2 hunger and just ignore their character's whining. 

 3. Wes's Other Downsides. Wes does 25% less damage than Warly. In Shipwrecked... this doesn't matter. Tigershark is trivially easy to kite while taking 0 damage. Sealnado is easily stagger locked while taking 0 damage. Quacken is a joke of fight anyways, do I need to expand on this one? What other enemies does shipwrecked have? Spiders, snakes, and hounds? A few other mobs that you can fight. Spiders can be killed with traps and are stagger locked one on one so trivially easy. Snake kiting is the same for Warly and Wes. Let it strike, move in and attack 3 or 4 times respectively. The snake is dead before it can attack again. Hounds is where this could fall apart... but it doesn't. Cutlass Supreme. Yeah that weapon exists. Wes 3 shots normal hounds and 2 shots seasonal hounds. Same number of hits as Warly. Because shipwrecked has this incredibly easily made and mass produced weapon this difference doesn't matter. Wes also has 37 less max hp less than Warly. This makes him a lot less tanky right? Not really. Boat combat doesn't use the player's hp pool. And it's easy to amass a collection of thulucite armors/crowns which have such ridiculous armor properties that your hp doesn't really matter... 

 4. Wes's Biggest Upside. While Warly is constantly complaining that he's hungry, or that the food you give him is inadequate, or the weather isn't favorable, or any other number of complaints. Wes. Is. Silent. He trusts that you won't pilot him into the ground. So while math says Warly needs to go to very low hunger numbers and binge eat 3 meatballs, Warly says "BLECH" when you feed him the third, and for .75 days he will complain repeatedly about being hungry. Sounds like a troll, or a nitpick... But when your character defies the logic that actually governs optimal play, and criticizes you all the while. It's insulting to the player. 

If you read all that, then you are in one of three camps most likely; 1) This guys is off his rocker and terrible downvoted. 2) I don't think Warly is weaker than Wes, but he made some good points. 3) Omg... he's right. I can't say anything more to convince you if you're in camp 1, but camp 2, think of it this way: Wes is designed to be the challenge tier character. His official perk is "has trouble staying alive." If I made an argument that even has you considering Warly is near Wes in power level... is that ok from a design stand point? That someone, not intended to be a challenge, is so far below the power curve of other characters, that they are comparable to who is designed to be the most difficult to play. And that's in a skilled players hand. I think a new player by far would have an easier time on Wes than Warly in the current state. 

Reign of Giants

Here Warly is a sub par Wilson. Imagine Wilson, with no beard, but he has +40 max stomach. That's basically the situation. Warly's hunger drain vs other characters means that with a normal drain he would have a roughly 190 max stomach effectively. Now imagine that Wilson can't use jerky to explore the ruins. That he doesn't have the ability to binge eat taffy to restore his sanity... Sounds quite a bit worse than the Wilson we already have right? But this Wilson has a portable 6 charcoal, 9 rocks, and 6 twigs. That's amazing right? Crock pots are cheap, and you can cook in advance and carry 1 stack of food, rather than carrying several stacks of ingredients. But that's ok we got you cover, this new Wilson also starts with a backpack that not only helps him carry the ingredients, but helps them stay fresh twice as long! Of course, if you use this, you lose access wearing some very powerful chest slot armor items like hibearnation vest or belt of hunger... Why am I even comparing him to Wilson? This isn't even close. I would compare him to Wes again, but RoG doesn't trivialize Wes's downsides like Shipwrecked does. So I would just list Warly as second worst numerically powerful character...

 1. More Crock Pot Use But Fewer Options. In RoG you generally eat more crock pot dishes. While in Shipwrecked even in the late game your plan can just be gather jellyfish while wailing around, food isn't quite that common in RoG. Not rare by any measure, but we described Shipwrecked as flooded with food for a reason. In RoG Warly loses access to a ton of recipes while gaining access to only a few. He even loses 1 of his own recipes completely, and makes another very difficult to create as he needs sweet potato from farms. Fresh Fruit Crepes is still here, but still requires butter. Even so... This lack of options doesn't hurt him, as we showed, optimal play is simply binge eating food every 2 days. You can still make meatballs. 

