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Simple balance changes


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[Edited title to be less confusing]

Howdy! I've been collecting some rather small balance changes that I believe would be fairly easy to implement, and would greatly improve the experience of some characters, without breaking the game.

Some of these ideas are mine's, and others are from really good posts on the forums in the last months, so credits due to their respective owners.

WARLY

Spoiler

Warly is great in theory, but realistically he has an extremely hard and un-rewarding early game, making him quite unpopular, specially in public servers. I believe the changes he needs are not related to him, but are global changes needed to the world to make his early game life less miserable:

  • Replace the random carrots that grow across the surface world, for all the existent vegetables you can crop, distributed randomly. This will make his early game, instead of desperately trying to establish a bunnymen farm for the meatystews, a more balanced experience scavenging different ingredients across the world. I'm not sure what is the respawn time of carrots currenty, maybe the random vegetables should spawn during spring and autumn.
  • Make birds fed with a vegetable have a guaranteed drop of 2 seeds of such vegetable, and a random chance of a third seed, which can be of the same vegetable as well or a neutral seed: This will make not only Warly's life easier, but also Wormwoods, and Wickerbottom, and farming to become a more enjoyable process.
  • OPTIONAL: make pigs villages tend to their crops, and have a small patch area with vegetables. If they catch you stealing they will punch you though (sort of like HAMLET). As long as the pigs exist in that specific area they will grow random 6-9 vegetables (only in that small patch.)

WORMWOOD

Spoiler

Wormwood's unique crafting items are less than great and rarely used past early game, and I believe they could be given a small buff:

  • Bramble husk currently does not fulfill what I believe its the intended usage, which is adding a small DPS when you get hit (besides picking cactii). I'd increase its durability from 262 (currently) to 315 (same durability as log suit). Optionally I'd make it a living plant, so it slowly restores its lost durability, and make it slow enough to not make it OP (at about 10% hp a day). It is expensive enough to make it worth it, specially in solo worlds where bones are harder to come by (unless you kill no-eyed deers every winter)
  • Bramble trap: I'd increase its damage to be much closer to toothtraps (about 80 damage). So if you do have a wormwood in your team, it should be worth having a bramble trap field instead of tooth traps, or a mix of the 2.
  • Compost wrap: given that they have a really long animation time, and that you can get healing items like poultices and salves with much less effort they are rarely made. My solution is that every time you craft a compost wrap, you get 2 of them, making it much more affordable and rewarding.

WORTOX

Spoiler

Wortox currently feels a bit broken for everyone, and I believe its related to his self-healing capabilities, and not to anything else. Also currently his healing heals slightly less, the more people you heal, which from a mathematic point of view it makes sense given the amount of HP spread, but from a psychological point of view in a coop game, it doesn't. I'll explain further below.

  • Wortox should heal for 10 hp if he heals himself with a soul, but if he heals another person, that should increase to 15hp received each, and 20 hp received if he heals 2 other people. More than 2 people, it will always give 20 hp to everyone. This accomplishes that on one hand, Wortox solo players will have to spend more souls in order to do self healing, and on the other hand, it will have a psychological effect that you know that you get more rewarded if you actually heal others, so you'd naturally try to seek other players to heal them.
  • Wortox overcharge should no longer heal himself (but should heal everyone eligible around him) so you actually take care of that, instead of going bananas fighting everything and not having a single care in the world.
  • Wortox healing should affect ridden beefalos, and befriended pigs, spiders, catcoons, bunnymen and rock lobsters. Since most of these creatures hate Wortox and he can't befriend them in first place, this will mostly have a coop-effect.

WILLOW

Spoiler

I think we should get a way to summon BERNIE! in the lunar island. I don't know exactly how the enlightenment works lore wise, so I won't suggest how it should be done, if when we are fully enlightened, or when fully not enlightened. In any case, I'd like to be able to use BERNIE! up there.

If lore wise this is impossible due to Bernie being related to the shadow world, then I guess it's fair enough.

