WX-78: The Wicker-less Overcharge Experience

[lakhnish]

WX in Single-Player Don't Starve has an abundance of methods to have consistent overcharge.

• Thunderbirds in Hamlet
• Hurricane Season from SW 
• Moslings in RoG
• Classic Ruins Charging Station for base game 
• Telelocator Stave methods in base-game DS.

For only 16 Lightning Strikes, WX can easily get 40-60-80 days worth of overcharge in the matter of minutes for very little cost. DST's WX, on the other hand, received a change to his overcharge way back when, where the more WX is striked by lightning, the less charge he gets out of it. For two Wickerbottom books, you can get easily get about 20 days of overcharge, making it fairly balanced in comparison to before, but causes WX to rely on Wickerbottom for his charge. 

Some more details here on the rates, specifically for Wickerbottom's book from CarlZalph's post:

Spoiler

For if you read Wickerbottom books in succession:

Spoiler

Here's a more complete table showing all of the number of reads, up to using 3 books:

     Minimum        Average        Maximum
 1)   4.6459655535   5.4802979726   6.1496724959
 2)   7.3401161812   8.3029218607   9.0798845593
 3)   9.4578947156  10.4868285996  11.3248135671
 4)  11.2619376465  12.3337533642  13.2138527151
 5)  12.8607306203  13.9635652556  14.8755414118
 6)  14.3116850627  15.4384543528  16.3759117059
 7)  15.6495673464  16.7956133776  17.7541917653
 8)  16.8973290466  18.0593821893  19.0359274302
 9)  18.0710661932  19.2467196569  20.2388495547
10)  19.1825847153  20.3700016717  21.3758571474
11)  20.2408492224  21.4385874052  22.4566797136
12)  21.2528574052  22.4597580445  23.4888698826
13)  22.2241960939  23.4393103794  24.4784291093
14)  23.1594101368  24.3819487174  25.4302196843
15)  24.0622558047  25.2915530327  26.3482459727
^Reads

All time in standard in-game days of 480 real-world seconds, under the assumption that all strikes hit WX-78.

For if you let Wickerbottom read once, let the charge drain, and read it again:

Spoiler

Here's a chart showing reading it once, letting it drain, and then doing it again:

 1)   4.6459655535   5.4802979726   6.1496724959
 2)   9.291931107   10.9605959452  12.2993449918
 3)  13.9378966605  16.4408939178  18.4490174877
 4)  18.583862214   21.9211918904  24.5986899836
 5)  23.2298277675  27.401489863   30.7483624795
 6)  27.875793321   32.8817878356  36.8980349754
 7)  32.5217588745  38.3620858082  43.0477074713
 8)  37.167724428   43.8423837808  49.1973799672
 9)  41.8136899815  49.3226817534  55.3470524631
10)  46.459655535   54.802979726   61.496724959
11)  51.1056210885  60.2832776986  67.6463974549
12)  55.751586642   65.7635756712  73.7960699508
13)  60.3975521955  71.2438736438  79.9457424467
14)  65.043517749   76.7241716164  86.0954149426
15)  69.6894833025  82.204469589   92.2450874385

Much more value doing it this way, though you'll want some sort of sanity regeneration like wearing the bee queen hat doing it.

 

DST Counterpart

Unlike his Single-player counterpart, WX only has three reliable ways of getting overcharged:

1. Wickerbottom's The End is Nigh
2. Moslings during Spring.
3. Telelocator Staves.

I wanted to figure out a way to always be overcharged without relying on Wickerbottom, as I play do play DST solo for a large chunk of my own time.

Given what's available, The End is Nigh is obviously the best way for WX to gain overcharge, but it's not possible if you play DST solo like me (unless you use an alt, which kinda defeats the purpose of this post).

