What's your Willow Refresh Wish list?

[Stonetribe]

With everyone's favorite pyromaniac confirmed to be next in line for a character refresh, I'd like to hear what everyone would like to see with the new and (hopefully) improved Willow! Here are a few things that have been on my mind as of late. I have no idea if they're any good or not, I'm far from an expert on this game. I do love brainstorming though, so I'd love to hear some other people's ideas!

Bring back fire immunity: Pretty straightforward, I think that this is probably the one thing that I've seen everyone agree on.

Immunity to overheating: I think I once heard that this was something that was originally intended for Willow, but it was a while ago so I don't remember the details. I'm not sure if it'd be too strong or not, but I hope that Klei has at least considered it at some point. Plus from a lore stand point, it's awfully weird that she'd be immune or resistant to fire but not especially hot weather.

Lighter buffs: As of right now, Willow's lighter is mostly just a longer lasting free torch that's not really worth keeping around or crafting again once lanterns are available, right? Being her signature item, I'm really hoping that the lighter will receive some upgrades. One way we could do this would be to simply bring back the infinite durability, and I think that would certainly be a step in the right direction. I don't think that it'd be too strong if the radius could be increased to match that of a torch either. One idea that I came up with would be that her lighter could have a durability, but it would gradually "refuel" itself when not in use. If that were the case, what if her lighter was given the ability to simply create a fire anywhere similar to the ones that spawn when red hounds are kill. These flames could burn for about a minute or so and It would use up some durability, like around 15-20%, so you wouldn't be able to simply spam fires all the time. I was thinking that this way, her lighter could function as a sort of pseudo-lantern of sorts. Oh and something like this were to be implemented, she would probably lose the ability to craft multiple lighters to be given to other players. Oh, and please keep the ability to cook food with it, I really like that feature for some reason ha ha.

Control over how her fires spread: This is something I shared in the suggestions and feedback section but I heard that not very many people go there? I hope no one minds me sharing it again but I came up with the idea that any fires started by a Willow wouldn't actually spread on their own. Instead, any objects within spreadable distance while the fire is still burning would show a "spread" prompt when you hover the cursor over them, causing that object to immediately combust, the new fire following the same burning rules. This would extend to mobs set on fire by a Willow, and if they would die to the flames their loot wouldn't turn to ashes. Willow would only have control over fires started be her though, any other fire would behave normally. I was thinking that this way, Willow can take advantage of all kinds of fire related shenanigans without the massive risk of collateral damage, like making the fire darts and fire staff safer to use. As for exactly how she's able to do this, well  the best explanation that I can come up with is that she has so much experience starting fires that she knows how to light them in such a way that she can predict how and where it spreads. That or pyrokinesis, that one's a popular theory right?

Bernie: Actually, I didn't have anything in mind for the teddy bear. Considering he was only added as compensation for her original nerfs, I honestly don't think I'd mind it too much if they just removed him in favor of other useful fire related perks. (Though at the same time that would feel like a bit of a shame wouldn't it?)

Downsides: I don't have anything in mind for this either. Isn't it generally agreed that no one really likes Willow's current downside of freezing when insane outside of using it to help survive summer though?

[Viktor234]

Give her the ability to charge her up like a Thermal Stone.

• Fully charged:
  • Light Sources grant twice as much light if held by her and their durability drops half as fast
  • Fuel will be twice as effective
• Completly uncharged:
  • Light Sources grant half as much light if held by her
  • Fuel will be half as effective
  • Takes no fire damage at all

Players holding Willow's lighter will behave like they're uncharged.

[GetNerfedOn]

allowing her to cook with a torch too

[Datanon]

• a bonus for food cooked in the campfire/lighter
• the lighter and torch being able to keep her warm
• immunity to overheat
• bernie being able to eat nightmare creatures and burp out nightmare fuel
• somehow i feel like her insanity downside makes a lot of sense on her and i wish it wouldnt go away. maybe if the upsides were good enough so that it would be a good trade-off?

those are just some ideas

[GenomeSquirrel]

infinite lighter with better radius 

fire immunity 

fire based weapon, a ranged one especially, or trap

scaleless scalemail

beard hairless Bernie

something involving camp fires or cooking would be nice, but i’m not particularly excited for it

[minespatch]

Bernie skins.

[HeatAndRun]

Make Willow can burn florid postern so any more Willow griefers cannot join in and ruin Willow's reputation

[ProfessorAlpaca]

Something I wish could be more utilized in combat is the fire staff, but unfortunately fighting monsters with fire is far too destructive to be worthwhile. Not only do the flaming enemies light their surroundings ablaze, but any of their drops that are flammable become ash should they die while on fire.

If fire damage were to be reworked to be less destructive on the surrounding environment (and allies) but to be used more as a status of constant damage, Willow could gain the benefits of using fire as a primary weapon. If she could use a fire weapon more like the one found in the Forge she could play an interesting role of fighting from a distance and applying constant damage to enemies.

