Underpowered Weapons, and how to fix them

[Canis]

So, as everyone at this point knows, there are a big handful of tools and items that literally no one uses. Whether they be too expensive for their worth or them being completely overshadowed by others. So, here is a quick list that I have compiled, along with my recommendations on how each item could be balanced so it has a fair shot to be considered viable.

 

Survival Tab:

Spoiler

Healing Salve:
Ever since the release of Wortox, practically every healing item in the game became useless. The Healing salve is the biggest loss because it heals as much as one soul. Also, butterfly wings exist, so unless you're doing a Winter-Only world, you don't have a reason to craft something that heals 20 HP, since you can easily get 5+ butterfly wings during 1 day of hanging around flowers.
Recommendation: Raise the HP healed to 30.

Honey Poultice:
This is in the same boat as the Healing Salve, ie overshadowed by Wortox, and butterfly wings to an extent.
Recommendation: Raise the HP healed to 40.

Piggyback:
It's a great idea on paper, and is actually okay as an item. However, it's severely underused.
Recommendation: Increase the Piggyback's inventory space to match the Krampus Sack, and keep the movement speed nerf.

Insulated Pack:
It's an item that requires you to kill a boss monster (that doesn't spawn until 1 full year has passed, mind you) so it doesn't have any real reason to *not* be an upgrade to the normal backpack.
Recommendation: Increase the Insulated Pack's inventory space to match the backpack.

 

Fight Tab:

Spoiler

Tail o' Three Cats:
It has an interesting concept, however no one ever uses this because it's gimmick of removing aggro is a tad wonky, coupled with the fact that it only has 150 durability, despite it's high cost to craft.
Recommendation:
-Increase durability to 400
-Increase chance to de-aggro mobs to 75% chance per hit.

All Darts:
Darts, at the moment, are a complete waste of resources to craft because they only deal 100 damage each, which sounds a lot but keep in mind that it only takes 3 spear hits to do the same amount. 
Recommendation: Increase the amount of Darts made per craft to 3.

 

Magic Tab:

Spoiler

Night Light:
It's cost to craft compared to it's usage is absolute garbage. At the moment, it's basically just a garbage bin for nightmare fuel, and even that isn't effective because said nightmare fuel doesn't even fuel it for that long.
Recommendation: Allow it to be used as a late-game firepit.
-1 nightmarefuel fuels it for 1 day (8 minutes)
-Allow the ability to cook on it.

Night Armor:
It breaks too easily, given it's cost.
Recommendation: 
-Increase it's durability much higher than a log suit / football helmet (ex: 900-1000?)
-Increase the sanity drained when attacked (a hound, for example, only takes away 1 sanity per hit, perhaps we can make this something like 5 or 10?

Bat Bat:
It's durability is 75, and considering it's cost, that's so doo doo. Granted, you can regain a massive amount of HP with it so buffing it's durability might not be the best option, so the clear option is to lower it's cost.
Recommendation: Change the Recipe to [2 Bat Wings / 2 Living Log] (from 5 Bat Wings / 2 Living Logs / 1 Purple Gem)

 

Dress Tab:

Spoiler

Rain Hat:
Right now, the meta against the rain is umbrella + football helmet, which provides 100% protection. This discourages the use of *any* other wetness protection item in the game. No one even bothers using this for lightning protection as the Eyebrella can do that.
Recommendation: Increase the Rain Hat's wetness resistance to 90%.

Rain Coat:
It's in the exact same boat as the rain hat. Doubly so because it requires 2 tentacle spots to craft, for some reason.
Recommendation:
-Change the recipe to [2 Moleworms, 2 rope, 2 bone shard.] (from 2 Tentacle Spots, 2 rope, 2 bone shard)
-Change the wetness resistance to 90%. (I did a goof and didn't know it is currently 100%.)

Dapper Vest:
No one ever even thinks about crafting this, save for when you need it to craft the Hibearnation vest. How do we fix this? Make it a discount Tam-O-Shanter.
Recommendation: Increase the Sanity gain to match the Tam-O-Shanter.

 

Ancient Tab:

Spoiler

Pick/Axe:
It's only problem is it's relatively low durability. The only time you'd use this is if you find it in a chest. If the durability was buffed, it could very well be the go-to tool for everyday tasks during late-game.
Recommendation: Greatly increase the durability (750?)

