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Warly and why he needs a rework


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Hello everyone. In light of Klei's decision to revisit and rework some of the characters in Don't Starve, I thought it would be a good idea to have another look at the Shipwrecked character, Warly. I'm a big fan of Warly. I like his design, his concept, his voice, and gameplay style. Unfortunately, Warly is one of the worst characters in the game with mechanics that are unrewarding and work against themselves. Over the years, I've created a mod called Improved Warly (Link) to help make him more fun to play but it would be nice to see Klei create an official rework to make him better. So lets talk about why Warly needs a rework.

Warly is a traveling chef. He has his own Portable Crock Pot and Chef Pouch backpack which lends himself to a nomadic playstyle. But Warly is also picky about what he eats. He likes crock pot meals and doesn't like to eat the same meal very often. So Warly roams around cooking whatever he finds into tasty meals. So far so good right? Afraid not. On paper, Warly looks fine. But once you examine his perks side by side, you realize that his positive perks exist mainly to counter his negative perks.

* 250 Hunger but also has a +33% Hunger rate increase.
* Has a Portable Crock Pot, unique recipes, and +33% bonus to crock pot meals but has a penalty with non-crock pot meals and a stacking penalty for eating the same thing too often.
* Has a Chef Pouch backpack but must carry his Portable Crock Pot and cooking ingredients everywhere.

Lets look at each of these perks little more in depth to highlight each issue.


Hunger
Warly has the highest Hunger in the game at 250 but this is countered by him getting hungry +33% faster. A character with a normal Hunger rate loses 75 Hunger a day. This means a normal character with 150 Hunger takes 2 full days to go from full to empty. In comparison, Warly loses 99.75 Hunger a day and takes about 2.5 days to go from full to empty. While this is technically a net positive for Warly, it isn't nearly as good as the +100 Hunger stat would imply. For comparisons sake, 250 Hunger and +33% hunger rate is the equivalent of 184.5 Hunger and +0% hunger rate. A bigger problem is that Warly's hunger rate is so high that he is going to be constantly searching for food. It doesn't matter if he takes half a day longer to starve because it is going to take more time and effort to fill him up. Warly gets less hunger from normal food and while the +33% crock pot meal bonus is nice, the repeat penalty ruins it. As a result, he is going to get less done during the day than other characters. In fact, it is easy to get trapped in a cycle where you spend all your time looking for food instead of playing the game. This makes Warly unfriendly to newer players. The fact that Warly has a Hunger meter that is emptying quickly is going to make newer players panic, spend all their time looking for food, and constantly fall into the trap of repeating food and meals.

Chef Pouch
A lot of people like to hype Warly as a strong character because he begins with an 8 slot backpack that halves food spoilage rates which is a better version of Insulated Pack you get from the Beager. First of all, the Insulated Pack is one of the least useful of the giant drops in Don't Starve and adding 2 slots to it doesn't do much. Second, Warly cannot function without a backpack PERIOD. The Chef Pouch NEEDS to be as strong as it so Warly's playstyle can work and even then it's STILL lacking. Of all the character in Don't Starve, Warly is the most in need of extra inventory space. Warly might as well have a backpack permanently attached to him for how much he needs the extra space. By default, he is automatically -1 in inventory space because of the Portable Crock Pot he must always be carrying. When you factor in how much extra space you need for ingredients, Warly will always be coming up short. Most characters can get away with just carrying a stack of Meatballs or Jerky in their inventory but Warly cannot. Aside from the Chef Pouch, the Krampus Sack is too rare to count on but the Booty Bag is reasonable alternative if you are in a SW world. It's easy to rush the Quacken to get it and is comparable to the Chef Pouch. Is +6 slots and 1/day free coins worth more than 1/2 spoilage rate? Maybe, but regardless, Warly needs a backpack to function in Don't Starve. He starts with one of the best backpacks in the game and it still isn't enough for him, that alone is a huge red flag.

