idea Warly Rework Idea: The Buff Master

[blacknight7890]

As we know, the shipwrecked chef Warly is inbound to the main game of Don't Starve Together, with a rework to boot! With such news, comes ideas, and I have some I wish to share. As the title states, one big idea is having Warly take on a supporting role by giving buffs to the other survivors, but that needs its own paragraph, lets focus on the rest first.

To start, lets go over what I think should stay unchanged. His faster hunger drain, need for food variety, and his want for crockpot food is fine, as it gives him a unique playstyle that plays into his cooking background better. However, some numbers should probably be tweaked and some way of knowing if you have eaten something already would be nice too.

Next, his equipment. Warlys portable crock pot is great by itself, Warly should not be the only one to be able to use and hold it, it helps to share. His other item, the chef pouch, should also be shareable, though other characters won't get much use out of it. A change to it that I propose is having it only able to hold food, in addition to its halved spoilage rate. Maybe also give it 10 slots of space instead of 8, to compensate for the limitation. The point of the bag would be to act as an ingredient pack for the portable crock pot, and to make it so it's not just a direct upgrade to the backpack. Only Warly will get any real use out of the pack, but the option is there for others should they want it. 

Though I said it was fine, there is one change to Warly's refine palate that I would like to make. Normally Warly gains about 33% more/less positive/negative stats from crockpot food, and of course that's reversed more or less for non crockpot foods. I, and several others, propose a change to this, making it so any crockpot food Warly makes, gets the "gourmet" prefix. This causes the food itself to get the 33% perk that Warly normally has, allowing anyone who eats it to get the effects of that perk, even if they aren't Warly. This makes it so any food that Warly makes is better than if anyone else had cooked it, allowing you to get more out of your food then ever before.

Better normal food is good and all, but let's get into the juicy bits. Warly of course has his own unique recipes, some of them are just good normal food, but others are even better. Warly has been experimenting in the kitchen and has invented new foods that will give passive temporary buffs to whomever eats it. Such buffs may include: More damage, faster movement speed, fire resistance, ice resistance, constant heating, constant cooling, greater sanity regen, health regen (better jelly beans, uses royal jelly), hunger regen (Wolfgangs rejoice), and maybe even some damage resistance. These are all temporary and give the buffs, in addition to whatever stat increases they have, when eaten. Might be able to stack them, not sure. With this new set of food, Warly can help fill the support role that Wortox has started. Even if Warly isn't fighting directly, he can still help his team beat bosses, or help fight the seasons, with his special food. With both better food and special buffs, Warly will not only be able to get more out of food than others, helping in times of famine, but also help both himself and other stay alive against the harshest challenge the constant can throw at them.

Some final tweaks/clarifications, gourmet food cooks faster in the pot, they also have the same spoilage rate as normal food though, no need to change that. Give Warly some way to know what the crock pot will make, so you don't need a mod for it, maybe some kind of recipe book? Finally, maybe have something like salt from the gorge, something that helps reverse some spoilage on food.

I want Warly to be more supportive, but not just in combat, but in the very name sake of the game, to make sure both he and the rest of his team, Don't Starve. With how complex the crockpot is, he is certainly not a noob friendly character, but I still think he has great potential for helping the whole team, for the whole game, and not just when a boss shows up. 

But that's just my ramblings, what do you think? Tell me below please, I crave validation and need attention to feel accomplished.^/s

Edit: words and grammar, added new buff idea, other small changes too.

Edit 2: Made a part 2 to this post: 

 

[Dr. Safety]

Over a week late, but I absolutely love all of these ideas. The only thing I wasn't exactly on board with is sharing his equipment, mainly because as it stands, they are very powerful and will likely receive a hard nerf should they be shared. The chef's pouch as you explained I think is great because it isn't nerfing it too much. However the big way to nerf the portable crock pot is making it have limited durability. I do not like the idea of the portable crock pot being durable as it surrounds Warly's playstyle (generally speaking), and would greatly hinder what is already a pretty underpowered character in singleplayer. Perhaps the portable crock pots could have infinite uses, but if the dish is cooked by a non-Warly character, the amount of time it takes to make it is doubled (along with not having the bonus stats as you explained above). Other than that I love the ideas of a character who is mainly for buffing his teammates, and I especially love all the ideas in the culinary tab. I think it would bring a lot to the table and make it so Wickerbottom isn't the only one who can dish out food.

TL:DR If his tools are going to be able to be used by everyone, I don't want that to effect Warly's general playstyle. Keep the crockpot like it is when used by Warly, but change it for other characters since it should be nerfed.

[Thieverpedia]

A fantastic set of ideas to really help Warly thrive on teams. I particularly loved the Chef Pouch idea. More space, but just for food? It really gets that cooking bug going!