Every problem I've had with Wurt so far

[WoodieMain45684]

37 minutes ago, Crimson Chin said:

It feels like the vegan thing was slapped on just because they thought a vegetarian character would be cool

I believe this is due to merms being vegan even before the update. It's just the diet of their... Species?

 

[Desblat]

12 minutes ago, WoodieMain45684 said:

I believe this is due to merms being vegan even before the update. It's just the diet of their... Species?

 

In SW there is fishermerm, who catches fish in the ponds using spear.

I assume vegan won't catch fish. Thus merms are not vegan.

[SinancoTheBest]

44 minutes ago, Desblat said:

In SW there is fishermerm, who catches fish in the ponds using spear.

I assume vegan won't catch fish. Thus merms are not vegan.

Perhaps they are plebiscitarian  Pescetarian then? Vegetarian but eating fish- to quote Avatar the Last Airbender: "Fish ain't meat".

In any case there isn't any vegan characters in Don't Starve, Wurt eats butter, drinks volt goat milk and licks honey. She's a vegetarian.

[Sweaper]

1 hour ago, Rellimarual said:

Back when there were really good players on this forum, quite a few of them preferred basing in the swamp for various reasons. I only got  into it myself later on, as a way to avoid newbs on publics, so I don’t remember all their reasons now. It’s far from bland, though, and an excellent base for Wigfrid because of all the meat and things to kill.

If I want to avoid noobs I just go to ruins (although impossible in the early days of DST), no need for ice flingomatic there so you Don't Starve™ your fellow potential griefers of gears which equals to less chance of a world reset. And now, I don't think swamps are that scary for new players since they know about keep running while in there and stop only to get that juicy free pig skin.

[ShadowDuelist]

I'll add my 2 cents on these:

* Strong grip when wet: yeah definately not a very useful perk, although not dropping items or health penalty when falling of a ship is not bad at all, since it makes sailing a lot less punishing. I like the idea of her not dropping weapons near bearger or moose/goose too.

* The Merm AI: this probably needs to be touched a bit, it is specially annoying how often they lose aggro on things. You have to command every little thing and unlike RTS games, here it becomes quite hard with what we currently have. I use the boomerang cancel animation to coordinate them and it works pretty well for the initial punch, but some keep the aggro and others forget about the attack quickly, forcing me to have to keep coordinating them which so far has proved troublesome.

* Gold and PK: This I feel its fine, gold is plentiful both in the surface and the caves so you can find initially enough gold for at least a year or two. Wurt also doesn't need as many gold tools since merms can help you do everything, specially with the fact that they can mine. In team games another player can eventually exchange the excess meat or trinkets you have, forcing team gameplay. In solo worlds just save all those million trinkets you will get from the ruins, MK and tumbles inside a chest near PK, switch characters once every 2 ingame years, trade with pk, then go back to wurt with enough gold for 2 years or more. Easy peasy.

* Excess meat problem: I have one word for this GUNPOWDER. Turn all that excess meat into eggs and let them rot. Its not like she has many other uses for nitre anyway.

* Dead fish in the pocket: this is not a great perk but its not bad either, its an early game perk, it lets you have about the equivalent of a tam's sanity with just a fish and a tophat. Also its meant to be a joke/lore, it explains why merms always drop fish when killed, and it seems that they are fascinated by them.

[Well-met]

merm king needs a dynamic shadow. Bugs me to no end. Might aswell give PK one too.

[Lammarr]

3 hours ago, Desblat said:

In SW there is fishermerm, who catches fish in the ponds using spear.

I assume vegan won't catch fish. Thus merms are not vegan.

They hunt for fun.

They don't eat the fish they catch.

[Theukon-dos]

3 hours ago, Crimson Chin said:

Like you said, who in their right mind would use 20 durability on a wicker book to gain (or lose for some reason???) like 30 sanity.

 

actually, I think this is going to be a really good ability. Sense Wurt thrives in the swamp, you're generally going to have a decent stockpile of reeds. she can also obtain tentecle spots quite easally in exchange for fish from MK. And On tentecles spesifically restores a whopping 50 HP, meaning that Wurt can use the easally obtainable book as what is essentally a 5-time use icecream, though I don't know how long it takes to read the book.

[knaveofclubs22]

I would have to echo that a lot of my problems with Wurt boil down to either niche, useless or clunky mechanics.