Moslings during Spring can maybe net WX 30 days worth of overcharge, but you're going to have to pen in ~20 moslings to get adequate charge. It would also take either a full day to get 10 days worth of charge, or 2 full days to get 15 days worth of charge. Via Moslings, you'd be able to get 15 days of charge in Spring (the first 5 are getting your 20 Moslings), and at the end of the season, get yourself another 15 days worth of charge for the Summer, to which the Moslings would despawn.

With Autumn and Winter being the only seasons where WX is charge-less, you'd have to rely on Telelocator Staves. However, I was really discouraged after doing the math to see how many Telelocator Staves I would need to maintain overcharge. 

Assuming I did 30 days worth of overcharge via Moslings (15 days in Spring, and 15 days for Summer) this is what the rest of the year would have looked like:

• For 40 days worth of "ideal" charge, it would cost me 42 Telelocator staves [78 Living Logs, 78 Purple Gems, 156 Nightmare Fuel] (10 days Autumn, another 10 days in Autumn, 15 in Winter, and the first 5 days of Spring).
• For 40 days worth of "frugal" charge, it would cost me about 23 Telelocator Staves [46 Living Logs, 46 Purple Gems, 92 Nightmare Fuel] (if I charged myself every 5 days) .

My math:

Spoiler

Ideal Charge Math:

Spoiler

 

10 days Autumn, 10 more days Autumn, 15 Winter, first 5 days of Spring translates to 3 reads + 3 reads + 6 reads + 1 read = 13 reads

13 reads * 16 lightning strikes = 208 total strikes

208 total strikes / 5 strikers per staff = 41.6 total Telelocator Staffs (Rounded up to 42)

Frugal Charge Math:

Spoiler

Looked at second chart to see avg. 40 days charge, got 7 reads. 

7 reads * 16 lightning strikes = 112 total lightning strikes

112 total strikes / 5 strikes per staff = 22.4 total Telelocator Staffs (Rounded up to 23)

 

Conclusion

While I could do this, too much of my time would be spent gathering the resources to do this, and not enough time to actually enjoy being overcharged, even for a late-game player like myself (assuming I don't change characters, as that's typically my motto and would defeat the purpose of this post as well. Changing characters as WX also costs gears since he drops them upon a despawn at the same rates as if he died. I don't have much gears in the first place as WX since I'm always using them).

This was the best I could come up to minimize the costs for a legitimate, year-round overcharge as WX, and my ultimate conclusion was that if I really wanted overcharge through Telelocator Staves, I would have to plan those charge sessions. It's better to be overcharged sparingly and would probably only be of interest to me during Winter to avoid freezing. 

Not only that, Telelocator Staves and Foci are actually a great method of transportation on a server, since standing in the center of one focus will transport you to another focus instead of the one you're standing under (learned this from reddit), making me even more reluctant to wanting to use the Staves to charge WX.

Why bring this up?

It's because WX will eventually get a rework, and the New NEW Reign beta that's coming soon may or may not bring forth alternative methods of summoning lightning strikes that WX can utilize. I'd love to see more viable ways for WX to gain overcharge, and I'm of course not asking for something that's on par with Wickerbottom's The End is Nigh. Rather, it'd be something to expand the methods for which a WX has to overcharge himself, just like his single-player counterpart. By no means am I saying for the recursive function of WX's overcharge to change, as I think it's balanced as is.

I'd be great if I could be an Independent Robot that don't need no Wickerbottom to charge himself throughout the year and wanted to voice my input on this particular area as I've gotten to 1145 days almost solely as WX (only ~2 days were Wendy). In this world, I was able to always be overcharged for a relatively little, but time-consuming cost thanks to a bug feature in the game (8 days of the 70 days were spent charging myself throughout the year).

Spoiler

What are people's thoughts on this? I think people are going to disagree with me on this one a lot though.