WEBBER

Spoiler

I won't talk much about non-reworked characters since Webber is still due for a change, but I think this little change would affect Wortox and the coop nature of Webber, in addition to whatever the devs have prepared for him:

  • Let him craft the Shamlet mask, so in DST it has durability. The shamlet mask in DST won't overcome his penalty entirely, but more of make him neutral to pigs while he is wearing it. Pigs fed while wearing a shamlet mask could be suspicious enough, and instead of saying "YOU FRIEND" could say something like "YOU NICE, WEIRD PIG" and not befriend you.

The point of this is because in most public servers people tends to naturally keep pigs nearby, and sometimes even within the base, either for food, protection, lumbering, or pig skins. The mask would make both Wortox and Webber's life less miserable when walking around the public base, without giving them any special advantage over befriending pigs. Only Webber should be able to craft this.

The mask shouldn't work on other hostile creatures such as bunnymen (nobody wants bunnymen nearby because of the danger of accidentally picking meat).


Do you have any other "small" balance ideas to share?

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8 minutes ago, Well-met said:

How can Klei move on to other character refreshes if they constantly have to go back to the others?

I was under the impression that they nailed every single one of them so far (if we include post-update hotfixes like Woodie).

This can very well be made in a later patch, also if you read them through, they are not major changes, most of them require simple values tweaks, and others affect the world in a way that would benefit everyone.

These suggestions also come from hundred of hours of gameplay and from watching how real interactions between players behave, so it is only fair that they come after the refreshes and really hard to foresee as soon as a new character is released.

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One thing that bugs me in relation to consistency regarding Warly and... Winona is the fact one cannot operate (judiciously) Warly's cooking gear while ...everyone can use Winona's Catapults. I for one would want to see this addressed in also making Winona's "pew pew poc turrets" only operable while a Winona player is 1-screen-distance present (or something around that value). Again - consistency, and it also holds forth the concerns about easiness of swapping characters (like proverbial used socks).

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1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Replace the random carrots that grow across the surface world, for all the existent vegetables you can crop, distributed randomly. ...... maybe the random vegetables should spawn during spring and autumn.

I'd like that. Certain vegetables for certain seasons so the world feels more alive. 

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5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Howdy! I've been collecting some rather small balance changes that I believe would be fairly easy to implement, and would greatly improve the experience of some characters, without breaking the game.

Some of these ideas are mine's, and others are from really good posts on the forums in the last months, so credits due to their respective owners.

WARLY

  Hide contents

Warly is great in theory, but realistically he has an extremely hard and un-rewarding early game, making him quite unpopular, specially in public servers. I believe the changes he needs are not related to him, but are global changes needed to the world to make his early game life less miserable:

  • Replace the random carrots that grow across the surface world, for all the existent vegetables you can crop, distributed randomly. This will make his early game, instead of desperately trying to establish a bunnymen farm for the meatystews, a more balanced experience scavenging different ingredients across the world. I'm not sure what is the respawn time of carrots currenty, maybe the random vegetables should spawn during spring and autumn.
  • Make birds fed with a vegetable have a guaranteed drop of 2 seeds of such vegetable, and a random third seed which can be of the same vegetable as well, or a neutral seed: This will make not only Warly's life easier, but also Wormwoods, and Wickerbottom, and farming to become a more enjoyable process.
  • OPTIONAL: make pigs villages tend to their crops, and have a small patch area with vegetables. If they catch you stealing they will punch you though (sort of like HAMLET). As long as the pigs exist in an area they will grow random 6-9 vegetables in that small patch.
 

 

 

First of all, you greatly overestimate the challange of Warly's early game. Between Spiders, Birchnuts, berries, carrots, shrooms, and butterfly wings, Warly can easally keep himself fed. Adittitionally, Having every crop available would be a bit OP, as even having them in limited supplies can make otherwise powerful meals easally available, though I could see it happening with some weaker crops, such as Potatoes, Garlic, and maybe Toma roots. I do however agree that Warly could use a bit more stuff to make early game, as right now his only real options are honey crystals, Fish cordon bleu, glowberry mouse, and maybe volt goat chau-froid.

