My Suggestions for the Character Reworks

[Nitrogenoxide]

Before I talk about character perks, for anyone who doesn't know the different character perks in detail, I've divided characters into 3 categories based on the purpose of their perks in this info dump:

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Assist Types

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Assist type characters in DST are characters that aim to help newer players learn the game. Some help players more than others but may offer downsides that will cripple the player in the late game.

Wilson

Wilson is the main character of the Don't Starve universe. His only perk is that he can grow a beard, this perk should not be understated however, as not only will it help a new player through their first major roadblock (winter) it is also a good source of beard hair which can make meat effigies to revive the player. He has no downsides.

Winona

Winona is a DST exclusive character added

on September 13th 2017. She received some minor backlash from the fans as she fits the same niche as Wilson and doesn't specialize in any major areas despite specialization being valued over versatility in multiplayer games. Her perks include the ability to craft duct tape which is easily outclassed by sewing kits after the first few hound waves. She is also able to craft twice as fast and is able to take 1 hit from Charlie without taking damage.

Wendy

Wendy’s perks are helpful for new players but detrimental for experienced ones. Her perks include Abigail: her sister's ghost who is good at fighting groups but bad at fighting bosses. Abigail gets herself killed easily. Wendy also gets an insanity resistance perk. Her damage however is reduced by 25% which makes her performance poor in the combat heavy late game.

Willow

Willow is a poor choice for new and old players alike. Her perks include a lighter which serves as a buffed torch and a stuffed bear that keeps the agro of nightmares. She also has fire resistance and gets sanity regen near fires. She doesn't sound like a terrible choice but her lighter and bear may prevent players from learning the resource gathering and nightmare kiting skills needed for higher levels of play. Not to mention her downside of freezing while insane which prevents the player from getting nightmare fuel.

Specialization Types

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Specialization Types have perks that tend to focus on one aspect of gameplay. They work well in teams and are well liked by fans but can be hard to learn.

Wickerbottom

Wickerbottom is possibly the best character in DST. Her perks specialize in farming. Not the kind of farm you craft but in all kinds of resource generation. She has a variety of books she can craft, each of them having different uses.

1. Birds of the World summons a ring of 20 to 30 birds around the player. It's rather useless on it's own but when paired with “Sleepytime Stories”. It can be an amazing source of meat. It costs 2 eggs and 2 papyrus to craft and drains 50 sanity with each of it's 3 uses.

2. Applied Horticulture is arguably the most overpowered item in the game. It grows every plant on the screen 1 stage; Trees being the only plant that need more than 1 stage to grow. 1 book can fill half a fridge with berries. It costs 1 manure, 1 seed, and 2 papyrus. It drains 33 sanity with each of it's 5 uses.

3. Sleepy Time Stories functions like a more accessible panflute but with an added cost of 33 sanity and only 5 uses. It costs 2 papyrus and 2 nightmare fuel to craft.

4. On Tentacles summons 3 tentacles near the player with each use. The tentacles will attack anything in range making it good for killing enemies and bosses. It costs 50 sanity with each of it’s 5 uses and can be crafted with 2 papyrus and 1 tentacle spot.

5. The End is Nigh is summons lightning bolts around the player. It's main use is overcharging WX-78. It can be crafted with 2 papyrus and 1 red gem and has 5 uses costing 33 sanity each.

Wickerbottom's other perk is she gets +1 tier in the science tab. This means she can craft science machine items without a science machine and can craft alchemy engine items with a science machine. Her downsides include not being able to sleep and losing sanity from spoiled food, both of which have little impact on gameplay. She synergizes well with Wolfgang, easily feeding him, WX, who eats spoiled food without penalty and can be overcharged easily, and Maxwell who can read her books.

Wolfgang

Wolfgang's perks center around combat and rely on his hunger meter, his max health scales with his hunger and goes up to 300 max, he switches between 3 forms depending on his hunger. Between ~0-100 hunger he will be wimpy dealing only 0.50 to 0.75 times his normal damage, he loses hunger at a rate ~1-1.5 times slower than normal in this form, as well as going only 90% the speed of normal.

When between ~200-300 hunger he will deal ~1.25-2 times as much damage as normal  as well as going 25% faster and losing hunger ~1.5-3 times as fast. His main downside is that he loses 10% times more sanity from monsters and the dark, as well as an accelerated hunger drain.

Variety Types

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These types of characters seek to add a twist to the game, making each playthrough new and interesting.

Wes

We all know Wes, the most overpowered character in the game. He deals a whopping 0.75 times the damage of other characters, and his hunger drains 1.25 times as fast! He even has a full 113 health! His main perk is that he can craft a pile of balloons for 4 water balloons. These let him place explosive balloons. His main downside is that he can't speak, preventing him from flexing his power on the other characters.

Webber

Webber is one of the more interesting characters, he starts with and can craft spider eggs that let him make spider nests, he can also eat monster foods without penalty. Spiders are neutral towards him and can be befriended by him. His downside is that bunnymen, pigs, and

Catcoons are automatically hostile towards him.