Thulecite Club:
It's more expensive than a Dark Sword, but it's also worse than a Dark sword. It costs 3 living logs, 4 thulecite, and 4 nightmare fuel to craft, as opposed to the simple 1 living log and 5 nightmare fuel of the dark sword. If we were to look at the crafting recipes, then the Club should practically be an upgrade to the Dark Sword.
Recommendation: 
-Increase it's melee damage to match the Dark Sword (leave the shadow tentacle damage unchanged)
-Increase it's Durability to 250 (from 150)

Houndius Shootius:
Winona was made for the sole reason to provide an early-game Shootius. However, if we think about this, that just makes this structure entirely useless.
Recommendation: Increase the Houndius Shootius' damage to 150 (able to 1-shot hounds.)

 

If I missed anything, tell me below and I'll throw them into the spoiler below.

Spoiler

nothing here yet lmao

 

[fimmatek]

5 minutes ago, Canis said:

Rain Coat:
It's in the exact same boat as the rain hat. Doubly so because it requires 2 tentacle spots to craft, for some reason.
Recommendation:
-Change the recipe to [2 Moleworms, 2 rope, 2 bone shard.] (from 2 Tentacle Spots, 2 rope, 2 bone shard)
-Increase the wetness resistance to 90%.

The raincoat has 100% water resistance, so you cannot increase that to 90%.

[Canis]

1 minute ago, fimmatek said:

The raincoat has 100% water resistance, so you cannot increase that to 90%.

It does? I thought it had something stupid like 70%, must've mistaken it for the rain hat.

W h o o p s.

Edit: my point still stands about the rain coat, since it's horrifically overpriced with tentacle spots.

[Auth]

Thulecite club outdamages the dark sword so long as the enemy isn't moving, has a large hitbox, or at least isn't moving a whole lot

It's more of a situational replacement to the dark sword, because depending on what you're fighting, it could be considerably better, or it could be considerably worse. And I like that about it, the issue is that due to the fact that not everyone goes into the ruins for happy fun monkey times nobody really ends up talking about it much, which then also translates into not everybody using it as much, and it just ultimately suffers from the same problem that every thulecite item has, which is usually just that thulecite is too precious of a material for most players to justify burning through it at a somewhat rapid pace.

[Canis]

1 minute ago, Auth said:

Thulecite club outdamages the dark sword so long as the enemy isn't moving, has a large hitbox, or at least isn't moving a whole lot

It's more of a situational replacement to the dark sword, because depending on what you're fighting, it could be considerably better, or it could be considerably worse. And I like that about it, the issue is that due to the fact that not everyone goes into the ruins for happy fun monkey times nobody really ends up talking about it much, which then also translates into not everybody using it as much, and it just ultimately suffers from the same problem that every thulecite item has, which is usually just that thulecite is too precious of a material for most players to justify burning through it at a somewhat rapid pace.

Exactly, so why not make Thulecite tools/weapons more useful, then?

[ButterStuffed]

I think it'd be better if night armor was just lower cost to craft. 2 papyrus instead of 3 would make it oh so much better for me personally. If the cost was decreased a bit then I would be satisfied.

[FloomRide]

Remember that the piggyback cannot burn, or be soaked in rain. You can leave it on the ground to serve as a discount scaled chest. Four pig skin is a little expensive, though.

[Canis]

1 minute ago, FloomRide said:

Remember that the piggyback cannot burn, or be soaked in rain. You can leave it on the ground to serve as a discount scaled furnace. Four pig skin is a little expensive, though.

ik, but still, no one ever uses it. Since anything regarding movement speed is tough to swallow, might as well make the upsides better.

[Sinister_Fang]

33 minutes ago, Canis said:

Night Armor:
It breaks too easily, given it's cost.
Recommendation: 
-Increase it's durability much higher than a log suit / football helmet (ex: 900-1000?)
-Increase the sanity drained when attacked (a hound, for example, only takes away 1 sanity per hit, perhaps we can make this something like 5 or 10?

With these proposed changes, I still wouldn't use it on anyone other then Maxwell. And even then, I'd only use it occasionally. If anything, it's the passive sanity drain that makes it kinda bad. 10/s is quite a lot on top of the insanity auras form most enemies and the drain from getting hit. I think the passive drain should be significantly lowered (maybe 2/s?) and increase the sanity damage when hit from 10% to maybe 50%.