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

 

 

WORMWOOD

  Hide contents

Wormwood's unique crafting items are less than great and rarely used past early game, and I believe they could be given a small buff:

  • Bramble husk currently does not fulfill what I believe its the intended usage, which is adding a small DPS when you get hit (besides picking cactii). I'd increase its durability from 262 (currently) to 315 (same durability as log suit). Optionally I'd make it a living plant, so it slowly restores its lost durability, and make it slow enough to not make it OP (at about 10% hp a day). It is expensive enough to make it worth it, specially in solo worlds where bones are harder to come by (unless you kill no-eyed deers every winter)
  • Bramble trap: I'd increase its damage to be much closer to toothtraps (about 80 damage). So if you do have a wormwood in your team, it should be worth having a bramble trap field instead of tooth traps, or a mix of the 2.
  • Compost wrap: given that they have a really long animation time, and that you can get healing items like poultices and salves with much less effort they are rarely made. My solution is that every time you craft a compost wrap, you get 2 of them, making it much more affordable and rewarding.

 

 

Bramble husk I could see having more durability, unless an easer source of bones are added. However, both it and the bramble traps have one powerful niche, wich is there AOE damage. the bramble husk essentally turns you into fugu hutch, allowing you to kill hordes of weak mobs, such as baby tentecles and bees, just by standing still. While the Bramble traps deal 40 damage (tooth traps deal 60, not 80), meaning they sacrifice 33% of there damage in exchange for hitting multiple mobs at once. This means that they only need to hit 2 mobs (which is easy with hound waves) to deal 50% more damage than tooth traps. So really, I'd say there a perfect sidegrade to tooth traps.  

 

The manure wrap I whole-heartedly agree with, however

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

 

WORTOX

  Hide contents

Wortox currently feels a bit broken for everyone, and I believe its related to his self-healing capabilities, and not to anything else. Also currently his healing heals slightly less, the more people you heal, which from a mathematic point of view it makes sense given the amount of HP spread, but from a psychological point of view in a coop game, it doesn't. I'll explain further below.

  • Wortox should heal for 10 hp if he heals himself with a soul, but if he heals another person, that should increase to 15hp received each, and 20 hp received if he heals 2 other people. More than 2 people, it will always give 20 hp to everyone. This accomplishes that on one hand, Wortox solo players will have to spend more souls in order to do self healing, and on the other hand, it will have a psychological effect that you know that you get more rewarded if you actually heal others, so you'd naturally try to seek other players to heal them.
  • Wortox overcharge should no longer heal himself (but should heal everyone eligible around him) so you actually take care of that, instead of going bananas fighting everything and not having a single care in the world.
  • Wortox healing should affect ridden beefalos, and befriended pigs, spiders, catcoons, bunnymen and rock lobsters. Since most of these creatures hate Wortox and he can't befriend them in first place, this will mostly have a coop-effect.

 

 

Good changes, though you may find it beneficial to look up the meaning of "QoL"

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

WILLOW

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I think we should get a way to summon BERNIE! in the lunar island. I don't know exactly how the enlightenment works lore wise, so I won't suggest how it should be done, if when we are fully enlightened, or when fully not enlightened. In any case, I'd like to be able to use BERNIE! up there.

If lore wise this is impossible due to Bernie being related to the shadow world, then I guess it's fair enough.

 

 

Makes sense, I can get behind this.

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

WEBBER

  Hide contents

I won't talk much about non-reworked characters since Webber is still due for a change, but I think this little change would affect Wortox and the coop nature of Webber, in addition to whatever the devs have prepared for him:

  • Let him craft the Shamlet mask, so in DST it has durability. The shamlet mask in DST won't overcome his penalty entirely, but more of make him neutral to pigs while he is wearing it. Pigs fed while wearing a shamlet mask could be suspicious enough, and instead of saying "YOU FRIEND" could say something like "YOU NICE, WEIRD PIG" and not befriend you.

The point of this is because in most public servers people tends to naturally keep pigs nearby, and sometimes even within the base, either for food, protection, lumbering, or pig skins. The mask would make both Wortox and Webber's life less miserable when walking around the public base, without giving them any special advantage over befriending pigs. Only Webber should be able to craft this.

The mask shouldn't work on other hostile creatures such as bunnymen (nobody wants bunnymen nearby because of the danger of accidentally picking meat).

 

 

Pretty much all I would want from Webber.

