Maxwell... the miner ? yyy what?

[voyager156]

So in single player DS Maxwell is my favorite character. He is an interesting person, this "dark" occultist who has low health but can regain sanity very, very quickly. This leads to some fun changes in gameplay that I really enjoy! He also can summon shadow puppets -  but this is something, that I use occasionally.

In DS Together first thing that comes to my mind about this character is...miner. Why? Because people playing him mainly do that & yeah, how can I forgot - they also chop trees. Really a shadow puppets extravaganza. They do that ofc because his sanity regen is not very high --> so now he can become miner or lumberjack...

He was a cool magician remember ?!? What happened to him ;-(

Do You guys have some tips on how to play him now? (maybe I missed something).

If not, please write how do You think he should be changed.

I myself, would propose just this - make his sanity regeneration higher / faster - so instead of miner, he can become a magician.

[JohnWatson]

No, please don't make another sanity-related character. Any sanity-related abilities will always be useless, hence how useless Willow is.

Maxwell is fine just as he is, he's a lot more interesting than his DS counterpart.

[voyager156]

15 minutes ago, JohnWatson said:

Maxwell is fine just as he is, he's a lot more interesting than his DS counterpart.

He is more interesting now? In what way?

[JohnWatson]

Just now, voyager156 said:

He is more interesting now? In what way?

He makes grinding for wood less of a pain.

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

Maxwell is fine just as he is, he's a lot more interesting than his DS counterpart.

Agreed
 

Raising Maxwell's current sanity would really do nothing
His puppets in DS are slow,clunky, and very much just expensive shields compared to his DST counterpart
 

3 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

Any sanity-related abilities will always be useless, hence how useless Willow is.

Not necessarily they just need to be handled differently I wouldn't count willow as sanity-based as she just raises and doesn't  really have special abilities just utility with it.  I count Maxwell the most sanity based on the account his puppets cost sanity and they limit his actual max sanity

 

3 hours ago, voyager156 said:

he can become a magician.

He is but unless you increase his combat potential he would no matter what you do be a utility character and there for a miner

as you say

 

[Tumalu]

His sanity regen is still plenty enough to stay around max the overwhelming majority of the time and he makes good use of the shadow equipment; which is good, because half max HP is actually a big problem in DST with weaker armor. Puppets are fun and he can use Wickerbottom's books with his sanity regen and ability to sleep (if you really need a LOT of bookage... tentacle field for giants???) instead of on Wicker's not-so-easy-to-recover sanity. (Although, Wicker's mostly fine once you get a Tam o' shanter, Maxwell can really spam 'em, anytime.)

The main problem with Maxwell is that, yeah, he has HALF max hp, and DST has weaker armor. It's manageable and Shadow Armor can allow him to still fight more dangerous targets, but... it's a thing. Past that, there's a very noticable similarity between DST Maxwell and DST Woodie; Woodie gets 5 sanity for planting pinecones which, on him, makes sanity pretty much trivial. He can drop it like a stone with werebeaver if he wants to emulate shadow puppet max sanity drop, and he chops logs faster than even Maxwell can (since you can chop 'til you turn, and keep chopping 'til you turn back.), perhaps comparable to Maxwell with 3~4 woodcutters but Maxwell has to spend a bunch of fuel for that. And Woodie doesn't have half HP.

Maxwell still has mining and digging puppets but the digger puppets really aren't important. The main edge left is just being able to use Wicker's books and do heavy mining if you need a boatload of rocks for stone walls or something.

So yeah, that's my 2 cents. Maxwell isn't bad, but he's also kind of overshadowed by Woodie (Which is amusing, because people complain about Woodie not being good). I still like Maxwell a lot flavor-wise, and it works if you can manage his health with healing and night armors when necessary, but... unless you need to blast-mine or overuse wicker books Woodie is really just better, imo.

 

[ShadowDuelist]

Maxwell is a great support character, he requires very little sanity management and can quickly overflow any team with stone, gold and wood.

He's just really bad to fight, I know that he can wear night armor for longer before  getting out of sanity, but some bosses like toadstool or bee queen, if you play solo or with a bad team, are a real pain for him to defeat.