 2. Bosses. The bosses here are tougher to deal with and thus Wes's downside of lower damage is much more noticeable. Couple that with not having access to an endless barrage of cutlass supremes to fight them or hounds with and we finally have a time that Warly is noticeably better than Wes. 

 3. Caves and Ruins. He sucks at the caves and ruins. By this point, again, I'd move Wes up in the tier above Warly. Not being able to efficiently eat jerky while down here is huge. That's a defining food for the caves and ruins. You lose more sanity, you take more damage from more difficult enemies, and you keep getting hungry. So a food that fixes all of these in spades and only takes 1 inventory slot? Priceless. More valuable than anything Warly brings to the table. A Wilson who's only power is the amazing ability to eat jerky, is better in the ruins and caves than Warly. Yes there are other options. You can still double eat bacon and eggs, wear a hibearnation vest and tam of shanter while carrying your lantern, and bring honey poultices for healing. That covers you. But it limits your options, stops you from even using your chef pouch or a larger backpack. So again, we see Warly sacrificing choice just to be a sub par Wilson or Wes.

Adventure Mode

Awful. In adventure mode you want to stay mobile, picking and eating food as you run around collecting the things. That's important and time saving. Warly brings nothing to the table that helps here. He's again trapped on binge eating meatballs, and eventually upgrading to meaty stews or bacon and eggs. For what upside? A 26% larger effective stomach than Wilson, and gaining 33% more hp and sanity from food cooked in a crock pot. 

Conclusion

Warly is an intentionally gimped character, that starts the game with 2 crutches that are essentially required to survive the early game and after surviving the early game, his only upsides are having a 26% larger effective stomach than Wilson, and restoring 33% more sanity and health from crock pot recipes that he eats once. While his downsides are numerous and far more difficult for new players to understand than any other character in the game. He has nothing unique or powerful enough to merit playing him while his upsides solely exist to attempt to counter his downsides. Yet his downsides overwhelminingly limit him as a character and are not mitigated enough by his modest upsides. Why play Warly over any of the unique characters that have something special about them unless you want a challenge. And if you want a challenge, we already have Wes. 

 

_____________________________

 

I know it's long but I definitely think you should read it.

 

As for your counter arguments:

 

You're right, milk does work for the one recipe but it's still a rare item and the recipe is rarely worth making.

 

As for the recipe variance idea, the idea Iisted is way more inclusive than the current system. Currently Warly naturally gets a 33% bonus from crock pot foods. If he eats the same food twice in a 1.75 day period, the second time he eats it the food doesn't have that 33% boost. If he eats again, it is even less effective. My idea is that there's no downside to eating the same thing, but rather you get an additional boost from eating something that you haven't eaten in the past two days.

 

The food meter I mentioned really isn't a big deal. If you eat a single seed or berry, you reset the drain meter. It would just mean you need to keep more raw foods with you to keep that meter from draining too quickly.

 

 

[Donke60]

YAY you win. actually no you don't Warly was there to offer EXPERIENCED players a more varied recipe character. And ok Warly is gimped that's why he was those crutches well a big DUH to me thats like asking why can webber use spiders well idk maybe because he gets attacked by all neutral mobs. Also this Reddit user forgot about ,unagi,surf 'n'turf,banana pops and sense your going into the caves you do grab a belt of hunger and once that's done all of warly's downsides go byebye you don't really need the chef pouch anymore.

And the user also forgot to mention honey nuggets,honey hams,stuffed eggplant,gracamole,fish sticks,and tacos,dragonpies If you only eat food  that most eat yes with Warly you are going to have a bad time because those "optimal" foods are limting and the last thing you want is Warly to have is a limited food bank. However I don't stick to the most common foods when I play Warly and even when I don't and I don't have a problem. So I say that a lot of people get the wrong idea from him because he changes something that most people have a habit of making certain foods then when they play Warly who needs alot of different recipes they think he's unplayable or under-powered.