Warly Crock Pot Meals
Warly gets 4 extra meals he can make in his portable crock pot. Fruit Crepes is one of the best meals in the game but you will almost never make it since it requires Butter. Monster Taretare is pretty good. It isn't amazing but it does add another way to consume Monster Meat. Mussel Bouillabaisse and Sweet Potato Souffle are both SW specific, require ingredients that take a long time to gather, and are completely average in all stats. Warly's meals are not bad but they are very niche and forgettable. This hurts alot because Warly really needs variety in his diet and his own crock pot meals end up not helping at all.

Pickyness
Warly gets a +33% boost when eating crock pot meals and a penalty on eating non-crock pot food. I don't mind this at all since it focuses Warly on being a chef instead of making Jerky all the time. It's his least problematic perk.

Variety
This is the main problem with Warly. It is the reason he goes from an underpowered character to a bad one. Warly can only eat a specific kind of food once every 1.75 days. A repeat eating during this time will reduce the effectiveness of the food by 10% and causes the timer for that meal to reset to 1.75 days and increases the penalty by +10%. This effects ALL foods, not just crock pot meals.

I'm going to go through all the parts of this perk that cause Warly problems.

* The game has no way of communicating when it is safe to eat a crock pot meal again or what meals Warly has already eaten.
One of the reasons Don't Starve is an amazing game is because it manages to communicate a lot of information in subtle and clever ways. This is why it is surprising that Warly has no way to tell the player what he has eaten and when he can eat something again. It is left completely up to the player to remember. Warly was designed to eat lots of different food and he gets hungry faster than normal. You will end up having to remember a lot of different meals and times on your own with no help from the game. Also, if you stop playing a Warly game and come back a few days later, you will have probably forgotten what foods Warly ate and will end up having to guess next time you need to eat. That sounds fair, right?

* Fails to encourage food variety
Ironically, you can completely bypass the all the problems of the Variety perk by eating 3 Meatballs every 2 days. This completely fills Warly's Hunger to full even with the repeat penalty. Alternatively, you can eat 1 Meaty Stew every 2 days to do the same thing. This is an appealing solution to Warly's Variety problem because you only need to keep track of one meal and measuring 2 days of time is easier than remember 1.75 days. But make no mistake, this isn't a good thing for Warly. The fact that this is possible proves the Warly is fundamentally broken as a character. You end up playing Warly the same as every other character and miss out on what SHOULD make him interesting to play. You might as well play someone else. Why should you play a character with a unique gameplay style if you spend the entire time trying to avoid it?

* You are PUNISHED instead of being REWARDED.
Warly always gets a +33% bonus to crock pot meals he eats but the repeat penalty can stack ENDLESSLY. In truth, it takes 3 repeats before you will start seeing crock pot meals become less effective than normal. However, you cannot afford any reduction in meal stats because of Warly's increased Hunger rate. Warly isn't eating a variety of meals because he is getting a bonus for it. He is eating a variety of meals because he is trying to avoid a penalty. This is the philosophy of the Variety perk that ultimately makes it bad. It's better to rewarded than punished. Not to mention, no one likes being punished for something they have to GUESS on or was out of their control.

* Warly complains about food a lot.
For a chef that loves food, Warly sure does complain a lot when he eats a repeat meal. This is minor but it makes him REALLY unlikable. His whining is nothing more than just rubbing salt in the wound after the player makes a mistake. "Sorry I made you eat Bacon & Eggs more than once Warly. It was hard to remember the last time you had it since its the middle of the night, the Deerclops is destroying my base, and I was just trying to keep you healthy and sane enough to not die. My bad."


Let me explain how my mod handles the Variety perk. I don't want to shill my mod but I do want to present a working alternative to the existing system that demonstrates how Warly can be reworked into a better character. There is more to my mod than this but below is a relevant description of the new variety system from my mod:

At the beginning of each day, Warly will announce a preferred menu of food that he wants to eat for the day. The menu is picked randomly from the following categories: Meaty, Seafood, Fruits and Vegetables, Sweets.