-I don't like the Merm King rewards you trinkets you cannot use (I understand the game's about multiplay, but not everyone plays multiplay, or even plays a variety team in case of multiwurts)

-I don't like that while maintaining that fish are still the merms' currency, in winter your primary method of obtaining it is through murder

-Tentacle visual indicators just vanish in winter since it matches the coloration of snow

-It's a little frustrating that the mermking buff applies only an HP buff to Wurt, I'd like to see at least a minor damage buff for the setup time and cost of it. As well as to remain consistent to the buff's application to all the other merms.

-Bunnymen are still the best minions, even as Wurt. They're easy to amass, have really strong dps, run away when low to heal, and attack virtually anything as a monster or carrying meat, meaning you only have to kite through their village. Merms are still not particularly good for much for the Kiting AI. (Maybe have the MermGuards have an AI more similar to bunnymen or rock lobsters to make them seem more of an incentive).

-It's still better to base near classic base locations than the swamp, just making or moving turf to those locations. Tentacles are still "fleeting" as an area protection, swamps are located far away from other resources, etc. Maybe if craftsmerms could collect reeds or player be able to build fishermerm huts like SW that can still capitalize off the location. Otherwise the primary benefit of a swamp base is you could build next to mermhouses which have a cap of 4 merms instead of the 1.

-Be neat to have more merm "aesthetics" available. More buildings, turfs, or walls, even if just cosmetics like skins

[Queron81]

9 hours ago, Alexias said:

I don't like how she can't trade with pig king because I mostly play solo so I can't farm gold :/.

For what do you need so much gold when playing solo as Wurt?

But there is a solution for your problem: Celestial Portal.

[GenomeSquirrel]

40 minutes ago, Queron81 said:

For what do you need so much gold when playing solo as Wurt?

But there is a solution for your problem: Celestial Portal.

Eventually you’ll run out of flint and gold, Merms will chop trees only when you’re doing the same

[Desblat]

2 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

actually, I think this is going to be a really good ability. Sense Wurt thrives in the swamp, you're generally going to have a decent stockpile of reeds. she can also obtain tentecle spots quite easally in exchange for fish from MK. And On tentecles spesifically restores a whopping 50 HP, meaning that Wurt can use the easally obtainable book as what is essentally a 5-time use icecream, though I don't know how long it takes to read the book.

The only downside is: it doesn't work w/o wickerbottom.

It's like wx78, but worse. Lighnings sometimes strike you randomly, but there are no books randomly lying around.

[Fuffles]

Honestly, I like and dont like Wurt. Her Playstyle is supposed to be a Mermvillage manager, but Merms seem a bit quirky with their AI and stuff...

When a Merm automatically decides "Time to kill this Adoreable Chester" but he's like "This Bee Queen here? Nah, not a Problem" Im just seriously confused. Merms seem to have a random Target List and random Avoidance List, Pigs, yeah that's what Merms hate and I agree they'd attack it, but c'mon, a Hound that just borks around and murders stuff around them, how is that not a Threat to their village/life?

Then there is this pointless "No Slippery Tools" perk, like, why not make her totally immune to Wetness Debuffs? Her quotes indicate she loves rain and hates to not play in it.

The fact that Trinkets are useless also disappoints and that she relies on a lot of resources that are limited in Winter which is the first season swap, Ponds Freeze, so no Fish besider Murder.

Like Im unsure what Klei wants to do with her, but so far she is all over the constant like her Tapestry was supposed to be, I dont know what I expected, but I did expect more of this all over the constant stuff. Pig Skin is essentially everywhere under the form of Touche De Les Stones, Beefalo Wool can drop from Tumbleweeds and Beefs, Kelp is p. much the only thing that I accept, but then there's fish which also has 2 places to get it from. Also the fact that there is NO visual clue what mats have been added, unlike with the Celestial Portal that literally morphs as you build it, has been very disappointing (Also destroying the Construction Plan destroys your already put-in items which is stupid)

[Ermac__]

1 hour ago, Desblat said:

The only downside is: it doesn't work w/o wickerbottom.

It's like wx78, but worse. Lighnings sometimes strike you randomly, but there are no books randomly lying around.

The other downside is that there are plenty of other sources of sanity, for example fish+tophat, taffy,...or just killing the shadows. It's really a trivial perk.

 

Anyway, regarding wurt in general, she seems extremely character dependent. She enables characters like wormwood or warly because she's the best way to mass seeds that aren't extremely tedious and time-consuming (mermwars-->fish-->merm king). However if you don't really care about seeds(which you shouldn't if you are not those two characters, farming is a waste of time), she doesn't really offer utility you can't get elsewhere. Anything you can farm with merms you can farm with bunnymen. If you farm spiders with bunnymen you at least can keep the veggies and the spider drops. With merms you lose the carrots vs bunnies or you lose the fish+frog leg pitting them against spiders. Getting workers might be slightly more effcient as berries are cheaper than meat. But if you want to chop wood or mine Maxwell or woody still exists, as well as anybody can still get helpers with a slightly harder cost(meat isn't that hard to get.)

