[Analysis] Winona was nerfed overall: I truly feel like she needs these buffs to her rework.

[RancorSnp]

There is no need for hostility. I am a player who is not skilled enough to be able to play Winona, as I can not provide enough food to survive the crafting as soon as the winter starts.
I am not a beginner in a technical meaning of the word, considering I have first started playing the game back in the very early beta during the Dogs & Bees update - but I am not a good player by any stretch of imagination. I am confident majority of the player base is better at this game than me, but I am also sure that with my 200 hours of playtime I did learn something to be at least a bit above a player that is just starting out.

I am just sharing my experience with the character and questioning the use of "beginner friendly" taking myself as an example of a begginer player in this context. 

[maradyne]

...as far as I see it, new Winona is meant to be a character that you only pick with a somewhat competent group, or switch to late-game using the Portal.
Definitely not for new players, and not appealing for early game; early crafting just takes too much hunger, and the speed loss at low hunger...isn't a positive? I'm not sure how else to say that. You really start to feel it when doing initial base setup. She's not someone that should be picked at all until later game.
The crafting change actively discourages her from making things herself, unless you have a lot of food to spare. Kinda weird, since she's supposed to be a self-determined hard worker, not...someone that sits around and asks others to do her work for her.
The level of stone requirements for the catapults asks for a rock-farming Maxwell.
With the generator capacity being what it is, you kinda need gems for the process to not be terribly tedious, so...either need someone camping in caves, or you need to be farming bosses. Both, if you plan to use those catapults much outside of creative mode ya nerds.

And yea, Spotlights don't serve a purpose in their current state compared to other light sources, other than looking neat. Throwing a couple pieces of wood on a Firepit or turning on a Lantern is just plain better, and takes one object space rather than two. The gem requirements to leave multiple spotlights permanently fueled are just more than you can feasibly upkeep without several players dedicating their playtime to it.

 

Some neat ideas all in all, but...Winona could use some work. Her spotlights especially, but the power system should be more streamlined, and maybe buffed. And if Lanterns and Flingomatics can have off switches, Win's machines really should too. Early game aside, I think she could be a solid late-game choice if she's given some QoL updates.

Generators in general are cool though, so I'm glad for their addition. I think we're going places with that...

[Duplosion]

The catapults are proving to be quite better than originally expected against some of the bosses if you keep aggro off the rock slingers, I'll give them that. I definitely acknowledged their power, it was just against the speedier foes that they were airballing, lol.

I still stand by that the 5 hunger per craft is a little too punishing though, as well as that the generators should have an off button.

[GuyNamedChris]

I agree that the hunger crafting does need to be changed, it doesn't really feel worth it to take advantage of her fast-crafting ability when you're always worrying about your hunger afterward. 5 hunger per craft is way too high, especially with crafts that require refined items. It'd be much more bearable at like 2 points per craft.

Generators should have an on/off button, nothing different from what everyone else is saying.

Catapults are fine as is.

SPOTLIGHTS however, need to be more polished. At the moment you can have 5 spotlights all focused on a single person while there's others in range that are vulnerable to the darkness. Spotlights should be changed to only have one focus on a player at a time so others can have the other spotlights follow them. Mobbstar made a nice "Proof of concept" mod for this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1676200992

Also is it too much to ask that tape repairs armor?

[maradyne]

7 minutes ago, Chris1448 said:

Also is it too much to ask that tape repairs armor?

I'm pretty sure the update could've just been this and a light hunger drain and most people would've been happy
...I mean, if it can apparently hold together working machinery...

[Kaio17]

Notes:

It smashs our fences, (didnt test walls, statues)

Gem range, dont work as should, ( all them is on range, only 1 is working, maybe a geometric bug thing. still low range)

Why not create wires and connect things like flingomatic ? instead of this little range?

-5 hunger for craft? We cant start playing as winona ? 

Didnt find any useful use for her machines without throw away TONS of material.

The hype is destroyed for me, hoping for the next rework been good or the new char.

Winona for me is still dead.