I'd also like to mention that it's durability is already higher then a log suit. It's durability is 525 and the log suit is 315. It might not seem like it's much better, but that might have more to do with DST's armor durability nerf.

39 minutes ago, Canis said:

Bat Bat:
It's durability is 75, and considering it's cost, that's so doo doo. Granted, you can regain a massive amount of HP with it so buffing it's durability might not be the best option, so the clear option is to lower it's cost.
Recommendation: Change the Recipe to [2 Bat Wings / 2 Living Log] (from 5 Bat Wings / 2 Living Logs / 1 Purple Gem)

Making it cheaper won't make it more useful. My issue with it is, again, sanity. There's a lot of easier ways to go about healing yourself without completely destroying your sanity. Because of that, I've only ever used it when farming nightmare fuel.

[Terra B Welch]

1 hour ago, Canis said:

Rain Hat:
Right now, the meta against the rain is umbrella + football helmet, which provides 100% protection. This discourages the use of *any* other wetness protection item in the game. No one even bothers using this for lightning protection as the Eyebrella can do that.
Recommendation: Increase the Rain Hat's wetness resistance to 90%.

Personally I like the rain hat for spring in the event I cannot get an eyebrella(mainly in the event someone else gets it)

I like the lightning protection for moslings, and I find RNG lightning damage annoying anyway, I still keep an umbrella incase I need to dry off, but it lets me use the walking cane for longer.

And if you say Lightning Rods, I prefer not to ugly up my world by placing lightning rods everywhere, and I'm not one to always carry loads of gold everywhere either.

[ButterStuffed]

4 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

With these proposed changes, I still wouldn't use it on anyone other then Maxwell. And even then, I'd only use it occasionally. If anything, it's the passive sanity drain that makes it kinda bad. 10/s is quite a lot on top of the insanity auras form most enemies and the drain from getting hit. I think the passive drain should be significantly lowered (maybe 2/s?) and increase the sanity damage when hit from 10% to maybe 50%.

I'd also like to mention that it's durability is already higher then a log suit. It's durability is 525 and the log suit is 315. It might not seem like it's much better, but that might have more to do with DST's armor durability nerf.

Making it cheaper won't make it more useful. My issue with it is, again, sanity. There's a lot of easier ways to go about healing yourself without completely destroying your sanity. Because of that, I've only ever used it when farming nightmare fuel.

The night armor is very nice with Willow now that Bernie is less annoying to use.

[GenomeSquirrel]

in beefaloless worlds, dapper vest is usually my backup, if hound mounds are still there

[NSAiswatchingus]

16 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

in beefaloless worlds...

What hellscapes have you seen?

[GenomeSquirrel]

6 minutes ago, NSAiswatchingus said:

What hellscapes have you seen?

that's usually when you have a few overzealous and unlucky horn hunters

[Unn0ticedShadow]

I'd have to agree with most of the stuff on the list, though making the piggyback have Krampus sized inventory could be over the top, I personally think that it would be better to just replace the string in the recipe with more rope.

I find shadow armor to be pretty balanced and useful in it's own way, I think it would be better to make it so that your sanity only decreases significantly upon taking damage, as opposed to a ridiculously strong passive sanity drain.

Lastly, as for all healing items being overshadowed by Wortox, it's Wortox who needs the nerf, the healing items (exept maybe healing salves) don't need an upgrade, a wonderful list however, and I think it could be expanded to include most or every unbalanced item in the game, like Dapper Vests and One Man Bands!

[Canis]

1 hour ago, Unn0ticedShadow said:

I'd have to agree with most of the stuff on the list, though making the piggyback have Krampus sized inventory could be over the top, I personally think that it would be better to just replace the string in the recipe with more rope.

I find shadow armor to be pretty balanced and useful in it's own way, I think it would be better to make it so that your sanity only decreases significantly upon taking damage, as opposed to a ridiculously strong passive sanity drain.

Lastly, as for all healing items being overshadowed by Wortox, it's Wortox who needs the nerf, the healing items (exept maybe healing salves) don't need an upgrade, a wonderful list however, and I think it could be expanded to include most or every unbalanced item in the game, like Dapper Vests and One Man Bands!

Even without/before Wortox, butterfly wings exist. Unless you start out in Winter you'll never need to craft a single healing item.