 

She feels like a soloish character like webber that can't really utilize most of the stuff she makes. She can't eat fish which she can mass produce, she doesn't utilize farms better than anyone else and easier just get by with stone fruit, so seed massing isn't terrific. She can't trade the trinkets she gets for gold. Feels like to get the most out of her you need strong character dependencies.

[Maxposting]

6 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I like the idea of her not dropping weapons near bearger or moose/goose too.

Sadly she uh... drops items fighting the bosses.

 

[maradyne]

I find Wurt's expansionist playstyle encourages her to stick around the swamp so she can farm reeds (required by her unique crafts).

Wicker's an obvious beneficiary of this; Reed buildup means more books. Reeds plus Tentacle Spots means excess books for Wurt to read, because when you have tons of both, why not. And you can have her re-stock Tentacles around the swamp to continue automatic Merm (Fish) farming.

In general, it seems like Wurt operating a swamp outpost while other players have another base works out very well. Constant income of Reeds, Tentacle Spots, and Merm drops even in the early game; especially if set up near a Reed Trap. I was fortunate enough to get one in my first play-test, and god it works so well. Surround the trap with Merm houses, infinite supplies. Set up a tree farm and you can expand indefinitely.
Trade your meat products, excess Reeds, and any Trinkets you stumble across on supply trips to the main base, and take gold and veggies in return.

As for the Vegetarian downside...in practice, it almost doesn't matter. People were concerned about going hungry in Winter, but...
Even early game, it's nothing. One vegetable and 3 Ice makes Ratatouille, which Wurt benefits extra from. Winter = conquered.
Eggs also work as filler; and with the piles of Frog Legs and Monster Meat Wurt supplies, you'll be swimming in those.
As for the source of the vegetables? Underground Mushroom forests are great; you get wood while you're farming the vegetables, which you'll want a ton of anyway to build more Merm houses. Once I realized that, hunger was never an issue. It was almost easier to deal with in Winter, due to the Ice regeneration.

 

All in all, she really seems like a character meant for Multiplayer and Webber 2.0 on steroids, but I think she'll be fine once people get used to her. Maybe some minor tweaks? But stuff like the no-PK downside change how the player has to approach the game in a way that you can really feel, and I think that's good design.

[Mrklli]

9 hours ago, Desblat said:

In SW there is fishermerm, who catches fish in the ponds using spear.

I assume vegan won't catch fish. Thus merms are not vegan.

I've always thought the pigs and merms in hamlet/shipwrecked are all from different cultures, maybe they're even different subspecies. Their habitats are not similar and I don't think there's much travelling in between different populations. So, due the natural selection/cultural evolution they have developed different traits and ways to survive and their isolated little communities don't have any idea what their distant cousins are up to somewhere really far away. Thus imo it's perfectly possible that merms are vegetarian in dst-constant but not in sw. There are many differences anyway, so why not in diet also?

[ShadowDuelist]

8 hours ago, knaveofclubs22 said:

-I don't like that while maintaining that fish are still the merms' currency, in winter your primary method of obtaining it is through murder

 

6 hours ago, FuffledBeeQueen said:

She relies on a lot of resources that are limited in Winter which is the first season swap, Ponds Freeze, so no Fish besider Murder.

All cave ponds stay liquid during winter, you can also fish peacefully there. There are usually one or 2 cave entrances with a couple of ponds. Cave swamps sometimes have ponds, and the ruins also have ponds (although they contain EEL but it works the same).
 

2 hours ago, maradyne said:

All in all, she really seems like a character meant for Multiplayer

This.

I think she's meant to be an isolationist like Webber, living by herself on the swamp and trading with the other survivors. Except that in her case and unlike current Webber, she can eventually bring a huge and very powerful army to most fights, and with the mask she can provide the means for others to join her at her base to keep expanding the Merm army.

It's a brand new concept for the game (like, playing an RTS within DST) and I like it, although its currently bugged/broken due to the Merm's AI and I believe its mostly what takes the fun out of her.  As soon as they improve the Merm AI a little, like to keep focused on the aggro (they forget about fights often) try to attack hounds, depth worms and bosses by default, etc, I think she will be one of the best characters.

Honestly I really hope Klei fixes the AI so I don't have to resort to mods for it.