[Annatictac]

55 minutes ago, Kaio17 said:

Notes:

It smashs our fences, (didnt test walls, statues)

Gem range, dont work as should, ( all them is on range, only 1 is working, maybe a geometric bug thing. still low range)

 

Your machines are not in range. The circle around the machine needs to entirely be within the range of the generator's circle. You'll know it works when both circles glow green.

 

Winona's a powerful character and I feel like not enough people have gave her enough testing. She can effortlessly solo the Fuelweaver with a couple of catapults due to their splash AoE damage. (You can probably get away with like 5 catapults for that fight.)  She doesn't ever have to attack the Fuelweaver or the ticks he summons. The catapults will destroy both, leaving you to only have to worry about the hands he summons. 

The biggest danger in that fight is the bone cage the Fuelweaver traps you in, as if you're near a structure when he traps you, the structure will instantly be destroyed, but with enough reaction time or proper knowledge of his attack patterns, you can avoid this situation. 

Queen Bee is also trivialized as neither the queen nor Grumble Bees will ever target the structures. The Grumble Bees will usually die before they get a chance to move if you have enough catapults, and if the queen commands them to dash, then all you have to do is run in a small circle and the catapults will destroy them. You don't even have to attack the Queen to kill her if you felt like saving some bee hats/armor.

The catapults aren't that expensive. They cost a decent amount of rocks, which are incredibly common, and once you've set down a catapult, it's there for life. Most monsters don't target catapults, and those that do won't instantly destroy it. (Catapults also heal themselves over time!). This effectively makes harder fights like Fuelweaver/Toadstool cheaper. Instead of worrying about a bunch of armor/weapons/healing items, you just need rocks and some gems (Or nitre). You can even get away with wearing no armor/weapons if you know what you're doing.

Winona's only downside is her fastcrafting costing hunger. -5 hunger isn't a whole lot. This is a game where food is ironically one of the most common things to find. Learning to utilize the crockpot as Winona is vital, and making one should be top priority. This doesn't make Winona bad. It just makes her downside actually matter. Characters like Wolfgang or Wickerbottom have downsides that literally nobody ever cares about, so it's refreshing to see such a strong character actually have some sort of weakness.

The only changes I would make to Winona is to slightly buff spotlight range so it at least reaches half a screen away and to make spotlights smarter. Right now if you have two spotlights next to each other, they won't target two different people.

The ability to turn off generators would also be nice, but you're more than capable of managing them. (Only fuel catapults before a fight, only fuel spotlights at night.)

Also, if you're for whatever reason using catapults to fight smaller monsters you can easily handle yourself, run in circles. The rocks will almost always hit them.

[Casm]

I agree that some tweaking will probably need to be done but I'm confident that devs will adjust accordingly. Bugs aside (cause those are bound to get fixed regardless) I'm sure they'll tweak things to make sure she feels balanced and fun to play. If the hunger cost is too much early game for her crafting, it'll probably get readjusted. I mean, the idea is to make these characters more fun to play. If the opposite starts happening, then things will likely get fine-tuned to fix it.

Worst case scenario, a mod will undoubtedly come out in a short time that will allow you to adjust it yourself or adjust it for you. That's more of a last resort thing though. I'd still like to give Klei the benefit of the doubt that they'll see the problem and act on it.

[lakhnish]

5 minutes ago, Annatictac said:

She can effortlessly solo the Fuelweaver with a couple of catapults due to their splash AoE damage. (You can probably get away with like 5 catapults for that fight.)  She doesn't ever have to attack the Fuelweaver or the ticks he summons. The catapults will destroy both, leaving you to only have to worry about the hands he summons. 

I'm already ahead on you on that :3 You do need to break the hands yourself, but that's a non-issue and you can actually get away with 5 catapults honestly. I did about 8-9 catapults, and managed to kill Fuelweaver with stupidly little effort into it for about a 3-4 minute kill. Here is proof in the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

 

2 hours ago, lifetheuniverse said:

...as far as I see it, new Winona is meant to be a character that you only pick with a somewhat competent group, or switch to late-game using the Portal.
Definitely not for new players, and not appealing for early game; early crafting just takes too much hunger, and the speed loss at low hunger...isn't a positive? I'm not sure how else to say that. You really start to feel it when doing initial base setup. She's not someone that should be picked at all until later game.
The crafting change actively discourages her from making things herself, unless you have a lot of food to spare. Kinda weird, since she's supposed to be a self-determined hard worker, not...someone that sits around and asks others to do her work for her.
The level of stone requirements for the catapults asks for a rock-farming Maxwell.
With the generator capacity being what it is, you kinda need gems for the process to not be terribly tedious, so...either need someone camping in caves, or you need to be farming bosses. Both, if you plan to use those catapults much outside of creative mode ya nerds.

