Wendy/Abigail rework

[EzLo54]

So what do you think Wendy's rework's going to be? Will Klei remove her damage penalty and make Abigail weaker? Or add something completely different and make her a more decent character to play as.

Please share your thoughts.

[Terra B Welch]

Make Abigail commandable, is what I think will happen.

That's the big fix Abigail needs. To not fight things you don't want her to, or to not get in the way of things like pig farming.

[Pop Guy]

Abigail first of all should be controllable.
Then it should have a regeneration of 6 life per second.
Its damage area should increase by 50% and its speed by 33%
On DS its damage and life can remain unchanged.
On DST his damage and his life should be increased x2 
Also, if Wendy "hunts" via Abigail with an attack, the flower should immediately be ready to evoke she (with the life he had before he was struck).
Personally I play Wendy like this thanks to a careful and meticulous work of modding and she's perfect: Abigail can finally protect her effectively from any "small" threat of the game and help her in a concrete way against the bosses, without being able to defeat them exclusively by herself. How it should be in my view of things.
Furthermore it would not hurt to have objects that enhance she, like in the forge.
For example in my mod package I can build a garment that does not give me protection, but increases the damage for Abigail. In short, it makes me more damage from enemy, but it strengthens my allies, a nice risk when fighting against enemies capable of doing considerable damage.
When they change Wendy I will probably look for an "old Wendy" mod to continue playing she like now, since I think I made she perfect (at least for my needs).
Abigail is basically a kind of tank in my run, and I'm her support and strategist.

 

Addition: I would like to add for those who think that I am making Abigail "too strong" that Winona can build with 15 rocks and some duct tape a catapult that do basic damage 45 and have regeneration, as well as 400 HP. I mean, really my Abigail who can actually help (but not win) against the bosses by resisting their blows is not good, but one that can kill a misery toadstool in 10 minutes with basic resources yes? I'm just noticing that now the "power level" of the characters is getting up on average (like Wortox for example) and it's right that they all have more capacity, even the twins.

[FloomRide]

Wendy is pretty basic as far as the DST characters go, she gets a unique summon but only one at a time and has no real team presence beyond killing hounds and spiders for meat.

I hope they give her some entirely new toy to play with, in addition to better player control of abigail.

[ShadowDuelist]

8 minutes ago, FloomRide said:

has no real team presence beyond killing hounds and spiders for meat.

I do not agree with this part, she is a strong team character. Farming spiders and shadow monkeys is pretty useful throughout most of the game, and she can also make the most efficient repeatable sanity farm in the game, on any biome she chooses to.

11 minutes ago, FloomRide said:

I hope they give her some entirely new toy to play with, in addition to better player control of Abigail.

This I agree with.

[Canis]

I have an idea for a buff,

How about if she uses rope in her inventory she just dies

/s

[Nolgore]

Beyond better control of Abigail, I think the best thing to do is create different "forms" of Abigail based on the type of creature killed to summon her. That might make it a bit more interesting to play with than moar hp, moar dps.

[BeliarBAD]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I do not agree with this part, she is a strong team character. Farming spiders and shadow monkeys is pretty useful throughout most of the game, and she can also make the most efficient repeatable sanity farm in the game, on any biome she chooses to.

This I agree with.

also shes great in bee queen fight and dfly regulary fight. and to distract deapthworms and many more. also using a fighter beef is very good with her. then you have 65 damage, 1.000hp and abigal.

[Donke60]

1 hour ago, Canis said:

I have an idea for a buff,

How about if she uses rope in her inventory she just dies

/s

CRAWLING IN MY SKIN!
THESE WOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEAL!

[Footman Crouch]

She is quite balance atm, the ability to deal aoe damage to weaker mobs for a cost of sarcificing single target dps. Only use abigail when you want to farm weak mobs and you counter her weakness.

I hope her rework have her stay in that role, i don't want her to be willow 3.0.

[minespatch]

I'd like a Abigail and Wilson beard customization in the future. So that Abigail's flower matches the skin that Wendy has. If Wortox's ghosts are affected by the skins, I can see Abigail having a similar scenario.

