warly Warly's food penalty is in need of a rework

[Viktor234]

After enjoying Warly for some amount of time, analyzing his pros and cons, I noticed something about Warly's penalty for eating the same dish multiple times.

Many newcomers suffer from Warly because they don't know any crock pot recipes besides Meatballs, Ratatouille, or Fist Full of Jam. But eating Meatballs only will increase the penalty of Meatballs & reduce the restored hunger down to 18.75 per Meatballs, forcing them to eat a total of 5 Meatballs daily. They'll quickly loose meat & fillers, won't be able to make more meatballs, and finally die from starvation.

But the truth is:

 

Warly actually can survive on 2x Meatballs per day:

Warly has an 20% increased hunger penalty, forcing him to restore at least 90 hunger daily, which is the same as 1.44 Meatballs. And once he starts eating more and more Meatballs, 2 Meatballs will only grant hunger equal to 0.6 Meatballs. But besides that, he also has a pretty big stomach, allowing him to store a total of 250 hunger, which is enough to survive for 2.78 days. And if he manages not to eat the same dish for exactly 2.0 days, his whole penalty on that kind of dish will just disappear.

Or in other words: If Warly manages to restore 180 hunger with one kind of dish, then his penalty for that dish will disappear once he starts starving again.

To reach this goal, you'll have to cook some dishes and eat them all at once to reduce the time for the dish reset.
Let's take a look at different dishes:

• Meaty Stew + Meatballs (212.5):
  • Dishes per 2 days: 1 (1x Meaty Stew + 1x Meatballs)
  • Total hunger restored: 212.5 (of 212.5)
  • Effectiveness: 100%
  • Total increased hunger drain: 20%
  • Notes:
    • That's just an example how to avoid his penalty completely & to compare 0% penalty with >0% penalty
• Meaty Stew (150):
  • Dishes per 2 days: 2
  • Total hunger restored: 285 (of 300)
  • Effectiveness: 95%
  • Total increased hunger drain: 26.32%
  • Notes:
    • Eat the 2nd Meaty Stew as soon as your hunger reaches 115 to avoid loosing hunger from the 2nd one
    • Since 2x Meaty Stew restore a total of 285 hunger, Warly will be able to avoid starving for a total of 3.17 days with 2x Meaty Stew
• Beacon & Eggs / Honey Ham / Turkey Dinner / Dragonpie (75):
  • Dishes per 2 days: 3
  • Total hunger restored: 202.5 (of 225)
  • Effectiveness: 90%
  • Total increased hunger drain: 33.33%
• Meatballs (62.5):
  • Dishes per 2 days: 4
  • Total hunger restored: 209.375 (of 250)
  • Effectiveness: 83.75%
  • Total increased hunger drain: 43.28%
• Any dish with 37.5 hunger (37.5):
  • Dishes per 2 days: 9
  • Total hunger restored: 189.375 (of 337.5)
  • Effectiveness: 56.11%
  • Total increased hunger drain: 113.86%
• Ratatouille / Taffy (25):
  • Dishes per 2 days: 17
  • Total hunger restored: 186.25 (of 425)
  • Effectiveness: 43.82%
  • Total increased hunger drain: 173.83%

As we can see, dishes with low effects are really bad for Warly. A Meaty Stew diet on the other hand will grant Warly almost 0 hunger penalties. It's still ok & possible to survive via Meatballs only, but any dish which grants less hunger than Meatballs is already useless.

A Warly on Meaty Stew diet will have almost the same hunger drain as a Wigfrid on Meaty Stew diet (Meaty Stew restores max 120 hunger on Wigfrid).
A Warly on Meatball diet will have a lower hunger drain than a Wolfgang who's avoiding his wimpy form.

So his repeated dishes penalty actually does not affect his hunger that hard if you use it the proper way.

Isn't Warly supposed to explore the world with his Crock Pot, collect different foods and use them to make different dishes? According to my calculations, he isn't. Warly is only in need of eating 2x Meaty Stew every 3 days, and thanks to his Chef Pouche, he's able to keep the stews fresh for 10 days.

I can confirm: It's possible to survive for ~12 days without Crock Pot by using 8 Meaty Stews. If the amount of Meaty Stews isn't odd, eat once as soon as your hunger reaches 0. If it's odd, eat one as soon as hunger reaches 115.