Maxwell just needs an improvement in his duelists to give him another tool in the fight department; It still won't make him good against bosses, but Im sure having 2 duelists that don't die in a single hit would expand his playablity

[Sinister_Fang]

6 hours ago, Tumalu said:

but the digger puppets really aren't important.

Really? I find the diggers to be one of my most used puppets. I don't really see many other Maxwells much so I could be the minority here.

[Maslak]

 Diggers are the only worker puppets that you can keep around at all time, because they won't destroy stuff you want to keep, like immature trees or marble sculptures. Unless someone uses stumps as decorations, then digger can mess up, too.
 It's pretty handy to keep one digger all the time. If you want to chop wood, you want to have digger anyway. 3 miners is totally enough, in my opinon, too. Digger won't do much if you're not chopping tho, after the early days when he's useful for gravedigging.

[JohnWatson]

Maxwell isn't overshadowed by Woodie, it's the complete opposite. Maxwell's minions chop down trees faster Woodie can. Maxwell could also pick up the drops and dig out stumps while his minions are busy. And the best thing is, Maxwell doesn't have an annoying transformation gimmick when collecting wood. He can also go perma-insane for basically infinite nightmare fuel. Basically, the magician is a better woodcutter than the woodcutter.

[Donke60]

that may be true

but woodies personality is pretty great
EH?

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

Maxwell isn't overshadowed by Woodie, it's the complete opposite. Maxwell's minions chop down trees faster Woodie can. Maxwell could also pick up the drops and dig out stumps while his minions are busy. And the best thing is, Maxwell doesn't have an annoying transformation gimmick when collecting wood. Basically, the magician is a better woodcutter than the woodcutter.

Also I would like to point out that even if that is true which I will assume it is
Woodie is self suffeficate in his resource gathering he doesn't need nightmare fuel
and for some players that is a nice thing to not rely on a resource or people.

He is a blue-collar man made his own way
"insert some speech"

[Mario384]

Utility-wise, Maxwell's puppets completely wash over Woodie's usefulness.  They chop better than Woodie, don't have to deal with the horrible Werebeaver form of DST, and any decent player will have no trouble getting nightmare fuel for replacement puppets. That's not even to mention that they have other forms which completely overshadow Woodie's Beaver abilities.

[HamBatter]

10 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

Any sanity-related abilities will always be useless, hence how useless Willow is.

Willow's problem is her association with fire (utility essentially a toggle between destructive and irrelevant) and being unfortunately chosen as the sanity showcase character in Strange New Powers.

[voyager156]

Ok, so if Maxwell is so great, as You guys / gals wrote - why almost no one plays him?

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, Mario384 said:

 

Utility-wise, Maxwell's puppets completely wash over Woodie's usefulness.  They chop better than Woodie, don't have to deal with the horrible Werebeaver form of DST, and any decent player will have no trouble getting nightmare fuel for replacement puppets. That's not even to mention that they have other forms which completely overshadow Woodie's Beaver abilities.

 

Maybe
But for some players its about Player/Character connection
rather then what is optimal
For me anyway

 

3 hours ago, voyager156 said:

Ok, so if Maxwell is so great, as You guys / gals wrote - why almost no one plays him?

Well maybe they do but that doesn't mean that the majority of players in DST play Maxwell
this is a rather small online commuity

[228]

11 minutes ago, voyager156 said:

Ok, so if Maxwell is so great, as You guys / gals wrote - why almost no one plays him?

That's not true, many people main maxwell, including me. First impression of him is being very fragile and having seemingly useless book, which can't be used the "normal" way (it's not very obvious that is has to be dropped on the ground in order to be used). Also, maxwell is completely different to his DS counterpart, therefore requires building different strategy, which itself takes some time. Usually it's easier to abandon new things than to adapt to them.

[Sinister_Fang]

5 hours ago, voyager156 said:

Ok, so if Maxwell is so great, as You guys / gals wrote - why almost no one plays him?

Because everyone else uses Wigfrid, Wendy and WX-78. No one is really saying that he's the most op character (well, not anymore at least). He's just not as easy to use as some other characters and I'd imagine his low health scares away a lot of people from using him.

[Silxer]

12 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Maxwell is a great support character, he requires very little sanity management and can quickly overflow any team with stone, gold and wood.