As for Wendy, perhaps her eyes glow whenever she brings back Abigail?

[sinisterrkid]

I wish Abigail had use against the bosses. As of now even tree guards are a good-bye to Abigail. An expensive craftable "ghost armor" that you could give to Abby would be really nice

[4 Da LOLs]

3 hours ago, minespatch said:

I'd like a Abigail and Wilson beard customization in the future. So that Abigail's flower matches the skin that Wendy has. If Wortox's ghosts are affected by the skins, I can see Abigail having a similar scenario.

As for Wendy, perhaps her eyes glow whenever she brings back Abigail?

i would love for a client mod that makes beards invisible because Webber the Victorian looks so off with a beard same with most other Wilson and Webber skins

[Stonetribe]

I don't play a whole lot of Wendy so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I was thinking about the idea of in exchange for making Abigail stronger in general, enough to the point where she can actually contribute towards taking on bosses, maybe she could be turned into a temporary summon rather than sticking around until she falls in battle. Perhaps we could do away with the need to kill a mob and Wendy could simply call or dismiss her at will by using her flower, but summoning would incur an initial minor hit to her sanity followed by a gradual sanity drain for as long as Abigail is active, so players would have to take some care to not summon her for every single fight. Of course then there's the issue that folks would use this to drain sanity super fast to farm nightmare fuel, but I'm hoping that down the road Klei makes the effects of low sanity a lot more dangerous to offset the benefits of any nightmare fuel you might obtain.

[Captain_Rage]

I'd love to see a smarter AI for Abigail. Making Abigail directly controllable would be really boring. Perhaps a way to set different stances would be a good compromise (aggressive / defensive / guarding / kiting (!?)). In The Forge we saw that summons can be clever enough and viable, depending on what they are doing.

[Pop Guy]

11 hours ago, Pop Guy said:

[...]

I would like to add for those who think that I am making Abigail "too strong" that Winona can build with 15 rocks and some duct tape a catapult that do basic damage 45 and have regeneration, as well as 400 HP. I mean, really my Abigail who can actually help (but not win) against the bosses by resisting their blows is not good, but one that can kill a misery toadstool in 10 minutes with basic resources yes? I'm just noticing that now the "power level" of the characters is getting up on average (like Wortox for example) and it's right that they all have more capacity, even the twins.

 

[darkhero]

i thing replacing her hp with specific number of hits (like 20) makes her useful for bossfight.

[blacknight7890]

I like alot of these ideas, but one thing I think no one has brought up is the fact that abigail is a ghost. I think, if abagale could haunt objects that would give wendy a very strong power that while yes, anyone can do it, she won't have to die to do so, allowing it to be used more frequently and make abagale more versatile. In addition, it would let players use some haunting powers that normally wouldn't be worth dying for, but are still useful if you can do it while alive. I imagine haunting with abigail would cost sanity, but that still makes it useful since you don't need to waste a revive.

With this you can do various useful haunting actions at will, like: spawn evil flowers from normal flowers, transform pigs into werepigs, have a 0.1% chance to spawn a treeguard from trees, send creatures into a panic, turn hounds into different hounds, turn mushrooms into different mushrooms, change blueprints into different blueprints on the same tab, spawn pigs from pig torches, and even guaranteeing spiders drop spider glands. 

Everything I have listed is available to any dead player, but having them available to an alive player is a strong boon that should really make wendy a lot more useful.

Of course haunting can cause a myriad of badness too, but any dead player can do that anyway, so its not a new problem, but it is more available to wendy users, so that is something to note.

EDIT: spelling

[The 2C3D]

Well, for Abigail to hold her own, she’ll need to do more damage to compensate for greater enemy health. Right now she needs a stunlock, or she just can’t deal damage fast enough to outlast more then the weakest enemies. She’s not worth playing around. Once that’s been addressed, I’ve got a few more interesting ideas:

For those of you who don’t know, Abigail’s damage depends on the time of day, being 10 in the day, 20 at dusk and 40 at night. I’d love to see that mechanic played with more. Say we give Abigail 25% protection at dusk and 75% at night. (With somewhat reduced HP to compensate.) This would allow Abigail to take on much tougher foes at night and survive, but this comes at the price of having to fight in darkness, staying near a fire or giving up an equipment slot for a light item. 