 

Let's move to another issue:

Unlike others, Warly can't rely on his own Crock Pot food:

There are a few different ways to heal yourself in DST:

• Crock Pot: Recipes like Pierogi, Fishsticks and Dragonpie are sort of the best healing sources, especially during boss fights. They restore 40 health + some hunger & a little bit sanity pretty quickly which will keep you alive.
• Plants: Eggplants, Potatoes, Pomegranates or Dragon Fruits restore 20 health if cooked, making them a good & quickly healing source if you have access to a farm or to a Wormwood planting all these (who again: Can't profit from his own pros).
• Jerky: Does not heal as much as the best Crock Pot recipes and requires 1x meat per jerky drying for a total of 2 days. But besides that it's a nice way to heal yourself, and as a side effect it also restores a nice amount of hunger & sanity.
• Blue Caps & Butterfly Wings: These food items are mostly considered as the early game healing items: They grant pretty good healing stats without the use of a crock pot, especially for rushing a boss. But these do also have their penalties: Butterflies do only spawn during daytime not in winter & they become stale right after 3 days. Blue Caps on the other hand will make you insane and they need to be collected during night (unless you're a bad person who digs all the caps he can find).
• Spider Glands, Healing Salve, Honey Poultice, etc.: That kind of healing items does not spoil over time which makes it available 24/7. But it doesn't grant any other stats besides health and you need to kill alot of Spiders, collect many reeds, etc. to get a moderate stack of Healing Salve/Honey Poultice.
  I consider these healing items as emergency healing items.
• Sleeping: That's a nice & effective way to turn your hunger into health and sanity, but it takes way more time than other healing sources and you can't use it while you're fighting against mobs or a boss. You're forced to leave the fight (which in most cases resets the boss) to restore your health.
• Grim Galette: This one is a Warly exclusive way to heal yourself: Sacrifice your sanity and turn it into health. But on the other hand: It's harder to quickly restore sanity compared to health. To restore a total of 150 health as Warly, you need to get a total of 200 sanity, and sanity can mostly only be restored via Crock Pot, Jerky, Cooked Green Caps, Tent/Siesta, or dapperness, which is pretty much not available for Warly during a fight. Most kind of bosses do also have an insanity aura, making it almost impossible to keep your sanity safe.
• Special Abilities: Some kind of characters have their own ways to heal themself: Wigfrid is able to heal herself by attacking mobs. Wortox can heal everyone by releasing his collected souls. But Warly does not have such an ability yet.

There are many ways to heal, but Warly can't eat non-crock pot items, thus healing with Plants, Jerky, or Blue Caps & Butterfly Wings are not an option for Warly.
The Grim Galette is not a good alternative for healing, because most of the bosses have an insanity aura & it's really hard to restore alot of sanity in a short interval. It feels more like an emergency healing food. To Sleep during a Boss fight you need to abandon the fight. But upon retreating it also resets the whole fight, making it an useless healing source for fights like these.

And the Crock Pot (Warly's main ability) is also not an healing option for Warly too! During boss fights you'll have to heal yourself multiple times, more than only once every 2 days. And eating the same dish over and over again will reduce the effectivity of the dish. While a normal character needs 20x Pierogi to heal themself for 800 health, Warly needs 59x Pierogi to heal himself for 802 health. Using 2 different kind of dishes reduces the total number of required dishes from 59 to 51 and so on as we can see here:

• 1 kind of dish: 59
• 2 kind of dishes: 51 (2x 25.5)
• 4 kind of dishes: 36 (4x 9.0)
• 5 kind of dishes: 27 (5x 5.4)
• 10 kind of dishes: 22 (10x 2.2)

But as much as I know there aren't more than 10 dishes available which especially can be gathered easily & restore not less than 40 health. And filling your whole inventory for different dishes will remove all the space you have for weapons & armor. There's no way, Warly could use his Crock Pot easily to restore his health during a fight.

The only way for Warly to heal himself during a bigger fight is: Spider Glands, Healing Salve, Honey Poultice, etc. (Almost same as Wormwood)

He has access to nice features but unlike other characters (for example Wigfrid and her Helmet & Spear) he can't use his features to assist himself! Others do profit way better from his dishes than Warly himself, which sadly turns Warly into the role of a supporter!