The first time Warly eats a crock pot meal from his preferred menu, the meal provides 33% more Health, Hunger, and Sanity while negative values are reduced by 33%. Warly remembers what crock pot meals he has eaten. If he eats the same crock pot meal more than once per day, he will not receive the 33% bonus.

On the other hand, if Warly eats a crock pot meal that isn't on his preferred menu, the meal provides 33% less Health, Hunger, and Sanity while negative values are increased by 33%. The penalty doesn't increase if Warly eats the same meal more than once.

Once the next day begins, Warly will randomly select a new preferred menu and forget all the meals he ate during the previous day. The new menu will never be the same as previous menu.

Lets go through the problems listed in the Variety perk and should how my mod tackles them:


* Punishment vs. Reward
The big thing here is that there are no repeat penalties for anything. The player is rewarded for eating different preferred meals by giving a +33% bonus for each one. Repeats have normal stats. Eating the wrong meal just gives a -33% penalty.


* Communication and Remembering
All meals Warly remembers are reset at the start of each day. The reduced timer and having a preferred menu make it much easier to remember what you have eaten. Unfortunately, there are too many different crock pot meals in the game to find an effective way to display them or list them off to the player through dialog. Aside from announcing his preferred menu at the start of each day, Warly also has a few other way to state the menu to the player if they forget such as when a save is loaded or when he eats a meal that isn't one his menu.


* Variety
The menu system is selected at semi-random, so each day you will have different food items you will want to eat. Crock pot meals can belong to more than one menu so the meal choice isn't too restrictive. You only get the +33% bonus once per meal per day, so will not always be eating the same thing throughout the day.


* Complaining
Instead of complaining, Warly will state what menu he want food from when he eats the wrong crock pot meal. I used this a chance to help the player instead of annoying them.

    
My mod isn't perfect, but I honestly feel that it handles the important points of Warly's gameplay concept better than the current version does right now. I simply want Warly's gameplay to be to fun and rewarding instead of tedious and punishing.

Warly has to potential to be an amazing character. I'd love to see him get a rework some point in the future.

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I appriciate the effort you put into this rework. Warly is one of the most unique and fun characters for me. I agree on some things but also disagree on certain things.

First, I dont think Warly is a bad character. You mentioned how he is difficult for newer players, because of his higher hunger rate and and penalties. I do agree here but in my opinion he isnt and was not designed to be a character that teaches the player the basics of the game. To be able to play Warly one has to know a lot of crockpot recipes, perish times for food, where and how he gets it and so on. It requires a lot knowledge and Klei assumes that the player has a certain level of understanding about Dont Starave which is why he has the highest experience requirement in the whole game. So he is clearly supposed to be a challenge character simular to Wes or Maxwell (though in my opinion much better executed than Wes). With that in mind a lot of his downsides get smaller when the player knows what to do and accepts that he is a challenge.

As you pointed out though, he clearly has flaws that could be improved without destroying his uniqueness. I like the idea of choosen recipes for Warly but I feel like random recipes each day are not a good solution. A more interesting way could be if Warly has a certain list of acceptable crock pot foods for each season. Like only getting his +33% on crockpot foods that require vegtables for Mild Season for example. This way the player can plan ahead and interact with the world differently throughout the year. It would be good of course if Warly would have a unique list for every season in each DLC (so 12 lists). His additional crockpot recipes would have to be slightly expanded to fit 1-2 unique recipes with ingridients from each DLC. 
Warly certainly would need quite a few more speech lines with so many changing recipes and hunger/variety annoucments in place.

And that is really it from me. I think he is fine except for his current variety problem and his discouragement for food experimentation. His penalties, crockpot, chef pouch and hunger stat can stay the same in my book. If his above two problems change, then the rest shouldnt be a problem and he would stay a challenge character.