[Steve Raptor]

15 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

 

All cave ponds stay liquid during winter, you can also fish peacefully there. There are usually one or 2 cave entrances with a couple of ponds. Cave swamps sometimes have ponds, and the ruins also have ponds (although they contain EEL but it works the same).
 

This.

I think she's meant to be an isolationist like Webber, living by herself on the swamp and trading with the other survivors. Except that in her case and unlike current Webber, she can eventually bring a huge and very powerful army to most fights, and with the mask she can provide the means for others to join her at her base to keep expanding the Merm army.

It's a brand new concept for the game (like, playing an RTS within DST) and I like it, although its currently bugged/broken due to the Merm's AI and I believe its mostly what takes the fun out of her.  As soon as they improve the Merm AI a little, like to keep focused on the aggro (they forget about fights often) try to attack hounds, depth worms and bosses by default, etc, I think she will be one of the best characters.

Honestly I really hope Klei fixes the AI without having to resort to mods.

I think the "Merm army" is being very overrated by a lot of players.

Recruiting NPCs (bunnies and Pigs) is nothing new to the game and already exists, merms behave exactly the same as pigs regarding combat.

The problem with them is their very limited use for the most important activities you do need as much help as you can get, that being boss fights mainly.

Pretty much 90% of the bosses have some sort of AOE or damage modifiers against other mobs and will kill them in 1-2 shots, so massing 10+ army of merms, after spending insane amount of wood to craft all those houses, to just watch them get 1 shotted by almost every boss in the game is very disheartening.

For those bosses that do benefit from NPC assistance (Bee queen for example) bunnies get the job done much better than merms, they have better AI, better damage and DPS, and a lot easier to recruit en mass.

After 60 days of playing with Wurt and playing with her Merms, the best use I found for them is mining and wood cutting, I never found their combat capability useful, they can't even protect you from hound waves...

Its cool and all to run with 10 Merms at your side, but it has little practical use other than to look cool for RP purposes.

I think Klei need to take a step back and re-consider how to re-design the Merm AI and traits to be unique and more useful in combat than Bunnies and Pigs for it to be truly worth to invest into and use them, especially when vs bosses and late game challenges.

Don't forget that to assemble a lot of merms you need to go through a lot of effort to build all their houses, especially material gathering (you need insane amount of wood), and feeding the king, the reward should be adequate as well.

[Theukon-dos]

2 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

I think the "Merm army" is being very overrated by a lot of players.

Recruiting NPCs (bunnies and Pigs) is nothing new to the game and already exists, merms behave exactly the same as pigs regarding combat.

The problem with them is their very limited use for the most important activities you do need as much help as you can get, that being boss fights mainly.

Pretty much 90% of the bosses have some sort of AOE or damage modifiers against other mobs and will kill them in 1-2 shots, so massing 10+ army of merms, after spending insane amount of wood to craft all those houses, to just watch them get 1 shotted by almost every boss in the game is very disheartening.

For those bosses that do benefit from NPC assistance (Bee queen for example) bunnies get the job done much better than merms, they have better AI, better damage and DPS, and a lot easier to recruit en mass.

After 60 days of playing with Wurt and playing with her Merms, the best use I found for them is mining and wood cutting, I never found their combat capability useful.

Its cool and all to run with 10 Merms at your side, but it has little practical use other than to look cool for RP purposes.

true, However, Pig guards in particular are much, much stronger than pigs or bunnymen. Pigs have 250 HP and 33 attack damage, bunnymen have 200 HP and 40 attack damage, and, aslong as you have a Merm King, Merm Guards have a whopping 660 HP and 50 attack damage. This makes them over 3x as tanky as bunnies, and about 2.5x as tanky as pigs. Additionally, Merm Guards kite enemies, which while it does take a bit of there DPS away compared to bunnymen, it does also make them much more preserving, as even AOE bosses will usally only hit a few at a time.

[Neu7ral]

The only things I agree is the Halloween Trinkets needs to be changed to work with Merm King, some AI fixes for Merms, her exploits and making the wetness less of a burden.

PLEASE FIX THE MERM HIT BUG THAT'S HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

[ShadowDuelist]

2 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

I think the "Merm army" is being very overrated by a lot of players.

Recruiting NPCs (bunnies and Pigs) is nothing new to the game and already exists, merms behave exactly the same as pigs regarding combat....

[Snip]

...After 60 days of playing with Wurt and playing with her Merms, the best use I found for them is mining and wood cutting, they can't even protect you from hound waves...

Its cool and all to run with 10 Merms at your side, but it has little practical use.

Well I do agree with you, my experience was the same, but I believe this is actually because they are bugged.