All characters could benefit from a change to fire damage but naturally Willow would excel at utilizing it.

[minespatch]

1 minute ago, ProfessorAlpaca said:

If fire damage were to be reworked to be less destructive on the surrounding environment (and allies) but to be used more as a status of constant damage,

"Friendly fire".

[Catteflyterpill]

Fire reduction seems like kinda an interesting thing to play. I think Klei is focusing more on synergy and being a team player, one thing that always bugs me is fire spread in the summer. Maybe Willow could greatly reduce the fire spread around her (as part of her pyrokinesis), helping prevent base collateral damage and protecting crops. Not as effective as a flingo, but still a good component in the interest of the team. 

[Canis]

1 hour ago, minespatch said:

"Friendly fire".

no stop it

 

58 minutes ago, Catteflyterpill said:

Fire reduction seems like kinda an interesting thing to play. I think Klei is focusing more on synergy and being a team player, one thing that always bugs me is fire spread in the summer. Maybe Willow could greatly reduce the fire spread around her (as part of her pyrokinesis), helping prevent base collateral damage and protecting crops. Not as effective as a flingo, but still a good component in the interest of the team. 

I feel like this would indirectly give more counter-measures towards griefing, *and* be a viable upside at the same time. Not enough to warrant a main perk spot, but one of those misc. upsides that some characters have.

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, Catteflyterpill said:

Fire reduction seems like kinda an interesting thing to play. I think Klei is focusing more on synergy and being a team player, one thing that always bugs me is fire spread in the summer. Maybe Willow could greatly reduce the fire spread around her (as part of her pyrokinesis), helping prevent base collateral damage and protecting crops. Not as effective as a flingo, but still a good component in the interest of the team. 

But nothing could be more out of character for her.

[The 2C3D]

A while back I was thinking about how her insanity could work. My idea was, in practice, too complicated to make sense to new players and would probably confuse them and/or seem like a bug. But it was a cool idea...

My thought was to have Willow’s classic DS fire-starting, but where the fire are her insane delusions instead of real fires. Her insanity “fire” is visible only to her and, for other players, has no effect on the objects it spreads to to other players, however, when the Willow who started the fire sees them as burnt. Because of this, when an insanity fire burns, for example, a science machine, the player cannot use it because Willow is convinced it’s broken, even if it’s actually working. Items inside chests do not fall out (thus, the insane Willow cannot access them) and items that burn to ash don’t catch.

When a faux-burnt structure is hammered, it drops the items it should drop as an unburnt structure and takes the normal amount of hits to break. When a faux-burnt tree is chopped, it should probably follow these same rules for consistency, even though I like the idea of having one forest be usable for logs and charcoal.

Now, we don’t want to force this poor player to build a new base because they can never use the old one, so there would need to be a way to remove the effect. I would suggest the condition should be one of either sleeping through a night, or reaching full sanity.

[Canis]

4 minutes ago, The 2C3D said:

A while back I was thinking about how her insanity could work. My idea was, in practice, too complicated to make sense to new players and would probably confuse them and/or seem like a bug. But it was a cool idea...

My thought was to have Willow’s classic DS fire-starting, but where the fire are her insane delusions instead of real fires. Her insanity “fire” is visible only to her and, for other players, has no effect on the objects it spreads to to other players, however, when the Willow who started the fire sees them as burnt. Because of this, when an insanity fire burns, for example, a science machine, the player cannot use it because Willow is convinced it’s broken, even if it’s actually working. Items inside chests do not fall out (thus, the insane Willow cannot access them) and items that burn to ash don’t catch.

When a faux-burnt structure is hammered, it drops the items it should drop as an unburnt structure and takes the normal amount of hits to break. When a faux-burnt tree is chopped, it should probably follow these same rules for consistency, even though I like the idea of having one forest be usable for logs and charcoal.

Now, we don’t want to force this poor player to build a new base because they can never use the old one, so there would need to be a way to remove the effect. I would suggest the condition should be one of either sleeping through a night, or reaching full sanity.

I immediately fell in love with this idea the second I read it.

[FloomRide]

As for controlling fires, I do like Stonetribe's suggestion but it seems possibly difficult to implement. We could also give willow better manual fire control i.e. a faster extinguish animation with no damage taken.

[Stonetribe]

Maybe Willow could also simply gain the ability to quickly extinguish fires with her hands even if they're actually burning and not just smoldering? I do think that being the resident fire fighter would certainly be a useful team ability, but at the same time I'm kind of conflicted as putting out fires is awfully contradictory to a character whose in-game nickname is literally The Firestarter. It probably wouldn't be too big of a deal though, it's not like Willow can't love setting fire to as many things as possible while also still wanting to keep the things she needs to survive intact.

[sosiskaKi]

My ideas:

• Add near-fire immunity. Let her take halved fire damage if she burns (from lava pool, for example).
• Fires have sanity aura same as befriended pigman (and not bigger).
• Can extinguish fires with bare hands but loses 15 sanity per fire.

