Is Warly a good character?

[NormalPinkerton]

So I made a pole about Woodie to see the community's opnion about him, and it seemed to have a consensus and now I decided to make a pole abot Warly as (from certain threads I've seen) he's more of a controversial character, many see him as a weak character with downsides too bad to make up for his upsides and many see him as a good character that is viable and balanced

This is going to be interesting! Or not...

[Zeklo]

Honestly it kind of feels like spices should be a non-character exclusive thing.

Thing is Warly's perk is really... weird. Since it's essentially all item-based. It's not like Wigfrid where she has both the lifesteal thing AND her craftables. 

Don't really have much to say about them beyond that.

Well, except for the fact that I wanted a goat chef instead. #feelshumanman

Edit: Oh and his portrait art needs to be touched up a bit. Sticks out.

[Dr. Safety]

Warly is just one of those characters who starts off difficult and somewhat of an anchor to the team, but only gets more powerful as you progress in the game. Other players can't demand that Warly feed them on day 5, and get upset when he can't. Warly has to worry about himself until he gets farms up and running. Usually I find that Warly can't actually start being a reliable source of food for the team until the first spring (by the time you are able to make a decent enough group of improved farms without the aid of Wicker+Wormwood combo, it is winter). For this reason, I usually pick another character at the start and then use the portal to switch to Warly once I have enough food supplies to cater to the picky culinarian. I feel like a lot of people who think he is a bad character didn't actually play as him long enough for his abilities to really shine. 

I should also point out my obvious bias on any subject regarding Warly. I just really like the character and have wanted him in the game long before they announced he was being "reworked" (Back in January actually). I'd likely defend him no matter how good or bad he is so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Spoiler

That being said, Klei Warly chef skin when?

 

[Russian_Philin]

I think this character is fine =) 

[GenomeSquirrel]

He feels too incomplete, either needs a farm buff, or liberated from his vegetables to hold my interest.

[maciu67]

Very good in team poor solo.

[Viktor234]

His hunger penalty is more like just a trap for newbies: It can easily be avoided by eating Meaty Stew only. His dishes are useless to him during bigger fights due to the penalty, and blue caps or cooked veggies are not consumable, which forces him to rely on Healing Salve or Honey Poultice.

Newcomers are always like: "What the f**k can Warly eat?!?", they come to the base, eat 10x Pierogi because they need healing, and later on they just leave or starve to death. "Brings a stylish chef pouch." should be renamed to "Eats only prepared, non-repeated foods.". The fact that he can craft another kind of Backpack is not as important as to mention his penalties.

Most of his abilities require a farm, which is in most cases not available till spring: In Autumn you should spend more time to explore the world and to gather some ressources, and farms are not useable during Winter.

He feels somewhat like a 2nd Wormwood right now.

[sinisterrkid]

2 hours ago, Viktor234 said:

He feels somewhat like a 2nd Wormwood right now.

This comparisong came out of letf field. Not even what you said supported this. We have a lot of people complaining about characters being hard, we have a lot of people complaining about characters being easy. We have both options. Everybody just be happy already!

[Neojenlce]

8 hours ago, Zeklo said:

Well, except for the fact that I wanted a goat chef instead.

#nobilly

[Viktor234]

23 minutes ago, sinisterrkid said:

This comparisong came out of letf field. Not even what you said supported this. We have a lot of people complaining about characters being hard, we have a lot of people complaining about characters being easy. We have both options. Everybody just be happy already!

I don't want to say that he's as hard as Wormwood, I just want to say that his playstyle (for example to keep his health high) is almost equal to Wormwood's.

[Moonatik]

9 hours ago, Dr. Safety said:

For this reason, I usually pick another character at the start and then use the portal to switch to Warly once I have enough food supplies to cater to the picky culinarian. I feel like a lot of people who think he is a bad character didn't actually play as him long enough for his abilities to really shine. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

That being said, Klei Warly chef skin when?

 

I think its the perfect move, in a solo game but even in team. I didnt hesitate to sacrifice my WX and his 400hp for Warly, around day 900. 

I had everything he need. The giant garden was ready, the kitchen was easy to build. And having at least 5 or 6 different recipes mid or late game is easy. Meetballs, honeyjam, pierogis, dragon pie, meaty stew, new recipes and Warly's recipes of course. 

I could focus on 45 gardens and cooking, spicing and wrapping. Really fun when you can do some big works for the return of a character.

I spent maybe 100 days working with Warly, but I was solo. I cant imagine a 5 or 6 players working team on the garden...  It could be huge.

[sinisterrkid]

3 hours ago, Viktor234 said:

I don't want to say that he's as hard as Wormwood, I just want to say that his playstyle (for example to keep his health high) is almost equal to Wormwood's.

That's what I was referring to as making little sense. I only see your point in the early game, because as you said yourself, Warly can only really start getting his perks after a couple dozens of days.

But in general you chose to focus on two traits, both good farmers and bad healers. But even just focusing on just that, Wormwood just farms wildly and carelessly because it's just for hunger (and sanity while planting) while Warly is way more specialized (having a general preference to more peppers, onions, potatos and dragonfruits, which you get with the help of a bird in a birdcage), and has more diverse benefits to it (the spices bonuses for fights or chopping down forests, and the variety needed for specific crockpot recipes). And as for healing, Warly has a way easier time doing it, you just happened to only mention Pierogis and veggies which you said forces him to use healing salves, which, first of all: it's not a big deal at all to eat two or three of the same recipe in a row. The first repetition is only 10% less benefits. The second 20%. So 3 pierogis for other characters heal 120 while for Warly it's 108. A 12 health difference. But also, when you really get into the chef playstyle, which is the biggest fun of playing Warly, you have 27 food options that heal you for 20+ health (I'm not gonna count Mandrake Soup or Jellybeans), 14 of which are super easy once you have your farms set up. (*)

So literally the style in which you farm and heal, and the way you have to prepare them is different.