Overall his perks change up gameplay but make him synergize poorly with other characters.

Strange/questionable design choices?

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You might’ve noticed I've only gone over 8/12 characters in Don't Starve Together, and the reason for that is simple: characters perks and design choices for them in this game are downright strange. Most of the perks for the characters in this game were taken straight from the single player. It's hard enough trying to categorize 8 of them as it is. Here's my take on the rest of the characters.

WX-78

WX is strange in his objective superiority. His main perk is his ability to consume gears, which not only can increase his max health, sanity, and hunger but also double as the best healing and sanity restoring items in the game. this goes up to a maximum of 400 health, 300 sanity, and 200 hunger. His other perk is that when he gets struck by lightning he becomes 50% faster and emits light on his own. He also becomes immune to freezing, each bolt of lightning gives the buff a day of duration and stacks indefinitely. Considering “The End is Nigh” summons 16 bolts with each use and has 5 uses, if we assume every bolt hits a single book will give him 80 days of this buff. He also has the minor perk of eating spoiled food without penalty. His weakness is that he takes damage when it's raining(although it's rather negligible).

Woodie

Woodie's perks are too spread out to count as specialized, too obstructive to count as helpful and don't change the game enough to count as variety. His main perk is that he has a talking axe that chops trees fast and has infinite durability. He also has an extra stat called beaverness. His main downside is that he becomes a werebeaver during a full moon or when his beaverness stat drops below 25. his werebeaver form has heat, cold, and water resistance as well as night vision. In this form he can't wear armor and only does 27 damage with each hit. He only turns back into a human when his beaverness reaches 100. He can gain beaverness at any point by eating wood materials and he can gain it in werebeaver form by destroying objects. Beaverness drains about 2/min and by 1.5 each time Woodie swings his axe. It also drains fast during full moons. He also gains 5 sanity each time he plants a pine cone and gets added follower time as well as extra insulation.

Maxwell

Although Maxwell fits the same resource gathering/sanity management niche as Woodie and does those jobs better, his downside makes late game quite difficult. His main perk is his shadow puppets which not only harvest resources easily but also can keep him insane at will letting him farm nightmare fuel easily. Maxwell's other perk is his passive sanity boost of 6.66/minute which combined with his shadow puppets give him the best sanity management in the game. He can also read wickerbottom's books. His main downside is he only has 75 health, which can make late game content excessively difficult. His downside certainly twists his playstyle but he's also very specialized, putting him half a foot in each category.

Wigfrid

On the surface level Wigfrid looks similar to Wolfgang, however she plays quite differently: first of all, she take 0.75 times as much damage as normal and deals 1.25 times as much damage as normal. This puts her on a clear path towards tanking with her added resistance, compared to Wolfgang's tendency for kiting due to his speed boost. Secondly, Wigfrid can craft battle helmets and battle Spears which are similar to normal football helmets and Spears but with more durability/damage. The ingredients for these are more abundant early game but also less renewable then normal. She also gains health and sanity from killing monsters, further solidifying her role as a tank. Her main downside is that she can only eat meat dishes. In contrast to Wolfgang who's perks reward combat skills Wigfrid’s seem to compensate for a lack of them, putting her somewhere between assistance and specialization. This combined with her meat diet spreads her perks out too much to fit in any of my categories.

 

Problems and Fixes for each Character

Let's start with the near perfect characters to get them out of the way first:

First we have Wilson, his perks give new players a good starting point, and his lack of a weakness makes him a good character for almost any situation.

Then we have Webber, his perks give the game a fresh twist, the only criticism I have for him is that he starts with spider eggs, which end up turning large Webber servers into giant spider nests, the simple fix is to remove the eggs, maybe let him start with a few of the materials but not enough for the eggs.

We also have Wolfgang, who's perks make him a wonderfully specialized character, his downside of added hunger is good at keeping him at bay. Perhaps make his hunger drain a bit faster. please make his animations cancelable as well.

Finally we have Wes, he serves his niche perfectly and as such doesn't need any changes.

Next we have some characters who need some tweaking:

Let's do Wendy first. She's good at what she does for the most part however Abigail could use a bit of a buff as she doesn't compensate for Wendy's weaknesses enough. Perhaps make her more of a tank but do less damage as it would give new players a safer environment to learn kiting with the added benefit of not needing to change her behavior tree.

Next we have WX, he doesn't take nearly as much rain damage as he should. cranking that up a bit should keep him by the fire on rainy days. Instead of nerfing the overcharge, Nerf “The End is Nigh” instead, a day of charge from a stray thunderbolt is reasonable but 16 days from a single book use is not. Nerf the amount of bolts down to ~6, as although it would still be powerful, it would be able to keep WX at bay at least with the extra rain damage.

Finally we have Wickerbottom, Nerf her health down to 100-120 as no old farmer lady should be that tanky, that should limit her to her farming job. Her science tab perk is kind of overkill as well so add a sanity cost whenever she makes anything a tier higher than normal.

Alright, time for the big reworks, these are characters who need real fixing up.