5 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:


Do you have any other "small" balance QOL ideas to share?

 

Feeding a bird crops always results in 2 seeds (not just for Warly)

Basic farm cost reduced to 5 grass, 2 manure, and 4 logs

Advanced farm cost reduced to 8 grass, 4 manure, and 4 stone

 

While I'll happily be the first person to complain about food being to easy, Farms are just such an investment and a hassle to work with, that litterally every other (practical) food source outshines them by lightyears. At the very least, garenteeing 2 seeds from 1 crop would make the yeild of farms more consistant and make them less of a hassle to work with.

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5 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Feeding a bird crops always results in 2 seeds (not just for Warly)

Sorry maybe I wasnt clear, the changes i listed in warly are actually global changes. Meaning that the seeds thing would work for everyone, not just Warly

5 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Good changes, though you may find it beneficial to look up the meaning of "QoL"

Rude?

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2 hours ago, xhyom said:

Bramble Husk should be made of stingers. I mean, bones makes no sense and are not that easy to get. Bramble Husk is not even that good to be that expensive 

Picking two deserts worth of cacti and all the spiky bushes you want on top of getting no damage from spiky traps is not something I'd dismiss, it's one of the best utility items in the game and pairs up greatly with a headgear like football helmet as you get more protection and more durability aside from counter attack. (One of the rare armor synergies that work) It also destroys baby tentacles. What better use do bones have anyway? Buckets load of poop?

In any server with Wormwood one of the first things I do is to present them bones and nitre for that sweet sweet armor.

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7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Rude?

 

Ah, sorry about that. I was just refrencing how nerfing Wortox is the exact opposite of a QoL change.

 

5 hours ago, SinancoTheBest said:

Picking two deserts worth of cacti and all the spiky bushes you want on top of getting no damage from spiky traps is not something I'd dismiss, it's one of the best utility items in the game and pairs up greatly with a headgear like football helmet as you get more protection and more durability aside from counter attack. (One of the rare armor synergies that work) It also destroys baby tentacles. What better use do bones have anyway? Buckets load of poop?

In any server with Wormwood one of the first things I do is to present them bones and nitre for that sweet sweet armor.

well the issue with bone shards is that they are very hard to renew once you take out the skeletons in your world. Your options for bone shards are 

>boons (non-renewable)

>desert/lunar (non-renewable)

>Player skeletons (renewable, but expensive when not in pubs)

>Tunbleweeds renewable, but slow)

>No-eyed deer (once per year, still unreliable)

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Sir, we do not have the same definition of "small balance QOL ideas ".

While these are fairly easy to implement, as they are simple tweaks, some are still major buff/debuff leading to a total change in character balance.

 

Like what has been already said before about Wormood, I think its crafting tab is fine and powerfull, except for the compost wrap, where I highly agree with you about it needing a buff. I like the fact it has a really long animation and does not rot. To craft two of them at once seems fine.

I think you get it wrong with the armor, its usage is to take no damage from thorns, or to work with traps to slaughter swarms of small enemies. It's not design for combat, where other armors have their use, or else you should use it with a helmet, like SinancoTheBest mentioned.

Wormood is an amazingly designed character, and a powerful one. I would say a buff to its compost wrap is enough.

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46 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Ah, sorry about that. I was just refrencing how nerfing Wortox is the exact opposite of a QoL change

 

43 minutes ago, Petit Citron said:

Sir, we do not have the same definition of "small balance QOL ideas "

Alright, updated title to be less confusing, sorry about that.

Regarding wormwood perhaps I have not found enough people playing him right in the late game, I have used the husk before and it was pretty useful against spiders and hounds, specially on tanky characters, I just felt its durability was a bit low.

I've noticed that Wormwoods specific items, specially the traps, were just never used. But maybe I should dedicate wormwood more time and see for myself.

The wortox change is not meant to be a complete nerf, overall with 10 hp self healing you'll still be a tanky powerhouse, its meant to focus him a bit more to try to be more cooperative with his perk. Also being able to heal beefalo and befriended NPCs is actually a huge buff. But I take that it is pretty debatable on how much is enough. Even if they let him exactly as he is, he will still be fine.

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