Using Walry's perks to the fullest does require more effort and time played, and that's really what makes Warly so compelling, in my opinion. And what allows for a very different playstyle. It's definitely not a character made to please everyone.

Other than that there are tons of details that differentiate them such as Wormwood being able to make Lure Plant fields as a way of defense with no risk, having a way harder time chopping down forests due to sanity loss and the trouble recruiting pigs for help (when Warly can even have the honey boost for chopping), having easy access to sanity by planting, being able to eat red mushrooms with no penalty, or monster meat with less penalty, etc... And Warly's exclusives like the recipe for glowing in the dark, the one that switches sanity and health, the electric one.

But yes for fighting bosses they are the two characters that have to rely on healing salves.

*The 27 recipes include 8 with unusual ingredients (butter, bone shards, birchnut, banana, mole, cactus flower, or eel). That leaves you with 19. Other 5 include fish, which I'd consider not an easy ingredient, since it requires silk for fishing or a Merm farm. But it's also not hard. Still, removing all of those leaves you with 14 recipes that are obtainable for a prepared base anywhere on the map.

 

[0rutyna0]

Warly is a hard character (relative to other characters). Starting a game for him is problematic and pointless. To feed him, you will have to spend more products (and time) or look for a variety of food sources (this reduces the number of free inventory slots). Its unique dishes and spices require many farms to grow the appropriate ingredients. Warly cannot eat many good foods (mushrooms, seeds, jerky, Glommer's Goop, cacti ...) is a very inadequate restriction for survival. Warly has a large satiety loss, which is multiplied by a loss in the effectiveness of the repeated meals. As a result, a lot of time is wasted searching for food. He can cook goat horns, Nightmare Fuel and other similar things, but he cannot cook any mushroom dish. Nonsense. The benefits of Warly appear only in the late game - it will help to save weapons and medical supplies (when they already become in excess). He and Wormwood are two characters who are harder to play than Wes.

In my opinion, Warly should be able to use all kinds of food. From seeds he could make porridge or grind them for seasoning.
Warly is a character for a fan game and I liked playing for him, but he is not suitable for a serious game.
I do not know what plans Klei has, but if they want all the characters to be equal, then they should strengthen Warly (or weaken the rest).

[shadowDigga]

I find it ridiculous that he has a portable crock pot to cook stuff on the go and most exclusive recipes require farming that is not portable. He's supposed to be collecting stuff while travelling around the world, not just staying somewhere endlessly planting and harvesting and occasionally going out for fish and human bones. Making decent meals from stuff that others  just throw together to make meatballs. Basically, quality over quantity.

He also got 2 more portable stations and, ironically, at least 1 of them doesn't even need to be portable (the one that makes spices . So, if you are going to play by design, you'll need 3 slots for 3 stations to carry, maybe 5-6 slots for ingredients and perhaps 2-3 slots for prepared food, 1-3 slots for spices. That's like, even more than a single backpack can contain. And there's not a single item to help him deal with all the junk he has to carry around. I even suggested to turn Chef Pouch into less potent version of bundling wrap, that doesn't stop spoilage completely and doesn't stack even when empty, but, unfortunately, this never happened and instead Chef pouch was turned into DST's thatch pack that even other characters wouldn't want to use. You'll ditch it for regular backpack as soon as you can make one.

Spices provide laughable perks compared to amount of effort to get them. Yes, you can make them for other characters like Wolfgang, but by the time Warly is done with the farms multiple players could have taken down all the bosses already.

Also, special effects from exclusive recipes don't last long. I would even dare to say that you'll spend more time getting the ingredients than you'll save by eating them. They also use day length (yellow phase on the clock), which is dependent on season, to calculate food buff duration rather than total day length (8 minutes) which makes their effects even shorter to the point you'd even ask yourself if these foods were a joke.

And, most importantly, farms are terrible. The worst part is that they require replanting after EVERY harvest. Not even that, you also need to use additional structure to get seeds. This structure (birdcage) takes up to 2/3 (great conversion fee, eh?) of what you give it to make same amount of seeds that you harvested. Oh, and don't expect bird to be alive by the time you come back next time. You'll need to catch a new one for each farming session. How nice, as if it wasn't time-consuming already.

TL;DR: Downsides last forever and can't be avoided, upsides are laughable and require a lot of tedious effort to achieve them, if you do nothing all you have are downsides.

[Fuffles]

20 hours ago, Zeklo said:

Edit: Oh and his portrait art needs to be touched up a bit. Sticks out.

Actually it's fine as it is, the thing is his Skin Tone is not Ghost White like the others, thus he sticks out a bit, since you know, darker skin color

[Brago-sama]

Honestly Warly himself is nice, it's the fact that a majority of his finer dishes center around farms, arguably one of the worst sources of food even late game (with only rabbit hole trapping being worse) that really limits him.

Imo his character is fine, it's farming in general that needs to be improved if you want to see any substantial changes in the player bases opinion of him

[Zeklo]

10 minutes ago, FuffledBeeQueen said:

Actually it's fine as it is, the thing is his Skin Tone is not Ghost White like the others, thus he sticks out a bit, since you know, darker skin color

I disagree. Compare it to any of his skin portraits and it's very easy to see the difference.

[Neu7ral]

Boring and hard to singleplay him, tbh lacking the extra food restoration feels not good.

Fun to multiplay, mostly for your teammates, but also having recipes for everyone feels great.

For both, feels unnatural not having some crops arround the world, still bummed about it, potatoes could spawn over the world.