And if you say Warly has access to his powders & Volt Goat Chaud-Froid: Everyone has access to them if you have a Warly in your team and everyone can benefit from these. And Wes consumes way less Pierogies in a fight than any Warly ingame, making Wes more effective than Warly.

 

Suggestions:

• The penalty of different Crock Pot foods should depend on how much hunger you restored with that kind of dish in the last few days: Warly should rely less on Meaty Stew and use other dishes restoring only 37.5 hunger way better than before.
• The multiple food penalty should not affect Warly's health, that feature just turns Warly into Wormwood 2.0 (Can't heal with food) & turn him into a supporter which can't rely on the advantages he has. Removing the penalty for health won't affect other players gameplay too much because they mostly struggle with hunger rather than health, and it's easier to restore health via Tent etc. which also restores sanity but is only usable outside of boss fights.
  • Another alternative which might be not that good would be to add more dishes requiring Batilisk Wings, etc. and restoring Health over time or leeching health from enemies. But adding a single dish which fixes all your health penalties will make Pierogies useless for everyone.

 

Perhaps an idea for an update:

Quote

H - the amount of hunger the food restores

Whenever you eat an item, the penalty P for that kind of food will be increased by H (or 2*H) and it drops half as fast as Warly's hunger drops.
Eating another dish of the same kind will restore only H / (H+P) of the hunger.

Eating 2x Meaty Stew at once will restore 150 + 75 = 225 hunger. Eating 2x Meaty Stew one by one (2nd one as soon as hunger reaches 0) will restore 150 + 100 = 250 hunger, but following Meaty Stews will have harder penalties. Eating 1x Meaty Stew, 1x *Any other dish restoring 150 hunger*, 1x Meaty Stew one by one won't grant any penalties at all.

Because that system won't act same for each kind of food, Warly should be able to inspect foods, telling himself if he still remembers the taste of that food.

Please adjust his penalties a bit and make him a character who's supposed to explore the world with his Crock Pot, collect different foods and use them to make different dishes.

I hope I could convince you a bit to change Warly's multiple dish penalty.

[MondayNight]

Or you can decrease the "Warly remembers the dishes he ate for up to 2 days" to 1.5 days (or even 1 day if bulk of player-base under-performs painfully low, resulting in Warly being one of the least played characters as a whole).

[Viktor234]

9 minutes ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Or you can decrease the "Warly remembers the dishes he ate for up to 2 days" to 1.5 days (or even 1 day if bulk of player-base under-performs painfully low, resulting in Warly being one of the least played characters as a whole).

That's totally not what I meant: I don't want to have a character with a food penalty which does not give any penalty at all (if you know how to fool it). With your suggestion it will be way more easy to fool his penalty by eating Meaty Stew only.

Edit: Also looking at the Klei Official servers right now, I see about one Warly per server. I disagree that Warly is one of the least played characters as a whole.

[shadowDigga]

The worst thing with Warly is that if he for some reason loses his crock pot (for example, recently died and had to go to portal to be revived or simply forgot to pick up dismantled crock pot), he'll starve to death refusing to eat unprepared food. Words can't describe how ridiculous it's to die of hunger having lots of food on you.

[MondayNight]

31 minutes ago, Viktor234 said:

That's totally not what I meant: I don't want to have a character with a food penalty which does not give any penalty at all (if you know how to fool it). With your suggestion it will be way more easy to fool his penalty by eating Meaty Stew only.

Edit: Also looking at the Klei Official servers right now, I see about one Warly per server. I disagree that Warly is one of the least played characters as a whole.

For advanced players - sure. For rest... not really.

Also there was an "if" in my supposition: if now, a mere 1 week after Warly's release, there are [0;1] of him in general servers populace, wait 2-3 more weeks for the hype/interest regarding the new character to settle down, and all people out there willing to test him - getting a conclusion for themselves to actually see from there onward how he performs. From what I've personally seen, what I've talked with my friends (most of whom are advanced ones), and my own personal impression of Warly, I speculate he will be played a bit more than Wes (and we all know where Wes is).