Let me know what you think of my approach to tweet Warly.

Thanks for reading.

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Warly also one of my favorite characters, it’s sad to see that he is really underpowered.

This pretty much the best description for his current state.

Variety food is absolutely bad and overcome all his upside, any normal character Make meatballs+normal meats and survive the entire seasons, meanwhile i am stuck in my base trying to find ingredients for recipes.

Wes is easier than him in ruins because the fact he can stack taffy and jerky, warly can’t do that.

I don’t think the main problem is that he is “hard” to play, but the fact he doesn’t reward skilled player, the time you learn variety and find ingredient you get the same reward as wilson killing spider for meatballs with less effort and time.

I don’t think he need a complete rework, he need rebalancing, variety definitely need a change.

QoL needed:

Let him upgrade his chef pouch using Krampus sack, because in mid game more inventory is needed so i have to sacrifice his chef pouch.

His crockpot should cook food faster, this will make him turtle less next to his crockpot.

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35 minutes ago, Namelessgamer said:

Variety food is absolutely bad and overcome all his upside, any normal character Make meatballs+normal meats and survive the entire seasons, meanwhile i am stuck in my base trying to find ingredients for recipes.

Well yes obviously, that is the challenge of the character. His hunger is more time consuming to statisfy. His hunger drain rate shouldnt change. Instead the methods around it should be tweeked.

Wes is easier than him in ruins because the fact he can stack taffy and jerky, warly can’t do that.

Not necessarily. While he does need more inventory space in the ruins, it is not that bad. A stack of honey and fishes (and maybe pumpkins if insanity is a bigger problem for you) gives quite a few good recipes given that monster meat is easily obtainable in the ruins. A stack  healing salves or honey poultice sould be enough for a ruins run. Warly also does more damage than Wes, which is not insignificant.

I don’t think the main problem is that he is “hard” to play, but the fact he doesn’t reward skilled player, the time you learn variety and find ingredient you get the same reward as wilson killing spider for meatballs with less effort and time.

You are right, the problem isnt that he is too hard to play (again he is a challenge character, you just have to figure him out), but his problem also isnt that he doesn’t reward smart play. It is just that he becomes boring after a while, because his game play doesnt change once you found your rythm. That is why I suggested above that his appetite should change with time (be it days like OP´s idea or seasons). That way things stay fresh and dont get stale too quickly.

It is true that he needs more time to set up things and has a slower early to midgame. But once you have a variety of different food source set up this shouldnt be too much of an issue. Given that he is supposed to be a challenge character I think this additional required setup is fine.

I don’t think he need a complete rework, he need rebalancing, variety definitely need a change.

Agreed.

Suggestion:

Let him upgrade his chef pouch using Krampus sack, because in mid game more inventory is needed so i have to sacrifice his chef pouch.

His crockpot should cook food faster, this will make him turtle less next to his crockpot.

I think these solution dont adress the roots of Warly´s problems. The gameplay would still be a bit tedious and stale after a while. Tweeking his variety, appetit and better speech lines should be the main focus of improvements in my opinion.

 

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You mentioned how he is difficult for newer players, because of his higher hunger rate and and penalties. I do agree here but in my opinion he isnt and was not designed to be a character that teaches the player the basics of the game.

I'm fine with Warly not being beginner friendly. The crockpot itself isn't beginner friendly either and people usually need the wiki open or mod to help them make meals anyway. My problem is that it is really easy to get stuck in a downward spiral with Warly's pickness that makes playing him extremely frustrating. No character should be designed that way. The lack of communication doesn't help either.