The shipwreck characters were made for the shipwrecked enviroment if you take them to an enviroment like RoG you have to deal with the problems of not playing them where you are suppose too. It's like sayng that woodlegs sanity drain is to much if you put him in a RoG world of course your going to have that problem. And Adventure Mode isn't a optimal environment for anybody. 
 

I play both Wes and Warly and I enjoy them both though I do not often play Wes in shipwreck for that's when I play warly mostly I don't consider Warly below Wes at all I've also played Warly in Rog I played all characters expect Walnini in Rog and it was fun so you are not persuading me and I am not one who needs the persuading.
 

And That guy's math would of been better if crockpot foods all had even values but they don't they jump all over the place 
anyway before you ask but other crockpot foods or usless I say well you just gimped yourself right there.Until I here your counter I leave you with this

 

[JohnWatson]

@Donke60 I get the feeling that you haven't read any of what Brewster said. Or at least, you just glimpsed through and didn't bother to analyse anything. Contrary to the popular belief, Warly does not promote a nomadic playstyle, and /u/Misuto-M has mathematically proven that. The argument he presented has logical and mathematical basis. If you visit the /r/dontstarve subreddit often, then you'll know that /u/Misuto-M is a very experienced player with vast knowledge in maths.

[Brewsterpigeon]

@Donke60 The 'popular' foods in the game are popular because they're the most effective for the lowest cost. Warly gets limited access to meatballs, which are amazing, and to green caps/jerky/cooked cactus, all of which are more amazing. If he had some recipes that actually made up for some of his downsides, then he'd be worth using, but as of right now, even with his downsides eating two meatballs right after another is more optimal than other options. His hunger stays fine. But despite that, he still doesn't get to eat jerky often, or green caps, or cooked cactus, which really hurts sanity and health wise. He doesn't have enough to make up for not being able to eat very helpful foods, and having to stop often to cook food good enough for him to eat, limiting his mobility. He needs a more mobile crock pot and food to make that gives him additional benefits, sorta like wickerbottom's books.

Also, the guy on reddit was just going through every mode of the game. He's judging every character based on their potential in every mode of the game.

[Donke60]

4 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

 

@Donke60 I get the feeling that you haven't read any of what Brewster said. Or at least, you just glimpsed through and didn't bother to analyse anything. Contrary to the popular belief, Warly does not promote a nomadic playstyle,

 

I did as best I could I seem to have gotten the wrong idea I didn't mean to say that he promoted a normadic style but you can use any character in any style.

 

4 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

u/Misuto-M has mathematically proven that. The argument he presented has logical and mathematical basis. If you visit the /r/dontstarve subreddit often, then you'll know that /u/Misuto-M is a very experienced player with vast knowledge in maths.

I don't use reddit and had never heard of this user so forgive me for my skepticism of this users credibility but If you say so I will accept that I am wrong.

4 hours ago, Brewsterpigeon said:

 

@Donke60 The 'popular' foods in the game are popular because they're the most effective for the lowest cost.

 

I understand there popular for reasons but that change that I hate Don't starve meta in general but usually someone does my yelling for me on the forums so I don't tend to say much when it comes to changing something in the game. 

 

4 hours ago, Brewsterpigeon said:

wise. He doesn't have enough to make up for not being able to eat very helpful foods, and having to stop often to cook food good enough for him to eat, limiting his mobility. He needs a more mobile crock pot and food to make that gives him additional benefits,

So I can see that health and sanity are the main issues but  I still don't like many of your suggestions because I like characters don't really have powers but do something that changes up the gameplay why you want food that messes with his stats and thats whwer we differ most on what should be changed I just vote for recipes that fix the sanity and health issue 

[Donke60]

I came up with an idea how bout make it so that he is able to make food out not normal food items like seeds flowers petals and glommer goop or the(flower) and because he is a chef if there is a chance of making something else make there player choose what he makes that way you can always make the best dish.