Sure Warly is dear to many forumites, I myself find him quite interesting and fun with all he brings to the table even in solo worlds without character flip-flops via Celestial Gate, but let's be real here: it's a difficult character for vast majority of players.

[Ezaroth]

1 hour ago, shadowDigga said:

The worst thing with Warly is that if he for some reason loses his crock pot (for example, recently died and had to go to portal to be revived or simply forgot to pick up dismantled crock pot), he'll starve to death refusing to eat unprepared food. Words can't describe how ridiculous it's to die of hunger having lots of food on you.

You can just make a new one with just gold, charcoal and sticks.

[TemporaryMan]

7 minutes ago, Ezaroth said:

You can just make a new one with just gold, charcoal and sticks.

Heck, if gold's hard to find, you can just make a regular one with rocks.

More to the point... why don't you have a regular crock pot set up somewhere?  Like... a base?

If you really want to get fancy, you can just build a regular crock pot and not deploy it, just in case.  Or build at least one regular crock pot in the base just so you know how, allowing you to make one any time you have the materials without needing to find gold for a science machine first.

[seffard]

Your calculations lack improvisation/ adaptation and other important things about combat. I dont say he is supposed to explore, but he can once you are able to make the right food for the right time.

 

 

 

[TemporarySolutn]

Almost never keep new comers in mind. They can learn how to play with Wilson. Complaining that a character is hard for newcomers is like complaining about wes being under-powered. They all have an aspect that can change how the game is played entirely.

[Owlrust]

I liked warly's ability in the base game where he got 33% extra benefits from crock pot dishes. You could eat like 2-3 meatballs and break even with the normal amount, and dishes that had negative effects had them 33% less deadly. Would make smaller dishes more viable for the cooky boi when ratatouille gives 33 hunger instead of 25, and say butter muffin which is normally about 37 hunger turns into about 50 (super easy to make too) 

[LimeGreenINC]

How about adding a new spice that, when applied to a dish, removes like 90% hunger and adds a sanity penalty from it, but allows Warly to regain the same amount of health from it no matter how many times he's eaten it (provided the dishes are all seasoned with this spice).

This way, you could still use food to heal, but it'd take an extra amount of preparation to season all of dishes and you'd still need other dishes to fill food and sanity.

[Girl Bart]

Ive said it many times haha
but ill say it again
Id like Warly to have a similar passive upside like his singleplayer counterpart (the 33% increased benefit from crockpot food to compensate his 33% hunger drain)

But this time make it a 20% bonus (health, sanity and hunger) from crockpot foods since he has 20% hunger drain, and a side bonus would be that he would also receive a 20% bonus duration to his crockpot / spice boons making it a bit more special to him


He is a chef, he would know to appreciate food more.

[Ryeknox]

Let Warly Season Jerky or eat it in the very least.

[MondayNight]

18 hours ago, JustCrimson said:

Almost never keep new comers in mind. They can learn how to play with Wilson. Complaining that a character is hard for newcomers is like complaining about wes being under-powered.

Is not (just) about new comers but majority of player-base - newbies, casuals, noobs, mid-level players, etc - ones that make by far bulk of players. Sure you can relegate them all to a bumbling stumbling Wilson role, yet majority of them do play various characters in different skill degrees. And this bulk of players are potential customers for skins. Skins sold by Klei to cover costs of work sunk into new updates. Thus is in Klei's best interest to both provide interesting characters playgame-wise, and appeal for large audiences to get needed profit (again, they can't just work for free) - middle ground. Try-hards, more so the ones compulsively playing the game in short-bursts, get spools constantly and have them from past events (case in point: me, with a current total of over 15k spools atm of this post - though am not considering myself a classic try-hard, aka a junkie for hardest game-play conditions possible) - so they can just weave skins, not paying a dime to Klei (and in my case, again, I just weaved-in Wormwood plus his Rose skin, also Warly's Rose skin - I don't consider them worthy of spending money on as am not content with their capabilities; yes, one can say Klei lost me as a customer when talking about Wormwood and Warly, as opposed to Winona, Willow and Wortox for whom i bought all their skin packages). Additionally, try-hards reach the gameplay plateau of all things possible-to-be-done in-game very soon after new updates come out and theoretically get bored quicker (and we see that in some try-hard's posts on these forums, advocating for hardest-possible conditions in late-game, to the point someone suggested gameplay should be harder and harder with each survived season to somehow become a mob-rush/boss-arena fiesta, where game throws at you tougher and tougher foes you have to defeat/survive, inevitably dying again and again... or "gittin' gud"; and then a "you won" screen pops-up - no kiddin', I remember someone actually proposed this recently). In the end we need, as stated, middle ground. In Warly's case.. we will see 2-3 weeks from now where that may stand - and if he's perceived by most players as a hard character not-to-be played ..or not.