TLDR:

More options/ways for WX to solo overcharge himself like his single-player counterpart would be nice. WX was never nerfed in DS, but has several ways of gaining overcharge, ie, Thunderbirds, Moslings, Hurricane Season, Ruins Charge Station, and Telelocator Staves for 40-60-80 days worth of charge. In DST, it's costs an arm and a leg to do the same thing. I was able to always be overcharged in a solo Day 1145 world, but it was because of a bug feature present in the game.

[Viktor234]

3 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

Moslings during Spring.

I recently managed to keep the moslings for the summer because of a rollback on 1st summer day and according to some other players, moslings don't fly away if they're frozen when they're supposed to fly, perhaps that might help to keep moslings in the world 24/7?

[Charsis]

Bundle lots of cactus flesh for sanity and do one teleport staff charge every day and waiting out till last charge goes out. Then you need only 7 staff from autumn to winter.

[ShadowDuelist]

7 minutes ago, Viktor234 said:

I recently managed to keep the moslings for the summer because of a rollback on 1st summer day and according to some other players, moslings don't fly away if they're frozen when they're supposed to fly, perhaps that might help to keep moslings in the world 24/7?

This is actually a great idea, I just want to point out that most worlds where people do not use, or in most cases, not even care about dealing with moslings, it would eventually overrun the world by moslings if they keep reappearing every spring.

Perhaps the solution would be making Goose/Goose and moslings a permanent boss since the first spring, that as long as they don't die, they never respawn (sort of like how bearger works).

It would be strange however, in the sense that lets imagine that you manage to trap all but one mosling from a nest, who died, when momma gets back next spring she will have to give birth to only an equal amount of moslings killed, which in this example would be just one. It would be weird but it would work nontheless.

[CarlZalph]

In an online environment some semblance of balance has to be maintained, otherwise why really play any other character?

In singleplayer this doesn't matter because it's just you who is OP and you choose to play the character without outside influence factors.

 

The mere state of being charged gives movement speed and light, both of which are very useful in every situation for DST- movement for everything and light so you can forgo holding a light source freeing up a slot, keeping your equipment all good, and not get pinned to a small area around a dropped lantern.

It's very powerful and still fairly easy/cheap to get done with a Wicker since multiplayer environment.

 

Spoiler

Charts in OP made by me a while ago which can be found in this thread:

 

 

[lakhnish]

1 hour ago, Viktor234 said:

I recently managed to keep the moslings for the summer because of a rollback on 1st summer day and according to some other players, moslings don't fly away if they're frozen when they're supposed to fly, perhaps that might help to keep moslings in the world 24/7?

Yea, that's the bug. There's more to it make it even easier and consistent, but at the end of the day, it's because of a bug.

1 hour ago, Charsis said:

Bundle lots of cactus flesh for sanity and do one teleport staff charge every day and waiting out till last charge goes out. Then you need only 7 staff from autumn to winter.

That's actually pretty good and haven't thought just living off of one charge, mainly because for me, it would have felt like it was a vanity charge. You're still overcharged and can adjust the time for say if you want to go the ruins quickly or do a quick Klaus fight, but outside of that, I feel that it was just a little limiting in what I could do. Having said that though, I'll most certainly play around with it, and it may even change my mind, so thanks for pointing that out.

23 minutes ago, CarlZalph said:

In an online environment some semblance of balance has to be maintained, otherwise why really play any other character?

In singleplayer this doesn't matter because it's just you who is OP and you choose to play the character without outside influence factors.

 

23 minutes ago, CarlZalph said:

It's very powerful and still fairly easy/cheap to get done with a Wicker since multiplayer environment.

While that's most certainly true and hard to argue against, I still would have liked a way to charge myself without Wicker that would have given an ok amount of charge if no one's online with me. Though @Charsis's post may change my mind.

I also edited the post to reflect that the data was from you. I normally make sure to reference that the charts are from you when others have asked about WX's overcharge, but failed to do so this time.

[SpookyXy]

Hit volt goats with the morning star to charge them, then they'll strike you with lightning during the fight.