And yea, Spotlights don't serve a purpose in their current state compared to other light sources, other than looking neat. Throwing a couple pieces of wood on a Firepit or turning on a Lantern is just plain better, and takes one object space rather than two. The gem requirements to leave multiple spotlights permanently fueled are just more than you can feasibly upkeep without several players dedicating their playtime to it.

What you've said summarizes my thoughts exactly.

In addition to that, if you build the catapults once, you really have them forever. There are just tons of avenues for rocks (initial rocks on the surface, meteor biome, petrified trees, the Spalagmite biomes in the caves), that I truly believe if someone wanted to get enough rocks to trivialize Dfly, Bee Queen, Misery Toadstool, and FW of all things, then they can easily do so. Gems are a non-issue as well since you just get too many from clearing the ruins, or you can just build a catapult Varg Farm.

With some tweaks, they could make Winona better, but as she currently stands, I most likely will not touch her at all with what her playstyle and perks are currently now.

[Kaio17]

14 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

I'm already ahead on you on that :3 You do need to break the hands yourself, but that's a non-issue and you can actually get away with 5 catapults honestly. I did about 8-9 catapults, and managed to kill Fuelweaver with stupidly little effort into it for about a 3-4 minute kill. Here is proof in the spoiler.

  Hide contents

 

 

What you've said summarizes my thoughts exactly.

In addition to that, if you build the catapults once, you really have them forever. There are just tons of avenues for rocks (initial rocks on the surface, meteor biome, petrified trees, the Spalagmite biomes in the caves), that I truly believe if someone wanted to get enough rocks to trivialize Dfly, Bee Queen, Misery Toadstool, and FW of all things, then they can easily do so. Gems are a non-issue as well since you just get too many from clearing the ruins, or you can just build a catapult Varg Farm.

With some tweaks, they could make Winona better, but as she currently stands, I most likely will not touch her at all with what her playstyle and perks are currently now.

Finally one good use that worth effort, to kill fuelweaver minions..

[4 Da LOLs]

i don't know i don't think i like her

another newly added character Wormwood has no healing from food that's his downside you play good don't take damage then you aren't penalized for it

Winona loses hunger from crafting a thing that you cannot avoid in average game you are penalized for things you cannot avoid

even if her new hunger penalty isn't that bad it still doesn't feel good

[Maxposting]

Personally...

Winona is now very great for bosses and has few failsafes ( free hit from charlie ) while fighting them.

HOWEVER

She ultimatelly has only one problem... that is with hunger if people don't know how to regulate her crafting exhaustion.

[Nolgore]

I swapped over to Winona on a 300+ day world with my friend and immediately built a few catapults near our toothtrap to test them out. As soon as I plonked down the generator, we heard the barking of hounds. What luck! No wait required to test them!

Unfortunately, the wave seemed to consist entirely of firehounds, and while the catapults did an admiral job dispatching them,  only the burnt husks of the catapults remained. I swapped back to Webber, defeated. 

[Ressayez]

1 hour ago, Nolgore said:

I swapped over to Winona on a 300+ day world with my friend and immediately built a few catapults near our toothtrap to test them out. As soon as I plonked down the generator, we heard the barking of hounds. What luck! No wait required to test them!

Unfortunately, the wave seemed to consist entirely of firehounds, and while the catapults did an admiral job dispatching them,  only the burnt husks of the catapults remained. I swapped back to Webber, defeated. 

Yeah, you'd either need to put your catapults behind some walls (marble statues, end tables) or plop down a flingo. I personally use tier 2 spider dens as hound defense as Webber, but I keep a flingo in the middle of the dens for autumn and summer.