[Auth]

3 hours ago, Canis said:

Exactly, so why not make Thulecite tools/weapons more useful, then?

I honestly think the best way to get more people to use thulecite gear is to be able to haul out the pseudoscience stations from the depths of the ruins(or be able to make some Psuedoscience Lite station), because while undeniably the items in their already existing state have the potential (and always have had the potential) to shake the meta gear game up, point is, even if you're swimming in thulecite, most people don't want to even bother trudging all the way into the ruins to make gear that not only charges you the most valuable resource in the game (Hint: The gear that already exists in it's current state is what makes it so valuable) but also requires you to navigate the most deadly region of the base game every time you want to make it. While all the gear at the end of the day is godly (crown and club specifically) and even when bases have stacks and stacks of thulecite, and it's hard to find a player that doesn't wish they had thulecite gear at all times, there must be something up with the game design that almost every player (Including most pros) think that Risk/General Annoyance > Reward and I just don't think that buffing the gear to even more insane limits is going to help make that any better.

[pedregales]

Healing salve and honey poultice were already underpowered before Wortox when compared to many food items, and their only advantage was non-spoilage. I'd say pump those numbers to 40 and 60 (and even then I think having 2 items that heal in the same way is a bit too much and maybe one of the 2 should receive some sort of re-work, maybe healing over-time or something).

If at least piggyback could use the backpack skins *sigh*... But yeah, I agree it should have more slots to be worth the use. As for insulated pack, I think it would be better if it didn't work like a backpack, but like a more accessible bundling wrap that doesn't break (there is a mod for that, so it is possible), and bundling wraps be nerfed to drastically reduce spoilage time, but not stop it completely. But maybe is a bit too good (haven't really tried the mod much outside of a single game, I didn't find it OP, but one time is not enough to give a proper review).

Agree with the catcoon whip. As for the darts, their biggest issue (I think) is how severely unconvenient they are. The only way to get feathers is killing birds, and they only have a 50% chance of giving you a feather (save for the canary, that has a middling 5% of dropping a feather, or with a caves event gives 3 or 4), the only character that can viably make feather farms is Wicker because of 2 of her books; the "best" feather (azure) is exclusive to winter which makes yellow feathers indirectly better as long as you have caves (instead of because of their mechanic to deal 150 damage to wet enemies), they stack at 20 (so for 4000 damage, roughly the health of a deerclops, you need 2 inventory slots, for bigger bosses you need more, and with a single dark sword you have more than that in just 1 inventory slot and for much fewer resources). So I agree they need some improvements, but maybe making feather farming easier for ALL characters (maybe with the use of the birdcage in some way, like using a razor with a bird gives you 3 feathers every 10 days, as absurd as it sounds) might be a better solution, and increasing the stack size to 40 would also be nice.

Night light is very niche, as only Willow could and can use it effectively at all. I don't think increasing the duration of each nightmare fuel would be good though? But I do think it should automatically "turn off" during the day, and "turn on" during the night, saving fuel and only using it when you need it (at night), also make it immune to the shadow claws. I think night armor and bat-bat are fine-ish, only decreasing the recipe cost would do it for me.

Biggest issue of rain hat is that eyebrella exist, filling the same exact niche but way better and relatively cheaper, and I am not sure how they could be encouraged to be used. For dapper vest I am not sure either, I mean, I wouldn't mind the increase, but that kind of defeats the whole point of the tam o' shanter, I think. Rain coat I think is fine, wouldn't mind seeing the tentacle spots go for something more easily renewable like the moleworms, but sewing kit exists, and tentacle spots are only used for a handful of recipes (Wicker's book, feather hat, rain coat, )...

I believe there is nothing that can save the Pick/Axe, and that it is better to be removed and changed as a skin for the pickaxe. The only advantage it truly gives over pickaxe and axe is that it only takes 1 slot instead of 2, but by the time you can craft it (unless you rush it by day 2) you probably don't need to harvest more logs or rocks or have some kind of way to get tons of it. Houndius (and I am going to get stoned for this) I think might be better to be "removed" as well, and given to Winona as another "turret". Thulecite club I think is fine as is, one way to increase it's usage would be as Auth said: make some way to make ancient items less annoying to craft, but I am not sure that is entirely needed.