I think that if you invested the time and effort to make the merm warrior hutches, and get the king (and keep him alive) they have everything to be better than pigs and bunnymen: the buff gives them really high stats and damage, and their speed is actually remarkable, (they dodge many attacks with their kiting pattern actually, its not bad at all) the problem is, like you say, that their AI makes them extremely dull, dumb, and don't do things right, which ends up making bunnymen currently a much better and cheaper option.

Befriended Warriors should protect you at all costs specially against hounds, spiders and bosses, and try to avoid AOE damage which, being as fast as they are, could do it perfectly.

I think this is Woodie rework 2.0, its a great concept but it needs tweaks in patches to work as intended. I wouldn't toss her to the garbage yet, the AI and the way they fight (specially the Merm Warriors) just need some tweaks.

[Steve Raptor]

8 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

true, However, Pig guards in particular are much, much stronger than pigs or bunnymen. Pigs have 250 HP and 33 attack damage, bunnymen have 200 HP and 40 attack damage, and, aslong as you have a Merm King, Merm Guards have a whopping 660 HP and 50 attack damage. This makes them over 3x as tanky as bunnies, and about 2.5x as tanky as pigs. Additionally, Merm Guards kite enemies, which while it does take a bit of there DPS away compared to bunnymen, it does also make them much more preserving, as even AOE bosses will usally only hit a few at a time.

Even at 600 HP they still get one shotted by the likes of Bearger (It was shown on Dev stream) and deerclops just froze them .

The kiting behavior is deceiving, because while it may seem that they stay alive longer, their DPS is also extremely low because 70% of the time they are running around, eventually they will get caught up in one AOE and die, sometimes it can happen on the first hit. Bunnies have a better AI, they straight up beat the target until their health gets low and then they retreat to regenerate, this is far more useful in my experience, they always give you "more bang for your buck" in terms of DPS before they die.

5 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Well I do agree with you, my experience was the same, but I believe this is actually because they are bugged.

I think that if you invested the time and effort to make the merm warrior hutches, and get the king (and keep him alive) they have everything to be better than pigs and bunnymen: the buff gives them really high stats and damage, and their speed is actually remarkable, (they dodge many attacks with their kiting pattern actually, its not bad at all) the problem is, like you say, that their AI makes them extremely dull, dumb, and don't do things right, which ends up making bunnymen currently a much better and cheaper option.

Befriended Warriors should protect you at all costs specially against hounds, spiders and bosses, and try to avoid AOE damage which, being as fast as they are, could do it perfectly.

I think this is Woodie rework 2.0, its a great concept but it needs tweaks in patches to work as intended. I wouldn't toss her to the garbage yet, the AI and the way they fight (specially the Merm Warriors) just need some tweaks.

I agree with everything you said, hopefully Klei will give them more attention and improve their AI.

Honestly its the biggest letdown for me and what demoralized me from continuing my session and playing with her.

I invested so much into building a Merm village only to find out that their use is so limited combat wise.

I think that the AOE modifiers that bosses have against mobs should not apply to Merms royal guards, even more so for the fact that they don't accept helmets and therefore you can't help them mitigate damage.

[maradyne]

AI is one of the things that needs tweaking, yea.
From what I've gathered, they were rushing pretty hard to get this update out; Follower mechanics seemed to get the brunt of the odd behavior.

Not terribly worried. Characters usually get a second pass, and Merms will probably get smoothed out then.

[sinisterrkid]

1 hour ago, Steve Raptor said:

Recruiting NPCs (bunnies and Pigs) is nothing new to the game and already exists, merms behave exactly the same as pigs regarding combat.

What the hell? Pigs take 4 days to respawn, Merms take 4 minutes. Bunnies are only active during dusk and night while pigs only during the day. You can actually use Merm-guards as permanent base defense and I look forward to not needing tooth traps anymore (I hate having to reset them). Merm-guard's combat AI needs reshaping for sure, to increase the DPS and all, but the potential at least is for them to be a definite better choice than both bunnies and pigs, so don't dismiss them just yet. They're not gonna be absurdly better, but I also don't want every next character to be twice as good as all the previous ones.

Non-combat wise, merms will help you chop trees. At the surface that seems like something pigs would do just as well, except that in long-lasting worlds tree guards spawn very easily and kill all of them leaving half of the forest still standing until they can respawn 4 days later. And while you made the comparison with Woodie and Maxwell, only 4 pigs is enough to chop + gather a forest faster then both, which it seems no one realises. (a recent post made videos timing all the methods). The only problem with Woodie and Maxwell using pigs to further boost their speed is the tree guards, and then this paragraph loops.