[Ornge]

I knew someone would create a list of foods to counter warlys downside eventually

[TemporarySolutn]

3 hours ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Is not (just) about new comers but majority of player-base - newbies, casuals, noobs, mid-level players, etc - ones that make by far bulk of players. Sure you can relegate them all to a bumbling stumbling Wilson role, yet majority of them do play various characters in different skill degrees. And this bulk of players are potential customers for skins. Skins sold by Klei to cover costs of work sunk into new updates. Thus is in Klei's best interest to both provide interesting characters playgame-wise, and appeal for large audiences to get needed profit (again, they can't just work for free) - middle ground. Try-hards, more so the ones compulsively playing the game in short-bursts, get spools constantly and have them from past events (case in point: me, with a current total of over 15k spools atm of this post - though am not considering myself a classic try-hard, aka a junkie for hardest game-play conditions possible) - so they can just weave skins, not paying a dime to Klei (and in my case, again, I just weaved-in Wormwood plus his Rose skin, also Warly's Rose skin - I don't consider them worthy of spending money on as am not content with their capabilities; yes, one can say Klei lost me as a customer when talking about Wormwood and Warly, as opposed to Winona, Willow and Wortox for whom i bought all their skin packages). Additionally, try-hards reach the gameplay plateau of all things possible-to-be-done in-game very soon after new updates come out and theoretically get bored quicker (and we see that in some try-hard's posts on these forums, advocating for hardest-possible conditions in late-game, to the point someone suggested gameplay should be harder and harder with each survived season to somehow becomes a mob-rush/boss-arena fiesta, where game throws at you tougher and tougher foes you have to defeat/survive, inevitably dying again and again... or "gittin' gud"; and then a "you won" screen pops-up - no kiddin', I remember someone actually proposed this recently). In the end we need, as stated, middle ground. In Warly's case.. we will see 2-3 weeks from now where that may stand - and if he's perceived by most players as a hard character not-to-be played ..or not.

You also gotta remember that more than half of them are people who play on public servers and use modded characters

[MondayNight]

10 minutes ago, JustCrimson said:

You also gotta remember that more than half of them are people who play on public servers and use modded characters

One can use body-slot skins for modded characters too. And you can see in-game, in menus, the announcements for Klei releasing an update, be it world-content or character. So I suspect vast majority of them players will test at least once these new characters, and if they like them for whatever reason they might be inclined to also buy skins and whatnot for them (that can be also used on their modded characters). Sure, you can only buy skins if fancying them independent of character for whom they were made, but bottom line is: how Klei can maximize the chances for monetization.

[X-lem]

It seems like this desired change is because Warly is difficult for new players. No game shouldn't be built for new players.

A player is a newbie the shortest amount of time relative to their other play levels. Meaning, someone might be a newbie for a few months, but an average to advanced player for years. So why would we build a game that caters to the smallest portion of their play time? That doesn't make any sense.

So what if Warly is difficult for new players? There's over 10 other characters they can learn with.

I also don't really understand why Warly switching between 2-3 hunger filling food items is a problem.

[GuyNamedChris]

The only thing Warly really needs to be more inviting for newbies to play is a visible cue for crock pot foods that are still on cooldown. A quote or a special spoilage meter would be good.

[MondayNight]

27 minutes ago, X-lem said:

It seems like this desired change is because Warly is difficult for new players. No game shouldn't be built for new players.

A player is a newbie the shortest amount of time relative to their other play levels. Meaning, someone might be a newbie for a few months, but an average to advanced player for years. So why would we build a game that caters to the smallest portion of their play time? That doesn't make any sense.