And buff fire damage in entire game. Now we can't even kill rabbit with single fire dart/fireball.

[Stonetribe]

10 minutes ago, sosiskaKi said:

And buff fire damage in entire game. Now we can't even kill rabbit with single fire dart/fireball.

I'm pretty sure that's not true, a single fire dart does 120 damage and a fire staff shot does about 50 and rabbits only have 25 health.

[FloomRide]

25 minutes ago, sosiskaKi said:

Can extinguish fires with bare hands but loses 15 sanity per fire.

This might actually be really powerful if coupled with no health loss and a fast animation. Losing sanity by extinguishing fires would give Willow some pretty great sanity control, which is something I've always wanted to see since she was the best character for that in the base game.

[Prismaux]

I really like the idea of losing sanity when extinguishing fires. Maybe the Fligos and Ice Staff would have a negative sanity aura?

[Unn0ticedShadow]

Total overheating immunity almost seems like it could be op, which while not optimal, excites me, as before I was struggling to see what an op Willow could even look like!  I think that Willow's lighter should be everlasting, and "magical" meaning no one else can use it.  A character with an everlasting lighter and heat resistance is already shaping out to be a very good one for beginners, who often struggle with both of these.  I'm still clueless to what could be a cool downside though, without breaking Willow for the very fragile character she is at the moment.  

As for Bernie, I think he doesn't add much to the game, makes Willow more complex for beginners (the intended audience) and is pretty useless, I think Klei should scrap the bear altogether.  This would make the bear no longer spawn in her inventory by default, and be severely nerfed, pretty much only existing as a bit of backstory and flavor for her character.  I'm not quite sure what else to do with the bear, but does anyone else have any ideas?

[Mr.Mulk]

Fire Immunity and inventory Burning is a good place to start. Could be altered from its original DS incarnation to be more balanced and fitting for multiplayer, however at its core it's arguably Willow's best perk in DS.

For those who don't know what it is enjoy:

Spoiler

 

Beyond this I don't really have any major opinions, just that fire immunity + inventory burning gives her a unique combat style making her awesome for dps based fighting.

[GenomeSquirrel]

 

2 hours ago, Mr.Mulk said:

Fire Immunity and inventory Burning is a good place to start. Could be altered from its original DS incarnation to be more balanced and fitting for multiplayer, however at its core it's arguably Willow's best perk in DS.

burning inventory would be able to kill other players is my biggest problem with that

[Atkvin]

I like the idea of inventory burning but it would become massively cheesy if she could literally just fell bosses like that without burning the loot. Just look at the pro outcry to Winona's catapults. Willow being able to solo a Deerclops in seconds faster than more combat oriented characters (Wolf, Wig) would unleash hell.

Personally, I'm down for her being able to craft a unique equipment that grants fire and/or overheating immunity - though I don't think it should be shareable to avoid making Dragonfly or Summer too easy..?

Along with that I'd want inventory burning to be made a legit thing in a different way - and given proper animations on the items. I'd remove the fire damage thing (as unique as it seems) due to my other suggestion of fire immunity equipment - and in its place, grant Willow a light aura i.e Charged WX as long as an item is on fire in her inventory. Aura increases to a max range the more items are on fire at once but heat her up more and more.

In exchange for the loss of inventory burning's offensive capabilities I'd allow her to heat up weapons to increase damage temporarily without burning enemies and potentially loot.

I also like the idea of imaginary insanity fires proposed earlier in this thread very much - but I'd rather they simply spawn as annoyances that hurt her if she gets too near rather than lock off structures.

[EveryMansFool]

I feel like a meter, like Woodie has, that constantly ticks down and increases when Willow is near fire would be really cool. When above 75% she lights enemies on fire when she hits them, but when low or empty make her freeze or maybe make her burn flammable things in her inventory or something. She should be able to gain sanity when near flaming mobs, as well. The fire from the enemies should not spread, otherwise this could actually make her incapable of fighting near anything flammable.

I also really liked the idea of letting Willow extinguish fires that was brought up earlier, but maybe if this meter was implemented it could also take, like, 5% from it? Side note: When I play as Willow I always accidentally burn my base down, or red hounds burn it down, and I feel this is probably the ability I want the most. Then maybe my friends wouldn't groan when they see the character I've chosen. 

Make her lighter have infinite durability and able to cook food, or at least be refillable. It would also be really nice if when dropped it let off a small light radius like a lantern, considering that getting a lantern is relatively easy and makes the lighter nearly irrelevant. 

She really needs fire immunity and overheating immunity, or at least make her not overheat from fires. The reasons for this are obvious.

Maybe also make her go insane very quickly when cold.

This may be overpowered, I'm not sure of the DST meta as I only play with friends. Anyways, Willow is my favorite and go-to character and not feeling punished for wanting to play her is all I really want.