Let's begin with Willow, let's fix up that lighter by repairing durability with grass and petals, maybe around 25% each to keep it cheaper than a new lighter, the intention here to keep the player gathering resources. Next we fix up Bernie, let him keep the agro of a nightmare even when the player attacks it, do however, make sure he can only keep the agro of 1 at a time, this would make him useful but not overpowered. Finally instead of making Willow freeze when she becomes insane make her become insane when she gets cold, not only does it make more sense it also lets her farm nightmare fuel.

Let's address the biggest problem: in DST there are not 1, not 2, but 3 pairs of characters that fit the same niches as each other. Let's break it down shall we?

First we have Wilson and Winona. These fit the same exact niche of being a beginner character with minor perks and no weakness.

Winona is in dire need of a new set of perks to differentiate herself from Wilson. This is ultimately up to klei as this is far more then just tweaking but I'll list a few ideas I've heard from different people off the top of my head.

1. This is a highly requested perk I've heard many times: simply make the duct tape able to repair items other than clothing: while most agree that armor weapons and magic are overkill she should at least be able to repair items from the tool tab.

2. This perk is an idea of my own: to further capitalize on her crafting specialization we can add a perk similar to the construction amulet. I'll let klei balance this one out but take the amount of materials, eg 6 and divide it by 3 (maybe 4) and whenever she crafts an item, that many random materials aren't consumed. (Take a backpack for example: 4 twigs & 4 grass. 8÷3=2.67 rounded down that's 2. so whenever she crafts a backpack 2 of the materials aren't consumed.) you would still need all the materials but you would only lose 2/3 of them. (Complicated, I know, but Terraria did it so why not?)

Finally, a good character needs a good weakness: maybe she can't use magic tab items? In the end I'm not a game designer but I do think she's in dire need of a rework.

Next up: our next pair of competitors… Wolfgang and Wigfrid! Yes the pair everyone saw coming. they're not as conflicting as the other pairs because their niches aren’t as similar. Because Wolfgang is as perfect as he is we’re going to be fixing Wigfrid!

There's not a problem with Wigfrid being a combat character; the issue is she's too offense and damage focused.

Wigfrid should capitalize on being a tank: take off the damage boost but beef up her health to 225-250: still worse than WX and Wolfgang but tankier now. Give her agro priority over other characters: they should have to hit the enemy multiple times to get it off her. Overall this would give her more purpose on a team, adding to her supportive role and better capitalizing on her combat abilities.

Finally the twin calamities of resource gathering: Woodie and Maxwell. Both of them need quite the Rework and overlap with not only 1 of their skill sets but 2 of them! DST does not need 2 sanity management and foraging focused characters.

Let's start with Maxwell: his reliance on nightmare fuel makes him intimidating for new players but his low health is a huge roadblock for late game content making him underutilized despite being better at gathering resources than Woodie. I have a few ideas for fixing him up.

1. Buff the shadow duelist: the shadow duelist is largely useless with more players using it to lower max sanity than ones using it to fight. Making it more tanky and agro focused then damage focused would get a lot more use out of it.

2. Buff Maxwell's health up to 150, but make shadow puppets reduce max health instead of max sanity. Making his strength and his weakness the same would make for more interesting risk/reward gameplay.

3. Make clockwork pieces neutral and befriendable for Maxwell: not only would this help him in the ruins, it also makes sense thematically, not to mention clockworks already being befriendable.

We also need to address Woodie: seeing as Maxwell already fits the resource gatherer/sanity management niche we need something to separate him: I propose more versatility. First we throw out the old. The added follower time and pinecone sanity perks are out of place. Take them out. Now we need to revamp the werebeaver: first we give him added defense, around 70% should do it, maybe a speed bonus of 10% or so. Woodie's log eating ability is rather underutilized, let's have each log restore 3 hunger and 1 health, living logs can restore 30 health and 10 hunger but lose 20 sanity. The aim here is to give Woodie more versatility like in the single player. I do think the beaverness meter needs some revamping but I am not a game designer nor do I have playtesters. Hopefully this shifts him over to more of an assist/variety type character and out of the specialization zone.

 

I'll wrap this up by saying that although I think new characters are a good idea, we already have 12 that need more love and attention. On a personal note Klei doesn't seem to realize that most of the late game is combat, it really sucks as a Maxwell main to have to switch to WX whenever I want to do late game content, not that it's impossible to fight late game as Maxwell, but rather that I'm a mere mortal who wants Klei to have mercy on my soul. 75 health was fine when you started with the best armor in the game with no penalty but it's rather overkill in DST.

TL:DR

There's more than a few characters in DST that need reworking. Willow, Wendy, and Maxwell block players from the late game content while Winona, Woodie, and Wigfrid are just worse versions of a different character. Finally WX and Wickerbottom are too powerful for their own good. Klei recently announced plans for character reworks and the above is my long and detailed opinion on the cast.

[JulieWasHere123]

Wendy is my favorite! I hope they don't change her too much.. 

[Nitsuj87]

Spider eggs are hard to come by or make....ijs