So what if Warly is difficult for new players? There's over 10 other characters they can learn with.

I also don't really understand why Warly switching between 2-3 hunger filling food items is a problem.

As stated, is not about only new players.

Warly atm, a mere 1 week after release, is far from popular. My speculation is, after initial release-interest and subsequent tests of his play-style tone down, one will barely see any Warly on pubs, akin to Wes' presence. Sure some people will change into him to make spices and special combat food, but not at all for playstyle (yes, not including the very small minority of Warly-fans). And sure one can argue same can be said about Winona for example, and indeed Winona players are also precious to the sight in pubs, but Warly will be even lower. Atm his lows are low and highs, well kinda high more so when you count interactions with Wolf (granted Wolf isn't yet re-balanced). Warly needs a bit more balancing imo so it can be both less taxing in early game and less OP in later game (also pretty annoying to play on long run for mid-to-advanced players, at least from what I saw personally and from my experiences). But hey, that's my opinion and only time will tell what Warly's fate will be on the long run playability-wise.

[X-lem]

3 hours ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

As stated, is not about only new players.

Warly needs a bit more balancing imo so it can be both less taxing in early game and less OP in later game (also pretty annoying to play on long run for mid-to-advanced players, at least from what I saw personally and from my experiences). But hey, that's my opinion and only time will tell what Warly's fate will be on the long run playability-wise.

I see what you're saying, but I don't think changing his balance will make people want to play him more than they already do. If he's OP late game now, making him less OP late game isn't going to make people want to play him more. Making him less taxing early game might make him played more, but probably not by much if they also Nerf him late game.

I agree he's hardly seen, and it is low, but I'm not sure it's much lower than other character refreshes a week later. We should also remember that the more characters are added to the game the less you'll see of each character.

 

I think if Klei adds more recipes and spices in the future that do interesting things people are more likely to play him. It sounds like this is their plan too.

[Viktor234]

Warly penalties are designed for more experienced players who know Crock Pot Recipes, but right now you can avoid them easily. Besides that he doesn't have any source of healing on which he can rely on during fights. That will keep experienced players away from playing him, because things like fighting enemies, fighting bosses or raiding the ruins is also on their to-do list. I dislike the fact that Warly isn't forced to eat different kind of meals even if he's supposed to do that.

Back in DS: Shipwrecked you had to sail from island to island, collect different fillers like Berries, Potatoes, Bananas, Meat, Eggs, Fish, and Limpets. DST has way less variety: Berries, Carrots, and Meat; There aren't that many fish exclusive recipes. Health was not really a problem in SW, most of dmg could be avoided by using any boat + Boat Repair Kit, and unlike in DST, equipping 2 kinds of armors granted a total of 96% damage resistance. In DST, mobs are stronger than in DS and you take 80% dmg when equipping Log Suit + Football Helmet.

Warly isn't supposed to camp in the base, he has access to a Portable Crock Pot and a Portable Ice Box with only 6 slots: They need to be used. The Portable Grinding Mill and Portable Seasoning Station rewards base campers, which is acceptable from my opinion: At least one perk for a Warly camping in the base. But most of his recipes require a farm & alot of farming, which can be only achieved by camping in the base.

There's no exclusive recipe for:

• Red/Green/Blue Caps
• Rabbits
• Cactus
• Koalefant Tunk
• Electric Milk
• Phlegm
• Steel Wool
• Tallbird Egg
• Leafy Meat
• Foliage
• Batilisk Wings
• Lichen
• Eel (Unagi grants pretty low stats, which makes it ineffective for Warly)
• Cave Bananas (except Banana Pop, but unlike in DS you can't farm Ice easily in the caves via Ice Maker or Hamlet Shop)

Which is again an advantage for base campers because most of the items on the list can't be farmed easily in the base.

The only reason I see to play Warly is his recipe Glow Berry Mousse: You need to leave the base and move over to the ruins to make it, and it grants a really nice effect lasting for 2 days. 2x Lesser Glow Berry + 2x Berries or 2x LGB + 1x Cave Banana + 1x Lichen, and these fillers ain't base exclusive: No need for a farm & not base exclusive! (Unless you have access to the Shadow Atrium)

The Fish Cordon Bleu is also a base exclusive recipe, but it does not last as long as the Mousse, and it's only available & useable during spring.