[metallichydra]

items no one uses:

• rabbit earmuffs

 

also, whenever people find something to be useless, they always say "lets give it a buff", and at the same time many players say the game is too easy.

 

[Cpt. KatKit]

Healing items are useless because butterflies and food have op healing amounts (Wortox is similar but that's his trait so it should be stronger than average). Am sure nerfing butterfly and pierogi healing would make the game a lot harder but makes a lot of people angry because "devs nerf everything good" or "game is now unplayable GG".

[Viktor234]

10 minutes ago, Cpt. KatKit said:

Healing items are useless because butterflies and food have op healing amounts (Wortox is similar but that's his trait so it should be stronger than average). Am sure nerfing butterfly and pierogi healing would make the game a lot harder but makes a lot of people angry because "devs nerf everything good" or "game is now unplayable GG".

Unlike Butterfly Wings and Pierogi, Healing Items don't have any spoilage and you'll be able to use them whenever you want to, in case of if you didn't get enough healing items or didn't need the healings in your last raid. There's also not always a Wortox nearby and Wortox needs his souls to satisfy his hunger plus he can't carry more than 20 souls.

[56933043043]

39 minutes ago, Viktor234 said:

Unlike Butterfly Wings and Pierogi, Healing Items don't have any spoilage and you'll be able to use them whenever you want to, in case of if you didn't get enough healing items or didn't need the healings in your last raid. There's also not always a Wortox nearby and Wortox needs his souls to satisfy his hunger plus he can't carry more than 20 souls.

There are many ways in which healing foods outweigh survival tab healing items.

• Healing foods are abundant and easy to find and produce.(butterfly wings, blue cap mushrooms, koalephant trunks, pierogi).
• Also, their spoilage downside is ENTIRELY nullified by the existence of bundling wraps. Seriously, ever since those were added food spoilage has never been a problem in the game. It's ridiculous.

My proposed fix for healing foods was to make them heal MORE but make them LESS common and harder to obtain, so that way it would be wasteful to use them at high health but it would be the safe thing to do.....except that bundling wraps exist. So that doesn't seem like it'll fix any.

12 hours ago, Canis said:

Magic Tab:

  Hide contents

Night Armor:
It breaks too easily, given it's cost.
Recommendation: 
-Increase it's durability much higher than a log suit / football helmet (ex: 900-1000?)
-Increase the sanity drained when attacked (a hound, for example, only takes away 1 sanity per hit, perhaps we can make this something like 5 or 10?

 

Night armor provides 95% protection, the highest of any armor in the game, tied with a marble suit, but without the heinous speed penalty.(Thulecite crowns and suits only protect 90%). It seems like a tiny difference but in practice it's quite significant. It's also more practical to craft than a marble suit(how often are you going to have rope and marble in hand, really? Nightmare fuel and papyrus are a lot easier to farm.)

[Canis]

12 hours ago, metallichydra said:

items no one uses:

• rabbit earmuffs

 

also, whenever people find something to be useless, they always say "lets give it a buff", and at the same time many players say the game is too easy.

 

I mean, I tried to exclude items like rabbit earmuffs because the seemingly sole reason that they're in-game is if all hope is lost, winter is a day away, and you just spawned in.

 

Also, yeah, the game is too easy (pray for a challenging content update) but buffing trash-tier tools will only expand the meta, and in turn make things at least a tad more interesting. The only real way that buffing trash items would make the entire game easier if it becomes the type of item that is the easy pick for 100% of the game (ex: football helmets and ham bats are available in all stages of the game, and can deal with just about anything the game has to offer.)

Basically, when I say that I want, say, late-game ruins items buffed, I'd obviously start to have a problem if players could start to use it early-game with little to no effort. (Ruins rushing, while common, still requires a good amount of skill to do.)

[ADM]

Well, sounds good ! I also ask for a rework of an item that is... kinda pointless for fighting : The Water Balloon,

It only works on players and dragonfly for a game design reason, that no one use btw

 

I always have in my inventory a Shadow Sword, to fight, a Bat Bat, to heal (and you're right that it break too fast)

And I like to use the Morning Star on spring, but, if we can use a water balloon to splash the mob, it could be a more interesting weapon to play as a main damage dealer. As every creatures can go wet when it rain I don't know why a balloon full of water should not works fine too.

[BadScra]

Great topic. I'm very agree to buff night light and pick/axe, disagree to nerf rain coat.