 
Your seasonal menu idea does sound interesting but I would be concerned about players stockpiling ingredients for "the best meal" and eating nothing but that for the entire season. One of the reasons I went with the random element in my mod was to keep players on their toes when it came to what to make. This helped increase variety without being too frustrating. In fact, my mod has a few ways of keeping the frustration down with the preferred menu system. Aside from never repeating the same menu the next day, I also made sure that all the menus had some meal overlap to keep them from being annoying. For example, the Sweets menu has a lot of fruit dishes on it so that not having Honey doesn't completely lock you out of the menu. A few other things you would need to be address would be a way to identify what season it is, meal bonuses/penalties, meal reset time, etc. You could also get creative too. For example, maybe there could be certain meals that can only be made during a specific season. I like my idea better but yours has a lot of potential too.
 
I'm 100% with everyone on Warly not rewarding smart play. Ironically, the smartest way to play him is to use the Meatball trick I mentioned in my original post. Once you realize that, you will begin to ask yourself "Why am I playing the chef character if all I eat is Meatballs?". Warly kinda falls apart once you reach that point.
 
I think I messed around with the idea of Warly being able to upgrade his Chef Pouch in my mod. It's been a while but I think the problem I ran into was that the game had trouble using the Chef Pouch as a recipe ingredient since you couldn't put it in your inventory, only wear it. Another issue that I saw someone bring up with it was that an upgradeable Chef Pouch detracts from his core gameplay because Warly isn't a tailor, he's a chef. In the end, I just made it so you can adjust the attributes of Chef Pouch in my mod's config menu. You can adjust it's size from 4 to 14 slots, make the spoil effect also keep Ice from melting or cool Thermal Stones or just remove the feature all together, make the Chef Pouch Waterproof and/or Fireproof and so on. This worked out better since it put the choice in the player's hand for how strong they wanted the Chef Pouch. I usually play with a waterproof 10 slot Chef Pouch and that seems balanced to me.
 
Quote

Warly also one of my favorite characters, it’s sad to see that he is really underpowered.

This pretty much the best description for his current state.

It's funny you mention that post, because that's one of the main things that lead me to making my mod! It has a lot of good information about how he is played in every aspect of the game and I used it as a resource on ways to fix Warly. It really opened my eyes to how poorly Warly performs in DS. The fact that Warly ties with Wes so often in effectiveness in Shipwrecked is also a bad sign.

 

Quote

I don’t think he need a complete rework, he need rebalancing, variety definitely need a change.

Agreed.

When I said rework, I meant the same thing as rebalancing. I'm not suggesting something extreme like Warly not being a chef anymore or  replacing him with an Astronaut. His concept was great, the execution wasn't. The important thing to remember about improving Warly is that his biggest problem is also one of his core perks. Removing the Vareity perk and replacing it with nothing only makes him overpowered and boring to play. I've already tried this in my mod. Any change to Variety would probably mean that some of his other perks would need to be tweaked too for the sake of balance. My mod manages to get away with replacing it by allowing the user to tweak the power of ever old and new perk to their liking.

 

It's always good to get some feedback. I hope someday Warly will get the improvements he needs.
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On 1.5.2019 at 3:09 AM, Tigermouth25 said:

I'm fine with Warly not being beginner friendly. The crockpot itself isn't beginner friendly either and people usually need the wiki open or mod to help them make meals anyway. My problem is that it is really easy to get stuck in a downward spiral with Warly's pickness that makes playing him extremely frustrating. No character should be designed that way. The lack of communication doesn't help either.

I see it the same way, I just wanted to point out that a reworked Warly should still be a expert character and geared towards players with more experience and knowledge of the game. Maybe I worded this poorly but I think you agree with me here.
 
Your seasonal menu idea does sound interesting but I would be concerned about players stockpiling ingredients for "the best meal" and eating nothing but that for the entire season. One of the reasons I went with the random element in my mod was to keep players on their toes when it came to what to make. This helped increase variety without being too frustrating. In fact, my mod has a few ways of keeping the frustration down with the preferred menu system. Aside from never repeating the same menu the next day, I also made sure that all the menus had some meal overlap to keep them from being annoying. For example, the Sweets menu has a lot of fruit dishes on it so that not having Honey doesn't completely lock you out of the menu. A few other things you would need to be address would be a way to identify what season it is, meal bonuses/penalties, meal reset time, etc. You could also get creative too. For example, maybe there could be certain meals that can only be made during a specific season. I like my idea better but yours has a lot of potential too.
 