I avoid Volt Goat Chaud-Froid for now because it's way too OP: Combined with other buffs, you'll easily reach 1.2k dps as Wolfgang.

[Sweaper]

There are a few things that makes him see less play on public servers.

Warly usually will usually only come online after the first winter ends and you have 6+ farm plots. And before the farm plots you definitely should have either a pig farm finished before the first full moon or a bunny farm so you can forget about food foraging and work on the farm plots non stop.

For a public server all of these can be a problem for Warly since it takes a long time (2 seasons) to make use of most of his perks (unless you have Wickerbottom and everyone is rushing plot farms but that rarely happen), getting the pig farm is problematic since there will be people destroying houses just for helmets and as for the bunny farm most casuals won't dare to explore the caves.

A lot of players first time seeing his portable crockpot think he is good as a nomad/food forager, but he is not, he isn't by far and when they keep dying of starvation they just give up on the character. The reason he isn't good for that playstyle is because you'll be eating a lot of inefficient recipes if you don't have meat, eggs or some specific veggies and fruits (the last three being mostly available in a base). Sure you can make different dishes with what you get, but then you're leaving to RNG (if you don't have the map explored) and praying for the right ingredients  at the right time while every other character (except Wig) can simply eat whatever is in front of them, cooked or not and even cooked monster meat is better than Monster Tartare. Plus, having to carry multiple food items on a limited backpack while being a nomad is a big no-no.

He is kinda boring early game, imo, all you do is rush a meat farm followed by rushing farm plots just so you can finally start doing Warly stuff. And since public servers are mostly early game you'll be stuck with that. Having an autumn/spring randomized start on public servers would help him because his perks does little to nothing in the first winter, but I never saw anyone running this setting on any server yet.

And now I'm blabbing myself out and just repeating stuff.

[Dr. Safety]

I honestly think Warly is fine as is. If I was to change anything about him, I would say give him the increased stat benefits from crockpot dishes, only because he tends to be a resource guzzler in the early game. I'd make it exactly the same as it is in single player. Once you are well off enough, it isn't necessary though.

[ShadowDuelist]

One thing that I believe wasn't mentioned (if I didn't read right please let me know) is that spiced foods count as different foods, even if the base food is the same.
EG: Regular unspiced pieroggi - Garlic spiced pieroggi - pepper spiced pieroggi, sugar spiced pieroggi. They count as 4 different foods even if you ate them in a row, and will grant full HP.

This means that Warly can perfectly use 4 pierogi, 4 fishsticks, and 4 of any other food in a boss fight., as long as you have a steady source of spices.  Even better, Warly has exclusive access to moquecas which heal for 60 hp and 33 sanity, meaning that just 4 different spiced moquecas grant 240 hp and 132 sanity. [EDIT: THIS IS WRONG, MY PREVIOUS TESTS SEEM TO HAVE BEEN WRONG, SORRY]

Sure its hard to make all that different food, and inventory consuming, but it's still doable, and after your food options are done, you can keep going with poultices or salves. I wouldn't say he is exactly like Wormwood, but he is a lot more time consuming than other characters yes.

IMPROVEMENT POSSIBILITIES:

• I'd give Warly a higher efficiency on unique foods as it was suggested, 33% or at leas 20% so he gets something unique and "selfish" out of so much effort for the team. He probably shouldn't get a buff on hunger since that would nullify his con entirely, but maybe the higher efficiency should be on the health and sanity if its the first time in 2 days you ate such dish. EG: Pieroggi will grant more health and sanity if it is the first time you ate it in 2 days. Repeated pieroggi will have just sub-normal effect. 
  Time based effects should be longer, instead of more potent.
• I like the idea of a dish or a spice that lets you leech life, it doesn't have to be as strong as the batbat, even a tiny 0.5 hp per hit would do a huge difference.

 

Final thoughts: Warly is definitely an advanced player character, new players will have a bad time with him and should probably stick to Wilson, Winona, Willow or Wendy. Its not like all characters should be suited for every type, or level of gameplay. It took me nearly 300 hours of playing with other characters, to be able to play as Maxwell without dying instantly, for example.