I would also like Abigail to be healed when Wortox releases souls, if this doesn’t happen. I can’t check ‘til I get him. For this to matter, it would have to heal more then 20 health to her, as she has a lot of health and gets knocked about a lot. (Pre-rework, she has 600 hp)

Crafting a new flower should destroy the old flower/Abigail wherever they are in the world. It’s kinda weird how Abigail can die, only for Wendy to pull out the backup keepsake to summon the backup twin sister she keeps in her pocket in case the first twin dies. I haven’t played too much with Woodie, but if I’m not mistaken, he has a similar ability on Lucy, where crafting an axe recalls Lucy.

Wendy shouldn’t take sanity loss from player ghosts. She has one for a sister.

So having given Abigail a significant buff, Wendy really needs another downside, especially since you’ll often have other players to take up the melee in your stead. Wendy should have a resistance to sanity gain due to her... outlook on life. My heartless side wants to suggest something brutal like 50%, but it would be wiser to do around 33%. It’s got to be at more then 25%, or her ratio of sanity loss to sanity gain will still be higher then normal.

[minespatch]

On 4/9/2019 at 6:55 AM, blacknight7890 said:

, if abagale could haunt objects that would give wendy a very strong power that while yes,

I'd be totally fine if she kept trolling Maxwell like this.

[sinisterrkid]

I don't know how they could make Abigail commandable though... At the very least it would be very nice if when you are the one who kills Abigail her flower doesn't get the cooldown and is immediately ready to respawn Abby

[FloomRide]

On 4/9/2019 at 12:46 PM, The 2C3D said:

Crafting a new flower should destroy the old flower/Abigail wherever they are in the world. It’s kinda weird how Abigail can die, only for Wendy to pull out the backup keepsake to summon the backup twin sister she keeps in her pocket in case the first twin dies. I haven’t played too much with Woodie, but if I’m not mistaken, he has a similar ability on Lucy, where crafting an axe recalls Lucy.

This would actually be a huge nerf to Wendy currently (was that your intention?), because by stocking up on multiple flowers, she can summon abigail immediately after the ghost dies. Crafting multiple flowers also allows Wendy to create a very strong in/sanity farm using tightly packed evil flowers.

[The 2C3D]

1 hour ago, FloomRide said:

This would actually be a huge nerf to Wendy currently (was that your intention?), because by stocking up on multiple flowers, she can summon abigail immediately after the ghost dies. Crafting multiple flowers also allows Wendy to create a very strong in/sanity farm using tightly packed evil flowers

Yes, it’s intended as a nerf. However, when I was thinking of destroying the old flower, I was thinking of it turning into a normal flower a la the despawn timer, so it would only prevent the rapid resummoning of Abigail. I suggested making her more durable, so if you do lose her  the consequences exist.

[Swanky Psammead]

Wendy is probably the closest to my ideal of "balance" of all the current characters. IMHO a DS/DST character is at ideal balance when their strengths are situational, but their downsides are felt almost all the time and you can't ever forget the downside exists. Maxwell is quite close to this too, but his strengths are useful a liiiiiiiiittle too often. Wigfrid/Webber/Wortox are also close, with downsides that are a liiiiiittle too easy to avoid from the midgame onwards. (Wicker/WX/Wolf are in the category of having downsides that might as well not exist)

There is one change to Wendy that I would like. I would like for Abigail to more consistently prioritize the Woven Shadows over Fuelweaver, particularly when he is invulnerable. Additional means of controlling her directly could be nice but I don't think they are strictly necessary. I like her a lot as-is.

[Onatamana]

I think it would be cool if Abigail could possess mobs and turn them into a free follower for Wendy, or haunt players and give them special buffs like damage reduction and/or her AoE damage aura.