I just reread my post and saw that I only covered his appite and completely forgot how I would change his variety. I wouldnt get rid of his variety, in fact with my proposel it would be better if he not just remebered his last food 1,75 days ago but remebers it no matter how much time was between each meal! That would get rid of certain food stocking you mentioned along with the meatball trick. This way one needs to really pay attention to his food and can only stock certain food types in preparation of the coming seasons but has to still cook differnt crockpot foods throughout the season. 
I dont think it would be too difficult to guess the current season as the coloring layer changes along with the kind of hounds in ROG and SW and the weather. But maybe additional voice lines of Warly could help with that. Or even that Warly could examine the thermal measurer for some unique lines.
 
I'm 100% with everyone on Warly not rewarding smart play. Ironically, the smartest way to play him is to use the Meatball trick I mentioned in my original post. Once you realize that, you will begin to ask yourself "Why am I playing the chef character if all I eat is Meatballs?". Warly kinda falls apart once you reach that point.
 
I agree again. This is his biggest complaint. It is a shame really, because he is such an interesting character. Lets hope Klei adresses this someday somehow.
 
I think I messed around with the idea of Warly being able to upgrade his Chef Pouch in my mod. It's been a while but I think the problem I ran into was that the game had trouble using the Chef Pouch as a recipe ingredient since you couldn't put it in your inventory, only wear it. Another issue that I saw someone bring up with it was that an upgradeable Chef Pouch detracts from his core gameplay because Warly isn't a tailor, he's a chef. In the end, I just made it so you can adjust the attributes of Chef Pouch in my mod's config menu. You can adjust it's size from 4 to 14 slots, make the spoil effect also keep Ice from melting or cool Thermal Stones or just remove the feature all together, make the Chef Pouch Waterproof and/or Fireproof and so on. This worked out better since it put the choice in the player's hand for how strong they wanted the Chef Pouch. I usually play with a waterproof 10 slot Chef Pouch and that seems balanced to me.
 
I think his backpack is fine. 8 slots is good early and reasonable late game. I dont think losing 6 slots is a big downside. If one really needs the inventory space that badly for transporting things for example then Warly can simply swap to a krampus sack for a short while. For day to day inventory space mangement is key!

It's funny you mention that post, because that's one of the main things that lead me to making my mod! It has a lot of good information about how he is played in every aspect of the game and I used it as a resource on ways to fix Warly. It really opened my eyes to how poorly Warly performs in DS. The fact that Warly ties with Wes so often in effectiveness in Shipwrecked is also a bad sign.

I dont think he is nearly as bad as Wes and see him more on a level with Walani. Not bad, just meh because his main perk doesnt work correctly.

When I said rework, I meant the same thing as rebalancing. I'm not suggesting something extreme like Warly not being a chef anymore or  replacing him with an Astronaut. His concept was great, the execution wasn't. The important thing to remember about improving Warly is that his biggest problem is also one of his core perks. Removing the Vareity perk and replacing it with nothing only makes him overpowered and boring to play. I've already tried this in my mod. Any change to Variety would probably mean that some of his other perks would need to be tweaked too for the sake of balance. My mod manages to get away with replacing it by allowing the user to tweak the power of ever old and new perk to their liking.

As I said above, removing his variety was never my intention. That is after all what makes him interesting. Rember guys, it is often the weakness of a character that makes him interesting not only his perks.

It's always good to get some feedback. I hope someday Warly will get the improvements he needs.
 

 

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On 18.05.2019 at 12:26 PM, oCrapaCreeper said:

Probably not sadly. 

It's funny how when he finally gets a buff/re-work, it's for another game instead.

It is disappointing, not funny.
But we do not know yet, so let's do not give up hope about it.

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