[seffard]

I suggest giving her a small hunger interval where the crafting is at normal speed, maybe between 50 and 70, and she's good to go. It's 8 or 80 right now, too punishing either way. The hunger cost at speed crafting is a bit too much as well for the benefit.

And if people want the possibility to switch the generators off, make the catapults and spotlights also rechargeable with cutstones and lighting things. But specially catapult since it can be spammed against bosses.

[camelot]

With this rework, Wiona is no longer a beginner friendly character but a mid-late game mobs killer that required a lot of team support and preparation. This role should be hard to play and requires a good team.

Still, almost all of her perks are upside, maybe useless to someone but still could be considered upside. So she needs a major downside or she'll become too OP. Drainning your whole stomach if you're not aware seems fair to me. Remember right now she is for quite experienced players, like Webber or Maxwell, to become useful and know how to minimize downsides. How many times you've seen a newbie picked Webber, Maxwell or Woodie, struggled to play around then quit? But still, we need more information about other character's reworks to know that if new Wiona is actually OP or not. So wait for it.

Also, someone often mention Wormwood as a good example of character design, but like this new Wiona, it would be very hard and annoying to play him in DST because of his downsides. For example, when someone burn trees to make charcoal near your location and boom, zero sanity. I would say that I would be very annoyed in that case, just like I found out I lost a lot of hunger when I'm playing Wiona and crafting something. 

In short, I think that this new Wiona is useful and would contribute a lot to the team, unlike before. 

 

[bjanmanjs]

On 3/8/2019 at 5:55 AM, Viktor234 said:

A normal character looses 75 Hunger every day, a full day in-game lasts for 8 real-time minutes by default. That does mean that a normal character looses 1 Hunger every 8*60 / 75 = 6.4 seconds or 0,15625 Hunger per second. A Wolfgang with a full belly has 100% increased hunger drain and he looses 1 Hunger every 3.2 seconds or 0,3125 Hunger per Second.

Winona uses 5 Hunger per craft and takes only half as long (0.5s) to craft items. 5 Hunger per half a second, that's 1 Hunger every 0.1 seconds, together with her natural hunger drain, she'll loose 10,15625 Hunger per second or 1 Hunger every 0,0985 seconds if crafting non-stop, that's a 6400% increased hunger drain.

Since Winona's hunger can drain up to 32.5 times faster than Wolfgang's max hunger drain, does that mean that Winona is now Wolfgang 2.0 or 32.5?

Wolfgang's hunger drain multiplier is 3x when he has a full stomach, so he loses 1 hunger every 2.13 seconds, at a rate of 0.46875 hunger per second, so Winona's hunger drain when crafting items is 21.6 times faster than Wolfgang's hunger drain with a full stomach.

[Duplosion]

11 hours ago, Ressayez said:

Yeah, you'd either need to put your catapults behind some walls (marble statues, end tables) or plop down a flingo. I personally use tier 2 spider dens as hound defense as Webber, but I keep a flingo in the middle of the dens for autumn and summer.

The catapults have been reported to attack walls, unfortunately. Might need a friendly fire buff to stop that.

[blizstorm]

Winona can fast craft in 0.5 second. A regular character can craft in 1 second. When Winona fast crafts 20 items on behalf of the team, she saved the team 10 seconds, at the cost of 100 hunger.

10 seconds, is just enough time to pick berries from 10 berry bushes, that are adjacent to each other. This is not even enough time for Winona to eat the berries, and 10 raw berries do not replenish 100 hunger. The 10 seconds also do not include time spent managing berry bushes.

With the hunger cost, Winona does not save time for the team  

[Ressayez]

7 hours ago, Duplosion said:

The catapults have been reported to attack walls, unfortunately. Might need a friendly fire buff to stop that.

Erm, this is why I put marble statues and end tables in brackets, both of them can't be destroyed by the catapult's projectiles.

[VexTheHex]

 Before

Faster Crafting, Free Charlie Hit, and Tape

 

Now 

Faster crafting at expense of hunger, Free Charlie Hit, Tape, Catapult structure, and Spotlight Structure.