He's just really bad to fight, I know that he can wear night armor for longer before  getting out of sanity, but some bosses like toadstool or bee queen, if you play solo or with a bad team, are a real pain for him to defeat.

Maxwell just needs an improvement in his duelists to give him another tool in the fight department; It still won't make him good against bosses, but Im sure having 2 duelists that don't die in a single hit would expand his playablity

I wouldn't mind seeing any sort of improvement to his shadow duelists, like making them take two hits to K.O. or something... but as of now I just use them as a short distraction/added damage pared with other mobs.

9 hours ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Really? I find the diggers to be one of my most used puppets. I don't really see many other Maxwells much so I could be the minority here.

I enjoy just having one digger around all the time as well, it's pretty much a shovel that doesn't take up an inventory slot and auto harvests which is pretty convenient. 

4 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Because everyone else uses Wigfrid, Wendy and WX-78. No one is really saying that he's the most op character (well, not anymore at least). He's just not as easy to use as some other characters and I'd imagine his low health scares away a lot of people from using him.

Yea, I think the low HP is the main reasons why many avoid playing him. You have to be much more careful (by always having armor on and having a life giving amulet if possible) or really good at kiting when fighting mobs to avoid taking damage, but there are some cases where taking damage is unavoidable if the server has lag issues and thus some players avoid playing him for that reason.

Also, I've notice that the characters you mentioned tend to be a lot more "lag friendly" since Wigfrid can face-tank most small mobs with minimum issue and Wendy has Abigail to help her out with mobs even on servers with high ping.  WX-78 is just good since he becomes something similar to Wigfrid in terms of tankiness with the gear stat boosts and  the speed bonus/freeze immunity is obvious great to. 

 

[JohnWatson]

9 hours ago, Donke60 said:

Also I would like to point out that even if that is true which I will assume it is
Woodie is self suffeficate in his resource gathering he doesn't need nightmare fuel
and for some players that is a nice thing to not rely on a resource or people.

He is a blue-collar man made his own way
"insert some speech"

Uh, do you actually believe that Nightmare Fuel is at all hard to get? Maxwell can even go perma-insane to get farm Nightmare Fuel very easily.

[Maslak]

11 hours ago, voyager156 said:

Ok, so if Maxwell is so great, as You guys / gals wrote - why almost no one plays him?

It's kinda boring - you just make puppets and pick up loot.
It's also risky, because of his low max hp.

[ShadowDuelist]

1 hour ago, Maslak said:

It's kinda boring - you just make puppets and pick up loot.
It's also risky, because of his low max hp.

But.. But! his... dapperness..!

Actually I find him fun, besides the anti-hero thing for rp purposes, to me he's a "Wes with a purpose": the hard mode character who actually has something useful for the party, and that forces you to stop and think how to face most fight situations using your brain (if you don't want insta-death that is)

[Donke60]

7 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

Uh, do you actually believe that Nightmare Fuel is at all hard to get? Maxwell can even go perma-insane to get farm Nightmare Fuel very easily.

Well no it isn't hard to get and I know maxwell can lock himself in a insane state.

[StarvedKasad]

Can we please buff Maxwell already? Unless Klei doesn't want to gain money from their previously badass boss character through customizations.

Because I haven't seen many people playing Maxwell since the first week of the game's release.

The character is literally horrible. Even WX 78 got some really nice buffs. Why can't maxwell have some decent buffs like 150 hp or not totally useless shadows that die in every hound wave,every creature swarm,Every ghost/tree guard they spawn and every giant attack except the Goose Goose?

Their argument against buffing Maxwell was "this isn't dota".That's PRECISELY why Don't starve together should have balanced characters.It's because this game doesn't have 100+ characters that interact with infinite possible ways together,but because there are barely 10 characters in the game that it's so FREAKING EASY TO DO IT.

 

[Corvidae]

On 12 March 2017 at 11:26 PM, voyager156 said:

Ok, so if Maxwell is so great, as You guys / gals wrote - why almost no one plays him?

He's about as durable as wet tissue.

- A former Maxwell player.

I'm considering trying him again now that I know how to not die and that non-duelist minions are worthwhile. Playing Wigfrid is fun but kind of low-hanging fruit, as other posters have mentioned. I mostly play WX these days.