 

 I fail at seeing this as a nerf to her since she was extremely lackluster and offered nothing exciting before. Now she has two unique and interesting structures to bring to the table to at least stand out. Asking for gens to be turn on/off and/or her hunger drain to be unnoticeable/toggle-able just goes back to people wanting everything catered to them. There is supposed to be drawbacks or cons to stuff. I don't know where I stand on the balance of everything, but I surely cannot agree that all her cons need buried.

[maradyne]

3 hours ago, VexTheHex said:

[snip]

The issue is partly that her original crafting perk is now a net negative (the hunger drop costs more time and effort than you gain from speedy crafting), her remaining two original perks were never really relevant outside of new players maybe (who her hunger con now serves as a trap for), and the structures are a one-time thing that require quite a bit of fueling, having their own built in balance.
...and that machines without off-switches are just dumb. We have an off switch on Flingomatics, and we can even turn off the supposedly-firefly/lightbulb-fueled Lanterns.

The structures are neat, but they're structures. The balancing should be somewhat self-contained, since you won't always be engaging with them. Winona's gameplay by itself is...meh, compared to the neutral balance point of other characters (I don't mean the Big 3, I mean Wilson and co.)
...heck, Willow's gameplay is at least engaging.

[snugglysnootertoot]

"Winona was nerfed overall."

Huh, Winonator making all the other characters entirely obsolete when it comes to laying waste to most bosses is a "nerf" now, is it?

Seriously though, and I do hope some Klei devs are reading the feedback from people, the catapults are overpowered boss killers. Mobs that are slow or stationary are a joke when you have ranged weapons with infinite ammo. To make matters worse, the catapults are hilariously easy to mass produce in comparison to what was available before. At least Houndius Shootius took time and effort to craft in numbers.

 

Suggestions for change(s) to catapults:

More demanding crafting recipe. (instead of 15 rocks require a load of frazzled wires or something)

Limit ammo / require reloading. (no, a few gems or some nitre every time you want to solo Misery Toadstool or Ancient Fuelweaver with your eyes closed is nowhere near enough as "operating costs")

Has to be actively operated by a character to fire. (or some other requirement that will noticeably limit mass production)

Some sort of % chance for a catapult to malfunction when it takes a shot. (this would then force Winona to repair the catapult at a one time cost to her sanity. sort of like Wickerbottom reading her books)

No health regen. (the regen on a Houndius Shootius is well earned. catapults should not have such a luxury. again, make Winona maintain her armada of death dealing machinery)

 

While character reworks are most welcome, I do hope the aim of the reworks isn't to turn DST into "A trivially easy wilderness survival game full of science and magic."

[RancorSnp]

Yes, people have decided that Catapults are really good if used for their niche, which is nice. But the problem with this reworks is, it's not Winona that's is good, it's the Catapult.  Her crafting tab and traits do not work together, as I see it from the design stand point Crafting tab is considered her strength and traits nerf her to balance them out - which means that the optimal way to play Winona is to switch to her when you need to build some catapults, and switch back to a better character when done.  

[pedregales]

4 hours ago, snugglysnootertoot said:

Suggestions for change(s) to catapults:

More demanding crafting recipe. (instead of 15 rocks require a load of frazzled wires or something)

Limit ammo / require reloading. (no, a few gems or some nitre every time you want to solo Misery Toadstool or Ancient Fuelweaver with your eyes closed is nowhere near enough as "operating costs")

Has to be actively operated by a character to fire. (or some other requirement that will noticeably limit mass production)

Some sort of % chance for a catapult to malfunction when it takes a shot. (this would then force Winona to repair the catapult at a one time cost to her sanity. sort of like Wickerbottom reading her books)

No health regen. (the regen on a Houndius Shootius is well earned. catapults should not have such a luxury. again, make Winona maintain her armada of death dealing machinery)

And with this Winona will go back to square one... who will even use this things if you have to babysit them for the entirety of the time you use them? An item that is good against a set of enemies (slow ones like bosses) and decent against others (very packed ones like spiders), but ultimately bad against everything else.